The Art of Possibilities 4-8 Week 3

The Art of Possibilities gets interesting as the chapters continue.  I am so amazed at how this book tends to lead or guide into my own personal soul searching.  I often analyze myself after reading each chapter to see what I’m doing and if I can change some things for the better after getting insight from the chapter. 

In chapter 5:  Leading from Any Chair discusses how everyone can be a participant or the leader of the group.  It empowers everyone to view themselves as leaders.  This helps you as an individual to display leadership qualities at all times.  From the viewpoint of an educator, it is important to allow the students to become leaders in the classroom.  I have found that some students learn better from other students.  I tend to have peer-tutoring session in class to allow a concept to be taught by a classmate who understands that particular concept better.  This strategy has proven itself to work.  It also builds self-esteem and leadership qualities of the students.

In chapter 6: Don’t take yourself so seriously, discuss how we over analyze ourselves and tend to become overly serious about minor issues.  From the viewpoint of an educator once again, we tend to become so serious that we break down the communication process between the students and ourselves.  Once this happens learning cannot take place.  This harms the students more than help.  I feel that we should be firm but fair and allow our students to know we are human and we care about them and their education.

In Chapter 7:  The way they are, discuss how we over analyze things rather than seeing them for what they are.  We tend to not stick to the reality of what things are but try to make more out of things, which then leads to problems.  As teachers we often overanalyze things such as pre-test scores.  We often feel that this is the marker that shows our students haven’t learned anything from the previous years or lessons.  We then began to over work ourselves and students rather than seeing the picture for what it is and not what it could be.  We as teacher must learn to relax and teach according to our students learning styles and abilities not test scores.

Chapter 8: Giving Way to Passion, discusses how we should try new things that are apart of our passion.  Most of us hate to try new things whether we are interested in it or not.  We often want to stick to the same things to avoid failure or hurt.  As an educator, I noticed that teachers love to teach but hate to try new ways of teaching to reach their students.  Most traditional educators want to remain traditional despite the growing changes in our society.  Technology is one thing that most traditional educators want to avoid; even though, they love to teach.  We have to learn how to take life by the handle and enjoy it and its new experiences.