I went back to work today. My heart is in it, though my brain is still scattered by the extended vacation and I remain terribly unprepared to teach. The good news is that I don’t have to teach just yet. Even better news is that I have the mental and organizational tools to put everything together before the semester begins. The problem with collaborative work isn’t that we all need to be on the same page, it is that we all need to be in the same library. We all are supposed to be pushing towards this common goal, which in education is somewhat undefined. Sure, we are all supposed to be there to help students succeed, but the way we define success and what we feel needs to be done to propel students forward varies tremendously.
I approach teaching from a somewhat selfish standpoint. I want to have fun and enjoy coming to work every day, so I create a learning environment that compels people to be a part of it and to enjoy the process—be it of writing, learning sociology, whatever. It is my goal for students to learn something more than content. I want them to learn how to enjoy the act of learning.
After all, if you like something you keep on doing it.
- People each have different motivations and some are very myopic in their pursuit of their own motivations. This is a problem when you cannot provide what motivates them, but must find common ground in order to be effective in your role. I encountered this problem in the past and was unable to make it work. Now that I’m dealing with it again, I feel that I’ve matured to the point where I know when to speak and when to shut up and listen. It doesn’t solve the problem even a little, but my silence keeps the problem from getting worse.
- At some point the kids all dressing in a particular fashion, be it the kids with the baseball caps with flat brims or what have you, must realize that they are not being individuals. In truth, they are aligning themselves as part of a specific subculture, which is neither small nor defining. All the look says is where you shop and what you think the collective idea cool is supposed to look like. By dressing the way we dress, by following talismans all we are doing is strengthening the predictive models. We are responding to programming from some more dominant ideology and allowing a merchant entity to capitalize on that and often predict through mathematical models what we are going to do, want, or like next.
- Chick Fil A tastes wonderful. My stomach is going to swell like a dead thing in the sun. So much for dieting…