Lesson Planning Basics

I used to be a teacher. I taught preschool all the way up to Grade 12 in various short and medium-term stints, including about ten years of experience tutoring kids and young adults one-on-one. It's a goal of mine to get back into the classroom one day.

I was asked to create a little lesson plan template with some very basic tips and advice for use structuring short lessons at fight practice. So, here it is. 

Step 1: Choose a Clear Objective

Students will… 

(Learn how to ______ in order to ______).
(Learn how to ______ in _____ steps so you can ______).
(Learn how to counter ______ with _______).

Your objective should be clear and fully understood by both you and your audience. It should express not only what you're doing, but how and why. 

Adult students must see value in any lesson or skill they are being taught, or they will not engage with you. 

Students will learn with a partner how to perform the basic Destreza (Spanish rapier) technique, atajo, using a single sword in three movements in order to gain control of the opponent’s blade. 

Step 2: Choose Your Method and Teaching Points

Be aware of your audience. Do they have the foundations to understand your lesson, or do you need to start simpler? What is the attention span of this group like? Use teaching points to organize and guide your delivery. The lesson plan should be so clear that somebody else with your experience could teach it from your notes. 

Method: 

I will explain atajo. I will have one volunteer who is familiar with atajo help me as a model to act upon. I will explain the technique using the “up, side, down” sword movement mnemonic, demonstrate it, and then invite students to pair up. I will ask students to place three atajos to either side of their partner’s blade and then switch. I will watch each pair and make adjustments as needed. 

Teaching Points:

1. Atajo is a Spanish word that means shortcut, but in Destreza we use this word to mean controlling the other blade. The goal is to control in a way that means they can’t attack you, but you are in a good position to attack them. We do this through creating leverage and positioning our sword as a barrier between us and them. We can do this in three simple movements – “up, side, down.” 
   
   
2. Line up the sword parallel to the other sword with both partners in a right-angle stance at measure.
   
   
3. Lift the point of your sword slightly, while taking care not to drop your hand. This is “up.”
   
   
4. Carry the point of your sword across the other blade using a movement from the wrist, maintaining your hand position as much as possible. This is “side.”
   
   
5. Lower your sword on to the other sword and lower your hand slightly to increase the angle, taking care to make sure you have stronger degrees on the blade than they do. This is “down.” 
   
   

Step 3: Assess Your Success and Make Adjustments

How will you know if your students have understood or not? What are you looking for? What are the common mistakes that people make, and how will you notice and correct them? Make mental notes of what you’ll change next time if things don’t go quite right. 

Step 4: Wrap Up Efficiently

Quickly recap the lesson. Ask for questions. Try to keep this short and gently discourage “helpers” from repeating information, extending the lesson, or discussing using technical language. This can overwhelm new students. Request that they come see you after for further discussion. 

Making good choices

My understanding of La Verdadera Destreza is changing all the time, because it's based around a pretty dense body of work that's a little hard to fully appreciate unless you're a highly educated Renaissance man who speaks Spanish. 

It's also deceptively simple - like Chess or Go, it might only take a few minutes for someone to explain the rules to you, but a lifetime to understand the mysteries and hidden depths. 

I have exceptional mentorship so I'm learning a lot anyway, but as I learn, different things stick out to me. 

At the moment, I see the True Art primarily as a philosophical self-improvement and brain-training program which conveniently moonlights as a martial art because people like swords.

I know I do. I really like swords. 

Ahh, swords.
Sorry, what was I talking about just now?

I also think it offers a very useful mental health toolkit. 

So, I go to therapy. This is just a thing that I do. It's like people who need to go to the doctor regularly - I need to go to therapy every week or two. 

Anyway, the type of therapy that I do is pretty well-known for teaching you a lot of skills and strategies to help you deal with sub-optimal behavior patterns. 

One of the skills they teach you is ODP, which looks like this:

OBSERVE - take in information with your five senses; experience your inner and outer world without interpretation or running commentary 

DESCRIBE - put words on what you have observed to describe it as accurately as possible, without judgement (the water is cold, I feel sad) 

PARTICIPATE - Based on what you have observed and described, make a decision about how you want to act. Be fully present, act decisively and with total awareness. Be engaged and present in what's going on, without ruminating, dissociating, reacting from reflex, etc. 

I was thinking about this skill the other day and comparing and contrasting it to what I have been taught about another decision-making process, this one extrapolated from the teachings of Carranza (the guy who invented La Verdadera Destreza) by Puck and Mary Curtis: 

KNOWLEDGE - Study, understand, gain experience to build a foundation
PERCEPTION - Observe carefully, see the options, see the potential outcomes
DECISION - From your existing knowledge and what you have perceived, decide what the best option is

ACTION - Decisively take action 

They're not really very different, right? One is maybe geared towards mindfulness and interpersonal situations and the other towards a combat situation, but the basic filtration system is the same. The goal is to mindfully and consciously decide what you want to do next. We don't want to just flail or act instinctively.

Obviously, Carranza wasn't secretly really into mindfulness meditation and he didn't invent therapy - but he did understand the heart of good, reasoned decision-making. 

When you leave yourself space for Observation of your mental and physical surroundings non-judgmentally, Orienting yourself to the options based on context and knowledge, Deciding what to do next, and then Acting (OODA - a term coined for the exact same mental process about 400 years later), you can do things with confident awareness. 

OODA!

You're not removing emotion and sentiment from the situation and you're not going to magically come up with a winning solution every time. That's not how life works.

However, by filtering information and making decisions in a structured way, you're taking firm control of the steering wheel and not just reacting desperately to every passing bit of stimuli. 

(Am I good at this? No. If I was, I wouldn't have to write helpful blog posts to remind myself about it later. But it might help you, and it's helping me.) 

That's useful whether you're fencing, responding to an angry Facebook post, or deciding what to have for lunch. 

See? Swords are still relevant.