The Alchemy of Age-Mixing and Prison Cats
A left-field approach to getting kids to 'care/lead/stop being feral'
“Not everything that makes sense works, and not everything that works makes sense.”
-Rory Sutherland, Alchemy
Example for this quote? Coming right up.
Problem: Aggressive, consistent prison fights at one jail
Solutions: Cats (watch video)
I thought I was going to do something else with this video that a coaching pal sent me, but I made a different connection.
See if you can spot it in this graphic:
The TPH I’m at is age-mixed. We have elementary-age kids through high school.
Age-mixing is great, you can go down the rabbit hole of ‘Zone of Proximal Development’. Or, you can go for the essence which is more my speed by one of my favorite coaches:
"Nothing improves a player more than playing against better players."
-Marcelo Bielsa
This post isn’t about player development though, it’s about human development, alchemy and most importantly, prison cats.
The story goes like this…
In Week 2, our youngest TPH player started crying in the middle of our practice because he was struggling and because he’s 9...
4 ‘older’ kids from his group saw him and stared at him. And no teammate stepped in.
I pulled him aside, got down on his level, and intervened, but that is not the point of this post. I just wanted you to know that someone looked after him.
Leave Room for Magic
“Remember, if you never do anything differently, you’ll reduce your chances of enjoying lucky accidents.”
-Rory Sutherland
The reason you give prisoners cats is because some courageous, young prison worker spoke up in a meeting with an idea… Probably… And said, “Hey, what if we give them something to ‘look after’, give them some responsibility, and just see what happens.”
The principle used by our courageous prison guard and In-Powered Coaches is such:
If you want to see changed behavior, create space and opportunity for it. If you want to see leadership, increase the surface area for it to show up on the screen of space called reality.
As with cats, so with people…
The same affordance is available at TPH when a 9-year-old starts having a tough time and 13-year-olds have a chance to be a big brother and positively influence a teammate who is down. That didn’t happen on that day, but we’ve been chatting about leadership all week as a theme. Planting seeds for it to show up when conditions are more favorable.
Coach Spotlight
Here’s how Chris does it with his groups:
