laremy.sg

According to a Stanford psychologist, you’ll reach new heights if you learn to embrace the occasional tumble.

(via)

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This was quite meaningful for me because of two portions, one of which was this:

Such zest for challenge helped explain why other capable students thought they lacked ability just because they’d hit a setback. Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized … that the difference lay in the kids’ goals. “The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something,” Dweck says, and “learning goals” inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than “performance goals.”

It’s helped me to realise why I took a certain something too seriously – I had been too focused on performance as opposed to learning, considering the stage I was/am at. I guess it was also, in part, due to mismanaged expectations. But better to learn this later than never.

The second thing which I found meaningful was this:

Dweck’s study showed that praising children for intelligence, rather than for effort, sapped their motivation. But more disturbingly, 40 percent of those whose intelligence was praised overstated their scores to peers. “We took ordinary children and made them into liars,” Dweck says. Similarly, Enron executives who’d been celebrated for their innate talent would sooner lie than fess up to problems and work to fix them.

Am going to start saying ‘good effort’ instead of just ‘good’ from now on!

Hands move. An exam.
Coloured pens mark scripts and time
while youth flies away.

–

An exam. Hands move,
coloured pens mark scripts and time
while youth flies away.

–

One among others.
Coloured pens mark scripts and time
while youth flies away.

Winds across water.
Paper boats without sails will
Change course once again.

1. Update HR database with the courses that I’ve gone for ASAP.
   Spent an unpleasant weekend last year updating the database because I let everything accumulate.
2. Create a list called ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ in Google Docs so I can update it with… all these things that I’ve done (at work).
   For the purposes of work review and the like.

I wonder if anyone else sees the irony in this.

When I have slightly more permanence in the classroom + opportunities to adapt the environment to suit my needs.

1. Run diagnostic test. Find out who has strengths in the subject, who has difficulties – use these profile for configuration/reconfiguration in class.
2. Cater to diverse learners. Use results from diagnostic to let independent ones learn independently. No point making them run when they can fly.
3. From (2), less people in the classroom = more time to concentrate on the rest. They are the people who need the most focus, anyway.
4. Communication. Need to be connected to the network the school uses to ‘speak’ with the students. Alternatively, make sure contact list is up as soon as possible to have more channels to transmit/receive information.
5. ICT the enabler. Google Documents for feedback, peer-editing, submission of work, etc; wikis for collaborative work; blog to share thoughts/interact with others. I’m totally not doing that now because I can’t find any way/space to introduce it – and not for want of trying.

To be updated over time too.