Teaching, Sharing, Learning, and Growing Every Minute of Every Day: 1440 Minutes a Day, 24/7. This blog serves as a venue for BHS staff to showcase their teaching, sharing, learning, and growing that takes place every minute of every day. I am grateful for their service to our students, their commitment to excellence and their dedication to infusing a sense of pride into everything they do.
Post by John Staber: John is in his 6th year of teaching English at Bettendorf High School. You can follow him on twitter @jstaber
My mother was an artist. One of her
paintings hangs from the wall of my home. It’s a painting of her father holding
her little sister on his lap—the muted colors convey the day’s toil on my
grandpa’s face. His eyes are bordered by blue shadows that secretly tell the
viewer that the day has been hard. It’s titled Padre y Nina.My mother
majored in art but only completed her junior year, giving up her aspirations to
become an art teacher in order to start raising her children.
To pass what little time she had to
herself, she read voraciously. I can still see her sitting on the couch, her
legs curled up underneath her, a book in hand, and the pages feathered out
before her. I was accustomed to this image, and perhaps took it for granted. In
these sparse moments she had to herself, she would escape into a separate
world. For her, literature was being present in the moment of the words. She
taught me how to read by simply showing me how to do it: by sitting on the
couch with a book. She took to art in
the same way by gazing at a piece and looking beyond the surface for meaning. I
learned to appreciate art and literature by simply watching her. I learned what
the power to be still and in the moment can do: illuminate a life beyond the
surface of things.
While pursuing a lack-luster degree
in business at the University of Iowa, I can remember picking up the phone and
having extended conversations with my mother about books. I enjoyed those
conversations; and in my classroom, I try to instill that same sense of passion
about literature into my students, that same sense of enjoying literature for
the sake that it is meant to be enjoyed. I learned how to discuss literature
from these conversations just as much as I did in any classroom. I learned that literature is
communication. Yet, those conversations
would end much sooner than I ever could’ve expected.
On Mother’s Day weekend of 2009, my
dad called to tell me that my mother had been taken to the hospital in order to
have fluid drained from her heart. Only days after, she was diagnosed with stage
four, non-small cell lung cancer—the kind smokers get, except my mother never
held a cigarette in her hand, let alone one perched upon her lips. She had a
total of fourteen tumors, all lighting up her body like a constellation in the
night sky. Days after, she called to tell me that she had at most two years to live, which I later found out was
a motherly fib. In fact, she had been told to expect six months to a year, with
six months being the more reliable figure. She was simply softening the blow. A
few days later, I turned twenty-nine.
I began the 2008/2009 school year
as a brand spanking new teacher, equipped with all the naivety that comes with
such an experience. I experienced the birth of my first child—my daughter—and
all the sleepless nights that eventually came along with her, and I ended the
year with the news that my mother would most likely not be around the following
summer. In the end, cancer took her in
only thirteen months’ time—seven months longer than her oncologists originally
gave her. She was, and remains to this day, the most stubborn person I have
ever known. But cancer is relentless, even for the most hardheaded. By the time
it was over, she was a shadow of her former self, both physically and mentally.
I can remember the smoky silhouette of her poor excuse of a body lying on the
make-shift hospital bed near the bay windows of my parents’ living room. I can
remember her thin figure taking shape beneath the white quilt and not knowing
whether that was a person or simply nature’s perverse version of one. I still
remember sitting with my family and watching the final rise and fall of her
chest, exhaling her final moments out into oblivion, while we exhaled what
could no longer be said.
She died on June 13th,
2010 at 9:22 pm. It was raining. I was
thirty years old.
When I lost my mother to cancer, it
was the first major loss I had ever experienced. I was fortunate enough that it
came later in my life than earlier. Watching someone deteriorate from terminal
cancer is one long process of grieving. When she died, I lost more than simply
a family member and the bond that ties a mother and son: I lost a sense of
communication. I didn’t get to have those conversations about books, art, and
film like I was able to have with her, and I was reluctant to have them with
anyone else.
