Inclusive Teaching at the Track
A few years ago, I broke my left leg and left clavicle. It was on vacation in Tuscany on a rain-soaked road that looked sketchy and slippery as hell so I was barely moving when the rug was pulled and I heard some things crack. It really does hurt to remember it.
It ruined what had been a very nice trip until then between riding, eating everything in sight and washing it all down with Chianti. A few titanium screws and a week in the local hospital with the Mediterranean version of Nurse Ratched later, I was back home but not driving anywhere which sucked since it was my first season leading the DE1 classroom and I was fired about it. Coincidentally, while on vacation but before I fell off my bike, I had signed up for an online class offered through the Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning on Inclusive Teaching.
I don’t teach at Columbia so I don’t know why I was on the invite list, but I thought that I might learn something I could use in class at the track. I finished the course by the time my hip had mended enough start hobbling around on crutches. By then the season was over. After a crap year thanks to covid that had us doing mostly lead-follow and me yelling so students could hear me because we were outside for the DE1 class, I finally got the opportunity to apply inclusive teaching and that’s what I’ve been leading up to sharing.
Google AI returns this succinct definition: “Inclusive teaching is a teaching style that aims to provide a learning environment that is equitable and supportive for all students, regardless of their background or identity.” I think this is a fancy way of saying to meet your students where they are to make the most of the time you have together. Inclusive teaching appealed to me because when Joe asked me to do the class room, I wanted it to be a conversation between me and the folks in the room who were expecting to be bored while the dummy up front droned on about braking technique and the ever-elusive appropriate apex.
I figured that our DE1 students had no idea of what to expect and mostly no track experience. In turn, I realized that I had no idea what expertise the students were bringing to the track. I thought of this as an opportunity to access the skills they brought to help them manage their day and learn the most possible from their time with us by luring them into owning the process. Did it work? I can’t give you a precise return on investment, but I can tell you that whenever I meet someone I had in DE1 and is now running with us in DE2, 3, 4, or has become an instructor or racer says hello and thank you I feel good.
Inclusive teaching isn’t fru-fru. It’s what I saw happening when I visited the classroom that Sal and Kevin ran in DE1, as well as what was going on in DE2 with Steve and Yuko, DE3 with Paul, Jake, Lew, and in DE4 with Rick his partner for the day. It’s also what I heard plenty of if I happened to overhear a conversation between an instructor and their student. This spirit is what makes doing what I do worthwhile. That we do it organically is great. It’s like the cream coming to the top as in being unconsciously competent and not thinking about doing what we are doing while doing it well; AKA being in the zone.
Can we be better? Of course, but how can we intentionally get in the zone and get our students on that path with us.
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I’m not good with the concept of OSB (Other Sports Beckon) as a description for drivers. I don’t mean to say that every student is capable of being great at driving, but everyone who comes out deserves a chance to learn and have a great time.
When we go to Lime Rock, I try to visit with my high school basketball coach. We’ve known each other for decades. He’s also a math teacher. I learned a lot from him over the years, but on a recent visit he was grumbling about having to implement another new style of learning in his math class. He couldn’t wrap his head around how letting students learn in teams was going to be helpful since they would have to take tests on their own. Funny thing, I sucked at math the first time around even with a guy that I had a great relationship with as the teacher. I love math, but I couldn’t get the hang of it then. Anyway, it struck me as odd that someone who was a coach and needed to figure out how to make a group of individuals work together on the court wasn’t open to trying something similar in his math class. The benefit of not being 13 years old and in math class with my coach anymore is that I can tell him when I think he’s wrong, like in this case, to not give the team style a try and pointing out that I learned more from him at the basketball court than in his math class.
Putting my learning style needs aside, what I like about coaching is the puzzle of trying to figure out who needs a shove and who needs a hug. I start with trying to be inclusive. It doesn’t necessarily work with everyone, especially the folks who need some tough love to be motivated – hello track pass and black flag.
So here is my gift to you. (It’s from Hamilton College’s web page based on, The Spectrum of Teaching Styles by Sarah Ashworth, and Muska Mosston.)
1. The Command Style: Student follows orders. Structurally the teacher is established as the authority.
2. The Practice Style: The teacher hands out a worksheet, gives directions, then the students do the worksheet and can ask the teacher questions while doing the worksheet.
3. The Reciprocal Style: Group work, cooperation, and utilizing the skills of students to work with and help their peers.
4. The Self-Check Style: The student is responsible to construct their learning, evaluation, and decisions under the tutelage of the instructor.
5. The Inclusion Style: Accommodate all of the students, no one can fail. Tasks are designed to accommodate individual differences, and give different options to accomplish the same goal.
6. The Guided Style: The different skills of students are utilized. Students formulate their ideas, and learn from each other.
Please dig into the cliché of reflecting on your past year to think about how you like to learn and how you have consciously or unconsciously applied one of more of the above techniques with your driving students.
Next level? How do you infer which of these teaching styles seems appropriate for what DE group? Maybe that’s not so next level. DE1 really needs some commanding along with some practice, and an introduction to the reciprocal style after starting with the inclusion style. What do you think works best for DE2, 3, and 4?
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