The Value Add of Coaches as Educators

I love going to conferences. It’s easy to feel bogged down in work or stuck on what to write / how to write, but then I go to a conference and it’s simply rejuvenating. 

As I head into day 2, what’s really sticking with me from yesterday is the morning keynote. It might have not been as interactive or imaginative as say the workshop on designing the future of education while role playing as a civilization on Mars in 2096, but the message really resonated with me because the speaker wasn’t originally in the education space at all, she started as a soccer coach. 

Luma Mufleh is the founder of Fugees Family, a non profit advancing educational justice for refugee and immigrant youth. Her journey in this space started when she joined a group of refugee kids playing soccer in the community. After a few weeks playing with the kids she helped them start an official team. Then that team continued to grow and as she learned about their stories and challenges in an education system that was failing them, she decided to open up a school. 

This is just a summarized snippet of Luma’s story, but my take away was how she talked about her journey from coach to educator. She talked about how people didn’t always trust or respect her because she didn’t have a teaching background. Yet as a coach she had an incredible understanding of the importance of teamwork, belonging, overcoming challenges, and pushing past limits.

I’ve been coaching gymnastics since I was 10 years old and still am now almost 15 years later. Yet when I talk about my experience in the education space, my work as a gymnastics coach usually only comes up as an after thought or a fun fact. Hearing Luma talk about her work as a coach was a reminder to me that my experience as a coach is so much more than just a fun fact. 

I practice curriculum building when I create my warm ups and assignment charts and personalize them to meet the different needs of each athlete. I am a mentor and guidance councilor when I notice a kid is having an off day and take them aside to discover they’ve been getting bullied at school and don’t have anyone to talk to about it. I assess and give feedback daily when seeing gymnasts perform routines at practice and prepare them for their competitions. I practice learner-centered pedagogy when I organize moments for gymnasts to practice goal setting and opportunities for providing input on things like their summer training schedule and brainstorming floor music. I even help kids with their basic reading and math skills when we have kids who haven’t learned to read that are trying to sound out the words on the assignment board for the day or kids who haven’t learned about decimals trying to add up their all around score at a competition. 

Coaches might not be traditional teachers, but they are educators. And coaches have more autonomy than the average teacher, so they have been able to prototype and pilot ideas for creating competency based, personalized, open walled learning for decades; this could be a game changing added value perspective to any team working to transform education. 

I’m excited for a world where we think more in the mindset of ecosystems of learning and coaches can be brought into the educator space as equally valued partners in the process of developing youth. 

Striving for “Life Long Learners” is Not Enough

I have officially submitted my last assignment of the term which means I have also officially completed my NZ exchange!!! Kind of crazy to think 8 months have gone by already and I only have two weeks left in the country before I head back to the US.

One of my classes this term was a philosophy course called “The Big Questions” – basically it was like a philosophy sampler course. The final topic we covered was “epistemology,” ie the study of knowledge. Talking about knowledge so much, and just thinking about why I even bothered to study philosophy, made me think about the term “life long learner,” and how often times schools will make statements about how they want to create/nurture life long learners.

Taken at face value, a life long learner is someone who continues to learn new things throughout their life span; it’s the notion that learning can and should happen beyond formal education. I think this is a super valid goal for schools to have; I mean why would we ever want for people to stop learning? I wonder though, what if this isn’t a lofty enough goal?

The way I see it there are 3 general outlooks one could have on the idea of learning beyond formal education:

1. Someone could be really stubborn and not willing to learn new things in adulthood. Either they think they already know best, or are too lazy to care about learning anything new.
2. Someone could accept that the world is constantly changing and new things must be learned in order to stay relevant in the work force.
3. Someone could just really enjoy learning, so they learn even things that maybe aren’t particularly “relevant” or “useful.”

I would argue that outlook 2 is a “life long learner” – someone who continues to learn beyond education in order to better themselves. This is great, especially considering I have met various people in my life with outlook 1 and they are very challenging to work with… But wouldn’t it be awesome if more people had outlook 3?

The difference is about motivation. Are people learning because they are motivated by the need to learn in order to achieve specific work goals or are they motivated to learn simply because they enjoy learning?

I’m sure some educators would argue that when they use the term “life long learner” they are implying the ideals of outlook 3, and truthfully they desire for their students to become adults that genuinely enjoy learning. But I think it could be important to make this distinction more clear, because they truly are two different outlooks.

