Maine Life, Personal Growth

What Day Is It?

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While it doesn’t happen too often (thankfully), today was a day when I woke up and realized I had no idea what day of the week it was. At some level it was amusing. At another it was frustrating. It could have been frightening. I began sleepily thinking about “what did I do yesterday?” 

Yesterday was an interesting day… it started with a meeting to discuss some new training oppo0rtunities  for solopreneurs*; continued with a fun and meaningful hour attending the S.A.D. 4 Annual Veteran’s Assembly and ended with facilitating a public speaking workshop. I suppose I could have posted each of those on Facebook along with an indepth report of my food intake and emotional state. Of course I did some other stuff too. If you are feeling deprived because I didn’t share everything, let me know and I’ll try to fill you in. I doubt the demand will be over-whelming.

Several hours and cups of coffee later, I’m pleased to report that I am now cognizant and coherent.  I know that it’s 11-11-11 and it’s Veterans’ Day. I even remember that later today I will have the distinct honor of  emceeing the Dedication Ceremony for the new Abbot Honor Roll. Maybe because it’s the first day in a while that I haven’t had to “hit the ground running,” it did take a while to get the wheels turning. (That might be another one of my mixed metaphors–it took a while to get my feet moving. No, wait, wheels here means the gears in my brain.) 

With the backdrop of Veterans’ Day activities yesterday and today, I had time to think about how fortunate I am. I get to do fun things.  I do work that I enjoy–at least mostly. I like that I live in a proud town. I really like that I share some traditional values–including a deep appreciation for our Veterans with my neighbors. I get to believe I’m part of something and I get to believe I matter.

During yesterday’s school assembly one point struck home hard. The sentiment was that those who gave their lives in battle are at peace. They did so that we might live in peace. One could almost think they are fortunate; they have found the peace we seek.

Perhaps we aren’t always looking in the right places. Being at peace with others can be challenging, being at peace with ourselves is always possible.

I believe when John McCrae penned he second stanza of that famous poem, he was challenging us to fully understand that peace and passion are so closely related they may be inseparable.

…To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The torch we’ve been thrown is about passion. Without passion there can be no peace. Let’s truly understand the debt we have to our Veterans–to have the same passion for those things that matter and to live in the peace their passion made possible.

*A solopreneur is an entrepreneur who works alone, “solo,” running their business single-handedly. You’ll be hearing more about this in the very near future!

Learning, Personal Growth, Teaching

Problem-solving With Kids

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Many regular readers know that I spend quite a bit of time with the kids at school… mostly as a “bookworm” meaning second and third graders get turns reading their favorite books to me. We have a lot of fun and I like to think it encourages a love of reading.  I know I enjoy their friendship and they teach me a lot.

During a recent visit a gaggle of third grade girls cornered me to announce “We have a bullying problem.” Now unless you live under a rock you know that bullying is something taken very seriously at school–volunteers are obligated to report incidents to teachers. I somewhat surprised myself when I responded by asking them, “What have you done about it?”

I was not that surprised when they gave me a fair amount of detail regarding the perpetrator, who’d they’d reported it to, and what the plan was for dealing with it. I am convinced that we often fail as adults by underestimating kids. The situation was well in hand; they just wanted me to know.

My conversation with them reminded me of an event some years ago. I was at my then chiropractor’s office and discovered that Amanda had come to work with her mom due to an accident at school the previous day. She and Tyler, another first grader, collided while playing kick ball.

She was busy managing multiple priorities: being a kid, greeting and visiting patients, entertaining herself, saying “out of the way,” creating art, practicing writing her name, and negotiating more time off rom school with her mom. I considered myself fortunate that she found time in her busy schedule to play with me. Actually, that’s not quite right. She let me play with her.

I found it difficult to “write my name” using those perfectly shaped first grade  letters. But every time I “goofed up” Amanda assured me I was doing fine. She also thought I could draw a pretty good cat.

We of course discussed her accident. When I asked her how she was going to avoid getting hurt again she didn’t hesitate with her answer. She would make sure her and Tyler were on the same team so they were always running in the same direction.

I left clutching the drawing Amanda did for me. (She drew pretty good flowers.) It still hangs in my office as a reminder of the fun we had and the fact that sometimes kids are great problem solvers. Adults are the ones who make things difficult.

 

By my estimation, Amanda is now in her early twenties. I’m sorry I’ve lost touch with her and her Mom… but I hope she’s still drawing flowers!

Learning, Teaching

But Do I Have To?

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Do we have to learn this?

When I’m teaching real estate courses one of the questions I get asked frequently is “Are we going to have to do this in practice/real life?”  (It might not be a surprise that it most often comes up during math exercises.)

It’s a good question, of course. It’s also a hard one to answer honestly because sometimes “it depends.” So I will often put my tongue in my cheek and reply “Yes, at least once–when you take the final exam at the end of the course.”

I recently finished reading a series of articles on student engagement and motivation that I thought created several important perspectives in relation to that frequently asked question. I was attracted to the series based on a teaser suggesting it’s important to “teach your students how to fail.” Now that’s an interesting concept–and one I’m still exploring.

But what followed was  the suggestion to “teach students to value learning, not performance.” That statement forced me to wheel my chair back and stare at the screen for a while. I admire the simple elegance of that suggestion.

For years we’ve met at the altar of an adult learning model that suggested we (educators/trainers) only have value when we are involved in “performance-based” training. Our lesson plans have to have “action words” in those behavioral objectives.  “At the completion of this course, the student will be able to…”

I remember having my cage rattled quite a few years ago by an instructor who suggested “writing behavioral learning objectives is arrogant and presumptuous–what right do you have to decide what students are going to learn in your classes?” It’s probably fair to label him an extremist, but he makes an interesting point. As if to reinforce his point, I’ve had a number of occasions when a former student has contacted me and thanked me for something he or she learned in my class–and I don’t remember teaching it.

Our obsession with performance (including how students perform on tests) may have some unintended results. I listened to a student at the start of a recent class introduce herself with the observation she “was tired of taking classes and learning.” I thought it was a very sad statement. But I also think she’s wrong. She’s not tired of learning. I think she’s tired of being taught.

Too often our systems of education remove the joy of learning. If we can’t figure out how to put it back in, we ought to at least look at some ways to allow it!

 

 

To read the articles mentioned visit Teachers Training International.

Personal Growth, Writing Skills

NaNoWriMo 2011

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Writing with a broken pencil is…

pointless!

Somewhere along the way I learned that no writing is pointless. I would give a good deal of credit for that to College Professor William Bailey who required every student to keep a daily journal. One sentence per day was the minimum and we were told not to worry about grammar and spelling. He wasn’t going to collect and grade it anyway. I suppose  this would seem pointless, but his objective was to get us used to writing and make writing a somewhat natural activity.

Perhaps the creators of NaNoWriMo were in Professor Bailey’s class. They are sponsoring “thirty days of literary abandon.” In short, participants are challenged to write a 50,000 word novel in one month (November).  That’s an average of 1667 words per day.  Last year 200,000 tried–30,000 succeeded.

And, no, I don’t think any of the 30,000 made the New York Times Best Seller’s List. That’s actually not the point. As the creators of this effort say,

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

How can you not love that? You write a lot of “crap,” but when it’s over you get to call yourself a novelist.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that last year 1800 K-12 schools participated and not surprised to discover that some participants actually have had their work published.

No, I probably will not be participating this year. But I do love the concept–and note that this doesn’t just apply to writing. Sometimes you just get started “valuing perseverance and enthusiasm over the craft.”

The word for the day is “intensity” and the question is “What could you accomplish in thirty days if you had it?”