Who gave November permission to arrive? I propose that instead of falling back one hour, we fall back one month.
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1263259
To create the time for a new book-length project, I’ll be consolidating blogs and posting at my author site/blog (this weekend’s post was about valuing your imaginative life) and Psychology Today, while putting this blog on pause for at least the rest of 2011 (thank you to Christi for helping me to think through this decision). Everyday Intensity will remain live, with a new front page coming soon, but please head on over tolisarivero.com if you would like to continue to receive regular posts/updates/newsy items related to intensity, writing, creativity, and whatever else seems interesting.
I greatly appreciate your readership, comments, and community and look forward to seeing you at my other virtual home!
1.WATG Fall Conference Presentation Slides Now Online
Earlier this month I was fortunate to be able to attend the WATG (Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted) Fall Conference in the beautiful Wisconsin Dells. One of the highlights for me was meeting and attending two presentations by Dr. Nadia Webb, co-author of Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults. WATG has made available on their website several of the PowerPoint and pdf files from conference presentations, including two by Dr. Webb: Parenting the Heart of a Gifted Child and Heart, Mind and Hands. I highly recommend them. Here’s a sample from her talk “Heart, Mind and Hands”:
The Unidentified Gifted in the normal classroom: The “Average” Student
The kids who are passed over. They are quiet; show average accomplishments in the classroom by using their intellect and hard work to conceal their deficits. “In essence, their gift masks the disability and the disability masks the gift.” They are frequently girls.
The disability is frequently discovered in college or adulthood when the someone reads or hears about learning disabilities. Parents often learn about their own disability when their children are identified. Read More
2. Women in Engineering: A Crisis of Confidence?
As an instructor of engineering students, I was struck by a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about a study suggesting that some women leave their engineering studies not because of a lack of ability or skill, but because of lack of “professional role confidence,” defined as “a person’s sense that he or she belongs in a certain field.”
“Traditionally, it has been thought that women’s family plans and low regard for their mathematical skills accounted for their low representation in the field.
Ms. Cech and her co-authors found differently. Women’s family plans had little bearing on their career planning, once they entered engineering training, the paper says, though the plans probably do play a role later, when they embark on their careers. Surprisingly, the researchers found much stronger evidence that men were more likely to leave engineering if they had plans to start a family.” Read More
3. Tamara Fisher’s Symbaloo
If you don’t yet subscribe to Tamara Fisher’s Education Week blog, Unwrapping the Gifted, do so without delay. Her most recent post is about an innovative way to collect, organize, and share theme-related web resources:
“Over the fifteen years I’ve taught this class, I have been collecting useful websites for the kids to use for their various projects. It started gradually when the internet was still young. At first it was just a helpful site or two that I knew from memory and would suggest to a student as a resource. Then the internet grew and I began scratching the addresses of a growing number of sites down on scraps of paper and thumb-tacking them to my bulletin board. And then the internet really took off and my students were helping me discover all sorts of great places they could use and my bulletin board looked a bit ridiculous.
Then this summer at Edufest when I attended a session by Brian Housand, I learned of Symbaloo. A symbaloo (also called “webmix”) is a place where you can collect a plethora of links on various topics and organize them however you want…” Read More
I cannot believe I had never heard of this tool before, and I can hardly wait to use it for next term’s creative thinking class, not only to share resources with the students, but as an option for them to integrate into their projects. Take a look at Tamara’s gifted education symbaloo for inspiration to create one of your own.
This weekend, I wrote about the Japanese light novel The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya at Psychology Today as an example of how existential themes can be found in modern literature and how bibliotherapy can be useful in facing some of life’s most important and difficult questions of meaning. You can also watch a clip from the anime version of the scene mentioned in the post.
So, are our times more stressful and anxiety-ridden than, let’s say, the Great Depression era in the 1930s? In a way yes, according to Dr. Jean Twenge, a professor at San Diego State University and author of “Generation Me.” “Anxiety rates have risen steadily over the past seven decades, during good economic times and bad,” she said.
Dr. Twenge sees at least some of the reasons in the deep cultural shifts we as a society have undergone since the 1960s. “Recent generations have been told over and over again: You can be anything you want to be, you can have the big job title, you can have the big bank account, and in the case of women, you can have the perfect body. That puts a lot on a person’s shoulder – and it is also not really true. That disconnect creates a lot of anxiety about how hard you need to work […] and a deep fear of failure.”
What are some literary or other works that help you to deal with existential questions?
