"...learning is hard. True, learning is fun, exhilarating and gratifying — but it is also often daunting, exhausting and sometimes discouraging. . . . To help chronically low-performing but intelligent students, educators and parents must first recognize that character is at least as important as intellect.” --Angela Duckworth
Discussing the impact of character on academic (and life!) success, this article is a long but interesting (and thought-provoking) read. Well worth the time, I think.
What do you think? Should schools focus on inculcating character in the emotional and academic development of their students?
Showing posts with label Resources. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Resources. Show all posts
9/16/11
8/31/11
Resources:
"If you can create a classroom where kids feel safe to take creative risks, most likely the stress level is lower and they're more available to learn in every way."
--Jan Kirsch, Director of Creative Development: Inner City Arts
"We've got to stop thinking of the students as vessels that get their education poured into them, and instead start thinking of them as drivers of culture. Can we get them deployed as drivers of reform in the school, instead of beneficiaries of it?"
--J.B. Schramm, Founder: College Summit
Intrigued? Want to hear more? Check out the short video, here.
--Jan Kirsch, Director of Creative Development: Inner City Arts
"We've got to stop thinking of the students as vessels that get their education poured into them, and instead start thinking of them as drivers of culture. Can we get them deployed as drivers of reform in the school, instead of beneficiaries of it?"
--J.B. Schramm, Founder: College Summit
Intrigued? Want to hear more? Check out the short video, here.
7/22/11
Resources: Banjo and Bass videos
I found these helpful for review & learning new stuff--maybe you will, too:
Banjo:
Examples of different styles of playing (useful if you're just starting and not sure how to do so)
and a good tune, taught here.
Bass-- There's a lot out there! This one is an entire series of short lessons--clear and concise. Covers everything from how to hold the instrument through both styles of bowing and more. Check it out,here.
Last but not least, if you're at all interesting in playing traditional tunes and learning social dances, check out the Fiddle and Dance Camp weeks at Ashokan. Wonderful place and amazing classes. See for yourself, here.
Good luck--and if this was helpful, or if you know of other good teaching videos out there, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!
Banjo:
Examples of different styles of playing (useful if you're just starting and not sure how to do so)
and a good tune, taught here.
Bass-- There's a lot out there! This one is an entire series of short lessons--clear and concise. Covers everything from how to hold the instrument through both styles of bowing and more. Check it out,here.
Last but not least, if you're at all interesting in playing traditional tunes and learning social dances, check out the Fiddle and Dance Camp weeks at Ashokan. Wonderful place and amazing classes. See for yourself, here.
Good luck--and if this was helpful, or if you know of other good teaching videos out there, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!
7/19/11
Process and Product
Which matters more, process or product?
I've been playing upright Bass this summer: for the first time, working to improve simply by playing, rather than through endless hours of drills and theory.
It's working: I can hear progress.
Been thinking about how that process can be applied to the school year. As an educator whose medium is music, the product (concerts & student music journals, mostly) tends to be a primary focus.
What if it weren't? And what if the focus on end results simply leads to what Seth Godin calls 'cul de sacs'?
Immersion in theory and preparation, for me, has sometimes meant that my tools are quite sharp, but lacking in the comfortable usefulness that only experience can bring. Merlin Mann, writing for the site 43 folders, characterizes this particular cul de sac as "tool mastery vs. productivity....– Finding and learning the right tools for your work vs solely dicking around with the options for those tools is just so important, but also so different." (Read the entire article here--heads up, though: sometimes he uses strong language--not for the faint of heart. But a great article nonetheless, with some valuable insights. )
Too much 'hands on learning' leads to lack of foundational knowledge.
Too much 'theory' and talk leads to understanding without functional skills.
Both are needed--but it's not an easy balance, is it? Not in our own learning, not in our classrooms.
I've been mostly happy with leaning towards a classroom full of active musicians, with enough music theory to enable independent progress.
Somehow, though, that's been more difficult to attain in my own learning. Pushing past the comfort zone--in music, in using technology more effectively, whatever--can heighten the desire to postpone 'shipping' in favor of 'preparing'. --Something I'm definitely continuing to work on.
How about you? Where are you, in your classroom or in your own journey of learning?
6/16/11
Resources: Agency
From one of my favorite books, Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soul Craft, talking about agency:
"The idea of agency..is activity directed toward some end that is affirmed as good by the actor...it flows from an apprehension of real features of the world....
In activities that are directed toward some end...the goodness of the end in question isn't simply posited. There is a progressive revelation of why one ought to aim at just this, as well as how one can achieve it.
As you learn your trade, this particular end takes its place in a larger picture that is emerging, a picture of what it means to be a good plumber or a good mechanic. ....
The progressive character of revelation energizes your efforts to become competent--something about the world is coming into clearer view, and it is exciting.
The sense that your judgments are becoming truer is part of the experience of being fully engaged in what you are doing; it is a feeling of joining a world that is independent of yourself, with the help of another who is further along." (pp. 206-207)
It would be hard to find a better description, it seems to me, of what it is to teach--whether the learning is centered on plumbing or music, the incredible exhileration of active engagement in the teaching process arises directly from the experience of agency.
Now, to figure out how to incorporate this awareness, even more, into my classroom....