I’ve found this applicable to my past semester because every week I would find myself thinking about why I bothered to take philosophy. I mean half the times our discussions would end with someone saying something to the extent of, “Yeah maybe we will never know, but for practical application we can just ignore that.” Sure philosophy probably has enhanced my ability to craft an argument and think outside of the box, but on the whole studying philosophy to me is kind of the epitome of learning just for learning sake because often times conversations just go in circles and there is no true conclusion or any outcome that will necessarily be applicable to work or life. It’s all just thoughts and wonders and learning about other peoples thoughts and wonders. This isn’t to trash on philosophy – I really enjoyed the course most of the time – it’s just to say that studying philosophy feels like the sort of thing that one would only study because they truly enjoy learning not just because they are trying to learn some skill or concept in order to stay work relevant in a changing world. Studying philosophy therefore seems to require something more than just being a life long learner.

And obviously there are more things that fit into this scenario besides just studying philosophy; I’m not trying to say we should aim to have every student want to take a philosophy course. Think about this scenario: an engineer who decides to learn more about excel to potentially move into a managerial role I would consider a life long learner. An engineer that decides to learn the bagpipes just because I would also consider a life long learner. But these two things don’t quite feel comparable.

I’ll admit I don’t know the best term to use to describe the bagpiping engineer / anyone who poses an outlook 3 view of learning. Right now though I’ve been going with the term “life long explorer,” but I could easily be convinced a different word is more appropriate. I just really think it would be neat if schools made this distinction and decided to strive for more than just fostering people who continue to learn in adulthood, because honestly being a life long learner is starting to feel pretty status quo and not really much of a goal for education. As our world continues to change at ever increasing rates, it seems almost impossible to not be a life long learner anymore. And just like in gymnastics, once it gets to a point where everyone is doing a double back tuck and that just becomes the norm, then that’s no longer a very impressive goal, so standards have to change and the bar needs to be set higher.

Perhaps the reason schools don’t specify this distinction is because outlook 3 requires a value that from my experience isn’t emphasized at school: fun. If students are to continue learning throughout their life due to intrinsic motivation – “just because” – then they need to believe that learning is fun. This kind of thinking always make me wonder, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if students wanted to come to school? Like if you walked into a classroom and asked every student why they were here today and the response was, ‘Because I want to be. School is fun.'” I feel like that’s the dream, but the idea of striving for school to be fun never really seems to be expressed in school mission statements or community announcements, at least not in my experience.

If we made it a goal though to not just create life long learners, but to develop life long explorers in the world then I wonder if we would start to talk more about fun and if we would start hearing more students excited and wanting to come to school. Those students already exist, and I’d bet that there are even some school that make these goals explicit that already exist, but I would like to see this on a larger scale. I would like us to strive for more than life long learners because this no longer feels challenging enough to be stated as an end goal for formal education.

A True Break

Since this weekend is supposed to be Easter “Break,” I’ve decided to try and cut myself some slack and not focus so much on the idea that I have to use all of this extra time we’ve been given to always be super productive.

So, after the interview I conducted for my human development project, a brief call home with a little discussion about gymnastics, I then basically watched Netflix all day. And it was very relaxing.

I’m a busy person by nature. I always have been. Even way back in 4th grade I was playing on two soccer teams, competing in gymnastics, a Girl Scout, and playing the lead in the school theater production while making straight A’s in school. Since I’ve spent my entire life going from one activity to the next, I’ve grown used to the need to always feel like I’ve accomplished something by the end of the day.

But this need to be productive can be overwhelming in a situation like we’re in now where we have so much time that it seems foolish to not use the time to try and get tons of things done. I’ve been trying to get ahead in classes and draft papers; I’ve seemed to have a meeting almost every day for some project or another; even when I just do something like play the flute I never end up stopping until I have completely learned and recorded all of a four-part song. However, I’ve had several professors and seen several articles circulating around about how it can be a good thing to actually rest during this time and not stress about trying to have so many achievements.

So my goal for this weekend (though perhaps it’s paradoxical to call it that) is try and truly take a break. No meetings, no school work, no gym work, and I’m not even going to blog. I’ll post about how it went in two days. I’m a bit doubtful I’ll actually be able to last the weekend without doing anything productive, but I know it can be good for the mind to take a break and just be mindless sometimes so we’ll see how it goes.