But I find that I have those conversations
more and more with my students. In some
ways, although it can never replace it, the conversations I have with my
students regarding literature and why we read it, fill the void of
communication I once felt deeply from the loss of my mother. I call them conversations because I like to
think I provide enough space in my classroom in which students feel a sense of
ownership over the day’s discussion on whatever text we’re studying. At least
that’s what I attempt to create.
Unfortunately, many of the students
I encounter on a daily basis did not grow up in the world I did. Fewer than
ever are coming from households where a parent is curled up on the couch, a
book in hand, with the pages fanning the air; and the reasons are numerous. I was fortunate, but many of my students are
not.
I wonder what my mother would say
about the world my students are going to inherit. I certainly wonder what she
would say about the world my daughter and son are going to inherit. I wonder
that most of all. With the increasing emphasis on a world driven by technology,
tweets, and a constant bombardment of notifications, I find that my students (and
present company included) are not living in the moment, but more often through
the moments trapped between layers of microchips, processors, and a 4.5 inch
glass screen. Don’t get me wrong: I like technology. I like my iPhone, I like
my iPad, but I don’t like how this digital dependency has fragmented my attention
to the world around me.
In a recent article in Time, Kate Pickert discusses the art of
mindfulness practices. Essentially,
meditation: the art of emptying the mind of thoughts or the concentration of
the mind on one thing. I am not one to believe in any one method as the magic
bullet to our problems. Instead, I know that the myriad of problems we face in
education today can only be met with a myriad of solutions enacted by a myriad
of people. But, I must say that this idea of mindfulness, the ability to empty
the mind in order to concentrate on one thing, is maybe just what we need most as
a society in order to simply provide balance to an utterly chaotic world.
Perhaps, in order to get my students to think critical thoughts, I need them to
get rid of some first.
My mother would certainly say that
technology is not the answer to any one educational woe we are experiencing.
Part of the answer? Sure—I would argue that it has its place. But so do the
quiet, introspective moments that literature, writing, and art inspire. Those
contemplative moments which are woven in and out of the words on a page, the
introspective alone time that simply viewing a painting can provide, have their
place in our lives and in our students’ lives most of all. And this is why we
need literature and art more than ever in today’s classroom. As an artist, I
think my mother would certainly agree.
Posy by Ray Knight: Ray is in his first year of teaching Language Arts at Bettendorf High School. You can follow him on twitter @RayPKnight
Before I entered high school, my mother recommended I read All I Really Need to Know I Learned in
Kindergarten. I never read it. But when considering what I really need to
know, I am glad I have seen Disney’s Pocahontas. Even while showing questionable judgment in
dressing this Native American heroin more like a Jersey Shore night club
aficionado, Disney Studios does produce nuggets of wisdom in the songs “Colors
of the Wind” and “Just around the River Bend,” nuggets that are personally and
professionally beneficial.
Former Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, took some flack
when he commented on the “unknown unknowns” facing American military engaging
terrorism. Perhaps if he was as good a
vocalist as Pocahontas, his message would have been received with less
friction.
In “Colors of the Wind,” Pocahontas councils John Smith, and
us, that “if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you’ll learn things you
never knew you never knew.” The problem
with learning things we never knew that we don’t know is… we don’t know to
learn them. In my personal and
professional life, I will learn things this week I wish I would have known last
week. If only I knew those things I
don’t already know, then I could spend some time coming to know what I don’t
yet know. Luckily, Pocahontas has advice
on how to identify what we don’t already know.
Pocahontas yearns to look, and I recommend we all take a
look “just around the river bend,” even if we “don’t know what for” or for what
knowing we might be missing. As I strive
to “look once more,” I am compelled to travel: to Italy, Mexico, Westeros,
ancient Greece, and the Marvel Universe. I am compelled to do triathlon trainin and have actual conversations,
etc. Conversations are certainly my
favorite; discovering new knowing face to face is about the most amazing discovery
I've experienced.
While I still don’t know everything I don’t yet know, I do know
enough to keep looking, searching.
Perhaps I should watch Pocahontas
‘once more’ to see “what’s waiting there for me.”
