We were lucky to catch up with Jacob Wachtel recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jacob thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

Schools and sport can work in cooperation with this, but they can also learn from each other so they can better their students and athletes and prepare them to be well rounded adults. I think schools and sports have numerous opportunities to prepare students for engaging careers and fulfilling lives, but I think more can be done to foster self discovery, promote self reflection, and cope with shortcomings and failures. As a teacher of seven years, I work to see each student as an individual with particular learning strengths, difficulties, and needs and work to cater to that specific student as they learn in my class. The same principles can be applied to a sport – especially an individual sport like fencing – so that athletes are seen by coaches as individuals and can then meet their own needs so their performance improves. This does require many coaches to re-examine their coaching philosophies and often necessitates a switch from a coaching style of “you will do it like this or it’s wrong” to something that is more based on their own student, but sports like fencing have benefitted from this philosophical change already.
As a fencing coach of almost ten years, I have seen the value of athletes learning to take risks and reflect on their own performance, but these values are absent in a classroom. Even though many classrooms (mine included) take on a more progressive stance on education where the student inquires about subject related ideas and content and the teacher facilitates that curiosity, students would rather be told the answer or investigate a simple concept due to the fear of a bad grade. The current educational paradigm of risk and failure is, in my opinion, hindering our students’ curiosity and growth; they must learn – like they do in sports – to have the courage to try and make the big play even there is the risk of failure, and teachers must assist in this.

Jacob, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I got into fencing the summer before my 9th grade year. My high school had a fencing team and my best friend’s older brother was on it, so we went to a summer camp hosted by the team. This is where I met two people that helped me become the coach I am today: Dr. Kathy Vail and John Stephens. Dr. Vail was the first fencing coach I met, and she taught me the basics of how to stand move, and attack. John Stephens was the team armorer, the one who repairs all the fencing equipment. Eventually I met the other high school coach, David Eichler, and I was on the team. I did alright at my first tournaments, but I was ultimately determined to do better. This is what led me to Dunwoody Fencing Club, where Dr. Vail was the head coach. I just needed a way of getting there, which is where John came in. Turns out John, also a certified coach, lived a few houses down from me, and he every Friday night and Saturday morning he would pull into my driveway and take me to the fencing club (we would become great friends through those drives of talking about anything and everything while listening to classic rock. I miss him.). Through the years of fencing at high school and for DFC, I got better. I won medals, trophies, and even helped the men’s team win the Georgia High School Fencing League team championship in 2013. All that was important, but I also got a taste of teaching and coaching by helping a special needs student learn to fence. That experience showed me how I can help others and how it seemed like a good fit, but another opportunity would arise when Dr. Vail asked me to coach another school in the high school league. This proposition meant I would have to become certified as a coach through the Unites States Fencing Coaches’ Association, and after taking a test and being observed for forty hours, the USFCA certified me as an Assistant Coach and I began my five year career at Milton High School while in college. During this time I began pursuing a degree in history education; I always liked history and remembered that feeling of teaching other fencers and thought I could translate that into the classroom. Upon graduating college I began teaching at Marietta High School. The experience has been one that has certainly had its challenges (much like coaching), but it all has been worth it.
Both my teaching and coaching styles have evolved to be what they are today due to personal reflection and insight from colleagues. The social studies department at Marietta High not only helped me start my teaching career, they mentored me when I was a student teacher. I have learned much my coaching colleagues like Coach Eichler, Dr. Vail, John, and even Dr. Laurence Schiller, the former coach of Northwestern. My networks have helped me learn how to reflect on my own strategies and better myself as I pursued a graduate degree in education and got my coaching certification. I am grateful for how they helped me get where I am now, but I have never lost my drive to help others in the classroom and in the fencing club. I have always remembered how it feels to help students and athletes better themselves, and I will continue to do so for as long as I can.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I’ve read a lot of books about teaching and fencing, but I’ve been most drawn to the ones that also address the psychology of learning of sport. For teaching, Bruce Lesh’s “Why Can’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?” helped me develop a class that focuses on student inquiry and exploration instead of straight lecture. I have used the book’s ideas many times when making lessons that encourage curiosity and questions. For coaching, Dr. Aladar Kogler’s “One Touch at a Time” focused on the psychology of fencing and works to help fencer’s harness their mind in the sport. The book greatly helped my mentality as a fencer and has become invaluable as a coach.

Any advice for managing a team?

The teachers and coaches I work with are very close, and I am blessed to be in such tight knit groups. Both my colleagues at school and at the fencing club maintain a high morale through one simple factor: create your own camaraderie. Both of my career groups have ways of making of making our groups even tighter by investing in get-togethers, potlucks, or even simple talks. At school, almost every social studies teacher eats in the same room during our lunch block, but we go even further by creating our own potlucks themed on the time of year. There is no requirement to create this kind of community at school, but my group of teachers willingly invest time and money to make these events happen because it boosts the morale in an already cohesive team, and that morale easily seen by the students.
The fencing club is a place where we coaches also create our own camaraderie. Because we have all known, worked with, and learned from each other for years, we can continue to work and learn in an environment where we can work as a unit to teach a variety of students at any given time. We also boost morale by having meetings of our own where we discuss the changes in the sport of fencing, the High School League, and our coaching ideas. We have also taken coaching clinics with other coaches like Maestro Schiller, and this desire to continue learning together helps us work our hardest so we can keep helping our students.