MAC Wk 2 Comment 2

Jodi Zeigler has a post on her blog this week that really resonated with me personally. Read it here and see my comments below.

Jodi,

You are not alone.

I too am an incredibly driven individual. And, while I've talked about my behavior and competitive nature with friends and family, I'm often at a loss as to what is driving these tendencies.

Furthermore, I too feel that I've practically "lost" an entire year to grad school. It is easy to feel caught up with your own world when a program or life event such as this can be so demanding.

In all, this has been a challenging year. I've lost touch with many of my regular friends and associates, and in many ways, feel somewhat isolated from my community. That said, I do think that a perspective that embraces contributions can help significantly. I feel blessed to be working in education, and I'm also incredibly thankful that I've had the opportunity to learn and grow with you and the rest of our EMDT cohort in such an exciting and inspiring environment.

Rest assured, you already are working towards contributing meaningfully in the lives of your students. This program is helping all of us broaden our horizons and preparing us for a rewarding and exciting career enriching young minds.

Good post, and god work.

MAC Wk 2 Comment 1

Sharon Jones has a very well written post about our reading this week from the Art of Possibility. Read it here. My comments are below:

Sharon,

I think you are spot on in suggesting that one of the Zanders' greatest strengths is the simplicity that they deploy in their writing style. However, in this week's post you have also eloquently and succinctly illustrated how the 6th Rule from the Art of Possibility can be reflected in our daily lives.

I agree, much of the positive or negative attitudes that surround our lives are self-determined. I've sometimes tried to describe this notion to my students through a discussion of "the little things". In short, I've tried to explain that it is often our reactions to little daily inconveniences, such as missing a bus, rather than drastic and catastrophic events which can positively or negatively shape our day.

More importantly, I really appreciated your observation that the behavior of our students, or traffic, or other such trivial daily events is rarely dramatically worse on any given day. Instead, it is our reaction to the myriad of other unrelated occurrences which lead to our perceptions of a good or bad day.

Personally, I sometimes find it difficult to choose how to respond to one of those "little events", but I'll certainly try to let my initial reaction or mood dissipate as quickly as possible. I've found on more than one occasion that green tea seems to make almost everything better…

Well put Sharon, thank you.

MAC Wk 2 Blog 1

MAC Wk 2 Blog 1: Reading

I'm really starting to enjoy the Art of Possibility as the issues that the Zanders raise continue to mirror concerns that I face almost daily as a teacher.


About halfway through the 4th chapter, the authors hit on one of the most difficult discussions that I have with students every semester. While building upon their theories from earlier chapters that many of our social norms are artificial constructs, the Zanders began to question the greater concept of grading. From the outset, I fully agree with their observations that grading can often be a very arbitrary process which sometimes provides very little information towards an individual's true comprehension of the material at hand.

As such, I regularly try to explain to my students that grades are not the final arbiter to success in life, career, and creative pursuits. Instead, grades are more akin to a valuable guide for concept retention that can help measure personal progress within a specific subject area. My overall goal when discussing this perspective with students is to help them feel less intimated by the prospect of a challenging grade. My hope being that students would be motivated to try new activities and / or difficult challenges unencumbered by the pressure that always achieving a certain grade point can create.

However, as the authors deftly point out, whenever you marginalize the impact of grades (or other such measurement tools), you risk completely devaluing the measurement all together. We risk trivializing the entire system of academic feedback if grading system begins to feel arbitrary or even "game-like".

This area of discussion really struck me as I was reading an article that raised similar concerns only earlier this week. In one of the most recent issues of Fast Company magazine, marketing guru David Boguski was trying to explain his abrupt departure from the industry he had literally been leading with a bevy of awards, clients, and accolades in tow:

"I wasn't attached to the idea that I was an ad-creative-director rock star. I don't believe any of that stuff. It isn't my legacy. I guess I just don't aspire to corporate legacy. I'm convinced that the greatness that matters more is the greatness people achieve through helping each other, through collaborating, more than the greatness that's achieved by grabbing all you can or getting all you can or building all you can. The 'you' needs to go away for there to be the real greatness to
things. So for me, the genuine part, it's a weird thing -- to get to the real you, you have to be less you."

I don't think it is a mere coincidence that the Zanders, Boguski, author and educator Seth Godin, and other cultural figure heads are merging around a movement that is based in both transparency and personal authenticity. Today, the internet and other modern mass communication technologies have brought a mountain of information, media, and entertainment to our fingertips. However, this influx of information has almost exposed us all to too much content, clouding our ability to judge and assess the quality of such media and digital information as well as our own identities and self worth. Authenticity is critical in today's world into only for consumers, but also for our students.