Post by Matt Nagovan: Matt is his first year of teaching math at Bettendorf High School. You can follow him on twitter @MNagovan
I decided that I wanted to teach near the end of my
senior year of high school. When I told that to the only teacher I remotely
enjoyed having (Calculus of course), his response was, “Teaching is not what
you think it is.” At the time, I almost took offense to that statement,
thinking he was trying to dissuade me from pursuing the profession, or that he
thought I wasn't cut out to be a teacher. As time goes on, though, I realize it
was none of those things. He was just stating a simple fact that becomes more
obvious every day.
I love my job. Here are a few reasons why:
Every day brings a new challenge, a
new obstacle to overcome. It is incredibly rewarding to meet those challenges
and to overcome those obstacles. My work day flies by, and while that can be
stressful, it’s much better than the alternative.
I have time to spend with my
family. I will unashamedly admit that a phenomenal part of my job is the time
off. It’s not that I don’t enjoy working. It’s that I’ll never have to worry
about having the day after Thanksgiving off to spend time with my family, and
that’s a wonderful thing.
I get to make a real impact on the
lives of others. My wife is studying to be an Occupational Therapist. I am very
proud of the fact that we are both in service based fields. At the end of my
work day, I feel fulfilled. I feel that what I do matters.
I have an audience, mandated by law, to listen to my jokes.
How amazing is that? Many of them are not even good jokes, but they have to
listen!
I get to meet a lot of great
people, including coworkers, but especially students. My students are awesome.
If you are one of my students and you are reading this, you are awesome.
Teaching is fun. If you are getting
paid to do something fun, you've hit the jackpot.
Of course, it hasn't been an easy first year. I had
a professor who said, “Teaching is easy. Teaching well is the hardest thing I've ever tried to do.” I was told by
another professor that I would learn more in my first six months of teaching
than my eight semesters of college. Here a few of those things I've picked up
on:
I
am tired all the time. I get home, eat dinner, and crash.
Balancing
your time is really difficult. I have a new wife, a new job, a new apartment, a
new cat (little Jerry Seinfeld Nagovan) and I’m still learning how to find a
balance between those things.It
can be really frustrating to not see immediate results.
I have to be patient
and trust that my work will pay off.
There
are so many meetings. I think I have a meeting this week to discuss having a
meeting about meetings.
There is so much I don’t know. As with any field,
there is just so much information out there, and not enough time to learn all
of it.
The warning my high school Calculus teacher gave me
was absolutely correct. Teaching is not what I thought it was. Tomorrow, it
won’t be what I thought it was today. That is a wonderful thing. I really love
learning, and I've chosen a profession in which I am constantly learning new
things, and being pushed to become better. I feel extremely lucky.
Post by Kelly Ager: Kelly has been teaching for 12 years. She has taught AP Psychology for the last 9 years at Bettendorf High School. You can follow her on twitter @KellyAger
Identifying Cognitive Errors and Developing New Habits of Mind
At our core, educators are human. Our humanity is one of our greatest
strengths - it is what allows us to relate to our students as people, not just
"learners." Our ability to form relationships with our students can make us
powerful forces in their lives for positive change, learning, and growth. Our
humanity, however, can sometimes make us vulnerable to distorted and maladaptive
ways of thinking. We can fall victim to making what cognitive psychologists
like Aaron Beck (1975) refer to as cognitive distortions. In
our personal lives, these illogical ways of thinking can lead to stress,
depression, anxiety, substance abuse and other dysfunctional behavior patterns.
Lately I have found myself noticing how these same thinking errors can hamper
our effectiveness as educators, making us harsh critics of ourselves and our
colleagues, ultimately preventing us from reaching our full potential.
