In The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander the reader is confronted with an interesting spin on self help for life adjustment. The main story line of the book is actually broken into stories that help support the through line and theme. After reading the introduction and first four practices I have been impressed with the authors’ abilities in sharing moving, eye witness stories about life and the obstacles of human nature. The book is meant to be a guide for practice and each story supports the need for or outcomes of each practice.
I like that the purpose is to identify in my life the examples shared and then practice ways to see the world differently. I have always been a believer in the notion that the world around me is created by my thoughts and desires. The reality I live in is simply my perception of the world and I have built into me a set of filters that allow me to see things based on my tendencies. I think the first part of the book is hinting at the idea that these filters are many times uncontrollable and learned from family, friends, and the many communities in which we belong.
The ideas presented by the authors about giving an A are most interesting to me. I work in an environment where students are unmotivated by the success of good grades in school. Parents are less interested in celebrating academic achievements and students in turn take things less serious. This environment presents many challenges that I think this book can help to address. To this point I have been using grades as the only factor of success in my courses. In the reading the authors share ideas about grades by telling a story of a pedagogical technique for motivating students to work hard to earn a grade. The idea is that students write a letter to the instructor as if they had just received an A at the completion of the course. The students are to outline everything they did during the time of the course to earn that A. The instructor then uses that criteria to challenge the students by saying they will earn that grade if they complete their own list. I am moved by this because the student takes control of their education and is motivated by the ability to learn what they want.
I am very excited to continue reading and finding ways to use these practices in my everyday life. Check out the book here!
David-
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same thing when reading your post, many of my students don't care what they make. Half of them don't care because they see my course as an elective, in that it doesn't really "count" and so they don't care as much about making a good grade.
So, when grading them, I always have them explain the techniques they used, why they chose the shots they did, or make the cuts they made. I also ask them to show or describe any shots they left out of their videos and tell us why these were cut. In this way, I can truly asses that they are learning and don't have to rely so much on the measurable A.
David-
ReplyDeleteI really like your idea that the "filters" of what you see and perceive are often uncontrollable and learned by friends and family. I also feel this connects with the idea of grades and school. Many of my students who don't "care" about school or their grades have no support at home and their parents never cared about their grades either. This is a cycle that is often difficult to break a student of. They often feel that because their parents did not do well in school they cannot either.
I totally understand your situation. Before I came to work at my current school, I was in a similar school environment. I was teaching business education courses in the coal region of Pennsylvania. While I enjoyed the teaching aspect and the administration involvement, the parents were the toughest to handle.
ReplyDeleteMany of the parents were generational coal mining families and while education was somewhat important, the follow through was not. The families knew that the only way to break the cycle of what many were accustomed (get high school diploma or GED then off to the local mine, pizza shop, bar, etc to work) was to get out of "the valley".
Getting out of "the valley" took more than just showing up to school and this seemed to be a problem for most of them. Parental follow through and involvement lacked and many of the students reached for C's and D's instead of A's and B's because that was acceptable to them and their parents.
So I do understand that your scenario, where grades are not a motivator, could have no affect on the concept that Zander's presents. Fortunately, I left that position 12 years ago and am now faced almost with the opposite. Our school has a very active parents association and the parents are invited (encouraged) to campus to visit with teachers. All divisions have a "Parents Day" each semester to keep the lines of communication open for the teachers and parents.
Excellent, you are one of the first to note in the chapter about giving an A that no one is giving anything, but things are set up so that students pre-determine their course of action to earn the A. Yay!
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