Hi, welcome to my third roller skating in-depth update!

Progress Update:

              One of the main focuses of the past two weeks was really solidifying all the skills I’ve learned so far. I should get very comfortable with the basics before moving on. This is because a lot of the skills just build on the balance and movement of the skating, I’ve learned so far. That part of the project has been fun because it means I get to just skate around and I am finding that a nice kind of break from my day.

I have been also learning a few more basic skills to add to my list. Those include one-foot glides, weaving back and forth and turning around. All these skills are helping me become a much better skater. The one-foot glides are really helping me build up balance skills as well as helping my legs get stronger. The weaving is helping me with weight shifts and remembering to stay low. The turning is very useful for when I am skating in smaller spaces because it helps with smooth and quick direction changes. Overall, the skills I have been learning lately have been helping me improve my skating faster than I expected it to go.

The last important skill I learned from my mentor recently was how to adjust my skates. In our last meeting, she taught me how to adjust my skates to make them best for the skating we were doing. She taught me how to test my trucks and wheels and how to tell when I need to. She also taught me a fun fact about roller skates when we were talking about trucks. “The truck design actually originated in roller skates and was then copied to be used on skateboards.” I found that fact very interesting and noticed how it tied into the chapters being a piece of information added related to the topic of discussion.

How to Have a Beautiful Mind:

Being Interesting:

My mentor made it quite easy to apply the being interesting chapter to our meeting. During skating, there is lots of time for us to talk as well. I also found adding interest to the conversation helped the conversation flow naturally.

During our conversation lots of the different aspects of the chapter. One of those was #2 talking about interesting personal experiences. When we were talking, we don’t only talk about roller skating sometimes the conversation will branch off to something that might have happened recently which is a good way to get to know each other more. This mainly happened because of making connections from what we were working on in the lessons to other experiences skating related or not. I also tried asking my mentor about her experience in roller skating and the styles of roller skating she liked to come up with new conversations to have.

Another one of the aspects in the chapter was #5 speculation. We discussed what good skating activities I could do once I improved and the weather got nice. This included places to go skating and more complex skills to learn. These activities would depend on my future skill level and what style of skating I really dive into but one activity that sounds perfect right now is going along the sea wall.

Responding:

Responding was a skill I wanted to build up in my meeting this week. I think it was very important to having conversations with my mentor to make sure that they are having a good time as well.

There was one part of our conversation that I found related to this chapter of the book. During our conversation, we were discussing working toward goals and I used #3 to respond. My mentor was talking about finding moves to work towards a goal. I fully agreed with this and was able to add to her idea. I mentioned how this method had worked for me in the past when learning other skills. This led to us deciding that I could find different tricks I thought looked cool and then we could plan to work towards them.

Thanks for reading. See you in two weeks!

Hi, welcome to my second blog post!

Progress Update:

Since my lasts post I have really started getting into my skill roller skating. I started with an online resource that my mentor recommended for getting started along with meeting with my mentor. I have been able to stick to my schedule for achievements easily and might even be ahead of schedule for some skills. I am also really enjoying my in-depth skill so far so I think I will be able to stay motivated for the project and be excited about it. The skills that I am working on right now are pretty much the basics or foundation of roller skating. My mentor and the online resources have taught me how to fall, stand, skate and stop. I have been practicing those skills and kept videos of my improvement for my final project.

Something I might want to change about my project now is the timeline. I think I will be able to have more time to learn more extra skills (tricks, types of skating, etc.). This is because the actual skating part is going faster than I anticipated which is a positive problem from my point of view. I also realized while getting more

How to Have a Beautiful Mind:

Agreeing:

I think agreeing was one of the easiest one of the three chapters for me to really notice. I found that it was very easy for me to agree with my mentor. I think that was because the discussions we were having were about practicing and learning skating and she has spent a lot of time in her career finding out what are the best ways to teach and learn roller skating.

Although it was easy to agree I still wanted to think of the reasoning. It’s very important to have a good process of learning something when you start something new. That way you can learn it in the quickest way and in a way that makes it easy to build more skills off of.

One example of this is in our conversation on what to learn first. You might think that standing up or even moving is the first lesson you should learn. That wasn’t the first skill I learned. The first skill that my mentor taught me was how to fall. Before I even put on my skates, we learned the safest ways to prevent falling and the safest ways to fall when it’s already too late. When I thought about this it made a lot of sense. It was such a smart way to start because once I started moving around and stopping, I had the skills to stable myself.  I even had a successful fall which was fine because of my safety gear and prior falling training.