Beck and other cognitive psychologists developed cognitive therapies
based on the premise that, if we can identify when we are making these cognitive
distortions, we can dispute them, come up with an interpretation that more
closely matches "reality", and thus prevent ourselves from letting them cause
distress or other dysfunctional thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy and The Feeling Good Handbook
(1999), Beck's student, David Burns outlined ten specific cognitive
distortions people make that I believe can also be applied to the way educators
sometimes think. These errors can become habitual, and cause us to beat
ourselves up unnecessarily, be harsher critics of our colleagues and students,
and be less effective and satisfied with ourselves as educators. Although this
kind of thinking can become very ingrained, research in cognitive therapy and
positive psychology (e.g., see Shawn Achor's TED Talk)shows us that we can
become aware of our dysfunctional thinking patterns and practice new, more
logical and positive ways of thinking about ourselves and the things that happen
to us. The following are some examples of how Burns' ten cognitive distortions
might be dragging us down as educators. If we can learn to recognize when our
thinking is maladaptive in these ways, we can begin to develop more positive
habits of disputing these negative thoughts and replacing them with more
rational and affirming ones.
1. Black-and-White (all-or-nothing) Thinking
This type of thinking involves looking at things in terms of absolutes
(e.g., "always", "never", "all", "every", "perfect", "failure", "best".) We
tend to see things as either black or white, but we do not look at all of the
possible shades of grey in between. Things in life and education are rarely, if
ever, all one way or the other. Teachers, students, parents, administrators,
strategies, and tools cannot be lumped into categories at the extremes, and yet
we find ourselves doing just that. We demonize or exalt many of these things (or
people) at times, and we forget that nothing is 100% good or bad. As a result,
I believe there are many things in education that we disparage unnecessarily as
well as any educators who may use those techniques. We also have a
tendency to exalt, glorify, or jump on a bandwagon prematurely and elevate
seemingly promising techniques. Educators can tend to miss the shades of
grey and see things as all good or all bad. For example:
Worksheethas become a dirty word in education. As the saying
goes, "Friends don't let friends give worksheets." I think it probably started
out as an understandable backlash against tasks that only required students to
reach the lowest levels on Bloom's (1956) taxonomy (i.e, knowledge and
understanding) and never challenged students to develop higher abilities such as
analysis, evaluation, and synthesis (now creation; Airasian et al, 2000) We do
want our students to reach those higher levels, but that does not mean we should
abandon some of the techniques that may help students master information at the
lower levels. We cannot leapfrog over knowledge, comprehension and application
and expect students will have success at those higher levels. Although they are
not sufficient, the lower-level abilities are necessary for learners to truly be
able to reach those higher levels. Judicious use of the much-maligned
worksheet to reinforce concepts, guide reading, or give needed practice
can help students achieve a certain degree of mastery over the concepts they
will need to analyze, evaluate, and create.
Lecture(also direct instruction, or anything that
is teacher-led) has become an educational boogeyman. The term "direct
instruction" seems to have cropped up as a euphemism for "lecture", which has
come to have very negative connotations. This seems to have carried over to
just about anything that is teacher led, such as discussion. This tendency to
lump all teacher-led activities together does a disservice to them. Here again,
I think the original intent behind this criticism was a legitimate critique on
teachers who spend all their time talking at their students. But who does that?
No teacher I know. Think of some of the teachers you've have over the years.
I'll bet some of the best ones you've had, and from whom you learned the most,
would be considered by many in education today as more of a "sage on the stage"
than a "coach on the sidelines". Lumping all teacher-led techniques may also be
an outcropping of our legitimate recognition that we need to let students
interact with each other more than traditional education allowed and be active
in directing their own learning. Many kinds of teaching can be
effective. Exclusive use of any one technique is unwise, and the personality
and strengths of the individual teacher mean that some teachers will be better
at certain techniques than others. There is no one-size-fits-all prescription
for a teaching style or set of strategies that will work for all teachers or
students. Let's stop pretending there is some holy grail of "best practices"
that we can discover and to which every teacher should adhere. We can all learn
from each other and add new techniques to our skill sets, and we should
encourage and help each other to do just that. However, what works for another
teacher, may not work for me. I may not be able to pull off an activity that
works beautifully for my colleague, and vice versa. Seeing the educational
shades of grey means that we need to appreciate the varieties of strategies that
can be useful and support each other in our efforts to broaden our skill sets
while not automatically demonizing and disparaging others. We do need to push
ourselves outside our comfort zones to grow as teachers, but then we cannot beat
ourselves up for what we perceive to be shortcomings. Expecting perfection of
ourselves or others can only lead to disappointment.
