Monthly Archives: May 2014

A Case for Liking Student Work

Thinking Out Loud, , ,

As someone relatively new to blog writing, I struggle to feel that my writing is good enough – important enough. I continue seeking positive feedback, looking at my site’s stats and reading online articles to stay motivated.(Click here for a great example). While I wholly believe in my own professional growth that comes about as a result of reflectively blogging, it is amazing how invigorating it is to receive a comment or a like or a share on something I’ve written. I like what I write, but it’s so nice to feel like at least one other person out there likes it too. Especially when I know and respect that reader. It makes me want to be a better writer – a better educational thinker. And this is an important lesson to keep in mind for teachers out there.

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The Classroom as a ‘Moral World’

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In recently considering how to further value, in my classroom, what David Brooks refers to as eulogy virtues – those virtues developed by our internal moral logic – I returned to Dr. Robert Boorstrom’s article “What Makes Teaching A Moral Activity” (1998). Boorstrom recognizes that teachers will unanimously agree that education is a moral activity, but for different reasons. Some will point to professional ethics, others to character education. Some will point to moral dilemmas that teachers face in their day-to-day teaching, while others see the moral aspect in the question of what aim does education fulfill. Some teachers feel that education is needed to help build a strong sense of morality in order to guide students toward becoming contributing members of society.

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The Great Balancing Act

Thinking Out Loud

New York Times columnist, David Brooks speaks about the dual nature of the self in terms of an external self and an internal self. The external self is driven to build, create, and innovate, while the internal self, driven by a moral logic, seeks to do good and be good. The result is that we end up with two sets of virtues: the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues.

The résumé virtues are the ones you put on your résumé, which are the skills you bring to the marketplace.The eulogy virtues are the ones that get mentioned in the eulogy, which are deeper: who are you, in your depth, what is the nature of your relationships, are you bold, loving, dependable, consistency?                        David Brooks, TED2014

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A Thank You to Teachers

Thinking Out Loud

Teachers,

We don’t really have one of these in Canada, but in the US it is National Teacher Appreciation Day and, in the spirit of finding the good and making it your own, I’m helping to bring it north. 

It can be a rather thankless job sometimes – we work with students based on the faith that what we are doing now will remain, or at least become, important to them in the coming years. It’s a job that is tiring and challenging, and can make us run the gamut from joy and pride to disappointment and frustration (sometimes all in one class!).

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Raising the Bar or Removing the Bar?

Thinking Out Loud

In his popular TedTalk, Shawn Achor speaks about the need to escape “the cult of the average” through the lens of positive psychology. This is a break from the traditional aim of psychology – to understand and treat mental illness. Rather, positive psychology attempts, in the words of Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the seminal thinkers in the field, to allow humanity to flourish.

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