Knowing that you're posting on Facebook is the first thing that tempts me to finally get a Facebook account.

That's funny: it's what makes me consider canceling mine.

Oooo....Jason....you're so mean!

I'm not doing a lot with Facebook, Tom. My experience with Facebook seems to define my experience with most social media: the more I use it, the less useful it is.

A

Every person you coach tells a story about who you are. Care to finish this one?

I think that every student carries some of their coach with them, but I sometimes think that too often, we judge coaches too much by their students. When I think about a recreational program in a small rural town and a program in a big city, the coaching may be the same, but often the students will be different, in their abilities, in their beliefs, and in their approach to fencing.

It's not that coaching makes no difference, but coaching has to be taken in the context of the student and the environment the student is fencing in.

A

(Of course, the counter-argument here is: if we don't judge a coach by their students, how should we judge them? Perhaps the answer to that is that it's time we stop judging fencers along a simple continuum of "no results" to "top results" and understand that fencing -- at least in the US -- consists of a number of different "sports" and not all of them are the same)

We could judge the coaches not by the quality of their students but by the quality of their instruction and the enjoyment of their students. I've had some really poor teachers that I've done well under because I wanted to about the subject and did the research myself. They acted, minimally, as a Q-A session and it was painful to get the Answer part. Almost like I was discovering hidden knowledge.

I've had some teachers who had great success with others but couldn't care less about this 'crop' because they were busy elsewhere (writing books, etc).

Then there are the teachers who inspire their students, push them to go beyond their normal expectations and start that "spark". Those are the ones that need to be held up as an example.

The success with students is really a factor of many elements: The teacher, the student and the student's support-team (Family, friends, etc). To give the credit to one of those discredits the work and effort from the others.