Muscle Memory

Practice makes permanent...

We had a kitchen mishap this week. Someone in our house doesn’t know their own strength and literally ripped the handle off the door of the refrigerator!

To be fair, it is an older refrigerator…and the plastic is probably getting brittle…

I was able to find a replacement handle online, which was a bit of an ordeal, since our fridge is old enough to have the manufacturer not really making replacement parts anymore. (Side note about our throw-away economy in the West…it would definitely be great if we could plan to repair things rather than replace them…but I digress.)

The really funny thing though is how I keep “missing” when trying to open the refrigerator door now. IT IS SUCH AN AUTOMATIC MOTION TO JUST REACH OUT AND GRAB FOR THAT HANDLE. And, because the handle isn’t where my hand expects it to be, I find myself repeatedly groping in the air for the now non-existent handle where it was once located.

Honestly, it was super frustrating when it first happened. But it is now almost comical. I’ll be really glad when the replacement handle arrives!

But the really interesting thing in all of this for me is what it reveals to me about just how accustomed I was to opening the refrigerator door without really looking at it. My arm knows just how high I should reach to hit where the handle is (was?) My hand knows just where I should be reaching to grasp the handle—which is why it’s so goofy to find myself fumbling around for it now. And my brain is always a second or two behind the rest of my body in realizing that the handle I assumed to be there is missing in action.

Muscle memory is a funny thing. When we practice things, they become second nature to us. This is why my piano teacher had me practice scales, and why my basketball coaches had us practice lay-up drills, right? But it happens in all kind of small, everyday ways. You can probably find that bathroom light switch automatically, even in the middle of the night. You don’t even have to think about where your hands go on the wheel when driving. Your thumb moves almost magnetically to that app you want to open on your phone. You can probably think of a dozen more examples of things that happen almost automatically, or at least with little-to-no conscious effort on your part, right?

The old saying is “practice makes perfect,” but I once heard a neuroscientist put it as “practice makes permanent.” That really resonates with me, and maybe helps make sense of why I keep fumbling to find the handle to my refrigerator door. I guess I’ve practiced that movement often enough that it has become “permanent,” and the now-missing handle is the evidence that is forcing me to have to learn something new. Who would have thought I would have to practice—and relearn—how to open my refrigerator?

I’d like to make a teaching connection to this idea of muscle memory. I have had the conversation multiple times in the past few years with future teachers I serve about writing lesson plans, and how the template we have them use when they are first learning is almost comically complex—it’s four pages long! Seriously, friends…when is the last time you wrote a four page lesson plan? My last year teaching middle school science, my lesson plans easily fit into the little two-inch square in my plan book. (Yep, because I’m old school, and I loved having that weekly lesson plan book with real paper pages!)

But why do we do this, if “real” teachers don’t write those kinds of ridiculously-detailed plans?

The analogy I’ve given in the past is that it’s sort of like learning to ride a bicycle. At first, you need training wheels. Later, maybe an older family member or friend to hold on to your seat to keep you from wobbling too furiously. But eventually, you can take off on your own, right? The lesson plan template can be similarly helpful until you develop the “muscle memory” to keep in mind all those small things about learning targets, and resources, and an engaging hook, and lesson steps, and assessment protocols, and differentiated levels of support, and, and, and, and… Well, there’s a lot that we eventually internalize about planning, right? To the point that an experienced teacher might only need a clear learning target, a few pages from the text, and a reminder about what the discussion questions or laboratory protocol or practice problems might be. “Muscle memory” for the win!

There are lots of other things about teaching that become second nature to us the more we practice them. I invite you to take a minute sometime today to think back to your teacher preparation program, student teaching, and even those first few years of teaching. What were the pressure points? Where did you feel like you needed to dedicate a lot of time and attention—time and attention that you now find you can allocate to other parts of the work? My hope is that you don’t have to have something “break” in your teaching practice—like my refrigerator door handle!—to notice your teacher muscle memory.

And then—giving thanks for this kind of “muscle memory” you’ve developed—I encourage you to take some time to connect with a colleague and name some of those things. (Particularly if you’ve been in this profession for more than five years or so…connect with a newer colleague and give them a word of encouragement, because those first year—wow, that learning curve feels steep!)

Let’s keep practicing this teaching thing, yeah? We never really “arrive” as teachers. It’s a process of continually becoming.

Dave’s Faves

Here are three things I’m absolutely loving right now that I hope you might love too…

Dave’s Fave #1: ADVENT. (It ain’t Christmas yet, friends!)

I have a bee in my bonnet about the rush to Christmas. About this time last year I shared a post in this very newsletter about how I needed an Advent reset to help me really remember what Christmas is all about. (You can revisit that post here, if you like: Advent is the Antidote.)

I bring it up now, because my music recommendation for this week is an Advent song. I love Sufjan Steven’s version of “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” from his 2006 Songs for Christmas project. (Many of them are actually songs for Advent, to be clear.) Advent begins next Sunday, but I invite you to listen to this gem now to get yourself in the right frame of mind…

Dave’s Fave #2: Superhero movies

I love superhero movies. I’ve been rewatching some of my favorite Marvel films while putting in my time on the treadmill every morning. (Gotta keep burning those Thanksgiving calories…or I’ll end up looking like Thor in Avengers: Endgame…) Speaking of, I just re-watched Engdame for…maybe the 7th time? It’s over the top, for sure…but fun filmmaking for people who enjoy superhero movies. Here’s a fun clip of an audience’s reaction to a climactic scene from back when the film first came out in 2019:

I’m planning on showing this clip in one of my classes this week. We’re talking about how technology gives us “superpowers”…but that there is always a cost to these powers, just like how Superman has his Kryptonite, yeah? I thought this clip might be a good way in to the discussion of why we cheer for our heroes, and why we need to be thoughtful about “magical thinking” when it comes to our technological hopes and dreams.

Dave’s Fave #3: The Life We’re Looking For

Speaking of teaching my technology-oriented course…I have to give a plug for Andy Crouch’s book The Life We’re Looking For. It is one of the best books I’ve read in the past two years, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to be more thoughtful about what they are doing with technology in their lives.

Seriously…I think everyone should read this book!

This was my review of the book that I posted on my Instagram when I finished re-reading the book this past summer:

Dr. Dave’s summer reading continues…this is a re-read, and OH MY, is it a good one! My friend and colleague, @justinbailey47, recommended this one to me a year or so ago, and I read it then. It was the spark for the new course I’m preparing to teach this fall.

Crouch is not a technophobe, but he does call into question an awful lot of what we just “assume to be true” about life in this highly technological culture we find ourselves living in. He calls us to a counter-cultural way of being that helps us see technology as a servant than a master. I highly recommend it to you; it might be the most important book about technology and culture I’ve read since grad school.

So, yep…I’m using it as one of the main texts in my Technology, Identity, and Community course, and I saved it for the end of the semester, because I think it will answer a lot of the lingering questions that we’ve had throughout the term about what technology is doing to us—both individually, and as a culture. Credit where credit is due: Crouch is the one who has me thinking about superpowers with technology; chapter 3 of the book is entitled “The Superpower Zone: How We Trade Personhood for Effortless Power.” I’m excited to dive into this with my students!

The Last Word!

Since I’ve got superheroes on the brain at the moment, one more Avengers clip to share as we wrap up this edition of Positivity. Passion. Purpose…

This is it: the first time we see the team as “The Team.” Take this as a good reminder for you that you don’t have all of the amazing abilities in your sweet little self—you too are better as part of a team, using your special gifts and talents in concert with everyone else. The whole really is greater than the sum of it’s parts, praise God!