The Happy Secret to Better Work

 

I found this Tedx video of Shawn Achor, and it struck a very real and genuine chord for me.  Shawn is a positive Psychology expert who spent over a decade working at Harvard University.  Shawn’s basic premise is about trying to train people to be positive in the present, not some distant “happiness” over the horizon, and to use that happiness to boost performance by at least 30%.

My notes and nuggets (in itallics) from his TEDx talk:

• We need to escape the cult of the average 
•  We spend all of our time gathering data to find the “average” and then building programs and supports suitable to that average.  
•  He challenges us to move the entire average up.  This was pretty intriguing to me, because I have always struggled with averages because of the outliers that averages create.  The idea to set a standard, and then work to raise that standard for everyone is great.  I will definitely put some more thought into ways to implement this in my practice. 
•  He questions our sensory inputs for news and events, and asks “what is the accurate ratio of negative to positive?”  Does the news accurately portray the world or sensationalize the negative events happening?  Like Shawn, I go through phases of watching the news and ignoring it.  I watch to keep informed, but then disengage when it seems to be negative.  And, I disengage a lot.  It is interesting that Shawn looks at the ratio of negative input to positive input—especially if our brain shapes it’s own reality by what it sees (see point below). 
• Changing the lens
•  Does reality shape us, or does the lens that our brain views the world shape the reality [that we see]?  See my notes above...
•  If we change the lens, we can change the outlook.  This reminds me of a condition that a brain scientist referred to once during a keynote presentation.  Rectaloctyosis:  A crappy outlook on life.  But I digress.  I knew a man who got a phone call from the hospital to pick up his daughter.  “Oh my gosh!, he said, “was she in an accident?”  “No sir, she had a baby.”  The man didn’t know that she was pregnant.  Now you can take what you want from this guy, but I can tell you—oblivious or not—he only saw the happy things in his life and they were the things that he wanted to see.  As a result, he was always (always) happy.  I think that sometimes, many of us look at life with a far too critical eye, and have had many moments wondering if this guy was onto (not just on) something.  He certainly spent a lot of energy crafting what his brain was given...
•  Does reality shape us, or does the lens that our brain views the world shape the reality [that we see]?  See my notes above...
• Shawn gave us an example of his acceptance into Harvard being a very positive one for him but not for every other entrant
•  2 weeks after acceptance, the original success many first year students experience by getting in was replaced by feelings of competition, workload, hassles, stresses and complaints.  Wow, does this ring true and I will share a sports analogy that I use with kids all the time.  How come, when someone scores a goal in youth soccer—say on a penalty kick—they are “supposed” to run back to centre and “get ready” for the kick off?  Why are we called show offs for celebrating our own success?  The flip side, of course, is that if they miss the penalty kick, feel bad, kick the ground a few times, shrug off the “that’s okay” from their team mates, and then they relive it in their memory over and over and over.  This often affects their play and we try to coach them to “put it behind” them.  This has always been backwards to me.  If we are supposed to visualize our successes before they happen, why are we not then allowed to celebrate them, heck, revel in them?  We should live in the past, and never forget our great accomplishments, and then be able to simply forget our mistakes and “move on”.
•  There is an assumption that the external world is predictive of our happiness levels.  He says that this assumption is backwards.
•  90% of happiness is determined by how your brain processes the world.  So, what if we can train our brain to process things differently?
•  If we change our formula for happiness and success, we can change the way that we then affect reality.  
•  75% of job successes are predicted by optimism levels, social support and your ability to see stresses as a challenge instead of as a threat.  So, then it seems to me that the bulk of our energy at work should be devoted to improving optimism levels and social supports (peer networks), and in stress management training.
•  Example of a wellness week at a boarding school
•  Monday – Adolescent depression
•  Tuesday – School violence and bullying
•  Wednesday – Eating disorders
•  Thursday – Illicit drug use
•   Friday – Risky sex vs. happiness (undecided)
•  My ideas on this are that this list reminds me of some many wellness workshops that I have attended, where we focus on the potential bad in work situations.  I call these the Chicken Little sessions because the focus seems to be more about identifying all of the things going wrong instead of ways to keep the path ahead a positive one.   
•  ***The absence of disease is not health.  This is a very powerful statement:  the absence of disease is not health.  I can be inserviced until the end of time, however, making me aware of everything that could go wrong doesn’t mean that it won’t.  It also won’t ensure that I have balance or wellness in my life.
• We need to reverse the formula for happiness and success:
•  Working harder ≠ more success
• More success ≠ more happiness
• Every time the brain achieves success, we change the goal posts for what success looks like
•  Good grades lead to a need for even better grades
•  Going to a good school leads to the need for going to an even better school
•  Getting a good job is a stepping stone to getting a better job
•  If we hit our quarterly sales target, we change the sales target 
•  If happiness is on the other side of success, your brain never gets there.  If we never stop to celebrate our achievements, never smell the roses, we will never give our brain a chance to feel success.  I think that this is what I feel during the “more stuff piled on” phases of my work year;  I always feel so run-down and over-worked when I seem to be just out of grasp of some sort of success.
•  If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what he calls a “happiness advantage”
•  Your brain, positive, performs 31% better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed
•  Intelligence rises, creativity rises, energy levels rise, every business outcome improves
• Dopamine
•  Makes you happier
• Turns on all of the learning centres in your brain
•  We need to bring more dopamine into the workplace!
• You can train your brain to be positive in the present by doing 5 things every day for 21 days:
•  3 Gratitudes (to take a moment to celebrate 3 small successes each day—to train your brain to scan for positive in your day)   
• Journaling (to reflect on things and relive them)
• Exercise (to teach our brain that your behaviour matters)
• Mediation (to combat our culture of ADHD and too many things to stay on top of—to train your brain to focus on the task at hand)
•  Random acts of kindness  (spreading the wealth)
  