One part of this chapter that I think I could add more of was doing less agreeing. I’m not saying that I should disagree just for the sake of disagreeing that would be the opposite of helpful. What I think I could do instead is when I find myself doing too much agreeing I could try adding the reasons I agree. Just adding something related to show why I agree would make the conversation more interesting and less repetitive.

Disagreeing:

I found this chapter was harder to reflect on my conversation with. A lot of it was about you thinking that someone might be wrong or have the wrong reasoning, but I didn’t find myself having that during our conversations.

During our conversations, she would start with a skill and then explain the best way for me to learn it. Not only that she would also go over the reasoning for the process of learning it. This made it easy to understand her reasoning and therefore easy to agree with.

There was only really one time during our lessons that I wasn’t too sure about why I would need to learn a skill. This was when she said it was important that I kept my head up while I skated. I had some struggle with that and felt like I should be checking what my feet are doing while I’m skating. She later explained the reasoning for this, and it made a lot of sense. She explained that it’s important to have your head up for better balance and to see where you’re going.

Differing:

I found that differing came a little easier to me than full out disagreeing. Differing for me didn’t mean that I thought what we were learning was wrong it just meant that I might have thought we would have tried something else first.

I think that differing would even sometimes be good for the conversation. Being able to go through ideas for skills to learn and ways to learn them and the way we would both approach it could lead to an even better way to learn something. When differing is done respectfully it even would make the conversation more interesting.

              There was one part of our lesson that there was a little bit of differing. After we learned how to fall, we were doing some stopping and she talked about how it could be better to have practiced without skates first. I think that it was good that we jumped into it though because I have already done the going over foot positioning before we had our meeting and was really to get rolling. This situation was differing because there would never be a right answer. I could argue both ways but in the end, I’m sure whichever way we went with it would have been okay because I was learning something.

Okay, thanks for reading! I’ve had lots of fun so far!

Hi! Here is an introduction to my in-depth project on roller-skating.

Introduction to Skill

For my in-depth project, I chose roller skating as my skill. More specifically though I want to learn first how to do more long-distance roller skating and then some tricks like jumping and spinning. The biggest goal is just to feel comfortable on the skates by spending time on my roller skates and getting tips on ways to practice from my mentor. I wanted to do this skill for a couple of different reasons. The first one was because I personally think it would be a fun skill to know how to do. I also think that it could be a fun social activity once I get better. Being able to go out with my friend who can also roller skate or skateboard would be a great way to hang out (when it becomes safer to do that). My second reason for choosing my skill was because it would be a great excuse to get outside and get exercise. Having a schedule for my progress means that I will have a chance to get outside and moving several times a week. Lastly, I think this skill could help me become more coordinated and better at balancing which could always be useful for future activities.

Goals and Process

              One very important part of in-depth is our goals. My goals work in order. I cannot move on until the one before is complete. The first goal or step is simply being able to stand on my skates. Once I can do that comfortably then it would be working on doing longer and longer distances. After I can skate around places easily, I would want to move on to learning how to do tricks like spins and jumps.  I would do this by setting goals week by week having a smaller goal and time set aside each week to work on it. Having a schedule to stick to will help make sure I am constantly meeting goals. It will also help me keep track of my progress videos because it would be a consistent practice time.

Meetings and Mentor

              My mentor for in-depth is a roller-skating coach who I will be meeting to work on technique and the best ways to improve my skills. My mentor works for a roller-skating club called Rollaskate and has experience teaching so I am very excited to work with her. The plan, for now, is to meet weekly which will help make my improvement go up consistently. For meetings, we can meet online together and look over videos of skills or do some live skating over a video call depending on what we are working on. There would also be the chance to meet in person occasionally because it is an outside activity that doesn’t involve any contact.

What am I working towards?

              My idea for my final project is a collection of videos put together to show progress and give more information about my skill. I will do this by taking videos weekly on how I am improving. Keeping track of what skill I am working on at the time and how I improve after every session. That means it’s very important for me to keep up the habit of getting skating clips most times I practice. The end goal is to know at least three different skills (skating, spinning, and jumping) and be able to explain the process that I learned, and the technique involved with the skill.