Textbooks have become another dirty word in education. No one
could legitimately defend the exclusive use of textbooks as a student resource.
However, textbooks can have a place in education. They offer an synthesized,
organized, logical progression through specific content, often with primary
sources, visuals, and examples that help students encode information in
meaningful ways (if used correctly, of course, with active reading, not just
skimming or use of glossaries which removes all context and hampers
understanding.) They can be a springboard to other types of learning,
investigation, and resources or a way for absent students to try to stay caught
up with their class or for parents to be able to help their students study and
review at home. However, because they can contain inaccuracies, biases,
unnecessary extras, etc., because students will often try to circumvent using
them as they are intended, because technology has led to a proliferation of
online resources, and because of their cost, textbooks have come under fire.
(For a wonderful look at inaccuracies and biases in texts I recommend Lies
My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by
James Loewen. For a user-friendly way to create your own textbook, take a look
at CK-12 online. It is rich with already-created open source texts in the STEM
areas, while other areas are lagging behind but progressing.) Textbooks are not
100% good or bad. Textbooks can offer some very valuable ancillary materials
that allow teachers to save time, discover new activities, and easily create
tests in multiple and modified versions. There are some excellent
standards-based texts out there written by experts in their fields that help
students acquire important thinking skills, including higher order ones. They do
not deserve to be automatically lumped in with poor and mediocre ones and
dismissed. We cannot assume that online resources painstakingly cobbled
together by teachers to replace them are going to be of superior quality.
Multiple Choiceis not our enemy. When used in combination with
other forms of assessment, multiple choice questions can be an efficient and
effective way to assess student's abilities. Objective assessment formats like
multiple choice allow us sample understanding and higher order skills when we do
not possibly have the time to assess all of the content and skills in our
curricula. There are bad ways to write a multiple choice question so that we
end up allowing too many other factors besides mastery of the skills and
concepts determine whether a student gets it right. Too much noise in the data
mean we are not assessing what we really want (i.e., our assessments are
invalid.) However, a well-written multiple choice question can accurately and
efficiently assess student performance, and not solely in lower levels of
thinking.
Memorization is another pariah in education. Memorized knowledge
is on the lowest rung of Bloom's cognitive taxonomy, and, because it is lowest
in rank order, it has come to be disparaged, mostly because some teaching did
not go very far beyond it. However, that does not mean it is bad or
unnecessary, yet some educators have a tendency to want to throw the baby out
with the bath water. We think that in this online, information age that there
is no reason for students to commit content knowledge to memory because they can
always "look it up" if they need that information in the future. So why bother
asking them to know it now? This extreme position is has led to a decrease in
students being asked to commit things to memory such as basic arithmetic facts
or spelling (with calculators and spell check, who needs them?) This decrease
in drill and practice has been recognized as part of why American students have
fallen behind in areas like math and spelling and can hamper students' math
fluency and ability to reason mathematically at higher levels. (See Joanne
Lipman's 2013 Wall Street Journal article, Why Tough Teachers Get Results for an
interesting discussion including this viewpoint).
PD Professional Development can mean many different things to
educators. It can be viewed as invaluable or a waste of time. Usually the
reality is somewhere in between, and it can depend on our attitude at the
outset. We prepare activities for our students knowing that what they get out
of it is directly related to the effort they put into it. We can lead them to
the experience but we cannot make them maximize their effort. It is the same
with professional development. I am fortunate to be in a high school where our
administrators value our time and ask for our input when planning professional
development opportunities for us, which has resulted in exposing me to valuable
resources and skills that are directly useful in my teaching. However, we do
not need to think of PD simply as something that is handed to us. We can seek
out our own personalized PD opportunities to help us grow as educators and
develop networks of colleagues outside our own buildings. For the past several
years I have been spending a week of my summer in Kansas City helping College
Board score AP Psychology exams. It has been a great way to become a stronger
teacher and build a network and exchange ideas with a group of excellent
teachers. Each year I look forward to this "summer camp for psychology geeks"
and the opportunities it provides. Many other opportunities are out there for
us in the form of conferences or online networking through Twitter or other
social media. We need to be willing to reach out to help ourselves become
better educators.