Today I’m honored to be visiting Ollin Morales’s blog, Courage 2 Create (definitely worth subscribing to), where we’re discussing introverted energy and social media. Be sure to check out the comments, which are both thought-provoking and introvert-friendly.
“This week we are launching themed iTunes podcasts, to bring more topics of interest directly to you. Along with receiving your daily TEDTalk, subscribing to one of our specially curated podcast channels means you will receive a weekly talk recommended by the TED team in the category (or categories!) of your choice: Art, Business, Education, Health, Kids + Family, Music, News + Politics, Science + Medicine, Society + Culture and Technology. When you subscribe this week, you’ll start with 10 TEDTalks we think you’ll like.” Subscribe
2. Dancing the Dream
I recently had the good fortune to read an advance copy of Joan Myers Brown & The Audacious Hope of The Black Ballerina: A Biohistory of American Performance, by Brenda Dixon Gottschild, and I cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone interested in the arts, 20th century American culture, and what intensity and passion look like on and off the stage. Ms. Gottschild’s writing, always expertly researched and as graceful as her subjects, and a beautiful collection of historical photos introduce us to the fascinating world of Joan Myers Brown, founder of the Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco). See the promotional fact sheet for more information.
3. Free Math and Science Puzzle Book from NAGC Britain
I met Tracy Weinberg last winter when speaking for an organization for which he is Associate Director, and I was thrilled recently to discover another, vital part of his life: music. Here is Tracy’s bio from his Reverbnation page:
Tracy Weinberg’s style is a mix of blues, folk, and jazzy rhythms, with throaty singing in the style of Louis Armstrong. His songs are an eclectic mix of serious and light-hearted tunes. Tracy is a latecomer to the performing scene. While having played banjo since age 16 (because everybody played guitar), he set aside performing for a long time, and only began playing and writing in earnest in 2001. About four years ago, he discovered the dojo, a resonator banjo, that fit his musical style and voice much better, and takes him places that banjos can’t go.
Tracy has turned his passion into a project: that of releasing a professional-quality CD, with 13 songs (all but one of which are original compositions), recorded with several Austin-area musicians. You can read more about his Passion Project at Mountains of Dreams Recording Project.
Does your passion lack focus? Has it been sitting on the shelf for too long, keeping company only with dust bunnies? Maybe you need to organize it into a tangible, goal-driven project. Here are some resources for inspiration:
A friend and I were recently talking about college teaching, and we agreed that, when we have the choice (and professors don’t always have the choice), we don’t use textbooks anymore. Why would we, when there are so many excellent trade books from which to choose?
Not that there aren’t some good textbooks, but they aren’t the best option for every class. Take my current Creative Thinking course, for example. Why would I have my students buy an expensive, bloated, heavy, often poorly written textbook from which we might have time to cover a handful of chapters in depth (our term is ten weeks long) when I can assign Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mindand supplement it with different perspectives, up-to-the-moment electronic articles, high-quality video content, and examples from current culture and local events?
Advantages for me?
Being able to choose the author(s) and content that best fit my students’ needs
Having the flexibility to adapt course materials and assign newly published database resources
Offering a greater range of perspectives
Choosing from a richer variety and, in the subjects I teach, higher quality of titles
Advantages for the students?
Less expense
Less back strain (one student recently told me that his Tuesday backpack load is 40 pounds)
Less waste (few or no unassigned chapters)
Greater ease of book re-sale (or, from my point of view, more of a chance that the students will find the book useful enough not to re-sell)
This week in class we watched the delightfully creative RSA Animate Ken Robinson video about changing education paradigms (scroll to the bottom of this post to watch it) and discussed how higher education can change to meet the need for creative thinking and production. The students surprised me by being more positive than I’d expected (and more positive than many adults I talk to) about how their classrooms are adapting to 21st century learning. They said that many of their professors understand that students today need to learn more about how to find and sort through information, rather than simply being lectured about content that they can look up in a matter of seconds. They also understand that changing the paradigm isn’t easy, that the magnitude of the change that is needed can’t happen overnight.
Yes, a lot still needs to change, but could it be that we are making greater progress than we realize?
“Our education system has plenty of critics; I’ve been one of them. But when facing the mercurial demands of today’s job market, it seems there’s still a profound need for the social, discursive, American liberal-arts model at its best.” Read More
The liberal arts model at its best is, itself, changing. While we have much about which to complain and that still needs to be done, I, for one, feel privileged to be teaching in such a transformative, exciting, creative time, when there is always something new to learn and to try.