  

Weekend Challenge

Simply Sharing

I have been asked by a few colleagues recently about blogging and how to get started.  Some days, the answers to questions like this are so clear.  The last few, not so clear.  I am in one of those busy funks right now, you know the kind where you can't quite figure out how deep the water is?  Or when you feel some accomplishment when you get deep enough into the pile that you actually find your to-do list (not that you tick anything off of that list...just that you find it)?

Anyway, while the written word haven't been exactly pouring out of my pen lately, sometimes working your way through the end of a "busy crisis" is just the thing that you need to find the answer for something else.  In this case, I had a minute to open my blog aggregator and the first post that popped up was from What Ed Said.  Well, Ed Said 10 tips for bloggers trying to get going on blogging.  Her advice is good, clear and succinct and worthy of reading in its entirety.  So, to that end, I will leave you with a link from What Ed Said:

10 tips for reticent new struggling teacher student bloggers...

Thanks Ed, you said it far better than I could have today!

Unlearning

 

I am both a school administrator and a parent, so I have a very unique perspective on learning.  I am asked for my advice from friends often about school-related (read:  “their-child-related”) issues.  This is a challenge, and at times has put me in very awkward positions where people are looking for insider information that I cannot provide, and I am always wary of the inevitable follow up of “my friend, the principal says...”.

Schools are definitely places of learning.  What is challenging about education, however, is that everyone is an expert;  everyone has very personal experience—generally at least 13 years long—of our education system from the inside.  In no other facet of our lives, no in with any other profession, does everyone have such influential life experience.  And, that is one our biggest challenges because so many of our truths and myths about education are based in a personal experience that is emotional charged—positively and negatively—and many of factors leading up to those experiences simply do not exist anymore.

This post was inspired by something I found on the blog What Ed Said.  Edna Sackson is a teacher from Australia.  She chose to list her list of ten things parents need to unlearn without comment, to provoke her readers into making their own comments.  I have also included a few from her her top ten list of things that teachers need to unlearn.  Here is my some of advice to the question of things that parents (and educators, too) need to unlearn to truly support their own children’s’ learning:

 
Learning is best measured by a letter or a number

I guess it depends on the letter or number.  It also depends on how the letter or number is arrived at because averages can be dreadfully inaccurate.  It also depends on the student; letter grades seem to matter most for students who achieve As and Bs, and much less for students who achieve lower grades.  My question is:  If not all students respond positively to letter grades, why are we assigning them?

