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What Generates Passion?

7/12/2018

 
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credit: careersingovernment.com
  “The notion of emptiness generates passion,” wrote the great poet, Theodore Roethke (1908-1963). When I first came across this line, many years ago, it occurred to me that the word “notion” is most significant. “Notion” means that you’ve had a taste, a vision, an inkling, a snippet of something—enough to alert you to its possibilities and whet your appetite for more.  My passions started when I was very young.

I was one of those fortunate children whose parents read to me.  The stories were not what hooked me.  I saw that books were full of possibilities, a portal to other worlds.  I also saw the the only way to access these worlds for myself was to learn how to read.  I remember being four years old and looking out a high-rise window over the myriad signs that decorated New York City rooftops. My companion was an eight year old girl named Brucia.  “Can you read everything you see?” I asked her wistfully. When she assured me she could, I remember wondering if I would ever reach that point where I could read everything I saw. (Here is the “emptiness” of Roethke’s line.) Then I could get into books anytime I wanted without being dependent on my parents. So in my determined way, I pestered adults for help and taught myself to read.

When I was eight, we made papier maché finger puppets in class.  Mine was of my father, featuring short lengths of yarn pasted vertically around his head as a frame for his bald pate.   I received a lot of praise for my cleverness. Over the weekend a mouse in the classroom came and ate the nose off my puppet leaving behind a disfiguring hole.  (The paste was an edible (tasty to a mouse?) mixture of flour and water.) My teacher was worried about my reaction. How would I feel about having my work so unforgivingly destroyed? Much to her surprise, for me it was no big deal.   Even at that tender age I realized that the puppet itself didn’t matter. I could always make another and no one could take that ability away from me. That same year my favorite doll fell off the bed on to her nose and it, too, was irrevocably marred.  I was inconsolable and vowed to myself that I would never invest so much emotional energy into a possession. The loss was too hard to bear. Acquiring skills and creating new things thus became my passions.

    Passion can be described as a feeling but it manifests itself in the world as behavior, strong behavior that recurs frequently despite obstacles, setbacks, and long periods without obvious feedback.  Passionate people are often unreasonable; they persist in spite of off-putting events or lack of approbation and support that might make others quit.


 “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world around him.  The unreasonable man persists in his attempts to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” (George Bernard Shaw, 1903 play “Man and Superman.”) [GBS was a misogynist so he was not about to include women in such a profound statement.] 

Behaviorists know that strength of behavior is built with payoffs that are highly intermittent and might only be perceived as a reward by the individual exhibiting the behavior.  The well-struck tennis ball becomes its own reward and is a first step in the steep learning curve of a potential champion. Hitting the ball in a racket’s “sweet spot” feels good. But the pursuit of a world-class trophy requires a commitment and a faith in one’s own abilities that defies the inevitable (reasonable) naysayers who know that the odds of reaching this pinnacle are extremely long.

"
Invictus" is one of my favorite films.   It depicts an unreasonable Nelson Mandela, played brilliantly by Morgan Freeman, who believed that he could unite his post-apartheid nation if only the rugby team, the Springboks, could do the impossible and win the World Cup.  He had formidable strikes against pulling this off—the team itself was an underdog that didn’t believe itself capable of such a feat and the freshly empowered black citizens of the “newly christened Rainbow Nation, South Africa” hated everything that stood for their former Afrikaner oppressors, especially this team. They were certainly not about to root for it.  Mandela said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Addiction is not passion.  Dr. Gabor Mat
é, a family physician with a special interest in child development says: 

"
The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates.." [For more on Dr. Maté watch his Ted Talk.]

Passion motivates learning, exploring, becoming a part of and interacting with something larger than oneself.  It is sometimes interpreted as "grit."  There are passionate teachers out there.  They are the ones that change lives.   I'll be you can think of one right now.  

Passion for writing nonfiction for children is experienced by the authors of iNK Think Tank. 
We authors work against all odds, creating works of literature to engage, inform and inspire children about the real world. You can get a delicious sampling of our work and our passionate voices in our Nonfiction Minutes.   If we want kids to learn and think about the real world and foster a passion for learning, why not give them great reading material?  One issue is that our books are not used in most classrooms where they can do the most good.

Our problem?  What can we do to change this small part of the educational landscape?
The answer:  Whatever it takes.  



Magic in the Classroom: One Teacher's Guide

12/7/2018

 
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Dr. Pamela Davis
Dr. Pam Davis is a friend of mine and a consummate teacher.  I asked her if she created magic in the classroom and in her blunt straightforward manner she said, "Not really.  I just capture the magic that's there!" So I asked her how that happens and her responses are the basis for this blog.

Is magic in the classroom the norm or not?  "I think magic in the classroom is overlooked and when it's harnessed that's the exception."

How often do you experience magic in your classroom?  "To me teaching and learning are both magical so I experience magic quite often?"