“If someone said you can have everything in five lifetimes or if you can have a really intense one, he would have said, ‘give me the one, I’m not coming back here.’” ~ Olivia Harrison
“People say I’m the Beatle who changed the most, but really that’s what I see life is about. You have to change.” ~ George Harrison
“He was looking for an out, for peace of mind. And I was interested in that. And It has to do with spirituality, but intellectual spirituality, not supernatural spirituality. A search for meaning, a search for the part of being human that seems to yearn for something that is more than the physical world. He ultimately may have found a way to live with himself, to a certain extent, to deal with the end of his life. That’s inspiring.” ~ Martin Scorsese
Note: A slightly different version of this post is also available at Creative Synthesis.
Last night, watching the final part of the new Martin Scorsese documentary about George Harrison, Living in the Material World, I became entranced by the quiet Beatle all over again.
I was too young to follow the Beatles when they were together, but when I was in grade school, I played my treasured Red and Blue Album collections until the grooves were nearly worn through (my son now plays them on his “retro” record player). Harrison’s songs, in particular, massage and awaken my emotions in that way that only music can. “Here Comes the Sun” lightens my heart. “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” ignites my hope. “Something” brings tears shed for sheer beauty, and every song by “The Traveling Wilburys” simply makes me glad to be alive.
What Scorsese’s documentary shows is the fascinating complexity of the gifted individual. The point is not whether he was a good person or a bad person. The point is that he lived fully, every moment of his life. As he said, “You have to change.”
From a story in the London Telegraph about Harrison’s photography:
‘What we are now is a result of our past actions, and what we’re going to be is a result of our present actions,’ he once said. ‘So for certain things there’s no way out. There’s no way I wasn’t going to be in the Beatles, even though I didn’t know. In retrospect that’s what it was, it was a set-up. At the same time, I do have control over my actions… I can try being a pop star for ever and go on TV and be a celebrity. Or I can be a gardener.’ Which is what ‘Beatle George’ ultimately chose to be.
Compare Harrison’s thoughts, above, with those from an interview he gave at age 33 (on a side note, the interviewer says, in 1976, “You look at the Stones now, and perhaps they are too old. Perhaps they should have stopped”):
Martin Scorsese on making the documentary:
The trailer for Living in the Material World:
“Something,” from the 1971 concert for Bangladesh:
When you read yesterday’s today’s New York Times story about cash incentives for classroom performance, be sure to go beyond the first page and the interesting and complex debate about internal vs. external motivation, to some fascinating results regarding inclusion and expectations:
“‘In 2009, the school began working with the math and science initiative, which requires that all barriers to A.P. enrollment be removed. “My initial instinct was that if we let everybody in, it was just going to dumb down the classes,’ Mr. Nystrom [AP math teacher] recalled.
But the school began urging students during announcements to sign up for A.P. classes, making it clear in guidance sessions and in meetings with parents that they were not just for white or middle-class students.
But the school began urging students during announcements to sign up for A.P. classes, making it clear in guidance sessions and in meetings with parents that they were not just for white or middle-class students.
Mr. Nystrom had his own recruitment program. He made tongue-in-cheek posters portraying the rap stars Lil Wayne and Flavor Flav, as well as the male heartthrobs in ‘Twilight,’ endorsing A.P. statistics as the supposed keys to success in life.
Forty-six students enrolled in Mr. Nystrom’s class in 2009, up from 12 the year before, of whom six had earned qualifying scores of at least 3 out of 5. Of the 46 students, 22 earned qualifying scores on exams in May 2010.
Last fall, enrollment surged to 61 students. Forty-three of those passed the exam, and 15, or 25 percent, got the top score. Worldwide, 15 percent of the 18,000 people who took the statistics exam got 5’s this year.
Thirty-one low-income students from Mr. Nystrom’s class passed the exam, more than at any other high school in Massachusetts.”
How many low-income, minority, and other overlooked students are we missing by assuming they don’t have what it takes?
This classic TED Talk by Dan Pink on the science of motivation offers clues as to why carrot-and-stick incentives for what he calls “20th century tasks” that require little creative problem solving (e.g., AP scores) may work in some circumstances, and also why pairing those incentives with the intrinsic motivation that Mr. Nystrom models and shares allows him to take his student to a whole new level of learning, one of “autonomy, mastery, and purpose”:
Author and teacher Lisa Rivero shares resources, tips, ideas, stories, and, most of all, encouragement for living a creative life of intensity n the 21st century.
A friend and I were recently talking about college teaching, and we agreed that, when we have the choice (and professors don’t always have the choice), we don’t use textbooks anymore. Why would we, when there are so many excellent trade books from which to choose?
