Week 3 Blog Responce #2

Image from Microsoft Clip art

Here is an interesting take on a the middle chapters of The Art of Possibilities, over at Jessica Kellogg’s Blog.

This week’s reading talked about leading from any chair. I really enjoyed this chapter because I think that as a teacher it is important to understand where a student is coming from also. It is vital that we get their feedback so that we can ensure that we are teaching and they are learning to their full potential. At the end of every quarter I give surveys about the class and I ask them anonymously to give as much specific feedback as possible. This takes some level of maturity because at the high school level I get things like: we want naptime, we should have no homework, school should be optional and what about smoke breaks? Once I get past that crap, I really get to hear what they like to see in the classroom, what helps them and what I can improve for their behalf.

Last year at the end of the year instead of reviewing all of the semester myself, the students each had to pick a chapter to teach. I got to sit back and as a “student” visualize what works in the classroom, what doesn’t keep my attention, and what new things to try. It was an awesome experience and every single group admitted that teaching was harder than they thought it would be. Some students were mad that they had to keep quieting down everyone; that was the funniest part of the experience.

The calculating self is my worst enemy. I definitely need to lighten up and I love the rule number 6. I think that it is very easy to be your own worst critic. I know that one of my biggest faults is being a perfectionist. I think that nothing humbles a person like being a teacher. I learn new things from my students all of the time and they call me out daily. It is the best remedy for the disease.  I love the story about June. As a Christian it makes me think about what my mom used to tell me about praying. Don’t pray to change that man, pray that our heart would change towards that man. We can’t change everything and everyone else around us, but we can change how we react, deal, and live with things around us.

I really like the author’s point of view about dealing with the here and now. I think that it is really important to acknowledge what is happening before you can deal with it. I think of my students that whine and complain about every little thing and then are incapable of completing anything. We are not promised tomorrow, so we need to live in the present and deal with it realistically. This includes bad things and mistakes. These shape us as much as anything else and we must accept them in order to learn from them.

I LOVE the two steps to giving way to passion. I think of two things when I think of living with passion. The first way is living for God. This is something that you have to let take hold of you and you have to be willing to be shaped into whatever He would use you for. The other thing I think about is singing. When I step on stage, the lights hit me, and the rhythm guitar starts, I have to give myself completely to the music and get out of my head. Some of my best performances were when I was signing with all of my heart, not all of the notes were perfect, but the passion came through in the music. It moved people. This is how we should live our lives with everything that we do. This is the reason that my husband opened his own store, passion. This is the reason that I teach, passion. Without passion in our lives and work it would be easy to get bogged down and get complacent.

Great post Jess, I think the things that you are doing with your class captures what the author is talking about. Having students do the teaching, and your ideas on self reflection definatly are what we need to be doing to make our teaching/learning environments come alive for our students.  I probably would have enjoyed high school, well the going to class part, if I had a teacher like you. Great Job!