What do you do to make this magic happen?  "First, I prepare by deciding how to share myself through the material. For example, I have a natural sense of humor and I love to read and listen to music.  If I can find a way to share any of my passions with my students through the mandated content, that's the first step in inviting them into a safe learning space.  So when I teach social studies to 6th grade, the kids need to learn about the term, the "golden age." I introduce them to Jill Scott who wrote a song called "Living Life Like It's Golden," which I believe represents a golden age in popular music.  Then I invite them to debate the properties of a golden age in history by comparing my generation's music to theirs.  This leads to discussions all kinds of golden ages and gives the students ownership of the term." 

What do you look for in the material you use to connect to your students?  "I have to look for outside material to supplement the mediocre required texts, which gives kids facts but doesn't inspire interest. I can say honestly, that in order to connect to my students and have them connect to each other and eventually connect to the material, I have to be some kind of voice--an author's voice, a musician's voice, an artist's voice that transcends diversities and keys into common humanity." 

How have you used the Nonfiction Minute?  "When we were learning about the Medieval Period in history, I used the Nonfiction Minute called "Gong Farmers."  I then posted the  link on my class page with the warning, "Read at your own risk.  This is disgusting.  I don't want to talk about it."Of course, most of them read it but then I had them lead a small group discussion about some of the pros and cons of the feudal system from the peasants' perspective.  And several children brought up the idea of a gong-farmer and explicitly explained what the job entailed while I barely contained my composure."  

Pam, you are an exemplar of what I call the "artist teacher."  How do you get away with it? "I get criticized by administrators and sometimes other teachers.  But parents and students give me consistently high ratings, so I persevere.  I get some encouragement from my work outside the classroom.   I teach teachers. I evaluate content and even provide really fun robotics to kids facing family trauma.  I've never seen teaching as anything but an opportunity to share magic.”
 

If you are a teacher who has never experienced magic in the classroom, you must first know yourself and be fully and confidently self-expressed.  Next you must be constantly on the lookout for excellent content material created by others who are also fully  and confidently secure in their form of self-expression. Shared humanity is at the heart of it all.

Magic in the Classroom

8/7/2018

 
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In the late 1990s, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who defined the psycological state of "flow," also published a model illustrating the skill level and challenge level required in order to achieve flow state for any given activity. The perceived skill level and challenge level both have to be high to achieve a state of flow. Thus the teacher must find an activity for students that they know they can do and are up to the challenge. Not an easy task.

Here’s a question for every student and teacher:  Are you having fun in your classroom?  By fun I mean the experience that psychologists call “flow”.  It’s a mental state where you are completely absorbed in what you are doing; your sense of time disappears.  It can be achieved in a variety of ways but it must include personal participation in an activity.   Here are the criteria to reach it as defined by the article in the link above:
  1. Intense and focused concentration on the activity
  2. Merging of action and awareness of the current task
  3. The temporary loss of ability to reflect
  4. A sense of personal control and ownership over the activity
  5. A distortion of subjective time
  6. The experience is internally rewarding in and of itself
 
When all six of these experiences are combined, then one is said to have achieved a state of flow. Flow can be motivation for learning.
 
 I believe that flow can be achieved when there is an engaging conversation going on in a classroom that leads to some kind of productive activity on the part of students. I experienced it when I was a teacher—some kind of magic happened in a few of my classes.  The bell rang way too soon. 
 
We trust that the Nonfiction Minute can create flow.  I know that the authors of the Minutes experienced it when they wrote them.  If we have flow when we write, will you have flow when you read it and when you teach it?  Can it inspire flow in follow-up activities when your students discuss it with each other, use it do research  and write their own thoughts about it?  Long ago, when I first started writing, I figured that If I were bored and uninterested in the material when I wrote it, my reader would be bored and uninterested when forced to read it. 
 
We have just opened up our Nonfiction Minute Charter Membership Club.  We are doing this because we cannot sustain new production of Minutes, their continued publication, and their Transfer-to-Teaching pages without funding.  You can learn more about it here.  One of our new Charter Members, Anna MacLaughlin wrote us:
  
“I have already scheduled Nonfiction Minute in my Afternoon Literacy for Middle School Daily Schedule! We start next Wednesday 📚and I will be introducing Paper Airplanes ✈️ as our Introduction!
 
“Thanks again for creating such a wonderful CCSS-aligned Nonfiction idea for students! I teach at a Special Ed Behavior School for physically aggressive and flight risk kids in K-11th and I am one of the Middle School Teachers with 8 students in my classroom so I will let you know how it goes in a few weeks!”
 

Anna must create flow  (motivation aka “magic”) in her classroom if she is going to reach students with severe emotional issues.  I’m thrilled that she chose our material as the vehicle for her challenges. Please join our community of authors, educators and students with the mission of creating the joy of learning in classrooms for all.   

     Vicki Cobb

    *Award-winning author of more than 90 nonfiction books for children, mostly in science.
    *Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
    *Founder/President of iNK Think Tank, Inc.
    *Passionate advocate for the joy of learning for every child and teacher.


    Disclaimer: All opinions, typos, and grammatical errors are my own,  especially small word omissions which I often don't notice in my fervor.  

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iNK Think Tank, Inc. is a nonprofit with the mission of using nonfiction children's literature in classrooms

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