Learning somatically

Our innovation work continues apace at g. We are all seeing new possibilities unfolding above and beyond our current business. And we are getting there somatically. That is, using a daily physical standing practice. More to come. 

Related to this is my now daily ritual of catching practice with the boys in the backyard. We play a hybrid game as I am hopeless with a baseball bat. I use a cricket willow, the boys throw a baseball to me, I crack it back to them and there are no gloves allowed. As the session progresses, the speed and degree of difficulty increases. The boys are loving it. 

Last week I needed to practice delivering a part of our Board Meeting presentation to the Board. But I was out of time at work and didn't want to miss out on the "cricket-(base)ball" catching practice. So I did both. As I smashed balls around the kids heads (perfectly safe Kim, Dad did it to me all the time and I survived) I rehearsed lines. Fynn (9) helped enormously. And I was reminded of something I learned while training as a teacher a decade ago. When it comes to boys, the last thing they need is to learn in a classroom, passively sitting at a desk. They need activity while they learn. Research shows a lot of ADD / ADHD can be attributed to this mismatch of learning style / learning environment.

I proved this out as I really saw I could get my message across and hit a pretty good cover drive (that'd be a type of cricket shot) at the same time. And best of all, after our Board Meeting, Fynn checked in to see if I had hit the highlights.

So today the tables were turned. Fynn has a 3 minute presentation to give next week, all about Wisconsin. So as I was bashing baseballs at him, off he went. He played around with a number of different approaches. He put a gag (joke) in here or there as we Graham's like to do. I learned a ton too. The state bird is the American Robin.  The state tree is the sugar maple. And the state flower is the wood violet. 

So all in all, we proved the research right and Fynn's catching is getting really good. Next up, we need to conquer using the baseball glove.