Someone who loves me and has known me well for over a decade recently observed, “I’ve noticed that you like things to be consciously organized.”
I told this to some other people who also love me, if perhaps less gently than the first person. They tried not to hurt themselves laughing.
“She’s just noticed this?” one asked, questioning how anyone might need more than five minutes with me before recognizing myobsession with tendency towards order.
It’s true: drawer dividers give me thrills, re-organizing my recipe collection is one of my proudest accomplishments, and my mudroom features custom built cubbies. But I don’t just love a master shopping list or a holiday control notebook. I also love a mission statement, a statement of principles, a governing philosophy.
Throughout my life, the consciously organized has manifested in color-coded flash cards and a need to keep my knee socks perfectly even, a guise in which it is fully deserving of mockery. But I hope that my drive for order pushes me to bigger things. My mind works best when I have a framework, a scaffolding upon which to build my understanding of any subject.
I’ve been reflecting on the consciously organized of late. In my role as a coordinator of the NWMAF 2010 Self Defense Instructors Conference, I asked a colleague to present on the topic of group process. She delivered this content at a self defense teacher training at the School of Love several years ago. A social worker, she used the jargon and framework of her profession to explain what happens to the group dynamics over the course of a self defense class. It was an a-ha moment for me, when something I knew intuitively from nearly two decades of teaching experience slid into place and became articulate: consciously organized.
Recently, the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation published a list of 101 Skills that Will Open Doors to Effective Self-Defense Education across Cultures. I found myself nodding and laughing along as I reflected on each of the skills, my relative facility with it, and the effect it has in my primary self defense venue, teaching Puerto Rican teen moms from nearby city.
I would not have known to name these skills as cross-cultural competencies. I would have called them “some of the things that seem to work better” or “the stuff that, when I forget to do it, really screws up my classes.” List in hand, now I can strive to increase the things that I already do:
#45: Cultivate student leadership
#38: Remember the stories your students tell you
#62: When someone says, “that would never work where I come from,” ask them what would.
More importantly, now that I have a framework—or one might say, a checklist—I can look for opportunities to exercise new skills:
#35: Value and embrace change
#39: Work with preexisting organizations in other communities
#46: Use popular culture to illustrate and examine the issues.
When I write about self protection skills for kids and families, I am trying to make transparent the way my self defense practice provides a consciously organized framework for teaching my daughter. I am naming what children need to keep themselves safe: intuition, self-confidence, self-regulation, ability to set and recognize boundaries, strong voice, fighting spirit, loving community. I am breaking those skills down into the tiny chunks that can be practiced and layered throughout childhood. I am identifying the teaching moments, describing the practice.
A therapist once told me that going to therapy is similar to going to law school: it fundamentally changes the way that you think. I went to therapy for a long time, but not nearly so long as I have trained in self defense and martial arts in a holistic, feminist empowerment environment. I think differently than most parents about the challenge of keeping my kid safe. That’s because my brain holds the scaffolding of self defense practice. The unique challenges of safety and vulnerability that arise from parenthood organize themselves around this scaffolding. I am not immune to the terrors of all parents, but I am reassured by understanding and deep faith in my practice.
As a social worker shared her organizing structure with me, as my colleagues with expertise in cross-cultural work named those skills, I intend to share the framework of self defense for other parents. I love my index cards and my box of colored highlighters, but I hope my gift for the consciously organized can go beyond office supplies and support my mission to help other families teach their children self protection skills.
I told this to some other people who also love me, if perhaps less gently than the first person. They tried not to hurt themselves laughing.
“She’s just noticed this?” one asked, questioning how anyone might need more than five minutes with me before recognizing my
It’s true: drawer dividers give me thrills, re-organizing my recipe collection is one of my proudest accomplishments, and my mudroom features custom built cubbies. But I don’t just love a master shopping list or a holiday control notebook. I also love a mission statement, a statement of principles, a governing philosophy.
Throughout my life, the consciously organized has manifested in color-coded flash cards and a need to keep my knee socks perfectly even, a guise in which it is fully deserving of mockery. But I hope that my drive for order pushes me to bigger things. My mind works best when I have a framework, a scaffolding upon which to build my understanding of any subject.
I’ve been reflecting on the consciously organized of late. In my role as a coordinator of the NWMAF 2010 Self Defense Instructors Conference, I asked a colleague to present on the topic of group process. She delivered this content at a self defense teacher training at the School of Love several years ago. A social worker, she used the jargon and framework of her profession to explain what happens to the group dynamics over the course of a self defense class. It was an a-ha moment for me, when something I knew intuitively from nearly two decades of teaching experience slid into place and became articulate: consciously organized.
Recently, the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation published a list of 101 Skills that Will Open Doors to Effective Self-Defense Education across Cultures. I found myself nodding and laughing along as I reflected on each of the skills, my relative facility with it, and the effect it has in my primary self defense venue, teaching Puerto Rican teen moms from nearby city.
I would not have known to name these skills as cross-cultural competencies. I would have called them “some of the things that seem to work better” or “the stuff that, when I forget to do it, really screws up my classes.” List in hand, now I can strive to increase the things that I already do:
#45: Cultivate student leadership
#38: Remember the stories your students tell you
#62: When someone says, “that would never work where I come from,” ask them what would.
More importantly, now that I have a framework—or one might say, a checklist—I can look for opportunities to exercise new skills:
#35: Value and embrace change
#39: Work with preexisting organizations in other communities
#46: Use popular culture to illustrate and examine the issues.
When I write about self protection skills for kids and families, I am trying to make transparent the way my self defense practice provides a consciously organized framework for teaching my daughter. I am naming what children need to keep themselves safe: intuition, self-confidence, self-regulation, ability to set and recognize boundaries, strong voice, fighting spirit, loving community. I am breaking those skills down into the tiny chunks that can be practiced and layered throughout childhood. I am identifying the teaching moments, describing the practice.
A therapist once told me that going to therapy is similar to going to law school: it fundamentally changes the way that you think. I went to therapy for a long time, but not nearly so long as I have trained in self defense and martial arts in a holistic, feminist empowerment environment. I think differently than most parents about the challenge of keeping my kid safe. That’s because my brain holds the scaffolding of self defense practice. The unique challenges of safety and vulnerability that arise from parenthood organize themselves around this scaffolding. I am not immune to the terrors of all parents, but I am reassured by understanding and deep faith in my practice.
As a social worker shared her organizing structure with me, as my colleagues with expertise in cross-cultural work named those skills, I intend to share the framework of self defense for other parents. I love my index cards and my box of colored highlighters, but I hope my gift for the consciously organized can go beyond office supplies and support my mission to help other families teach their children self protection skills.
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