Education As A Priority For Living More Than OK

From Foter

As the Summer comes to a close I see activity at the local elementary schools as teachers return to prepare their rooms for the new school year. My belief is that education is important in developing minds to face the challenges of life with critical and creative thinking. Education provides the foundation to prepare young people to explore possibilities for their futures and create new possibilities that are not apparent at present time. I am thankful I had a mother although not well educated herself, due to the time period she grew up in, emphasized education to me. Also I am thankful for the many fine teachers I had who inspired a love for learning. In the past and in my book, I have mentioned my third grade teacher, Mrs. Verna Clifford, who believed in her students and focused on the basics of reading, writing and math to set a foundation for future learning.

Thinking of education, caused me to have interest in a new Glenn Beck book written with Kyle Olson. The title is Conform: Exposing the Truth About Common Core and Public Education. No matter what side of the argument one is on it is an important book to think through the problems with education. I went through public schools in Barberton, Ohio and appreciated the education I received. Did I have perfect teachers all the time? – no. I would have, if they could have used cloning technology to create more Verna Cliffords. But the majority of teachers were passionate about teaching. That is one problem I have with those who bash public education (which Glenn is not doing). People pick out the bad examples of teachers and paint all public school teachers with the same brush. It would be like going to a grocery store and finding one apple with a bruise on it and asking the grocer to throw away all the apples.

In Conform the beginning starts out with the well documented problem that American students fall behind similar students in many other countries. They point out that studies show that American students “rank 31st in math, 24th in science and 21st in reading globally” (page 7). If we want to continue to be a global leader our education of our youth obviously needs to improve. It is problems like this that Common Core is trying to address. Glenn and Kyle go through the book making sounds arguments that maybe Common Core is not the best solution.

From Foter

I am going to discuss just a couple of concerns that I felt strong about in the book. Again I suggest if you are concerned about education in our country to pick up a copy to read and think through the issue yourself. One problem I have strong feelings about is that the Common Core system encourages “cookie cutter” education and teaching to the test. An example of this can be found on page 87, “If the English portion of a Common Core related test asks one question about Shakespeare but four questions about the Environmental Protection Agency document, it won’t be long before schools tailor their curriculum to include the EPA document. As McClusky puts it “Year after year, questions become curricula”. I have spoken with teachers who lament the teaching to the test dampens their love for teaching. More importantly, many College students have told me that it is all the required testing that turned them off to education. How can we create a love for learning to build creative and critical thinkers in such an environment?

Speaking of the tests, when I was working on my Masters in Counseling many classmates were school teachers. You could hear the anxiety in their voices when they mentioned that the TAKS or TASS tests were coming. You would think it was an invading army with the anxious voices. They would mention how anxious the students were. I would think in my mind “Of course! If the teachers and counselors are this scared of the tests that is going to rub off on the students”. In my discussion with college students many have shared how schools would focus for a couple of weeks in all the classes on the TAKS English for example before the test. How ridiculous! I am not against comparative tests. I think back to my elementary and junior high days. We had national tests but they were never hyped up like they do today. You just took the test and received the results. The emphasis on teaching was not particular national test questions. Instead of looking for new ideas for teaching someone should look back at what worked right in the past before test scores started to slip across the country.

Then a point that raised my blood pressure was on page 112 and 113 where they discuss all the data that is being collected on students to predict possible failure in college and to force career directions on students. I have seen this in action. One institution I worked at used an assessment tool for all incoming freshmen. In our college success course we would go over the results. One day one student came to my office and said the computer report said he would drop out. I asked him if he wanted to finish his Associate in Air Conditioning & Heating. He said yes. So I told him, “who is right – the computer report or you?” He went on to finish his degree. Another student, a girl, was doing poorly in her classes. She told me she did not like the health care program she was in. She actually wanted graphic design but a school counselor in high school told her that her career test showed she should do nursing, (which she did not like but did as the counselor told her to). Glenn is so right on this point. I am a believer in that career tests can be a useful tool but they are not exact predictors as the talking head experts like to make them out to be. Most of these “Experts” who say that students need to know at age 17 what they will do for the rest of their lives, did not know themselves at that age where they would be at age 50. That is one reason I promote to my college students to explore thinking about Dr. Jim Bright’s concepts of the Chaos Theory of Careers. We should be building up students critical thinking abilities so they can shape their own futures instead of following cookie cutter sameness in what computer programs tell them what to do.

