Recursion

Learning things repeatedly, moving through the same process over and again, has always improved my implementation of what I'd learned.

When I worked on my home's construction, performing new tasks repeatedly (framing, sheathing, siding, trim, painting, sanding, varnishing, electric, plumbing...) much of what I did became better as skills were internalized through repetition. They were strengthened by constant instruction and tips from the seasoned men alongside whom I worked. By the time I moved in, I was a reasonably accomplished rough and trim carpenter and had gained a handful of other skills that would serve long after. Beforehand, I was, at best, a hobbyist with some knowledge.

When I taught (Language Arts -- a career of over three decades), I was pleased when training sessions on new strategies and techniques were revisited (never as often as I'd have liked). Facing something new once was enough to begin its practice, but mastery requires repeat practice, repeat understanding of the rationale for it, and a plurality of ways to achieve results. Given those things, expertise is pretty much assured. Absent them, expertise remains achievable through the slower, incremental improvement that accompanies stumbling through partial understandings from a single exposure to new ideas.

Who wouldn't want a faster track to greater professionalism?

In staff training sessions, when offered a menu of activities, I typically selected what I'd already been exposed to if the choice was available. I wanted to become a top-level practitioner of the requisite skills involved by knowing so well the material that success was assured through both the full knowledge and expert implementation that recursive encounter helped ensure. For me, at least, it worked, especially in my high-performing school district committed to pedagogical advances.

Moving from teaching infancy to levels of confidence and control can come from experience and its sometimes-hard-won lessons, but recursive exposure to new approaches moved me, anyway, faster and farther on the road to excellence.