 

Craftsmanship Upgrade

I remember there came a time during Innovation Diploma where we had to all have a conversation about how our level of craftsmanship needed to raise. Our skills had further developed and we had gained more tools since the beginning of the program, so it was time to acknowledge that even “quick prototypes” now needed to have a higher standard of quality.

I was reminded of this conversation today when brainstorming gymnastics music for next year. I have been brainstorming and keeping lists of potential songs and imagining how I might edit the music and choreograph the routines. But then I realized, it’s been at least five years now since I started editing music (probably closer to seven even, but I’m not fully sure when I started), so it’s probably about time I step up my level of craftsmanship.

In the past, because editing music can take a decent bit of time, I usually waited to edit songs until after I got confirmation from others that the song might fit one of our gymnasts. However, I’m realizing now, I’ve gotten a lot better at editing music, so it doesn’t take as long to complete anymore; therefore, I should just go ahead and edit songs I think have potential because even if they don’t get used immediately, then we will have a larger database of future songs.

That’s the approach I decided to take today, so rather than continuing to brainstorm lists, I went ahead and started editing some songs. I finished two songs in one hour and I felt pretty good about that progress. This proved I was right in thinking that my skills have improved to the point where it’s time for a craftsmanship upgrade. So now instead of my “prototype” of new music ideas just consisting of a list of full-length songs I found, I can now provide lists of already edited music which will make it easier to visualize music-to-gymnast fit.

And as we also discussed in ID, once we become more proficient with one tool, it’s time to move on to learning new tools.

Therefore, the next step in my music editing development is gaining knowledge on additional music editing tools available to me. In the past 5-7 years, while I’ve gotten much more efficient at what I do, I believe there are a lot of features I’ve not yet discovered or attempted to utilize. For example, I know several kids would love to do a mash-up routine of several songs. I  typically deny these requests because I have a bias against gymnastics routines that are mash-ups since they often don’t have a logical story-telling flow to them. However, I also deny these requests because I don’t know enough about actually creating my own digital music to be able to make smooth transitions between different songs. So one of my new goals for the year is to learn more about creating my own digital music in order to experiment with creating a mash-up song that I actually would consider giving to one of our gymnasts.

Range Finder

For the last 10 minutes of our Wish For WASH meeting today, I encouraged our entire team to do a mini design thinking activity with one of the tools we used called “The Range Finder.” The purpose was for each of us to think about the timeline of different goals on our subteams; goals right in front of us, beyond the trees, and over the mountain. I thought with so much uncertainty and restructuring happening right now with the shift to virtual teaming, this tool would be a good way for us to check-in that everyone is on the same page with how we view our short term and long term goals.

The tool was so successful that I thought it would be good for me to do a personal Range Finder as well to consider what my goals are for while we’re on break from school (the three weeks still), once classes start again, and once we finish the semester.

Right in Front of Me:

• Finish sorting through all previously uncategorized blog posts of mine.
• Make final edits on our Wish For WASH design thinking in the sanitation sector research paper.
• Edit 5 new gymnastics songs.
• Have working drafts of the 3 assignments I’m able to get started on already.
• Choreograph a new dance every week until our gymnast can get back into the gym.

Beyond the Trees:

• Publish Issue 7 of Trailblazers.
• Video edit Jump Start Gym’s first-ever virtual gymnastics group routine.
• Host the virtual Design Jam Wish For WASH has tentatively started to plan.
• Obviously, complete my school work…

Over the Mountains:

• Explore whatever more of New Zealand I’m able to – Hobbit Town and the glow worm caves are specifically two things I’ve not gotten to do yet I really want to see.
• Reconsider Trailblazers business model in order to be more sustainable as an organization.
• Do more in-depth research into options for post-graduation (ie grad school or work first – and where)

The Gift of Time

Felt like I did pretty well for day 1 in isolation.

I started the day by reconnecting with some of the gymnasts I coach. I woke up early so I joined their afternoon Zoom workout and it was nice to see so many smiling faces in the midst of so much crazy. One kid changed her username to say “I love coach Anya” and it was kind of the sweetest thing ever.

I then spent a good chunk of time playing my flute – I am very happy I decided to prioritize bringing it with me to New Zealand despite the extra weight. I’ve been practicing getting better at keeping time and listening to different parts by “playing with myself” (ie videoing myself playing each of the different parts in a song). Today my song of choice was, “Dear Theodosia” from Hamilton the Musical.