What have I accomplished so far and what’s next?

              Since getting my skill approved, I have been looking at more videos of roller skating and thought about what skills I specifically want to learn with my mentor. I have also been thinking about the best places in my neighbourhood for practice once I start meeting with my mentor regularly. I need somewhere which is very flat and has room to move. For the beginning, my driveway will work just fine but once I get to moving farther the public courts in my neighbourhood would be a perfect fit for roller skating. The next part of my process is to basically dive in. The first goal of mine is to get comfortable standing on the skates so that would be the first part I would work on with my mentor. I would also want to work on getting to know my mentor since we will be seeing each other a lot.

Thanks for reading! I am so excited to get started with my skill!

Relationship Rule number #2-Put energy into being likable:

Relationship rule number #2 is all about taking the time to make yourself more likeable to others. If people like you, they are much more likely to want to work with you. This skill is really about being able to form good relationships with the people around you. Being someone who is kind and friendly can help you make better connections with the people you work with. Having connections in your life is very important to being a successful person. I chose this principle because it is something that you can always improve on. You can always be taking steps to make yourself more likable to the people around you. Since it is the start of the year and I am meeting so many new people I think it is super important for me to be a likable person. I will be working with a lot of the new people I met this year, so I want to make them like working with me. This skill would be especially important for me during our leadership 10 class because we are always working in groups. During the planning of events, we must work closely to get every aspect of a trip done and I would want to feel like the people I am planning with are enjoying working with me. I think being a patient, organized and kind person will help me be more likable to the people I work with within our leadership class.

The Law of significance- One is too small a number to achieve greatness:

The Law of significance is about how important working together is. You cannot achieve anything without contributions from other people. This law is about remembering that it will always be way easier the more people can help. The law of significance can be applied to lots of different parts of your life. Whether it be working on a project at school, making a meal with your family or even doing things by yourself takes a whole team because of the materials you use and the place where you do it. I think this rule will help me at school and even at home because sometimes I try to do things by myself and end up failing terribly because it was just too much for one person. One way I want to apply this Law is by relying more on the class we have at school. Fellow peers are helpful when in the past I have had questions and I want to try going to them more when I get stuck. I also want to be someone that people feel they can come to for help if they get stuck because that is how a team works. I think this law is especially important during our trips because we must do extra teamwork to keep on schedule and communicate messages in a big group. I also want to make sure I am going to teachers for help when it comes to hard questions because they are a very important addition to our team at school.

Our attitude can turn our problems into blessings:

This principle was part of the ‘What I Have Learned About Our Attitude’ section and was one of three important principles. This one is about taking the problems that get thrown at you and instead of giving up, you grow from them or even create something even better. Solving problems is all about your attitude towards what you are working on. It’s so important to have grit so you can preserver through obstacles that you are bound to come across. When you are working towards a goal there will always be problems and a good leader isn’t someone who runs into fewer problems it is someone who is able to overcome them with a good attitude. I chose this one out of the three because I thought it was the one, I could improve on the most. Sometimes when I run into problems it will cause me to lose the momentum I have will working on tasks. This is something I would like to get good at this year because of how different things are going to be. For the TALONS program, we plan a lot of events, but our events will have to be changed to fit pandemic protocols. I think it is important for me to keep a positive attitude so that I can help us create ways to still have fun while being safe. One way I can keep a good attitude is to not dwell on the stuff we cannot do this year and think about all the interesting things we have done and are planning on doing.

The Law of Process- Leaders develop daily, not in a day:

The Law of the Process is about not expecting a sudden complete change but small changes that happen frequently. This law really focuses on working on making big changes over time not suddenly. It is not realistic to think that things can change overnight. You must take the time to work on your habits to make them better. Talking to people about what you are working towards or taking small actions to help you get there can help you reach your goal over time. I think this law will be good for me to focus on this year as work towards improving my work habits. The workloads this year is a lot more than it has been for me in the past, so I haven’t developed proper work habits yet. I know that I can’t suddenly get good at time management, but I want to work towards that as a goal. Some of the small actions I want to try to help myself towards my goal is to start keeping and organized agenda system and asking my parents for support while I am starting out. This law will especially help me during leadership because a lot of the work is more dependent now that we usually only meet once a week. It will be important for me to get better at using the time we aren’t in class in a productive way.