I want to talk a bit about sanity — not because I think I'm an expert (I'm not; no one is) but because I have come to understand sanity as a choice we make moment by moment, and because, in so doing, I have seen how we either model — or do not model — it for our students in our classrooms and in our lives. And this is an enormous part of the social and emotional life training they either receive or do not receive in this crucial part of their lives.
I teach middle schoolers, or rather, I should confess that they teach me. Every student and every class is a mirror in which I can see what I am teaching them. Perhaps because their access to it is new, middle school students have a finely tuned hypocrisy detector. More so than any of the high school or university students I've ever taught, middle school students want to see who "walks their talk." Do so, I have learned, and they will follow you anywhere. Fail to do so at your own peril.
So a big part of this year's learning, for me, has been learning how to tune in to what I am actually doing and checking in on whether this is consistent with the social and emotional lessons on appropriate self-care I am trying to teach. Sometimes that has meant being the adult in their lives who tells them to stop the madness. The only way to stop the war is to stop fighting, stop struggling, stop efforting. There really are only so many hours of the day, and for middle schoolers, about eight of those need to be spent sleeping. That means every piece of homework can't always get done every day all the time. Sometimes a person has to choose sanity. So I try to understand that and allow for it, because learning to allow space for all of life is something they are going to have to learn if they are going to do better in running this world than we have done so far.
I've also had to learn how to trust my training and my gut. I was blessed to study for over ten years with a pioneer in integrating social and emotional intelligence and mindfulness into learning environments ranging from special education to mainstream classrooms to therapy situations. You probably haven't heard of him because he has spent his life being what I think of as a guerrilla bodhisattva — a pioneering educational psychologist and an undercover evangelist for social and emotional health in daily life. His name is Dr. Fred Joseph Orr, and I am blessed to count myself among his students. Actually, we think of ourselves as his disciples, though he would undoubtedly discourage that characterization. But it's a fair one. He taught us to integrate teachings from whatever sources might be beneficial to ourselves and our communities — teachings from Adlerian psychology, spiritual development, meditation, yoga, Buddhism, his own mischievous sense of humor and spirit of adventure, writing as a practice, the practice of joy and creativity in whatever form they might take, and environmental restoration and ecological rebalancing. I came to him as a writer, writing teacher, and longtime meditation practitioner, but I quickly became much more than that under his mentorship. And it was the kind of mentorship that is a true spiritual gift — the kind you can only repay by sharing it with others. In his life, he suffered in ways that most of us would find unimaginable, and yet he remains the most radiant and joyful person I have ever known. And although his active teaching practice has been cut short by a medical condition that has become the focus of his own personal life practice, his students carry on his great efforts, sharing the learning and the gifts we received from his teachings. His teaching of us was an investment in the future and a labor of love. I wake up every morning determined to be worthy of the effort, love, and energy he poured into teaching me.
There's an urban fable Fred used as a teaching tale. It's known as The Hundredth Monkey principle. It began in the 1950s as a call to end the escalating nuclear arms race, but Fred believes it has broader applicability as a model for how human awareness and sanity can be activated too, and I have come to believe this too. The idea is simple, yet profound: when a critical mass of individuals' consciousness gets raised, it inevitably triggers a paradigm shift in the dominant culture. So this turns out to be a more leveraged model for social change than the conventional wisdom tends to think, for when we direct the focus of our daily efforts on helping individuals and small groups to shift their energies, awareness, and attention, we are doing our part to put our culture on the path that leads toward greater sanity, in addition to greater achievement.
So what does all this squishy-sounding woo-woo stuff have to do with teaching and learning mathematics?
I believe it provides us with an on-ramp, a way to reach the hearts and minds of the students who are most discouraged and shut down in the math classroom. It's differentiated for the most capable students because most of them have never been given tools to cultivate self-awareness and other-awareness as a part of their learning. And by learning — and by teaching these discouraged students how — to cultivate their social and emotional intelligence in how they engage in mathematical practice in our classrooms, we can change their relationship with mathematical studies to one based on what the American Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron describes as "unconditional friendliness."
Over the last couple of days, as I've begun my yearly summer rituals of cooking and storing school lunches in the freezer for days when I need the loving self-care of hand-made soup in the middle of my day, I have realized that this is the heart of my Twitter Math Camp talk. My topic is Dan Pink's book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, and how to use his ideas about intrinsic motivation to reach the discouraged math learners in our classrooms. I've begun to understand how Fred's work with me is an arrow that flies straight to the bullseye of this target, and it's given me some hopefully valuable insight into how to create the toughest of Pink's three pillars of intrinsic motivation. That pillar is autonomy, and I'll write more about it in an upcoming post as I flesh out my talk with ideas and activities.