After lunch, I decided to start brainstorming some ways to make this challenge into an opportunity, specifically in regards to our gym. We’ve always said we wanted to get better at journaling and now that we have to move online anyway, I figured it was a great opportunity to start making progress on this task. So I made some prototypes of “Gymnastics homework” where we can give conditioning assignments and a place to share weekly goals and accomplishments related to healthy living; that way all of our girls feel like they can be making tangible progress on their gymnastics even without being able to train their skills full out. I also started brainstorming some potential new gymnastics social media challenges and various workshops we might be able to offer via zoom.

Normally around this time of year, I would be finishing up choreo for our end of the semester showcase and starting to teach the routines to the girls. Since this isn’t going to happen under normal circumstances, I’ve been working on creating a whole new routine so it can be performed and recorded at home and then I plan to video edit all the parts together. Two things I needed to learn to make this happen: better video editing skills and learn more sign language to use as part of the dance. I got started on both of those learning goals today and feel pretty good about the progress I’ve made.

The most important thing I was reminded of today is how much fun it can be to learn new skills and to revisit and build upon old skills. I know of my friends and family have already come to this conclusion after having lived in this reality of social distancing, online learning, and lots of free time for about a week now, but experience really does make a huge difference in understanding. Sometimes having time for “nothing” can truly be a gift for all sorts of wonderful new ideas.

Being Prepared for College

There’s always value in revisiting conversations. Today at SparkHouse I got the opportunity to re-experience a conversation around distinctions which I thoroughly enjoyed beause it’s one of my favorites. (This link actually connects to my post from Day 1 of SparkHouse 1 from two years ago, and it’s funny now looking back on that day compared to today and how many similar thoughts I had.)

I loved this conversation and many others of the day and was inspired as always by the energy of young learners gathered together to discuss what education could look like in a learner-centered paradigm.

However, what really stood out to me today, because it was unusual and disheartening, was when I heard a learner say they think their environment is too untraditional sometimes and should have more busy work in order to be prepared for college.

My heart was actually broken.

And I believe that the fact that a statement like this could come up at a gathering of learners from all learner-centered schools goes to show how we still have so much further to go in transforming the education system paradigm.

So despite it being 11:45pm after a long day of heavy thinking, high energy, and additionally having to do psych homework even while traveling, I needed to take time to reflect and respond to this comment because it’s been bugging me all day.

First off, I just have to ask, what does it say about our education system when students think college is all about busy work and doing busy work is what prepares you for college?

Second off, I don’t believe we should be conforming and confining k-12 education to doing things only based on what “colleges want.”

This comment was made innocently and honestly and while I don’t agree with the statement if you look deeper into what was being implied, the real problem being described is valid to address: learner-centered high schools and most colleges do not work off of the same paradigm. Therefore, this creates dissonance for everyone involved in our education system– students, parents, teachers, faculty, admissions reps, professors, etc. The proposed expectations, purpose, and methodology behind teaching in these two worlds (learner-centered high school and traditional college) are foundationally different, which can make communication and movement between the worlds challenging.

Moving from a learner-centered high school to a traditional college is hard. I know because that’s my current reality. The thing is, the reason it isn’t easy has nothing to do with “being prepared.”

The number 1 question I have gotten asked since entering college is:

“Did you feel like your high school prepared you to do well in college?”

YES!!! – That’s my short answer.

The long answer is that I’ve felt more than prepared because of all of the skills I learned that are actually useful for life, unlike just learning how to be a really good test taker.

Because being prepared for college is about more than being ready to take tests.

Being prepared for college means that you are mature and responsible enough to live on your own and take ownership of your learning. Being prepared for college means you have a keen sense of self-awareness in order to make informed decisions about your future. Being prepared for college means you are able to clearly and strategically plan and articulate your goals and curiosities to advisors, professors, job interviewers, etc.

You would think it would be obvious that college is about more than just test taking, but apparently, it isn’t because that’s all I seem to get asked about. And yet, while actually in college, I have plenty of advisors telling me almost daily “GPA doesn’t really matter beyond getting your first job/internship- then it’s all about networking, experience, and selling yourself based on your skills.”