Product is more important than process and progress

My father-in-law best describes my idea of an answer here.  He is a uniquely stubborn individual who never, ever lost his childhood curiosity or creativity.  His way of problem-solving is outside of the box, and way outside of most of our comfort zones.  The plus side, however, is that he has a process for figuring things out that always ends up with something wonderful that few of us could accomplish—or even imagine—on our own.  I imagine that he went through a lifetime of “you can’t do it that way” at school, and that helped him to harden his resolve to be a problem solver.  Most of us would have given in, and given up, long ago.  

Children need to be protected from any kind of failure

We see this in almost every part of our lives as parents.  Parents will do almost anything—reasonable or not—to prevent their children from experiencing failure.  In fact, I would go as far as say that too many parents don’t even want their children to experience disappointment.    I was upset when my oldest children came home upset from finding out about their class placements this year.  Both felt like they wanted into another classroom and both felt like they didn’t have enough of their close friends around them.  I have to be careful how to tackle these challenges at home and make sure that my dad hat and Principal hat don’t get mixed up; there is nothing worse for my daughter than when dad, the Principal, has all the answers for all of the questions.  So, as a dad, my job was to listen and to help them to cope with the (initial) disappointment.  We talked about how to flip this situation.  My son had a male teacher for the first time, and that became something awesome.  And he decided that he could meet up with his two best buddies everyday at recess and lunch.  Problem solved.  My daughter was worried about getting the new, strict teacher.  We remembered the last them that she got the “strict” teacher and how much she thrives when there are rules, a teacher that pushes her to her potential and who holds all students accountable for their learning.  And, we kept these conversations inside our house.  We didn’t let their initial disappointment linger on at social events with friends and family.  We talked about the disappointment, discussed some opportunities that the situation created for us, co-created some strategies to cope, and then we gave ourselves some time to move on.  Guess what?  They did, and they are having terrific years with terrific teachers.

Children need to be taught how to be resilient.  They need to be taught how to problem solve, not to have all of their problems solved for them.  Life is full of disappointments, and we have to teach them how to turn these disappointments into opportunities.

The Internet is dangerous to children

So are strangers, the mall, driving in a car, not talking to your kids about drugs, alcohol and sex...

I am not a believer in massive filters, rather, I am a huge believer in teaching kids how to select appropriate (and safe) online activities.  And, I will be honest here:  my kids spent very little time online by themselves until I was absolutely confident that they could make good decisions on their own before I allowed them the opportunity to work on their own on our family computer.  Here are some of my personal pointers for online safety:

• Make computer time family time.  Have your child sit on your lap or on a chair next to you and work together. 
• Put your computer in an open and public location.  You would not believe how many parents come in to talk to me who are worried about their child’s online activity and who allow their children to have a computer in a bedroom behind a locked door.
• Choose sites that are kid-friendly and acceptable to your family standards and bookmark them in a special place for your kids to access.  Show them how to access them.
• Teach them that there are strangers who are dangerous online, and have a discussion about what they should avoid including revealing their personal information.  Most of our innappropriate-site follow up has been about people posting rude comments on YouTube.  If that is true for you, limit time on YouTube and other video collections.
• If they are not old enough for a Facebook account (or other social media site), don’t let them have an account.  My oldest is 12, and she does not have have a Facebook account.  She also knows that when she is old enough to have one that I will be her friend and be able to see what she writes, and—maybe more importantly—able to see what her friends post.  We will definitely have a conversation about posting things that your parents and friends’ parent will be able to see.
• Set up an email account with them, and teach them how to send an email.  Also teach them about what is appropriate to send electronically and how easily something inappropriate can get into the wrong hands.  Check emails with them and reviews your lessons and rules.
• Have conversations with your children about those hard topics when they are young enough to want to have those conversations with you.  It always baffles me when parents come in for advice here, and they have avoided important but uncomfortable discussions until their kids are in grade 11 or 12.  Sorry, but my experience shows me that late teens is way too late to start trying to talk to your kids about awkwards subjects such as sex, substance abuse, relationships, online safety, etc.  By this time, the kids will have filled their advice void with peer input.  Are you satisfied that this is the best source of advice for your kids?

