The summer before I started law school I worked as an umpire in the northeast corner of Ohio.\u00a0 I umped for youth baseball and softball and the kids I saw ranged from 9 to nearly 19.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a terrible gig, actually.\u00a0 I made $25 to $30 a game, which paid for a whole lot more gas in 1997 than it does now.\u00a0 The girls were usually courteous.\u00a0 The boys less so. \u00a0The parents were\u2026 Well, I\u2019ll just tell you a little story.\u00a0 I was umping a game in Girard, Ohio.\u00a0 It was a game for 15- and 16-year-old boys.\u00a0 These kinds of games were rather enjoyable to watch when the teams were skilled and evenly matched.\u00a0 At this age, curveballs actually curve and fastballs arrive from the mound with a really enjoyable pop into the ready leather of the catcher\u2019s glove. I had arrived at the ballfield that day only to quickly realize that I was the only umpire in the standard two-umpire crew.\u00a0 The second man never showed. \u00a0I would have to take the plate and, because I was alone, virtually all of the heat.\u00a0 And the heat arrived like a blast of southern sun skirting free from a dark cloud.\u00a0 I can\u2019t even remember the call I made that precipitated what would happen next.<\/p>\n
I heard a father\u2019s voice shouting at me from the left field fence.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t Yankee Stadium, so it wasn\u2019t like he was 40 or 50 yards away from me.\u00a0 I looked quickly to my left just in time to see this father clearing the top of the fence and jogging toward me at home plate. \u00a0I ripped off my padded metal mask, gripping the bottom bar and turning the metal side inward\u2014in case I had to swing it from my right side up to his left cheek.\u00a0 Oddly enough, the short trip to home plate seemed to fill him with a deference he didn\u2019t have when he hopped the fence.\u00a0 He almost<\/em> calmly spoke his piece and turned to leave, finally finding the ushering arm of the manager of his son\u2019s team.\u00a0 I simply wasn\u2019t ready for the whole encounter.\u00a0 In all my training to become an umpire, I had never practiced for that<\/em>.<\/p>\n Here we are, at the start of another seemingly endless season of baseball.\u00a0 The Dodgers are dodging. The Brewers are brewing.\u00a0 The Mets are doing whatever Mets do.\u00a0 The whole thing makes me think of a fascinating study about practicing baseball.\u00a0 I know many of the readers of our little blog are advocacy coaches and advocacy program directors.\u00a0 I think this month\u2019s study will rattle us like an angry father coming over our fence. \u00a0Frankly, I think it should.<\/p>\n The Cal Poly baseball team agreed to participate in a scientific experiment.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Perhaps one could guess that a team from that school might be extra willing to be test subjects for the sake of science, but I digress.\u00a0 The entire team engaged in extra batting-practice sessions twice per week for six weeks.\u00a0 During these sessions, half of the team took batting practice in the same way they\u2019d always done their batting practices.\u00a0 Each player practiced hitting forty-five balls which were evenly divided into three groups of pitches.\u00a0 Fifteen fastballs.\u00a0 Fifteen curveballs. And, finally, fifteen changeups.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 \u201c[A]s the batter saw more of that type [of pitch], he got gratifyingly better at anticipating the balls, timing his swings, and connecting. Learning seemed easy.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n The other half of the team practiced in a somewhat similar way.\u00a0 Each of these players also saw forty-five pitches in a practice session.\u00a0 These forty-five pitches were also divided into three sets of fifteen pitches.\u00a0 However, the batter wasn\u2019t told which of the three kinds of pitches he would see on any given pitch.\u00a0 Everything was random.\u00a0 \u201cAt the end of the forty-five swings, he was still struggling somewhat to connect with the ball.\u00a0 These players didn\u2019t seem to be developing the proficiency their teammates were showing.\u201d<\/p>\n The first kind of practice is called \u201cmassed\u201d practice.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 It\u2019s the kind of practice you and I did for years and years prepping for exams.\u00a0 Find the exam topic.\u00a0 Dive into only that topic for hours at a time.\u00a0 Eyes on the ball.<\/p>\n The second, more random kind of practice is said to be \u201cinterleaved\u201d as it brings in work on other, different skills.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 It\u2019s varied and any repetitions you have, from one fastball to the next, for instance, are spaced apart in time.[6]<\/a>\u00a0 After the six weeks were complete, the hitters had all improved.\u00a0 Extra practice will do that for you.\u00a0 However, \u201cThose who had practiced on the randomly interspersed pitches now displayed markedly<\/em><\/strong> better hitting relative to those who had practiced on one type of pitch thrown over and over.\u201d[7]<\/a> [Emphasis added.]<\/p>\n The authors of the book writing about this study relay several other studies that reveal the same thing about learning.\u00a0 The lesson from those studies is not one most learners want to hear: We learn better when we don\u2019t<\/em> mass-practice.\u00a0 We learn better when we leave a subject for a time, pepper in other subjects, and randomly circle back to the first subject.\u00a0 It makes the process of learning difficult.\u00a0 In so doing, however, our brains have to work harder to remember what we learned before\u2014and the difficulty of recalling the past lessons actually helps those lessons take hold in long-term memory.[8]<\/a>\u00a0 When we focus heavily on one subject and mass-practice the heck out of it, we see quick improvements, but they are more ephemeral and vanish quickly. The authors of the book have a name for those quick improvements, and we as teachers and coaches aren\u2019t going to like it.\u00a0 They call them \u201cillusions of mastery.\u201d[9]<\/a><\/p>\n Now here we are, facing down a curveball of our own.\u00a0 You\u2019re probably thinking of your course syllabi right now.\u00a0 It\u2019s filled with mass practice.\u00a0 You never return to a subject once you\u2019ve covered it.\u00a0 You\u2019re thinking of your moot or mock trial practices as well.\u00a0 They\u2019re quite a bit \u201cmassed\u201d too, aren\u2019t they?\u00a0 I admit that every time I think of these studies, and I think of the syllabi for a few of the classes I teach, I become as unsure of myself as that boy\u2019s father finally arriving at home plate.\u00a0 Just a minute earlier, I was so sure of myself and sure of the ways I have (we <\/em>have) always done things.\u00a0 I\u2019m a slow convert, however.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t un-massed all my masses but I\u2019m mindful that I need to.\u00a0 What will you do with your classes and batting practices?<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Peter C. Brown et al., Make It Stick <\/em>80 (2014).<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Id<\/em>.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Id<\/em>.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Id<\/em>.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 49.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> See Id.<\/em> at 48 for a discussion on the value of spaced practice.\u00a0 Like you might guess so far, it\u2019s practicing the same skill in an un-massed way, intentionally leaving gaps of time between work on a skill or subject.<\/p>\n [7]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 81.<\/p>\n