Faithful Leadership - A Tribute to Julie Bradshaw

While this post isn't about education (well, actually, it is - just a different kind of education), I wanted to publically thank a woman who has been instrumental in my life this past year because she is moving to a different job next week.  Julie is the Group Fitness Director at the Alexander YMCA, but next week she will be at a different branch.  I won't see her often, so I want to take a moment to thank her for her faithfulness, friendship, and leadership.

The first time I met Julie was in June.  I had been at the Y for a couple of months and I had heard her name from instructors and other members. In June, she came up with an idea for a cycle challenge called the Tour de Alexandre.  Those of us who registered for it recorded our classes and mileage on a large chart with the goal of collectively reaching the same mileage as the Tour de France.  She sent a weekly email, updating us on our progress and including who the leaders were both in the number of classes and individual mileage.  The result was a really fun and motivating challenge.  The two men who were in the lead on miles teased each other and pushed hard against each other.  I knew I wouldn't be able to achieve a high number of miles, but I took more cycle classes in those few weeks than ever before and loved watching that chart fill up.  At the end of the challenge, I replied to one of Julie's emails to thank her for coming up with the idea and keeping us updated because it was super motivating to know that my progress was part of a collective goal (which we crushed, by the way - we ended up at double the mileage of those guys in France).

I didn't see Julie every time I came to work out, but she occasionally subbed for Matt's Group Power class.  In fact, I think the first time I saw her teach was when she and Matt taught Group Power Express together for the summer Group Fit Fest.  I realized then that she wasn't just a creative challenge designer.  She is an exceptional fitness educator.  She cares about the members of her class and is observant of how they are doing.  She is clear in her explanations and models skills well.  She tells Dad jokes both to motivate and to distract you from how hard what you are doing is.  Mostly, she is just super encouraging.  Whatever you are able to do is great, but she encourages you to do just a bit more.

Just as school was starting back, I wanted to tell my Y story to someone, and she seemed like the right person to share it with.  I sent her a very long email, telling her my story from the beginning and praising the educational techniques of many instructors.  She made the mistake of asking me about cognitive science, so she got a few more very long emails as a result.  Every time I see her, she asks lots of questions because she is great about learning everything she can about her members.

In September, Julie asked me if I would be willing to participate in fundraising for the annual campaign.  I was both honored to be asked and thrilled to have the opportunity to give back to the Y.  She kept me encouraged throughout the campaign, even when responses were slow.  When I first began feeling God's pull out of the classroom and towards the Y, she was the first person I talked to there.  I just wanted to feel out if it was a crazy idea, so I asked her if we could talk after a Group Power class one Saturday morning.  I'm sure she would have rather gone home after class, but she agreed to talk with me.  She was so helpful and encouraging and helped me explore the job posting website.  She set up introductions with important people so I could explore options, even introducing me to the president after class one morning.  When I decided to certify in cycle instruction, she was helpful and encouraging.  One of the final things Julie has done in her role at Alexander is to hire me as a substitute cycle instructor, and I couldn't be more grateful.  She gave great feedback on my demo class and asked great questions during our interview.   She has been walking me through every step of the process.  Mostly, she is providing me with an opportunity to be part of the Y's mission.  

In Drew Dyck's book Just Show Up, he discusses the value of faithfulness as both a character trait and a form of leadership.  He describes three questions you can ask yourself to identify faithfulness.

1.  Can people depend on me to do what I say I will do?

2.  Do I look for ways to help others?

3.  Am I a person who can be present even when I don't know what to say or do?

Julie exhibits all of these in her leadership at the Y.  She took the time to meet with me when she didn't have to and followed up on everything we talked about that day and at other times.  She took advantage of every opportunity to be there, not only for me, but for all of the instructors she is in charge of, and gave many members opportunities to be part of fundraising.  During more than one of our conversations about my future, I have begun to cry.  During each of those times, she has been patient to let me express whatever I needed to, comforted me with a hug, and given encouraging words when possible.  Her faithfulness has influenced more lives than she will ever know, and I am proud and grateful to call her my friend. 

Fun and Easy are Not Synonyms

There are two classes that I take at the YMCA with the same instructor, Matt.  (I have a lot of great fitness instructors that I like very much; but Matt is the best, and everyone should take his classes.)  One is called Group Power.  It is a weightlifting class.  I love it, but it is a challenging class for someone with little strength and zero balance. The other is Cardio Kickboxing, an energetic class with fun music and dance-y moves where I grin from ear to ear and never once look up at the clock.  For reasons that are beyond me, the difficult class is highly attended every week, and the fun class often only draws eight or nine people.  This week, I expressed my confusion about that to Matt.  Halfway through Kickboxing, he said, "Twenty-five minutes ago, you said this was the fun class.  Do you still feel that way?"  Well, yes, I had been jabbing and uppercutting and kicking and laughing at Matt and having a great time while dripping sweat.  Then, he said, "Let's show her it's not the fun class."  But it still was.  Sorry, Matt, it is fun, and there is nothing you can do about it.