From Foter

These are just a couple of points that tapped into my thinking on education. Glenn and Kyle were very good at presenting arguments about the problems with Common Core. I do wish they would have spent more time presenting solutions. That is weak point in the book. Parents need to be more involved in promoting the importance of education in the lives of their children. If we keep saying they are the future of the country what are we doing for them to help them prepare for progressing in that future?

Reflection: What was your education experience like growing up? Who were your favorite teachers and what made them your favorite? What did you learn from them?

Moving Beyond Boredom On Your Career Journey

Every hour of work feels like a never-ending blur of the same blahness of the previous hour. What once was an interesting job is now a routine of “can I just make it through another day”. This work morass hampers our work productivity and affects how well we do on work revues. This can even hasten a layoff in these financially tough times where companies are looking for people to be rid of. The burnout and blahs are often a result of boredom taking over our work life. Our career life can be debilitated by boredom and the feeling of being in a stuck zone.

In the work world one major cause of this is we become so familiar with our work that the initial excitement of learning to do well fades away. The routine activities reach such familiarity we find ourselves floating through on autopilot with no excitement or enjoyment of what we are doing. We settle not to aim for excellence but the OKness of just getting by with the minimum effort just to keep the paycheck coming. This can make us feel like we are in the Stuck zone; stuck with doing the same work activity day after day. Being in the Stuck zone carries with it a depressive lack of feeling; a numbness of just going through the motions. When we are in the boring stuck zone we have a nagging feeling that this is not the way to spend our work life. What are some ways to move beyond this boredom in our work and career area of our life?

Look for a renewed sense of calling in your work is a starting point. You may respond "but I am not in a calling I am just doing a job for a paycheck". You can turn a job into a calling. Take a relook at what you are doing as calling can relate to the sense of purpose in our work and career. Whose lives are you touching through your work? What is the bigger picture of life going on in your work place? Is it just about you or something bigger than you? Try to find the bigger perspective in your work. Purpose can rebuild some fulfillment in your work.

Our mindset attitude also can help with moving beyond boredom as boredom is often rooted in our attitude. Having a mindset for excellence instead of just getting by can improve your feeling levels to conquer boredom. Education and learning gets a bad rap but it is through learning we can increase our work skills and turn a job more into a career feeling and maybe even a calling feeling. Are you working where the HR department offers trainings? Check out their training opportunities. On the internet there are also training websites that help you improve in your work skills. Local community colleges and universities may offer continuing Education courses that relate to improving your work skills and continuing education credits are usually lower cost that normal college credit courses..

One thing that has always helped me in my attitude towards work has been the spiritual aspect of my work. Whether it was shipping and receiving for a company in Ohio, Janitorial work through college days, customer service, or my most recent work with students at a University I keep a spiritual component in my work mindset. Part of the spiritual is the big picture purpose of my work. Another part is I think of who am I working for? The company, the customer, the paycheck? Ultimately even though in a secular environment I believe I am working for God. That mindset guides me to work for as much excellence as I can in all I do. All my activities at work I am doing in God’s presence. It guides me to work in an ethical way so at the end of the day I can say with no regrets I gave it my best.

