Week 2- Post #3 Response to David Holter

Response:
David-
I really like your idea that the "filters" of what you see and perceive are often uncontrollable and learned by friends and family. I also feel this connects with the idea of grades and school. Many of my students who don't "care" about school or their grades have no support at home and their parents never cared about their grades either. This is a cycle that is often difficult to break a student of. They often feel that because their parents did not do well in school they cannot either.


Original Post:




In The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander the reader is confronted with an interesting spin on self help for life adjustment. The main story line of the book is actually broken into stories that help support the through line and theme. After reading the introduction and first four practices I have been impressed with the authors’ abilities in sharing moving, eye witness stories about life and the obstacles of human nature. The book is meant to be a guide for practice and each story supports the need for or outcomes of each practice.


I like that the purpose is to identify in my life the examples shared and then practice ways to see the world differently. I have always been a believer in the notion that the world around me is created by my thoughts and desires. The reality I live in is simply my perception of the world and I have built into me a set of filters that allow me to see things based on my tendencies. I think the first part of the book is hinting at the idea that these filters are many times uncontrollable and learned from family, friends, and the many communities in which we belong.


The ideas presented by the authors about giving an A are most interesting to me. I work in an environment where students are unmotivated by the success of good grades in school. Parents are less interested in celebrating academic achievements and students in turn take things less serious. This environment presents many challenges that I think this book can help to address. To this point I have been using grades as the only factor of success in my courses. In the reading the authors share ideas about grades by telling a story of a pedagogical technique for motivating students to work hard to earn a grade. The idea is that students write a letter to the instructor as if they had just received an A at the completion of the course. The students are to outline everything they did during the time of the course to earn that A. The instructor then uses that criteria to challenge the students by saying they will earn that grade if they complete their own list. I am moved by this because the student takes control of their education and is motivated by the ability to learn what they want.


I am very excited to continue reading and finding ways to use these practices in my everyday life. Check out the book here!