Flash over Substance Sometimes we get too excited about the newest
great thing in education and can sometimes mistake flash for substance or
overestimate its value without support from valid research. For example,
technology can be a wonderful way to improve education by providing
opportunities that we wouldn't otherwise have. We just need to be careful we
don't automatically assume that something that is really cool due to the
technology is also leading to more or higher levels of learning than a low-tech
approach. We also know that active learning is better than passive,
however, we should guard against mistaking physical movement in a lesson or
activity for higher levels of mental activity. Similarly, having students
create a video or other product does not mean they have reached the
Create level of cognitive activity on Bloom's taxonomy. We can also
differentiate instruction to try to reach students through many
different modes, however, we need to guard against believing that students will
learn more if we present material to them in their preferred "learning style."
Research shows that, while students may express a preference for learning things
a certain way, they do not actually perform better when we match the instruction
to their preference. (For an excellent examination of this topic, I recommend
cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham's book, Why Don't Students Like
School?)
Why I Hate School But Love Education
As educators, we need to try to catch ourselves when we are viewing things
as the best or the worst and try to remember to look for the grey areas. Many
things we do can be effective when used in moderation. Exclusive adherence to
extremes hurts our ability to be flexible and achieve some kind of balance. We
can be open-minded yet also maintain a healthy dose of scientific skepticism and
examine the evidence before making conclusions.
2. Overgeneralization
People can have a tendency to see a single negative
incident as a never-ending pattern of defeat. As educators, we can have a
negative experience with a student and overgeneralize to the point that we give
up on being able to reach that student. He is late - he is a slacker. She
doesn't turn in her assignments - she is not conscientious. He does poorly on a
test - he has low ability. If we telegraph these overgeneralizations to the
students, they may start to believe them, too, or it may contribute to a
self-fulfilling prophecy. One bad experience with a new technique, tech tool,
or activity and we may abandon it all together. One poor interaction with a
parent, administrator, or colleague may lead us to expect the same in the
future, so we miss out on opportunities to connect with them, learn from them,
and become partners.
3. Mental Filter
Do you ever catch yourself dwelling on the negatives to the point that
you do not even notice the positives? If so, you are using a mental filter -
one that can lead you to disparage yourself or others unnecessarily. I know I
can be overly self-conscious. I don't like being watched when I teach, which is
something I know I have to get over. I think one of the reasons I hate being
watched is that I tend to dwell on the negatives. My lesson may go very well,
yet I will fixate on the one (or more) part(s) that need improvement. Because I
am overly critical of myself, it seems I cannot help but think that others will
be as well. I know this is not logical, yet I cannot help it. Psychological
researchers have a name for a related phenomenon, the spotlight effect, which is
a type of social anxiety that includes the tendency to overestimate the extent
to which others around us notice our behavior and appearance. What we need to
keep in mind is that others around us are not judging us nearly as harshly as we
think they are (or as we are judging ourselves). Mental filters can be equally
devastating when we apply them to students or other educators. Research in
positive psychology and cognitive therapy shows how effective it can be to keep
journals of positive things and how we contribute to them as well as gratitude
we feel toward others. It has been shown that, in as little as three weeks, we
can retrain our brains to seek out the positive in ourselves and others. (See
Shawn Achor's TED talk for examples of this.)
4. Discounting the Positives
Sometimes we insist that our accomplishments or positive qualities
just "don't count."
We are so caught up in negativity, that we cannot acknowledge the great
things we are doing or have done in the past. We cannot accept a compliment
with a simple "thank you" because it would mean accepting evidence that does not
fit with our harsh view of ourselves. Take an inventory of all the positive
things you've been doing as a teacher. Keep a file of the nice notes of
gratitude that your students have sent you over the years. I had a colleague
who called this her "nursing home" file as she planned to look at all the
wonderful things in it in during her golden years. What a great idea! I have a
couple of these - one is a low-tech manila folder in my file cabinet labelled
"happy happy joy joy", the other a file on my computer labeled "smiles".