Parents and teachers should discuss students without the learner present

Whenever we have a challenge to work through with a student, we need the child present.  There is no sense drafting up a set of commitments for a student if they aren’t there to tell us whether or not they will live up to those commitments.  

Homework is an essential part of learning

...if the homework is worthwhile.   And, completing work that was incomplete during the day isn’t homework.   

My idea of a poor homework assignment:  writing out your spelling words 20 times each.  My idea of a great homework assignment (from my son’s kindergarten teacher a few years back):  select some things at home that are meaningful to you (i.e. a collection, a special toy or photo, something from a vacation, etc.) and present them to your class in an “About Me” presentation.  Explain why these things are important to you.

Kids also need to time exercise and play.  Do not underestimate the importance of exercise and play.

The school is responsible for the child’s entire education

Parents are responsible for a huge part of their child’s education, and need to be active partners with their school in this learning process.

Your child’s perspective is the only one

One of the toughest things we do is trying to find a balance between the needs of the individual and the needs of the group, and one of the most difficult things to work through when these needs collide is the events that led up to them.  People, not just kids, are very good at remembering the events that led up to them being wronged or applauded in some way because memories--accurate or not--are anchored by emotional responses in our brains.  We are all good at remembering the negative experiences (the details from when we were hurt or humiliated) and the positive experiences (the details from wonderful surprises), but in remembering those parts of the events that happened we are often reluctant to see that there were likely things that preceeded our personal memories and that other people may have seen things differently.  That is not to say that one is right and the other is wrong, but that as different people have different emotional responses to shared experiences, they will remember them differently.  As parents, we need to resist the urge to believe that "he just walked right up and punched..." for no reason.  My experience tells me that while the reason might not be a great one, there is always a reason for an action like this.

Learning looks the same as when you went to school

• Learning is different.
• Assessment is different.
• School are different.
• Community expectations are different.
• Job and post-secondary prospects are different.

Focus on (and fix) your child’s shortcomings, rather than their successes

Here is a sports analogy that hits the mark:  Take the penalty kick in soccer.  The player that scores does a quick fist pump then runs back to centre to line up for the kick off.  As a good team player, they forgo the accolades and get right back into the play.  The player that misses, on the other hand, feels like they let everyone down.  They kick the ground and hang their head, reliving the missed kick over and over again, putting themselves out of the play and making them a liability to the rest of the team.  Why do we spend so much time fixating on our shortcomings instead of celebrating our successes?

Learners need to sit quietly and listen

This is more than simply a generational gap.  I really believe that our children learn differently from us.  I always needed a quiet place to learn.  It needed to be away from noise and distraction and was generally an individual endeavour.  Kids today learn together, and there is some compelling research that says music—at least some kinds of music—can stimulate the brain and actually...gulp...help...learning.  Just because that doesn’t work very well for me doesn’t mean it won’t work well for my kids.  Brain research is exposing some very intriguing knowledge about our brains and how we learn, and that knowledge is doubling about every 4 years. 

Technology integration is optional

If we don’t write letters anymore, or rely on complete sets of encyclopaedias for all of our worldly knowledge, or drive horse buggies to work, why is this even a question anymore?

Worksheets support leaning

Three points, as succinct as possible:

1. Practice supports learning
2. Emotional experiences anchor memory
3. Learning needs to have relevance to the learner

Those are three things very difficult to accomplish with a worksheet.

Tests should be surprises

Tests that surprise teach us more about how well a student can guess what a teacher wants than they do about how much a student has learned.  Let’s be honest here, if a student has to guess what is most important from what I taught in the last unit, then I didn’t do a good job teaching the unit, did I?  Each lesson should start with a very clear rationale explaining what we are learning and why (hence its importance to us), and any assessment that follows should be an opportunity to support, and demonstrate, that learning.  Do you want the parachute packer who guessed right the first time and moved on, or the one who did it wrong, was corrected, and then truly understood the importance of doing everything just right?