Hi, this is post #5 of my in-depth. For my in-depth, I am learning how to roller skate.

Progress Update:

Progress has been going well for me as we start to really get into our in-depth projects. I am starting to feel much more comfortable on my skates. This makes it a lot more fun because I am less scared of the falling part of learning how to roller skate.

The fact that I am getting more comfortable is exciting to me because it makes me want to try challenging myself more. One way I thought I could do this was by finding a bigger practice space in my neighbourhood. The tennis court or the lacrosse box would be a great place to try more challenging skills on my skates. With more space, I can try gaining more speed and doing sharper corners. This will help me get used to the idea of trying longer distances which is one of my end goals.

One skill I have been focusing more on in the past weeks is turning. Not only is learning how to turn is useful for avoiding obstacles while skating, but it is also a great way to work on shifting weight, something that is important for several of the tricks I have been learning. Shifting weight is something that mostly just takes practice. I have been practicing this skill on skates and off skates because it requires not only balance but also the ability to control your direction with one leg.

Overall, I have been progressing steadily so far. I think that I haven’t been progressing quite as fast as I was at the beginning. I think that is because we started off with simpler skills that I was able to get faster but now are moving on to ones that require more practice. I am very excited to keep practicing and keep progressing with my skating over the rest of the project.

How to Have a Beautiful Mind- The Six Hats:

This was a part of our meeting recently. I was asking my mentor about how I could improve the new way to stop that I was learning. I took that clip of our conversation and looked at it with the six hats choosing which hat fit with different parts of our conversation.

Guide for the Hats:

Red Hat: Focus on emotion and feeling, doesn’t require evidence to support.

White Hat: Focus on hard and soft facts, involves information

Green Hat: Focus on adding to the conversation, promotes creative thinking

Blue Hat: Focus on guiding the conversation, the point of the conversation

Black Hat: Focus on critiquing, judge and look at problems

Yellow Hat: Focus on the benefits, looks for value

M- My Mentor

C- Myself

C: So, I was learning a new stop yesterday and it was not going well. (black)

M: Which one is it?

C: It was the one where you take your skate and rotate it to the side and place it down. (white)

M: T stop?

C: Yes, that’s the one. So, I took a video of it so that you could look at it and we could talk about it. (blue)

M: Yeah, it’s hard to help without seeing it but if I see it I’m sure we can figure it out. (blue)

*There was a bit of a pause while I sent her the video*

M: Yeah that’s not an easy stop until you really get it. (red)This one is very similar to the toe drag. (white) Do you remember how we learned those? (green)

C: Mhm yeah.

M: For this one, it’s different because you have to open your hip more before dragging. (white)

C: Yeah. I’ve been working on the balance for that for a while and it’s getting better but definitely way better on one side than the other. (yellow)

M: Yeah that always happens. There are two things about this stop. One it’s harder on ground that is less smooth because your skate bounces. Two it’s harder with softer wheels they won’t slide easily. So it’s important to put more pressure. That floor looks pretty rough. (white)

C: Yeah, I can skate on it but it isn’t completely smooth and flat. (white)

M: The other thing is that you need a little bit more speed. To be able to stop you have got to be moving. Try and find somewhere where you can really get going faster. You can practice lifting up one foot as you are going. (white)

C: Like the one-foot glides? (green)

M: Yep just like that. Once you’ve got that try moving the foot around to where you would put it down. Once you’ve got the balance for that then try putting the foot down. (white) Everything looks good just more and speed and watch how you are putting the foot down. (yellow)

C: Yeah I always find myself getting off balance when I have to pick my foot up and then put it back down. (black)

M: I understand you can totally start going the completely wrong way if your hips and knees aren’t going forwards. Practice without the skates can help with that. (white)

Thoughts on the Conversation After Transcribing:

I noticed that we got all the hats into the short part of our conversation. Though we did they were very uneven comparing each colour. The most common one being the white hat because I was asking her about how I could learn it so it involved telling me the steps that make it happen. This also caused the conversation to be lacking in red because we were just talking about the steps to getting this stop down. I also think the conversation could have been better if I tried asking more questions or more creative thinking to add more green. I think that would add more interest to learning.

Thanks for reading!