I think what Matt heard was "Group power is hard, and Kickboxing is easy," but that is not what I said.  I said that Kickboxing is fun, so I don't know why its attendance is lower.  It is fun, but it is definitely not easy.

Here's the thing. Fun and easy are not the same.  I googled synonyms for fun, and the word easy is not on the list.

While I have never heard or read the word "clubbable" and have never used the word "convivial," I would definitely use the rest of those words to describe the Kickboxing class.  It is lively, amusing, and enjoyable; it is the highlight of my week.  I would never describe it with any of these synonyms for the word easy.

Being a cognitive science nerd, I can't help but see it everywhere now, even in a conversation like this.  The difference between easy and fun is an important thing when it comes to student motivation.  On Thursday, I read a summary of the Robert and Elizabeth Bjork study, from which they coined the term "desirable difficulty."  They found that there is a sweet spot when it comes to learning and motivation.  If a task is too difficult, students give up.  But if it is too easy, they get bored and stop paying attention.  

Wordle didn't take over the internet last year because it was easy, but people loved it because it was at a doable level of challenge, making it fun.  The same can be said for Sudoku, crossword puzzles, and challenging video game levels.  Enjoyment comes from challenge, and so does learning.  Our memories chuck out things that are too easy to learn.  If you don't put effort into thinking about it, you won't remember it (which is good - this is what prevents our brains from being overloaded with too many memories, like what every person you know wore yesterday and what you ate four days ago).  Teachers, recognizing this should help us construct learning activities that lie in the desirable range.  Students should have to think about concepts or dig into their memory for answers.  They should be getting some things wrong, or we haven't calibrated the level correctly.  There is nothing satisfying about accomplishing something that was too simple and easy, and learning will not result.

Yesterday, I gave Matt a heads-up that he would be making an appearance on this blog.  During that conversation, he suggested that the reason challenging things are fun is because of the endorphin release.  While I had connected that to physical training, that conversation was the first it had occurred to me to apply it to academic work as well.  Perhaps solving a difficult math problem or writing a high-quality essay releases endorphins as well.  I'll need to dig into Google Scholar to see if there is any research on this, but shout out to Matt for getting me to think about its academic implications.

It is important that we explicitly relate this to students so they will be more willing to take on challenges.  In spite of the motivation of challenge, we still have to overcome inertia to get started, so it can be helpful to have examples of the joy of meeting a challenge.  I do this in "pep talks," of course, but I like it better when it comes up naturally in the curriculum.  When I teach 8th graders about the Apollo era, one of the things I show them is JFK's "We choose to go to the moon" speech, part of a 1961 address at Rice University.  This is at the heart of that speech:

"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? 

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

I love talking to students about this speech because they don't hear talk like this.  For sure, we aren't hearing it from politicians these days; they want to sell us on the idea that their solution to problems is easy, and no one ever has to sacrifice anything.  Students have access to a million technologies whose purpose is to make things easier.  Some of their parents email coaches and teachers to complain if they are being challenged.  Athletic coaches may be the only people truly encouraging them to do hard things on a consistent basis, but even then, I don't know if they are telling their players that the difficulty is, in fact, the point.  Yet, athletes know they feel more satisfaction when they beat a difficult team than they do when they win against the weakest team in the conference.

Nothing worth doing is easy, and it is important that our students know that.  Teachers, we are the people best positioned for showing them that day in and day out.  It's important that we model it by taking on challenges in our own lives, but I don't think they will draw the conclusion for themselves, so we should also take every chance we can to make it explicit.

Group Power is hard.  Spin classes are hard.  Boot camp is hard.  Cardio Kickboxing is hard (but it is also fun).  But with all of them, the hard is the point.  It's why I joined the Y in the first place.  After all, I was not pushing myself at home for free.  I wanted to be challenged, and that is, thankfully, what is happening.  Thank you to Matt, Stacey, Jay, Greg, and Liz for never making it easy.  Learning to read is hard.  Long division is hard.  Analysis of literature is hard.  The syntax of a foreign language is hard.  But the hard is the point.  It's why we go to school.  We want to learn the things we couldn't have learned on our own at home.

I'll end with one more quote, this one from Penny Marshall's masterpiece A League of Their Own.  

Speaking of making this concept explicit, our chemistry teacher has this quote framed and hanging by her classroom door, so students who have just finished a hard class can read it on their way out and remember that was the point.