Sometimes, at our lowest, it is nice to remind ourselves of the positive effect
we have had on our students.
5. Jumping to Conclusions
Sometimes we tend to jump to negative conclusions without any evidence.
This happens in a couple of ways.
Mind reading happens when we assume people are reacting
negatively to us even though we have no evidence that they are doing this. Those
of us who are self-conscious can find ourselves assuming that students, teachers
or administrators are reacting negatively to us when we have no evidence of
this. Sometimes students can have what seems to me to be a blank expression on
their face. I catch myself assuming that they are bored or judging me or my
teaching in some other negative way. Some of my quietest and least expressive
students have been the ones that surprise me later with a nice thank you note
that shows me I was reaching them in a way of which I was completely oblivious
at the time. I've been to graduation parties where the parent will make my day
by telling me about some of the things their student said about me or something
they learned in my class that they were excited to apply to their own lives.
Apparently a blank face can mean a lot of things. We have to remind ourselves
that it is not necessarily a bad thing.
Fortune tellinghappens when we arbitrarily predict that
something will turn out badly. As educators who want to push ourselves to
be the best we can be, it is a killer if we let fortune telling get in the way
of trying new things. We may even rationalize this by thinking that if it ain't
broke, it don't need fixing. We need to be able to ask ourselves, "What's the
worst that could happen, really?" It is also helpful to do an experiment to
test the validity of your negative thought. Try something new. It doesn't have
to be a huge change of an entire system or unit. It can be something small or a
single activity. Chances are, your thinking will be challenged and you will
find out something valuable, even if the activity does not work out as you'd
hoped.
6. Magnification or Minimization
Do you sometimes find yourself blowing things way out of
proportion? Or perhaps you inappropriately understate or shrink their
importance? When we maximize the positives and minimize the negatives about
others, it can distort our assessment of ourselves in a negative way. As
educators, we need to learn to celebrate the accomplishments of others without
comparing ourselves to them in a negative way and becoming defensive. How is it
that we can see the good and ignore the bad in others, yet we tend to be much
harsher in our self assessments of our teaching (maximizing our negatives while
minimizing our positives)? I am lucky to work in a great school surrounded by
others who have very high standards and abilities to match. It can sometimes be
intimidating to hear them discuss some of the great things they are doing with
their students. I can find myself doubting my own ability to come up with such
creative, innovative, or impactful lessons or activities. It helps when I
remind myself that others have struggled along the way to get to this point - it
may seem to me that it is effortless or easy for them, but they are human and
have probably had their share of setbacks and frustrations to get where they
are. I know I can learn a lot from them, but that does not take away from my
own positive accomplishments and qualities.
One specific type of maximization is
called catastrophizing, which happens when we focus on the worst possible
outcome, however unlikely it might be to actually happen, and think that it will
be unbearable or impossible. Although that outcome will likely be unpleasant,
it is a distortion to think that it is something we just can't stand. We need
to train ourselves to look to for the silver lining and the "teachable moment"
in even the most uncomfortable aspects of our profession, including dealing with
cheating students, having difficult conversations with parents, and respectfully
disagreeing with our colleagues or supervisors. If not, there are way too many
situations that we will dread without good reason.
7. Emotional Reasoning
Sometimes we reason with our feelings instead of using objective
reality or logic. I feel like a failure, therefore, I am. I don't feel like
doing this, so I will put it off (e.g., like finishing this blog post, rewriting
a test so students can have an opportunity to retake it, or setting the alarm a
couple hours earlier than usual to finish grading assignments so they can be
returned sooner). If we routinely give into these feelings, we are abandoning
our cerebral cortex's ability to logically weigh alternatives in favor of
letting the more emotional but primitive parts of our brain (e.g., the amygdala)
rule our behavior. In the long run, we become very reactive to negative
situations rather than proactively trying to ensure they do not happen in the
first place or at least minimizing their dysfunctional consequences. We need to
catch ourselves when we start to reason emotionally and interrupt with logical
challenges. We need to see our emotions as something we can control by
cognitively re-framing the situation, looking at it in a different way.