In the meantime, I'm going to let my subconscious mind work on the problems while my conscious mind takes a nap.
cheesemonkey wonders
Showing posts with label dogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dogs. Show all posts
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Favorite Tweets #18 - Special Unicorns Edition
 | druinok Developing Mathematical Thinking with Effective Questions... http://to.pbs.org/mVya4R 7/15/11 9:52 AM |
 | cheesemonkeysf @druinok Two similar resources I plan to blog about next week like this are: http://t.co/MGrbJIy AND http://t.co/R473yfN 7/15/11 10:07 AM |
 | sarcasymptote Just got a text from a student: "I bought a wallet that has the first 2840 digits of pi printed on it." Success! 7/14/11 10:55 AM |
| druinok Yeah, so in case you ever wondered, a Dyson will suck up a thumb drive... the things you learn when hubby vacuums... #sigh #men 7/16/11 10:05 AM |
 | park_star @jybuell @sarcasymptote @persidac @jackieb @druinok seriously Jason, it's like YOU'RE IN MY MIND. STOP IT. #ordont #dontneedtotweetanymore |
| park_star @cheesemonkeysf @k8nowak @fnoschese @joshgiesbrecht I *LOVE* that Winnipeg is the slurpee capital of the world. #wearesoweirdhere |
 | someecards Teacher attempts to get class to stop playing Angry Birds by giving exam question about Angry Birds. http://t.co/O6PS4i5 |
RT by @jazzbo51 of all people
 | k8nowak Just realized the technique for making pyth triples from squaring complex numbers thing is really just m^2-n^2, 2mn, m^2+n^2. #nowicansleep |
 | samjshah Math teacher bloggers and twitters! Huzzah! #loveit #TdF #pcmi http://twitpic.com/5pcztp |
 | mikeklonsky CapitolFax: Jonah Edelman’s blunt talk freaks out almost everybody. http://bit.ly/pK7oaO 7/13/11 9:36 AM |
 | jybuell #cubelady "Governments should really be banned. Well some of them" Me: So who would ban them? ..... 7/13/11 11:07 AM |
 | fnoschese STAY AWAY FROM MY SCHOOL. http://www.khanacademyschools.com/home 7/13/11 10:32 AM |
 | mctownsley Albert Einstein just added me to his Google+ circle. Not sure I have much to add there, guy. 7/13/11 12:13 PM |
 | sophgermain last night in my first apartment. it was seriously the best. 7/13/11 9:25 PM |
 | OMGFacts According to NASA's FAQ page, "There are no plans at this time to send children into space." 7/13/11 9:26 PM |
 | sockington DISASTER PREPAREDNESS DRILL note mouth is open and no food in it WHAT DID WE LEARN IN THE DRILL 7/16/11 4:34 AM |
| samjshah Do some topology or read? I'm leaning towards the former but I'll listen to arguments for the latter. Go. 7/13/11 9:11 PM |
| samjshah http://samjshah.com/2011/07/13/make-it-better-drawing-with-geogebra/ @bowmanimal made a genius post. READ IT NOW. that is all. 7/13/11 2:47 PM |
| park_star @rdkpickle oh em gee, can we be best friends? 7/13/11 8:42 PM |
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 | ThinkThankThunk @k8nowak Are you in Utah? With @samjshah? 7/13/11 8:22 PM |
 | Mythagon @ThinkThankThunk @k8nowak @samjshah yes, but she's looking at a problem like she wants to light it on fire so I wouldn't disturb her... 7/13/11 8:28 PM |
| k8nowak @Mythagon @ThinkThankThunk @samjshah CARE BEAR STARE! 7/13/11 8:30 PM |
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| jybuell What's a good gift (book) for a new 4th grade teacher? Something practical that doesn't include the names Harry or Wong. 7/14/11 9:19 AM |
| sarcasymptote @jybuell i always get new teachers a bottle of whiskey 7/14/11 9:26 AM |
| jybuell @sarcasymptote that's more of a midyear gift when they really will appreciate it. 7/14/11 9:57 AM |
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| sarcasymptote @rdkpickle have fun. pretend i know enough about harry potter to make some witty remark here. 7/14/11 9:12 PM |
| druinok I don't think I had ever connected the equation of a circle (x2+y2=r2) to the pyth theorem... #ahamoments 7/15/11 8:43 AM |
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| cheesemonkeysf I wonder if any of these mathematical questions could be adapted to incorporate unicorns. 7/15/11 11:18 AM |
 | RaisingUnicorns @cheesemonkeysf Yes. Everything can - and should - be adapted to incorporate unicorns. #MathMadeAwesome 7/15/11 11:33 AM |
| cheesemonkeysf FINALLY, A SOUL MATE! “@RaisingUnicorns: @cheesemonkeysf Yes. Everything can - & should - be adapted to incorp. unicorns. #MathMadeAwesome” 7/15/11 11:43 AM |
| RaisingUnicorns @cheesemonkeysf <:-) 7/15/11 11:58 AM |
 | sarcasymptote @cheflincoln man, i was hoping for an image generator too 7/16/11 8:07 AM |
 | cheflincoln @sarcasymptote Here you go!: http://jwebgen.com/generate There really is everything on the internet... 7/17/11 5:22 PM |
| sarcasymptote @cheflincoln @cheesemonkeysf jesus christ. the internet is weird. BUT AWESOME. 7/17/11 5:22 PM |
| cheesemonkeysf @sarcasymptote @cheflincoln Truly so! http://t.co/136GZqs 7/17/11 6:44 PM |
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| samjshah I just watched the last harry potter. It was a #TdF for sure. It was sooooo good. 7/15/11 10:40 PM |
| jybuell Answer: Joanne Jacobs, David Brooks, Jay Mathews ....Question: Name 3 highly intelligent people who I want to slap with a trout 7/15/11 9:22 PM |
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| sophgermain watching my cat meet my parents' dogs is like watching animal planet. 7/15/11 11:18 PM |
 | woutgeo Getting drunk with your family can be a beautiful thing 7/16/11 1:01 AM |
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 | DalaiLama We must generate courage equal to the size of the difficulties we face. 7/16/11 2:28 AM |
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