A Lesson in Learning

Class dismissed! 

You may or may not remember the fishing class I wrote about teaching a couple months back. It was going to be at Sierra College, 4 consecutive Sundays, for an hour and a half at a time. The subject: Basic Trolling Skills for Boat Angling For California Trout and Salmon. In the days and weeks before, I was a bit terrified. I’d never taught a class, of any kind. Heck, I barely paid attention in most of the classes I did have. I still don’t really know how I actually graduated college (thank you Central Washington University for not being Stanford).

But there is something about terror that can make you both pee your pants and focus your mind. The article I wrote was about that anticipatory anxiety- putting it out there made the class real and helped my brain galvanize that there was no turning back, especially when several people signed up for the class as a result (Yes! People still read local news!). The roster went from six to 18 in less than a week. In fact, I asked for the number to be capped, because the potential to disappoint 18 people was more than enough.

It became obvious early on this would have to be a visual class: I needed photos, maps, images. My wife pointed me towards Google Slides. You know how I’ve said I’m not the best student? I am really not the best student when it comes to new technology. My method of learning anything computer-related is: try for 30 seconds, become incapacitated by frustration and rage, put my laptop away, then come back to it after like, a month. The dog hides. The cat smirks. My wife calmly tells me I can do this in a voice like a kindergarten teacher trying to talk a scared student out of a tree. But this time, I didn’t have a month. I had a couple weeks! So, with every fiber of my being, I willed myself to remain seated, calm and keep my laptop open. Vickie didn’t even really have to tie me to the chair, but it was oddly comforting. 

And lo and behold, I did learn! It wasn’t easy - sort of the mental equivalent of constructing the Donner Pass train tunnels: chip, chip, chip, big explosion, repeat. Of course instead of pickaxes, wheelbarrows and dynamite the primitive equipment being used was my brain. But, by the week of the first class, I’d learned how to delete the little text boxes in Google Slides before adding photos. This was huge. By the 2nd week, I’d learned how to upload not just photos but videos.  By the third week I was adding text OVER images. I had basically become a software engineer. 

And the only thing matching the pride I had for myself was the pride I was developing for the students. They ranged in age from about 12 to 84. Their fishing experience ran the gamut too, from anglers looking to brush up on their skills to a woman who just thought fishing seemed like it would be a fun thing to try. To a person, they were awesome! They paid attention. They asked good questions. They took notes and video and voice recordings. They were engaged, and engaging. As far as I know, not a single spitwad was fired in my direction. 

The 4th and final class was out on the lake. My friend Chuck has a pontoon boat and we took the students out in groups. An aside: I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a pontoon boat. I used to sort of make fun of them, but after I started using Chuck’s regularly for guide trips last year (due to golden mussel restrictions), I realized they’re pretty awesome: like fishing from a comfortable studio apartment. At any rate, the trips were a chance for students to actually get on the water to see and try out some of the stuff they learned in the classroom. Best of all, we a

ctually caught a couple fish! 

I could not have imagined going in that I would have enjoyed this experience as much as I did. I didn’t just become a “teacher”, I became a student again too, learning- maybe most importantly of all- that whether it is ability, knowledge or experiences, we are all capable of so much, if it’s our wish. Be it Google Slides, the difference between the hypolimnion and epilimnion layers of a lake and how each impacts fishing or, heck, a new language…all we have to do is push ourselves a little, get out of our comfort zone, and (either literally or figuratively) sign up. You probably won’t even have to have your spouse tie you to a chair. 

(Oh! And I'm teaching the class again in fall. Just check out Sierra College's fall class lineup online when it becomes available later this summer)