8. Should Statements/Guilt
We can criticize ourselves or others with "should", "shouldn't", "must",
"can't", "ought", or "have to" statements. Concentrating on what should
be rather than what really is will lead to distress and cause
guilt or anger. Students should appreciate the hard work we do for them and
find our lessons and activities as interesting as we do, parents should be
supportive at home and keep tabs on their student's progress in our classes,
fellow teachers should agree with our opinions, support us, and act
professionally, administrators should trust us rather that restrict us all for
the transgressions of a few. I should get these assignments or tests back to my
students the next day (despite the fact that it means giving up family time,
exercise, a healthy meal, sleep, friends, and/or my own mental health.) Woe is
me! We get caught up in an ideal world rather than the real world, which leads
to negative and destructive feelings. Burns recommends the semantic method for
combating "should" statements. Substitute less colorful and emotionally loaded
language in your thinking. Instead of saying, "I should have these tests back
to them the next day," say to yourself, "it would be better if I have these back
the next day." It would be better if I hadn't made that mistake. Combat the
distortion by asking, "What's the rule that says I have to _____?", "What would
happen if I didn't _____?"
9. Labeling/Mislabeling
This happens when we mistake behavior for identity. Instead of
saying, "I made a mistake," you tell yourself, "I'm a loser." Instead of, "he
made fun of me," it's, "he's a jerk." Instead of, "they complained," it's,
"they're whiners." Once we label people, including ourselves, we tend to see
them one-dimensionally and view everything they do within that mental framework.
It makes us less likely to treat others with respect as individuals. Labeling
ourselves and others can also make us more vulnerable to thinking in terms of
"us" versus "them", what social psychologists have termed the ingroup and the
outgroup. Research shows that even randomly putting people into a group by the
toss of a coin leads to an ingroup bias, where people favor their own group and
may also lead to outgroup negativity. As educators, we need to recognize that
this can be a powerful factor in our beliefs and behaviors and guard against its
toxic effects. We need to think of ourselves as educators with the same
purpose, not teachers vs. administrators.
10. Personalization and Blame
We often find ourselves taking responsibility for things that are not
entirely our fault. Conversely, we may may blame others while overlooking our
own contribution to the problem. Not everything is personal. In education, if
we start to take everything personally, we are in for a career of misery.
Students or parents may say harsh or untrue things about you. Colleagues may
gossip about you. Students may try to cheat in your class. When these things
happen, it is often difficult to not take it personally and blame ourselves in
some way, beating ourselves up about it. It feels like such a violation of the
trust you have worked so hard to foster in those relationships . Although it is
difficult, we need to be able to step back and see these behaviors for what they
really are and not assume that it us 100% about us. Human behaviors have so
many determinants that it is not logical to think that the blame for any given
behavior can be solely placed on one person. That same logic means that
sometimes we are part of the problem. Maybe we are being passive aggressive
rather than direct with others. Maybe we could have done a better job in
communicating. Maybe we could have been more prepared. Maybe we could be more
supportive of our colleagues or administrators. Try to analyze situations in a
non-defensive way, and take responsibility for your part in any negative ones.
Apologize when appropriate and move on rather than dwelling on it. I have
found that students appreciate your willingness to say, "I'm sorry", and it
models that behavior of taking responsibility to them as well. We want our
students to be able to take chances in their educational experiences so that
they can learn from their mistakes. If they are always defensive and afraid to
mess up, they will not get as much out of their education. We can show them
that people are bound to screw up, but, if they own up to it, nothing bad will
happen, relationships can be strengthened, and, most importantly, they can learn
from it.
Challenging our irrational negative thoughts is easier said than done. It
is about trying to consistently learn to recognize when we are thinking in these
dysfunctional ways and then finding ways to change those maladaptive thought
processes. It takes time to develop these new habits of mind, so don't beat
yourself up in the meanwhile. Eventually we can break free of the bondage of
our self-imposed chains.
Notes:
If you want some quick tips on a few things to get you started, I recommend
Shawn Achor's 2011 TED Talk, The happy secret to better work (http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html).
His focus is on happiness leading to productivity rather than the other way
around.
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