Igniting Curiosity: How Skateboarding Sparks Learning

This summer, I spent a lot of time at skateboard parks watching my husband skate.  He started skating as a teenager and was quite a talented skater.  He often regales me with stories of his skateboarding feats and falls, a recounting of all the bruises and scabs.  When the pandemic hit, he took up skateboarding again, and I could see how much he enjoyed the flow of skateboarding.  When I watch him, I can see that teenage boy again.  Now, he surf skates instead of doing street tricks, but the agile boy still sails down the hills much to the amazement of young and old alike.

One summer day, we visited a brand-new skate park in Miami.  There were three young boys ages 6-8 riding their bikes, there were two young men on roller skates practicing tricks, and there was one 4-year-old Haitian girl on a scooter. My husband walked to the top of a slope and started his practices.  All eyes turned on him as they often do.  People wonder what this soon to be 65-year-old man is going to do, and then they are surprised.  He doesn’t wobble, he doesn’t fall – he glides along effortlessly like he’s surfing.

As I watched from the sidelines, I thought about how people learn.  The boy bike riders were following my husband’s path, emulating the same movements on their two wheels.  One boy was coaxed by his father to go down a big incline off the course.  At first, he did not want to do it.  He said, “Pappi, I don’t feel like it.  It doesn’t feel right.”  His father said something to him in Spanish, and the boy paused, looked down at the incline, and again shook his head and said, “No Pappi, I think I’m going to fall.” Again, his father encouraged him.  And finally with a deep breath and holding tight on his handlebars, the boy sailed down the hill without incident.  I saw the look on his face – it was pure joy.  I was so happy for him.  And I thought to myself, “He’s going to do it again.  Now that he knows he can do it, he’s going to keep going.”  And that’s exactly what he did with whoops of joy every time he went down that hill. On the other side of the course another bike rider went down a steep slope and fell. His father rushed to him and helped him up.  The boy surveyed his dirty hands, brushed them off, and hopped back on his bike.  His momentary failure did not dissuade him.  He went off on his bike fast down the course.

The two young men in the center of the course were practicing jumping up on a metal beam and sliding along it and then jumping down.  The young man with bleached blond hair was teaching his taller friend.  Both were proficient roller skaters, but the blond skater knew many more tricks and was much more confident The tall skater would try a trick, fall, try it again, and his friend would coach him on how to adjust his movements.  It was fascinating to watch.  They worked together for about a half-hour until the tall skater shook his friend’s hand and left.  The blond skater stayed another half-hour perfecting his movements.  He did one movement over and over again, proving to me that Malcolm Gladwell was indeed correct when he suggested that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve expertise in a field.

While this is all happening,  my husband is blithely running the course over and over again with an attentive audience – the 4-year-old girl on a scooter.  She is dressed in pink from head to toe.  She has on Disney Elsa helmet complete with a gold crown.  I wish I could have taken a photo of her.  She was petite and fiercely feminine.  I smiled watching her follow my husband, trying to move like he moved. At one point, she tried to get his attention, speaking to him in French.  I could see that my husband wasn’t sure what to do.  He smiled, shrugged, and kept on moving.  The girl’s mother, called to her in French, probably saying something like, “Leave that poor man alone!”  But the girl turn toward her mother, put her hands on her hips, stomped her right foot, then turned and followed my husband down one slope.  I chuckled.  “That girl is going places,” I thought.  She had a strong will and determination.  Nothing, not even her mother, could deter her. Eventually, she was lured away with a juice box and snack, but she kept an eagle eye on my husband and his movements.  There is no doubt in my mind that whatever that girl decides to learn in life, she will do it and succeed. She has the imagination and courage to chase the ideal.

All this skateboarding got me to thinking about how children learn.  Increasingly, learning seems to have become more and more passive.  Teachers and technology dole out information and kids are expected to take the information and hold on to it, but I’m not sure the kids understand the importance of the information and how to take it farther.  And there is so much information, it’s hard to determine what to hold on to, what is true, and what is not important.  I’m wondering in my work with children this year, how I can spark that skatepark enthusiasm.  How can I help to make the ideal visible? How can I help them to practice skills with the motivation, perseverance, and confidence that I witnessed this summer? I think sometimes we make the work too easy.  Maybe raising the bar and showing them how to accomplish a task step-by-step would help.  Kids definitely want to be challenged.  Observing students and setting the bar just right, just at their Zone of Proximal Development, as Vygotsky conceptualized,  will give them the courage to try.  Most definitely this desire to learn is intrinsic to every living being. People are curious, they develop interests in particular paths, they want to master their surroundings. And sure, they are influenced by goals, rewards, and social acceptance, but I’m not sure those external factors are enough to keep them going.  It’s the internal drive I’m interested in, how to help kids develop that natural drive, that curiosity to keep on learning.