Return to Readiness

Peter Pierro April 8, 2022

While dealing with Maturation issues, we teachers and coaches encountered human growth and had very little or perhaps even nothing to do with the factors involved in the work we will encounter with Readiness; speed of foot, arm power, interest, social means (e.g. teamwork), intelligence, body movements, cooperation, awareness, and all the rest of what being a human being consists of.  

“What can Fran do for himself as a player and what do I see as his potential as a team member?  “What is my interaction with him?”  

What can Pat become as a player or as a member of my team? What can I do relative to her improvement in the use of her abilities? 

It’s a comparison of their abilities to those of others and a judgment as to their correct placements with the others on the team. They are both individual persons and must be treated as individuals.

To deal with all of the factors, problems, opportunities, and joys we will encounter, we have adopted Player-Centered Coaching. This Learning method will be featured in our interaction with players and students throughout the rest of our blogs. We are completely aware that the process we are using with our “Coaching” and “Teaching” is really “Learning”; we are helping our students and players to Learn.

Readiness 

The older your kids are, the more they are able to learn. Is that too obvious? Many teachers and parents try to teach skills and strategies that the children are not ready or able to learn. Learn what children at the age of your children can do generally and then learn about the individual readiness of each of your kids -- for example, your neighbor's daughter Fran and your Pat are the same age -- Fran is able to identify basic colors and Pat isn't ready to do that yet. Pat is O.K. and should be treated that way – let’s just wait for him to catch up.

One of my favorite psychologists, James Hymes, made this situation very simple. He said, “Every child is ready to learn something; it’s our job as teachers and parents to determine what that child is ready to learn”.

In Child Psych 501, I learned a lot about the concept of readiness and I was really impressed with the work of E. L. Thorndike. He had come up with some practical ways of looking at readiness and what we teachers should do in working with our kids and I knew they would work in my classroom. He stated his ideas in his three Laws of Readiness and I translated them to fit my teaching models.

When I was coaching, I made another translation so that I could use them on my basketball court or baseball field. Anyway, here is how they look on the court or field or arena or wherever:

   1. If Pat is ready to learn to dribble the ball and he is allowed to learn this skill, he will have a happy experience.

   2. If Pat is ready to learn to dribble the ball and he is not allowed to learn this skill, he will be frustrated.

   3. If Pat isn't ready to learn to dribble the ball and he is forced to learn this skill, he will have a negative, perhaps even a traumatic experience.

These all seem very reasonable and manageable in our learning plans. Number 1 is the ideal situation. Pat is ready to learn; you are ready to have him learn; and everyone is happy.

Number 2 happens quite often. Pat is ready and to learn -- he wants to learn, but someone or something is standing in his way and he is feeling unhappy about the whole business. (Have you ever sat on the bench, itching to get into a game, and the coach ignored you - he said you weren't ready but you knew you were ready?)

Number 3 is the really scary one and yet you and I see it many times. This is the one that brings out the verbal abuse and the insults. Pat is just not able to distinguish among the different colors and her teacher and/or parents are not willing for that to be O. K. They keep pushing her, abusing her. ”You’re not even trying. “Are you some kind of ‘retard?’”

They are not willing to wait a little while until Pat has developed psychologically to the place that he can do the task. Pat has known those traumatic episodes in which Mom and Dad pushed and shoved him to do things and being abusive to him, making him feel guilty or an embarrassment to the family when he wasn't able to do them. "Well, he's six years old and our neighbor's girl is younger than him and look how she can do her schoolwork."

I've often wondered why Thorndike stopped after giving those three laws. In our business, this is a 2 x 2 matrix and there has to be a fourth law, so I will give you:

Pierro's Fourth Law of Readiness

(A Variation on a Theme by E. L. Thorndike)

4.  If Pat isn't ready to learn to dribble the ball and he isn’t forced to learn this skill at this time, that’s O.K. and he’s O.K.

Here we have reasonable, intelligent, caring parents who accept Pat right where he is and deal with him in terms of what he can do and what he can't do.

       They are the same parents who waited patiently for him to take his first steps, to be able to use the bathroom by himself, to learn to read at his own pace, etc. I hope you are that type of parent.