Authenticity is also crucial in our interactions with young people in the classroom. How are we assessing content? How are we motivating students to challenge themselves with individualized new opportunities and pursuits which would best support each and every learner?

In short, we need to help students see their authentic selves and highlight those talents and unique abilities that they, like all humans, possess. One of the greatest lessons that I've learned from the EMDT program here at Full Sail is that the ultimate value of many of the educational technologies we've discussed isn't it replacing the traditional classroom. These technologies and tools can all be used to augment the traditional classroom with more individualized opportunities to increase and enrich student-to-teacher interaction, material retention, and individual creativity in learning activities and assignments. I'm looking forward to implementing these resources carefully this fall to enhance the classroom experience, so that a room of 30 can ultimately feel like a classroom of one.

Later in the Fast Company piece, Boguski elaborated on his time away from advertising, "I've been messing around with this less-competitive version of myself, because the other doesn't make you happy. You can't win enough."

I think this is a tremendous observation that correlates directly to what we're talking about in class and the Zanders are raising in their book. No one can "win" enough, and within the obvious construct of grading, actually achieving an "A" is not necessarily enough to truly develop one's inner skills and creative aptitudes or acquire the vast myriad of diverse skill sets which are imperative to rising above today's political, environmental, and societal challenges..

Finally, I think Gandhi summarized these points best by declaring the following:

"Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning."

If we can learn to bring even a fraction of that encouragement and perspective to our young people, I think their learning and development could be significant. that's my challenge today.

http://www.fastcompany.com/alex-bogusky-tells-all

MAC Wk 1 Blog 3

Jodi Zeigler had a great post which brought our conversation regarding the Art of Possibility to the lives and perspectives of our students. Jodi's post can be read here and my comments are below.

Jodi,

Well put!

I too have been really inspired by our book for this class, but your post is the first time that I've been reminded that the ideas and encouragements that the Zanders share can be applied to our students as well.

Too true, our students are especially cognizant of the "measures" and socially constructed "pressures" that affect every day life. It is imperative for young people to learn to develop their own tools for measurement and personal progress. While critical benchmarks in life do exist, we need to caution young people who may try to live up to completely unrealistic situations or conditions.

Furthermore, we should all work as educators to do as you suggest and help our young people not perpetuate these same conditions.

Thanks for sharing, this post really got me thinking.

MAC Wk 1 Blog 2

Tamara Collins shared an interesting point in her blog referencing the Art of Possibility. Her blog can be found here and my comments are copied below.



Tamara,

The last paragraph of your blog post really grabbed me. I think you're absolutely right in suggesting that often times our assessments are based on whether or not the student is doing what we have told them.

Personally, assessment has always been a challenging aspect of the classroom. Early on in my teaching career, I would have to confess that much of analysis of student work was only slightly more sophisticated than "arbitrary".

And, while today I feel much more confident and consistent in my grading (armed with a bevy of rubrics and assessment tools), I still often find my self frustrated by certain student papers thinking, "That's not exactly what I wanted you to say in the essay". This is a challenge. We are grading based on our own personal perspectives and world views. This point of view doesn't necessarily account for the broader holistic learning that a student might experience.

I too am encouraged and inspired by our new text. I'm discovering that assessments should be diversified and broadened to allow students the opportunity to share and, per an earlier post on my blog, "re-present" what they have learned.

Well done.

MAC Wk 1 Blog 4: Open Topic

Yesterday, September 1st, I started on a bold new adventure. I attended my New Faculty Orientation at the McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul Minnesota where I will be teaching Media Economics, Music Business History, and other courses this Fall.


As part of our orientation, we had a variety of faculty in-service activities which included ice breakers, team building exercises, and teacher training. In order to support new faculty and prepare them for their courses this fall, the McNally Smith administration invited a variety of educational consultants and PhD's from the University of Minnesota to work with all of us prior to the start of the semester.

While I have attended a myriad of teacher training workshops in the past, this year's activities felt different. As we progressed through topics like "Why Learning Styles Don't Matter and What to do About It", "Making Assessment a Learning Experience", and "Understanding Challenging Students", I realized that for the first time in my teaching career, I was intimately engaged in the topics and theories being discussed. Subjects like Bloom's Taxonomy, rubrics, Multiple Intelligences, Learning Theories, assessment, and Kolb's Learning Cycle were known entities. I was able to share, discuss, and ask meaningful questions with the seminar leaders at a higher level than any other time in my career.

Furthermore, I was able to put the technical side of my EMDT experience to good use as well. As all of us new faculty shared the inevitable issues that arise within the classroom, I felt prepared to offer creative educational solutions which involved video production, audio podcasting, blogging, and other Web 2.0 technologies with my new colleagues.

