Playing with Fire

An impassioned essay that reminds us what we are all about and why we teach:

Playing with Fire

The Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning

Thanks to Marty Miller for passing along this link to The Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning at St. Andrew's Episcopal School.  The CTTL is run by former Blair faculty member Glenn Whitman, and the website includes a blog as well as links to other resources.

Another great source for professional development.

http://www.thecttl.org/aboutcttl/index.aspx

Signature Strengths

Thanks to Tiffany and a few articles on coaching, lately I've been playing with some of the strategies in Positive Psychology.  Martin Seligman started Positive Psychology several years ago, and its strategies are especially applicable to Blair.  One that I'm looking forward to trying in our remaining weeks is the Signature Strengths Test.  After taking a free questionnaire on Seligman's site, you learn your top five Signature Strengths.  Seligman's advice is to think of a weekly task- one you don't especially enjoy.  Then, find a way to complete that task using a Signature Strength.  By using something you're already good at, you'll be more likely to enter Flow, a state of Flourishing, in which time seems to stand still.  Check it out.  Turns out I'm Creative above all else.

Authentic Happiness Questionnaires

Teaching for the Future

Are we, at Blair, preparing our students for the future?

From Thomas Friedman in yesterday's New York Times:
"How to adapt? It will require more individual initiative. We know that it will be vital to have more of the 'right' education than less, that you will need to develop skills that are complementary to technology rather than ones that can be easily replaced by it and that we need everyone to be innovating new products and services to employ the people who are being liberated from routine work by automation and software. The winners won’t just be those with more I.Q. It will also be those with more P.Q. (passion quotient) and C.Q. (curiosity quotient) to leverage all the new digital tools to not just find a job, but to invent one or reinvent one, and to not just learn but to relearn for a lifetime."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/opinion/friedman-its-pq-and-cq-as-much-as-iq.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Are we creating an environment that encourages initiative and the pursuit of an individual passion?  Do we foster and reward curiosity?  Do we do these things consciously as part of our curriculum?  Do we, as teachers, model these values (particularly the importance of life long learning)?

I am not necessarily suggesting we come up short, but as we seek rejuvenation during the long weekend, we might also consider ways in which we can further integrate these values into our work at Blair.

Finally, thanks to those (particularly Eck and Jason) who are actively using and promoting this blog.

The Heart Grows Smarter

    

     On Tuesday, Election Day, David Brooks chose to write about the Grant Study that I mentioned during my Chapel a few weeks ago.  He focused on one of the key findings of the the study, that  '[the] positive effect of one loving relative, mentor or friend can overwhelm the negative effects of the bad things that happen.'  I have created a permalink to the article here, and I encourage you to take a look at it on your own:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/opinion/brooks-the-heart-grows-smarter.html?hp&_r=0
     As we go through our daily professional lives at Blair, it struck me that we are, possibly/hopefully, helping to foster and create just these types of relationships for our students which will serve them throughout their lives as they encounter the usual obstacles and challenges that life presents.  Brooks also chose to focus on one particular member of the Grant Study who seemed to 'turn things around' and achieve the type of success he always sought starting in his 60's, demonstrating that we are all life-long learners, and that in fact, all of us can change, grow, and develop at any point in our lives.  
     For further reading, here is the link to The Atlantic article that goes into the Grant Study in greater detail:  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/307439/