So when I say, “switching from a learner-centered high school to a traditional college is hard,” I say that because it’s hard to deal with the culture change. It’s hard to move into a reality where your voice is no longer heard, where you can’t easily pitch new ideas to leadership, where you get lectured at and talked down to constantly, where you are more frequently viewed as a statistic rather than as a holistic person. That’s hard.

It’s not hard to learn how to take tests. Plus every professor is typically a little bit different. For example, one of my current classes does pretty much all assessing online, so all you have to figure out is that the homework questions and practice problems are all potential test problems, then you’re pretty much guaranteed an A on every test. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some hard tests in college, but that’s just because it’s new material and challenging. The test wouldn’t be any easier if I had done more busy work and test taking during high school.

So back to this issue of the dissonance between learner-centered high schools and traditional colleges. Something that extends this challenge is that we too often try to silo our education system by looking at just k-12 or just higher education.

If we are going to “transform the education system” that takes the ENTIRE SYSTEM. 

We can’t ignore the fact that the education system doesn’t stop at high school graduation for the majority of learners.

So in order to bridge the gaps between the two worlds, one student today proposed, “We should have more busy work,” and I propose an alternative: Colleges also need to change their education system.

And I’d like to believe the alternative is the more likely option because it’s the more promising option. When I talk to college admissions reps, a student from a learner-centered high school is the ideal college candidate. They are mature and responsible. They have a keen sense of self-awareness. They can clearly and strategically plan and articulate their goals and curiosities. And they have all sorts of stories and evidence of their experiences that they can share to prove this learning.

However, as more and more learners start to graduate from learner-centered environments, I imagine there will be more and more pushback about why we have to then transition into a traditional college environment. Then these great, college and life ready learners will find alternative solutions of their own. They’ll attend the hand full of non-traditional colleges, or they’ll just continue on with internships from high school, or they’ll study in a different country, or something I’ve not even thought of. Colleges will have to change if they want these great learners in their learning environments.

That’s my hope/belief at least. I hope this process moves father than I anticipate, though unfortunately, bureaucracy and the fear of risks seem to be much more present struggles for colleges to overcome.

I could talk on and on about this struggle of learner-centered high school to traditional college, and to be honest I didn’t even go to one of the more unique high schools out there. There’s so much to be said about transcripts, assessment methods and “How do colleges interpret them?”, my advice to learners making the transition, my desire for a working compilation of non-traditional colleges, etc.

However, the important point here is that it is all a conversation. If you are aware of the two world struggle then you are already making the first step towards being able to respond to the struggle. But I want to make explicitly clear that I don’t, by any means, think the correct response is “Let’s be a little more traditional to prepare for college.”

Struggles are solved by compromise, not conformity.

I have felt beyond prepared for college because of my learner-centered experiences. And even now being in college and knowing what it’s like, I would never trade those experiences for the opportunity to have had more time to practice taking standardized tests to, “Get used to them for college.” Switching worlds is hard, but not because of the tests, it’s because of the culture.

Weirdly enough, upon further reflection, I’m actually glad that this comment was made about wanting busy work to be prepared for college. It brought up a very important question for education in terms of how we distinguish “college ready” from “not college ready” and definitely challenged me to think carefully about my own distinguishment for this topic and even on distinguishing “learner-centered education” as a whole.

SparkHouse Preflection

SparkHouse 3 is finally here and I’m so excited!!!

When I think back to my first time at SparkHouse it’s amazing how much has changed. SparkHouse was where the first idea for Trailblazers came about. Now here I am two years and three e-magazine issues later as a Community Builder and a chaperone for 3 of high school members of the current Trailblazers production team!

Since SparkHouse I’ve also become so much more involved with Education Reimagined and the Education Transformation Movement at large. I’ve attended and mentored at several conferences around the country, participated in numerous calls/video/social media chats,  and even been able to teach a short-term high school course of my own. (Which was obviously un-traditional in nature.) Honestly, it wasn’t until talking to my roommate, who is a first-time learner at SparkHouse, that I realized the full extent of how many opportunities I’ve had since joining this community.

