What next?

This Level 1 coaching class I'm taking is much on my mind these days. I'm not entirely sure where this train is heading but I'm happy to be getting on board. But, I guess like any trip into the unknown, it creates some real concerns. One of my larger concerns is all of the things that I'm not anticipating. 'lemme 'splain.

I was talking to a friend of mine who happens to be a coach and he told me a story I don't think I could have made up. They're in a class doing what turned out to be a 2 mile crossing. Evidently the conditions were fairly benign, which makes sense since the class is geared towards the improving beginner side of things. Anyway half way into the crossing, a mile from land on both sides, one of the students stops paddling. Just stops and announces, "That's it, I can't go on." Some discussion ensues (surprise) and the student breaks out the "Well, I hurt myself" card. The hurt card of course trumps anything when you're coaching (that whole duty of care thing) so the student had to be towed a mile. Of course the hurt miraculously disappeared and the student was fine for lifting boats, and the next day of the class, etc.

When I heard this I laughed (a lot). But then I got to thinking. If anyone asked me to write down a complete list of things that might go wrong when paddling I'm pretty sure "a student gives up just because" would not be on the list. I mean sure, I'd write down "student becomes exhausted", "student chooses not to participate", hell even "student (really) gets hurt and can't go on". But "give up just because"? UhUh. And what I realized is that if I'm going to actually do this coaching thing I'm going to be faced with this sort of stuff.

If I can used terms I'm used to, essentially I have to be more or less prepared to deal with the set of outputs of autonomous non-linear systems. To be sure the set is bounded. I'm probably never going to have to deal with some student spontaneously combusting seated in their boat (although the solution there is easy. Roll! Roll!).  But really, the surface area of the problem space here is pretty damned large. And really there are two components to this. The first is what should I reasonably be prepared for? The second is what am I reasonably responsible for?

An example. I've got a group on the water with no convenient outs (I said convenient, not easy) and one of the students starts complaining about being too hungry to go on and they have no food. What do? On the one hand, I really don't feel like it's my responsibility to provide food for this person. On the other hand, carrying a snack or snacks in my day hatch is a pretty reasonable preparation I can make (perhaps interestingly, that preparation is to support the other students in the class, not the hungry one). I'm guessing that as I think more about and do more of this coaching stuff more and more of this kind of thing will come up.

When I start considering all of this some of the proscriptions that the BCU coaching scheme has makes sense. Like, strictly, as a level 1 coach the BCU says I can't work on my own except for "taster" sessions on protected waters. Having the time to gain the experience to understand the problem space, at least to an order of magnitude, seems rather useful.