The Power of a Great Foundation: creating a core language for learning PART ONE

I rolled out a new class format this fall. I have competed one round and embarked on a second set of classes yesterday. I am delighted with how dogs and their people are responding to the class content and format. The focus of these classes is on building strong skills for people and dogs in a relatively short period of time: six hours of instruction. Classes are small, I close registration at six dogs. I want people leaving this class feeling empowered with a dog who has better skills than when they started and who they understand better.

As I drove home yesterday from a satisfying morning of teaching dogs and their people, I found myself once again chewing over the common ground between teaching Mathematics to young children and training people and their pets. We elementary school teachers often struggle to empower children in the area of Mathematics. More than any other subject area, it truly requires a strong foundation before children can move on to higher levels of difficulty. A big part of the challenges we face lies in the misconceptions and holes in understanding that emerge when children do not fully grasp the language of Mathematics. It is often difficult to get mathematical terms to "stick" and become part of a child's vocabulary of learning. I think this is also often the case when we attempt to teach people how to train their dogs. It is very easy to make assumptions and to speak to clients using language which we think is common or understood, when it is not.

I have so many ideas on this subject that I can hardly contain myself :) I am going to start by listing my thoughts and hope that I can then expand my thinking in a meaningful fashion.

1) What's my motivation? We lose dogs, pet owners and young students of mathematics when we emphasis the rules over making concrete connections to things that matter to them. An understanding of motivators and how to use them must be explicitly taught to the beings on both ends of the leash and to everyone in our classrooms - and trust me, this is a TALL order!

It is an exciting moment for me as a dog owner when I see my young puppies fully grasp what I have to offer them, every single one of them has needed a different set of motivators. Sometimes the difference are nuanced and sometimes they are hugely different. It is a tremendous thing as a trainer to watch a client fully embrace the power of building, maintaining and expanding meaningful connections. In the classroom, that moment when a math phobic kid decides that you might not be some luny bird teacher telling tales and that this "math stuff" might be okay after all, is GOLDEN.

2) Skill development MATTERS - children must learn basic facts to progress. Pet dog owners DO need a base level of mechanical skills and a basic understanding of how dogs learn to be able to have the well mannered pet they so desire. We teach young children how to add, subtract, divide and multiple and how to do these operations with a high level of speed and fluency. To accomplish this we need a balance of learning tasks. We need to make mathematics meaningful and tie it to the "real world" and we also need to drill the students on math facts. When teaching dogs all the basics: the stationary positions, loose leash walking and a strong recall, we need to provide powerful and meaningful motivators and make compliance with our requests as enjoyable as possible. Some drill in all of these areas of learning is often necessary to build up stamina.

3) Teach ONLY when the learner is paying attention: This is fairly self explanatory in the context of the classroom BUT I had a lightbulb moment on this front yesterday in my Foundation Class. I asked a client to ask their dog to sit. The client, (being a good student), immediately barked out the command "sit" to their unsuspecting dog who was sniffing the wind :) I thought to myself ... well, that was silly Catherine! ... chunk it DOWN! I stopped the client and issued a new set of directions: Say your dog's name (my homework includes explicitly training the dog's name) reward your dog for responding to their name - NOW ask your dog to sit. The results were dramatically different! The language of instruction MATTERS.

4) Building a Tool box for problem solving: We all fail when we don't know what to do and how to seek a solution. Dogs training and teaching young children Mathematics continue to two huge sources in my life for expanding my abilities to problem solve and think on my feet. It is a FANTASTIC rush to crack a problem! As a teacher, the moment of clarity in a student's eyes (canine or human) is a cherished gift for me. Many students, in both areas of my teaching life benefit when I verbally walk through HOW I solved a problem or better yet, how I initially failed and then proceeded to solve a problem using a new set of tools. Teaching students to articulate how they responded to a problem is an  excellent way to strengthen problem solving skills, to uncover misconceptions and to celebrate new realizations.

I have more to say on this subject but I am going to be disciplined and post this. I have challenged myself to post on this blog every week. Instead of getting caught up musing on ideas which then become too huge to write about, I am going to try to take my own advice and keep things short and manageable.