Without question, this past year at Full Sail has broadened my knowledge base in education while also empowering and inspiring me to become an even greater part of the academic discussion within my new institution.

Still, despite my enhanced background in educational theory, many of the University of Minnesota staff shared some very poignant tips and information. Dr. Paul Ching raised two very good points that I thought I should share. First, he recommended challenging students to "re-present" information in a variety of forums and media in order to assess their learning intake of a given lesson. While it seems commonplace to "test" or "quiz" or students as to their specific learning input, I really like the notion of "re-presenting". This term suggests a greater level of involvement on the part of the learner. The connotation alone of "re-presenting" alludes to oral presentation or multi-media broadcast. In short, I found this simple idea really encapsulated much of what we've learned here while also reminding me to develop assessment opportunities that involve a greater level of student participation and activity than a simple quiz or paper.

Later in the day, while discussing the value of mind mapping, (MLT anyone?) Dr. Ching also advised teachers to have students "practice retrieval" of critical concepts and topics. Through this type of practice, students are constantly recalling earlier discussions, facts, and ideas in order to solve more complex problems later on in the semester. The theory being, the more information is accessed within the brain, the stronger the neural networks involving that information will become.

Again, these ideas weren't necessarily revolutionary, however Dr. Ching was able to illustrate these concepts and techniques in a very elegant manner which reinforced the value and simplicity of employing them within the classroom.

In all, I'm really excited for the start of the school year. I feel more prepared than ever to really engage with my students and leverage technology to create an engaging learning environment. That you Full Sail, and thank you McNally Smith for taking the time to support, train, and work with teachers in helping to make a difference in the lives of young people.

MAC Wk 1 Blog 1: The Art of Possibility

By nature, I'm sometimes skeptical about books like this. Self-help books that is. There was a trend- for years these books were coming out of the woodwork and every title and analogy imaginable was used to craft a somewhat glib yet optimistic view of the world.


Most authors seemed to suggest that if only we knew more about our personal strengths and how to find cheese, we'd surely all be much better off.

However, I'm coming to realize that "The Art of Possibility" is reassuringly different. First of all, the authors are basing much of their writing on science and clinical psychology, not "Hallmark Moments". This is a book rooted in science and scholarly research, and it shows.

Moving through the first few chapters, what really struck me was the authors' explanation that societally, we are often stuck within a perspective of a "Measurement Center". In short, we are constantly trying to organize our lives, careers, and aspirations along a series of presupposed societal benchmarks.

I could not agree more. The world around us readily defines what is successful, beautiful, and even good. As such, we are commonly pitting ourselves against a level of measurement that we personally did not create and are likely unattainable for the average individual.

I think that this realization is a critical point not just for working professionals and adults, but for young students who are not only struggling with the common challanges of school, but the more difficult and diffuse issues of identity and self-esteem.

Much of what has been discussed within the first few chapters of the Art of Possibility reminds me of some critical distinctions Howard Gardner raised in his seminal text, "Intelligence Reframed". While highlighting the social variability of "intelligence" early on in his work, Gardner used what I consider an extremely powerful analogy which I paraphrase below:

Imagine that you are a member of a tribe in the jungle. While individuals amongst the tribe would all likely possess a wealth of valuable skill sets, it is highly likely that the tribe would elect the most able hunter and provider as the leader of the group.

In short, the notion of individual "intelligence" as understood and valued by society, is variable based upon the cultural constructs of one's own individual community. Clearly, when measured against those skills often deemed as valuable here within the industrialized United States, we would likely have a much different vision and understanding for "intelligence" or "value" than someone subsisting in a jungle environment.

Humans do measure and analyze the world around them. Partly, I believe this phenomenon is a problem solving tool- we are trying to categorize and understand a very complex and dynamic world. However, per the authors, it is incredibly important that we understand the impact that our propensity for "categorization" or "measurement" actually is.

Furthermore, we are all reading this work together as a growing voice in the public sphere is raising concern about the creative aptitudes of tomorrows' graduates. The Chronicle for Higher Education, Newsweek, The New York Times, and authors like Seth Godin and Jason Fried have all ran headlines stories or written books about a perceived lack in creative competency in today's students. Many of these works purport that this "creativity gap" (as Newsweek described it) is due in part to our development of an education system that pre-defined "academic success" by measurement benchmarks such as memorization and fill-in-the-blank based assessments.

In all, I'm actually very excited to continue reading The Art of Possibility. I do believe that we as a society often unfairly judge and measure ourselves against ill-conceived benchmarks and it is imperative that we limit this behavior's affect not only on our lives, but the world view of our students.

ee cummings may have said it best:

to be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.