Fred Shoemaker's Wisdom about Teaching, Learning, and Life
Episode Notes
Fred Shoemaker is considered one of America's best golf teachers, but in this provocative conversation about teaching, learning, and life you'll discover how his success has come by helping students discover their own capacities for performance and enjoyment and not by fixing what's wrong with their golf swings.
Much of what Fred has learned can be applied to parenting, coaching, and classroom teaching at any level. Here are a few notable quotes:
“…the cult of the expert is a dangerous position because we just get stuck there, and we're afraid to look into places or to be vulnerable or to see that what we're saying may be done in a different and better way.” (8:58)
“My experience of young people is that they want to contribute. They want to know what they say matters to another. They want to be heard, and if it does make a difference, it just turns them on just like it does to you and me to know we've made a difference for another person.” (8:13)
"[Timothy Gallwey, Fred's teacher] created an environment for the first time without evaluation or judgment in which curiosity became more valuable to me than doing it right.” (12:50)
On the importance of accurate feedback, Fred asks, “How many teachers get filmed for a day and can see it themselves? Not the principal seeing it, just themselves. Boy, that's a shock. I didn't know I spent all that time looking at one person and ignored everybody else basically and tried to make sure that the lesson went well because I kept calling on that person.” (1:08:47)
Story Transcript
Fred Shoemaker’s Teacher Story.pdf
Featured Guest:
For more than 30 years, Fred Shoemaker has been quietly transforming the way the game is thought of and taught.
Fred has spent most of his career—over 44,000 lessons, and thousands of golf schools and workshops—helping people overcome the obstacles that prevent them from discovering and expressing their potential.
In 1990, he founded Extraordinary Golf to have golfers come to see their remarkable ability and learn to unfold it moment to moment. The school has been named One of America’s Top 25 Golf Schools (GOLF Magazine) on numerous occasions and has been a life-changing experience for many participants. To many, Extraordinary Golf has become a learning community, a resource for their ongoing development.
Fred has authored Extraordinary Golf: The Art of the Possible, a book widely praised and described by the editor of a national golf magazine as “the future of golf instruction.” He has also written Extraordinary Putting: Transforming the Whole Game. He is featured in a two-hour video titled Extraordinary Golf: The Secret to Transforming Your Game where he coaches actor/author Michael Tucker and a group of golfers in discovering their natural ability and learning to self coach.
Committed to furthering the development of golf teachers and coaches, Fred has presented his unique instructional approach at over 1000 programs from Africa to Japan and has conducted numerous PGA/LPGA and coaches seminars, including training and development programs for the national coaches of Canada, Belgium, Argentina, Finland, Ireland, and Sweden. He is also an educational consultant to The First Tee. Fred believes that sports can be a practical venue for distinguishing new possibilities that allow for professional and personal transformation. He has worked with federal agencies such NASA and The Treasury Executives Institute; professional organizations such as The Young Presidents Organization and The World Presidents Organization; and corporations such as Oracle, Pfizer, Genentech, Apple, Clear Channel, Lucent Technologies, Monsanto, Hyatt, Polycom and All State, among others.
He lives in Carmel, CA.
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