Start With The End In Mind

This week's chapter is called "Helm's Deep".  What the movies depict as a battle that lasts half of the film, in our text is only one chapter - and it isn't even that long!

Theoden leads his army toward Isengard to attack, but reports reach them than Isengard has already attacked Rohan and that the borderlands have fallen.  Unwilling to do battle all across the Rohirrim plain, Theoden retreats to Helm's Deep, a mountain fortress.  At this point, Gandalf leaves the company to rally the Rohirrim units that scattered across the land when the borderlands were lost.

When Theoden arrives at Helm's Deep they find the fortress, with its small garrison, is already under attack.  Theoden's forces slowly but surely break through the attackers and enter the fortress.  But there are many thousands more of Isengard's army coming behind them.

The rest of the battle is Theoden's forces slowly losing ground to Isengard's forces.  They lose an outer wall, a small stream, and another wall.  Finally, sensing total defeat is near, Theoden decides to make a final charge.  He would rather die a heroic death on the field than a defeated one among ruins.

He and Eomer and Aragorn all lead a final charge into the fray.  But, look! Here comes Gandalf with the Rohirrim troops.  And a forest has now appeared on the Rohirrim plain - Fanghorn has arrived!  Surrounded, the orcs panic and are utterly destroyed.  The battle is over.

During the battle, after they have retaken Helm's Deep, a group of Rohirrim come up to Gimli and update him on what's happening.

'The enemy is at hand!' they said. 'We loosed every

arrow that we had, and filled the dike with Orcs.

But it will not halt them long. Already they are scaling

the bank at many points, thick as marching ants.

But we have taught them not to carry torches.'

The battle begins at night during a thunder storm, so the Orcs carry torches to help them see.  However, the torches also help the defenders know where the enemy is.  They are able to strike back more effectively.  Whatever use the torches had is negated by the onslaught of arrows.

But this defeat is only temporary.  "It will not halt them long."  The orcs will attack again, and with a new tactic.   They bring extra shields to carry over their heads to protect themselves from arrows.  The old strategy will not work.

But, as the torches made them easy targets for arrows, these shields make them easy targets for ambushes.  Eomer and Aragorn and Gimli are able to flank them, and the shields become an extra burden instead protection.  Once again, the orcs are beaten back.  But once again they will attack.  And when they do, they will have a new strategy.

We, too, must be dynamic in our pursuit of goals.  We must be willing to respond to defeat.  The orcs were taught not to carry torches - and in their next wave they indeed took that lesson to heart.  If orcs can do it, so can we!

So often we find our preferred strategy and stick to it - even beyond usefulness.  We're so focused on doing what we know has worked in the past we forget to check if it still works.  This leads to many problems.  Being committed to a single tactic also means we are committed to a single weakness.  Once it is found it can be exploited over and over again.  We must be nimble and willing to change as the situation demands - otherwise those who wish will always know how to defeat us.

The title of this post is "Start with the end in mind."  It is a phrase I, and many other teachers, when building lesson plans.  The purpose of each class, of course, is to give students knowledge or skills they did not have before.  So that's where I begin: What will students know they didn't know before.  Then I create activities that will help the students get there.  I vary the activities in order to engage all kinds of students.

For example, one class I'm teaching this semester is about Jewish Science Fiction.  Sometimes we will read the stories outloud in a round and discuss them as a group.  Sometimes students will read in pairs and discuss them in pairs and present their ideas to the class.  Sometimes I'll find an audiobook of the story and we'll listen to the story that way.

The "end" I have in mind is that the students will learn the Jewish influences in the science fiction stories we read.  But how they read the story and how they discuss the meaning doesn't matter nearly as much.  The class may be more engaging to me if I dramatically read every story to the students myself, but that doesn't mean it is engaging to them.  It cannot be just about me - it must be about my audience.

So I vary my teaching techniques - but I do not vary my endgoals.  Responding to defeat by moving the goalposts is accepting defeat and redefining victory.  That's not what I'm suggesting at all.  What I'm saying is we must be vigilant and committed to victory, and not merely to our favorite technique.  Victory is not easy.  We must pursue it doggedly, and be willing to go out of our comfort zone to achieve it.  Otherwise, we open ourselves to repeated failures.

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