And now that I have become more involved, I’ve realized the importance of “preflecting” – reflecting before things being about my expectations, hopes, and goals for this experience – in order to have a greater take away after the gathering. So here it goes:

Expectations:

• Great conversations around learner-centered education
• A deeper connection to the language we use to describe the kind of work we do
• Be inspired by the amazing work young learners are already doing and the new ideas they bring to the table

Hopes:

• Members of Trailblazers will branch out and expand their networks
• We’ll develop new ideas about ways that Trailblazers could contribute to the Education Transformation Movement
• More young learners will step up and continue to grow their leadership capacities in this movement even beyond SparkHouse

Goals:

• Have at least five new people sign up/express interest in contributing to Trailblazers
• Reach 50 followers on Trailblazers social media
• Find a new tool/activity/mindset that I can implement into my own leadership practices
• Inspire other learners to become more involved in the community/movement to transform the education system

Champions in the Making

I wasn’t able to blog this weekend because I was in Ohio watching the US Classics gymnastics competition then driving back home; kind of a crazy weekend honestly.

We went to the gymnastics meet because a friend of ours, who we’ve known basically all of her life, qualified for the Hopes Championship in the 12-13-year-old division of this meet. That might not mean much to non-gymnastics people, but basically, she qualified as one of the top eighteen 12-13-year-old gymnasts in the country which allowed her to compete in this championship meet.

While I loved getting to watch our friend compete, it was really cool to get to see the senior age division where I got to see some of the best gymnasts in the world compete!

I’m blown away daily by the amazing talents of young people. When I see the dedication and hard work of these gymnasts it just makes me wonder all of the other amazing things young people could do if they’re in an environment that fosters developing passions, setting goals, and finding creative ways to accomplish the improbable.

Most young gymnasts that are really dedicated to trying to go far in the sport end up homeschooling or going to part-time schools, like our friend at this meet does, from a pretty young age; typically around age 8 or 9. They homeschool in order to have more time when they can go into the gym to train more and more with each level they progress to. I know homeschooling or part-time schools are also common with other sports as well as young actors amongst others. I wonder what other kids could benefit from only spending part of their day/week in a school building, and then spending the rest of their time going into the environment they are interested in to actually do training in the area. What if “training in the gym ( or another environment)” was the norm in schools?

Address, Announce, Accomplish

Typically at the start of summer break (and also winter break though that’s currently irrelevant), I end up writing on my whiteboard wall in my room a list of summer goals. (Mostly action-oriented goals so that it’s clear what needs to happen for them to be achieved.) It helps me get a visual for what I want to have accomplished by the end of summer. Then I take a picture of the list and have it on my phone to refer to throughout the summer. Even if I don’t get everything on my list complete, I often get a good chunk of the list done and it helps satisfy the part of me that thrives on the feeling of accomplishment when I get to cross things off of my list.

This summer I did not write my list and I’ve noticed the effects. I don’t feel nearly as accomplished as we head into the end of summer, even though I know I did several things that would’ve been on the said list. I also think I procrastinated tasks that would’ve been my “moonshot goals” because I didn’t have the courage to ever make it “official” that I wanted to get those tasks done by announcing them on my whiteboard.

Sometimes changing a habit is how you learn just how much you appreciated the habit. Like when I had to stop taking band my sophomore year of high school because it didn’t fit into my schedule, I then realized just how much I loved playing the flute and how I didn’t want to give it up.

This summer of not creating my goals list has made me realize just how much of an “accomplishment driven person” I am. (I don’t know what fancy wording would be used to describe this kind of person, but that’s what I’ll call it for now.) I like feeling like progress is being made no matter how small, and I do a better job at getting big things done if I can break up a goal into little tasks and then “publicize/make visual” (even if only really to myself) these goals in order to hold me accountable to them.

To some extent, I already knew this about myself, but I think not creating a list for this break for the first time in a few years has made me realize how much more valuable this realization could be. I want to experiment this fall with how I can use this self-discovery to better my work progress.

I already have lots of whiteboards in my dorm room, so I think I’m going to make one of them my designated goals list. Then once a week, or maybe one every two weeks, or maybe some other time frame I’ll have to figure out, I will readdress my list of goals to see what progress I’ve made and what new goals I need to start working towards. My hypothesis is that developing a habit of more frequently addressing what goals I want to accomplish in a given time period will help give me a better work ethic and more positive attitude about making progress.

Some may say, “Why wait until the fall? Why not start now?” and to that I say that for some reason the process of standing in front of a whiteboard and writing down my goals really makes a difference. So rather than creating a big list for future thinking goals, I will start small for now until I get back to my whiteboard; my goal for next week while I’m in Ohio is to finish editing all of the gymnastics music needed for next season.