For anyone who is familiar with us, and too be honest for anyone who has access to google, it is a poorly guarded secret that Johannes and I are both strongly involved in the sport of fencing. Fencing itself is a great potential metaphor for much of what ISSA does especially in its work with younger children. So, given this reality, it is hardly a surprise that one of the questions we are most commonly asked is why do we have a ‘Skateboarding Panda’ as a mascot?
Well, it is actually not as unlikely as it may first seem. When we were designing our brand, we always knew we wanted a mascot that was fun, instantly recognisable, a little unusual, but most importantly that embodied all the characteristics we are trying to teach children to have.
We discussed many different options for an activity or activities that our mascot could be performing and after a lot of consideration (and the inevitable agonising decision to not go with fencing) we eventually settled on skateboarding. Let me explain why: we wanted to highlight four areas that we feel are extremely important for childhood development and long-term success and each of them are perfectly embodied by skateboarding and skateboarders.
Our variation of the four C’s of childhood development are perfectly embodied in this sport:
The 4 Mighty Superpowers of Success
Courage
This one is fairly obvious. In a sport where improvement has to come at the price of repeated failure and failure comes with the additional penalty of bumps and bruises; it is as Winston Churchill might has put it ‘it is the courage to continue that counts’. Beyond this there is a more important reason why courage is the first C on our list (even though it normally doesn’t appear elsewhere); it is during the early years of life we learn to interact with the world and those around us who occupy it, it is a combination of curiosity and courage that brings us too nearly everything else.
Collaboration
Even before we find methods of effective communication with are able to collaborate with others, sometimes this is an active partnership and sometimes it is passive. We all collaborated with our parents when we learned to stand up and walk. What they probably didn’t realise is that for us their collaboration was ongoing and not just during the times of active attention and communication. Skateboarders tend to ‘hang out’ in the same areas but not necessarily together, with many different groups occupying the same space and connected by a shared passion. Therefore, many of the technical aspects of skateboarding and nearly all of the more advanced manoeuvres come about through talking, observing, asking questions, being observed, getting feedback and receiving encouragement. Sounds like a pretty great learning environment to me.
Creativity
Creativity makes every list for education regardless of it being C’s or any other. In skateboarding, gymnastics, and even in fencing (as well as many other, perhaps all other pursuits) creativity adds value and is a hallmark characteristic of those at the top of their fields. The creative process can e alone or a collaboration and it certainly requires courage to do something new, or to go beyond the previously assumed limits. Creativity or more accurately creative thought processes (Edward De Bono may have called this lateral thinking) is at the core of problem solving, innovation, and nearly all the progressions that have built the modern world. Creativity is our way of introducing a little chaos into our worlds in order to progress it.
Confidence
Where there is a little chaos there must always be a little harmony to balance with it. The term ‘quiet confidence’ is one of my favourites (and is becoming rarer in a social media world where everyone is saying look at me). Imagine the confidence required to take on some of those tricks in skateboarding at the highest level; consider some of those athletes are barely teenagers; and remember that not so long ago they were starting out and falling off their boards just trying to go in a straight line. This is a wonderful thing about skateboarding as a metaphor for early education: that first big confidence building moment is one of achieving perfect balance!
Confidence is a gradual process that builds from very small successes too grand achievements. It comes from a sense of achievement, from knowing that you have worked hard and that you are ready, and it can be encouraged by those around you at no cost to them. Confidence (particularly self-confidence based on the right factors) is the best thing we can help a child to develop in their earliest years.
So skateboarding became the activity of choice for our mascot, but the next question was who or what should be doing the skateboarding. This as it turned out was an easy choice. Aside from eating and sleeping (two things that we all enjoy) pandas are famous for playing, it is one of the reasons why so many tourists flock to panda sanctuaries every year to see them climb, rolling, and generally playing both alone and with each other. I cannot over emphasise the importance of play in the learning process for every age group, but especially in early years. Besides, who doesn’t love Pandas!