Final Reflection On Project

Russell Ricketts

Edge 4010

Final Refection

Final Reflection of Edge Project

What I wanted to do for people was something different when it came to serving others, I wanted to teach people about the basic fundamentals of sword play. What made me want to teach it was that everyone else has a similar edge project of community service (not to talk bad on community service), but I wanted to give community service a different type of twist on it. I wanted to teach people a skill that deals more with an individual’s personal learning style while having fun. Swordplay is more than just swinging an object around. What Swordplay requires is discipline, skills, techniques, but above all an intelligent mind to execute sequences of movement. Swordplay is like a game of chess, but more physically challenging and much faster paced. 

Because I wanted to teach people Swordplay I had to have a way to do it. Luckily the SUU University provided a program called EDGE. What the EDGE program is a system of classes provided by SUU University, The EDGE program requires students to do a series of classes that serve a purpose for an individual student to have skills and gain knowledge for future jobs by teach something, or doing a project for the community, mine was a mixture of both.  The first step I had to take was enrolling in Edge 1010, becoming an engaged learner, the second process was my decoration. My Decoration is like stating what I want to do for my project and proposing how I do it. Step 3 was doing Edge 3010, what this was teaching was having students prepare and propose the way they were going to do their project, how they were going to do their project, and when they were going to do their project and get all of that approved. Step four was doing the actual project, I spent almost 120 hours teaching people Swordplay by using the SUU Boffering Club, the club had mock melee combat weapons so the materials were provided by the SUU Club, I later became a president of the club so that I could hold more practices regularly. The last step is Edge 4010 what this does is that you write about your experience with the Edge Program and all the steps you did.     

During my edge project my goal was to teach at least 1 person how to use a sword properly and later on let them develop their own fighting style, however I exceeded my expectations. I have taught over 50 different individuals to become proficient with swordsmanship. What I did was take each individual to the side and help them personally grow in their own style. One thing I learned was that everyone has a different method of learning and having a one-way type of learning would prove ineffective, but expanding my knowledge on how to communicate to different people helped me to help them overcome their challenges and learning walls. If I were to have a outcome of 1 person and have it expand to over 50 in my 120 hours of teaching swordsman ship I would say I greatly exceeded my outcomes and it definably came to pass with seeing how many people took an interest in swordsmanship.

The best part of teaching 50 different individuals was learning the 50 different ways that people communicate. I don’t mean in a professional authoritarian or casual type way, I mean creative thinking on how to put people in a scenario and let them figure it out for themselves while giving guidelines to them. Teaching people was defiantly challenging in providing me with new communication skills. Not everyone learns the same way or does the same fighting style. I have had students who want to learn classic fencing types, to students who want to learn to fight with a sword upside down. The skills I obtained and already learned was obtaining a great knowledge of multiple swordsmanship styles, but the challenging part was applying them to people who want to learn those styles, but I overcame those challenges by being creative with scenarios.

I am grateful for the opportunity that the EDGE program gave me for teaching people this type of skill. I always wanted to be a sword instructor when I was young and I finally got to achieve that dream. I usually wondered why SUU would have something like the EDGE program in place. The purpose was experimental learning, in short, SUU wanted students to challenge themselves to be better skilled individuals and give service back to the community because SUU is a community friendly type of University.  

If I were to say what EDGE meant in an acronym I would say Educational Demonstrational Growing Experimental. This was Educational to me for communication and team leadership skills. Demonstrational for my service of teaching others and demonstrating for them proper techniques and ideas for swordplay. Growing for the people who came in to learn from beginners to being proficient with swordsmanship. Experimental is what every student who learned was trying, students who learned swordsmanship tried more than one type of swordplay style so they could find a comfort zone of what techniques they would want to incorporate into their personal styles.