In trying to stay abreast of all that goes on in the world of education, I read many articles and reports about the state of schools in New York City, the never-ending debate regarding standardized tests, and the intellectual and financial value of tutoring. Recently, however, two articles that have nothing to do with my field reminded me how everybody needs a little help sometimes.
Fill in the blank: "________ are not teachers but they teach. They're not your boss...but they can be bossy...[they] speak with credibility, make a personal connection and focus little on themselves."
While anyone reading this will (hopefully) think of good tutors - my students would recognize the bossy part! - this quote is actually from an article in the New Yorker about coaches: athletic coaches, artistic coaches, and in the author's case, medical coaches. The writer, Dr. Atul Gawande, is an established surgeon who went in search of help to improve his technique, and in so doing investigated many different forms of coaching. He writes that while professionals like doctors and lawyers are expected to go to school, practice a lot, reach a level of expertise and then they've graduated, athletes and artists know that "the teaching model [is] naïve about our human capacity for self-perfection. It holds that, no matter how well prepared people are...few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own."
Any professional sports team has a roster of coaches, assistants and aides to keep the players in peak condition. Admire the latest Oscar-worthy acting performance? I guarantee the actor had a coach during production to help delve deep for the role. Prima ballerinas and Metropolitan Opera singers still take classes or work with an individual coach, who lends an eye or an ear to their ever-evolving work. Even some classroom teachers are letting coaches observe how they conduct a class in order to find out what they can improve to help their students more. As the surgeon writes: "Modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things: operating inside people's bodies, teaching eighth graders algebraic concepts that Euclid would have struggled with...In the absence of guidance, how many people can do such complex tasks at the level we require?"
If all these adults need help, what about their children? I could easily re-write the quote above as follows: Society increasingly demands that students take responsibility for learning more and at a faster pace in order to keep up with the modern world: science and technology, algebraic concepts that Euclid would have struggled with, languages written in a different alphabet...and they have to take tests which are based on a completely different pattern of logic than they are taught in school. In the absence of guidance, how can they juggle so many complex tasks at the level we require?"
The answer is: not many. Which brings me to the second article, in which a coach says that for every "I can't" statement, a person "will need 10 positive experiences to counteract that one negative thought...The general operating principle...is 'seeing is believing.' I'm going to have some success. Then I'm going to start to believe it...[our] overall philosophy is the opposite. Believing is seeing. Once you believe it, you're going to see it." This person, named Trevor Moawad, is an independent consultant and coach who works with the University of Alabama's football team, commonly known as the Crimson Tide. He is not, however, an athletic coach. According to an article in Sports Illustrated, Moawad is in charge of the team's mental fitness. He also works with various units of the military and his business parter is in charge of mental conditioning for the New York Yankees. These men know, as any student who has worked with me does, that preparation and performance are inextricably tied to what's going on in the head.
The skill set for a successful test-taker is the same for a mentally grounded athlete or actor. No one player can play football without their eyes and ears wide open; most trained actors will tell you that looking at and listening to their stage-partner are key ingredients to a successful scene. I know my greatest challenge on stage was staying in the present moment: not "thinking" about the performance I was giving, or the audience, or the butterflies in my stomach, etc. No test taker can focus on the details of a passage or the traps in a standardized test math problem if they are also thinking about what they "could/should have done and oh god oh god oh god..." As such, it wasn't surprising to read that the exercises used for the Crimson Tide are similar to ones that I learned in training to be an actor, some of which I use with my students today. They help the participants learn - and maintain - status, focus, trust and most of all, how to "get out of your head."
Those who suffer from "performance anxiety" are unfocused, feel inferior and therefore undermine themselves before they even put pen to paper. The good news is that overcoming that test-taking stress can be learned. We aren't born walking or talking. None of us reach our personal best in a vacuum. That's what coaches are for: to teach, to guide, to show the way. That's what a tutor is for too.
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