Last week I had the pleasure of playing Jericho National (http://www.jerichonational.com/Golf.aspx), an absolutely beautiful golf course in New Hope, Pennsylvania, with my father-in-law and his friend. Leave it to my over analytical, always reflective mind to relate learning to golf!
As we approached the 5th Tee, a 179 yard par three, I thought to myself, "where in the hell are the easy 125 yarders? None of that here, as this place is not for the faint-of-heart "hacker". Once the initial shock wore off, I noticed that all three of us were approaching the tee box with different clubs and strategies. I was taking the traditional approach in using an iron off of the tee. My father-in-law was using fairway wood, which is loftier and easier to contol...the safe play. Dad's friend was using a hybrid iron (used to replace the more difficult to hit long irons) to try to get the best of both worlds...distance and control.
If only we did more of this in the classroom. The three of us knew what kind of ball strikers we were, so we played to our strengths in order to maximize our chances of success. Not a bad philosophy for education, huh? If we know how our kids learn...better yet, if we can teach them to be more metacognitively aware themselves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition), then maybe they can approach learning like the three of us approached the 5th tee...a bit intimidated at first, but then confident about "taking a swing" because we knew what club to use!
The perfect ending to this post would be to say that we all parred the hole, but those of you who have seen me putt would never believe it! Either way, I had a great day at Jericho where both the golfer and "edu-nerd" in me went home satisfied. Our students and staff deserve the same feeling, so let's work to help them learn which club works best for them!
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