"The idea of agency..is activity directed toward some end that is affirmed as good by the actor...it flows from an apprehension of real features of the world....
In activities that are directed toward some end...the goodness of the end in question isn't simply posited. There is a progressive revelation of why one ought to aim at just this, as well as how one can achieve it.
As you learn your trade, this particular end takes its place in a larger picture that is emerging, a picture of what it means to be a good plumber or a good mechanic. ....
The progressive character of revelation energizes your efforts to become competent--something about the world is coming into clearer view, and it is exciting.
The sense that your judgments are becoming truer is part of the experience of being fully engaged in what you are doing; it is a feeling of joining a world that is independent of yourself, with the help of another who is further along." (pp. 206-207)
It would be hard to find a better description, it seems to me, of what it is to teach--whether the learning is centered on plumbing or music, the incredible exhileration of active engagement in the teaching process arises directly from the experience of agency.
Now, to figure out how to incorporate this awareness, even more, into my classroom....
2/26/11
Resources: Video
Today's learning link is to a two-minute (or so) video by Alan Watts....just a bit of thoughtful fun for the start of a new work week.
Watch, here.
(Surprisingly, I saw this first, not on youtube, but on a good small personal finance site called The Simple Dollar.)
Watch, here.
(Surprisingly, I saw this first, not on youtube, but on a good small personal finance site called The Simple Dollar.)
1/28/11
Resources: Music & the Mind
Yet another instance where science supports the notion that learning about music trains the mind to think more creatively....read more, here.
1/24/11
Resources: Music
Yeah! A groovy tune to start your week off right--check it out--Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Up Above My Head".
Get ready to dance!
Listen here.
Get ready to dance!
Listen here.
1/19/11
Resources: Creativity
Great ideas about creating, improvisation, and just plain inspiring listening from two amazingly creative people, Paul Overton (of Dudecraft.com and everydayisawesome.com) and Noah Scalin (of Skull-a-day
and 365:Make Something Every Day).
The bonus? It's really fun to listen to--a good creativity boost for our mid-January days.
More, here.
and 365:Make Something Every Day).
The bonus? It's really fun to listen to--a good creativity boost for our mid-January days.
More, here.
1/18/11
Resources: TED talk
Have you heard this TED talk yet? It's intriguing.
Charles Limb is a surgeon and a musician who studies how the brain operates when musicians play. He says that creativity is a neurological process that can be--and will be, even more intensively over the next ten years---studied from a brain-based viewpoint. He uses a special MRI machine that measures blood flow in the brain to track the creative flow while jazz musicians improvise, and while rappers perform. Amazing stuff.
It's totally absorbing. I want to listen to it again...
16 minutes--listen, here.
Charles Limb is a surgeon and a musician who studies how the brain operates when musicians play. He says that creativity is a neurological process that can be--and will be, even more intensively over the next ten years---studied from a brain-based viewpoint. He uses a special MRI machine that measures blood flow in the brain to track the creative flow while jazz musicians improvise, and while rappers perform. Amazing stuff.
It's totally absorbing. I want to listen to it again...
16 minutes--listen, here.
1/17/11
Resources: Compassion
Today's Learning Link is to a podcast of the NPR show, Talk of the Nation, which is an interview about compassion, with Karen Armstrong.
Armstrong, winner of a TED award, is a religious historian who chose to use her TED award to further the awareness of the dire need for compassion in our world. She asked TED "to help me create, launch, and propagate a Charter for Compassion that would be written by leading thinkers from a variety of major faiths and would restore compassion to the heart of religious and moral life. The charter would counter the voices of extremism, intolerance, and hatred. At a time when religions are widely assumed to be at loggerheads, it would also show that, despite our significant differences, on this we are all in agreement and that it is indeed possible for the religious to reach across the divide and work together for justice and peace."
In her words: "One of the chief tasks of our time must surely be to build a global community in which all peoples can live together in mutual respect.........The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.
Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect."
This interview, and her TED talk, are less a presentation of new ideas and more a recognition of the universal application and need for this basic tenet---- a call to action in our daily lives, and in the larger communities in which we live.
As a religious historian and author, Armstrong naturally grounds her work in the language of religions (not one but all), although the discussion is applicable within a secular context, of course, as well.
More, here.
Armstrong, winner of a TED award, is a religious historian who chose to use her TED award to further the awareness of the dire need for compassion in our world. She asked TED "to help me create, launch, and propagate a Charter for Compassion that would be written by leading thinkers from a variety of major faiths and would restore compassion to the heart of religious and moral life. The charter would counter the voices of extremism, intolerance, and hatred. At a time when religions are widely assumed to be at loggerheads, it would also show that, despite our significant differences, on this we are all in agreement and that it is indeed possible for the religious to reach across the divide and work together for justice and peace."
In her words: "One of the chief tasks of our time must surely be to build a global community in which all peoples can live together in mutual respect.........The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.
Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect."
This interview, and her TED talk, are less a presentation of new ideas and more a recognition of the universal application and need for this basic tenet---- a call to action in our daily lives, and in the larger communities in which we live.
As a religious historian and author, Armstrong naturally grounds her work in the language of religions (not one but all), although the discussion is applicable within a secular context, of course, as well.
More, here.
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