Another area of moving beyond boredom is to keep improving the work experience. This allows you to tap into your creative thinking to improve your work life. Write a list of 5 areas of your work you really enjoy. These are the flow activities where time at work flies by. They are probably areas where your natural strengths shine through. Brainstorm how you can keep improving in these areas. Then look at 5 weak areas to your work. These are the areas that make you dread Monday’s blues. They hamper flow and make the day drag on and on and on and on. You get the point! Brainstorm how you can attack these areas and either get help with them or come up with more enjoyable ways to do them. The writings of Michael Michalko are wonderful to help in developing your creative thinking in the workplace.

These are just a few ideas to help in overcoming boredom in your career life. You can research on the internet and find others or in your personal brainstorming come up with other ideas. The important thing is if you are in a stuck zone in your work you don’t necessarily in these financially tough times have to throw in the towel you have the power in your mind and attitudes to Move beyond the boredom.

Reflection
Take time to do the exercise noted above:
Write a list of 5 areas of your work you really enjoy. These are the flow activities where time at work flies by. They are probably areas where your natural strengths shine through. Brainstorm how you can keep improving in these areas. Since these make use of your strengths see how you can enlarge these 5 areas in your work. Then list 5 weak areas to your work. These are the areas that make you dread Mondays blues. They hamper flow and make the day drag on and on and on and on. You get the point! Brainstorm how you can attack these areas and either get help with them or come up with more enjoyable ways to do them.

Moving Beyond OK with Creative Thinking

In my last blog I spoke of the need for using Critical Thinking to improve our life journey. I will discuss Critical Thinking in more depth in the future but I wanted to speak to the importance of Creative Thinking as well. Your first thought might be, “I’m not creative. I even took a career assessment once that told me I was social, realistic, and I think conservative.” That was probably an Interest Inventory based on the RIASEC model – Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. Conservative is close. Consider what Brenda Ueland said in her book, If You Want To Write: “I have proved that you are all original and talented and need to let it out of yourselves; that is to say you have the creative impulse. But the ardor for it is inhibited and dried up by many things; as I said, by criticism, self-doubt, duty, nervous fear….”.

So repeat after me, “ I am original and talented and need to let it out of me! I have the creative impulse!”. You are creative. Maybe no Michelangelo and you need to tap into your creativity. Think back to the imagination you had as a child. You could dream wild dreams, turn a tree branch into a laser gun, or see purple elephants flying through the air. Over the years it disappears just as Brenda Ueland says by criticism as teachers and parents tell you ,”don’t be that way, settle down!”. We then resign to settle down to okness and being not creative.

Since you now know you are creative the key is to tap into it. Think through an area of art -- do you like to write, does music interest you? Or maybe you want to try painting, sculpting, photography, or quilting? Try something new. Trying one of the arts will help in building your creative thinking skills. Check out creative resources. On the web I like the information found at www.creativityforlife.com where there are a number of articles you can read about creativity. Also www.creativity-portal.com has a plethora of informational tidbits on the writing and physical arts. Take some time to peruse these websites to see if there are any helps to build creativity into your life.

As we build an awareness of our creative side we will improve in our creative thinking. This will then improve our curiosity, increase our perseverance in facing challenges, see more possibilities within the problems we face, and open up our imaginations more. With creative thinking we move beyond the can’t be done thinking to there -- must be some way we can do this. The “can’t be done mindset”, stops creativity. Here are some examples from history: Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society in 1895 said, “Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.”; Robert Milliken, Nobel prizewinner in physics in 1923 said “there is no likelihood man will ever tap into the power of the atom.” Intelligent people can hamper creativity and new ideas with their “I cant’s”. We can do the same with the same type of self-talk: “I would love to do that but it’s just impossible for me.”, “I just am not creative enough to come up with new ideas!”, “I would never be able to do that.” Try changing the “I cant’s” to “I can” and see how you feel. Creative Thinking allows us to not only think outside the box but to turn the box inside out or create a new box. Are you open to thinking of new ways to new ideas? Are you a possibility thinker or a just one-way thinker? Being open to your creative thinking side opens your life to new ideas and possibilities for your life journey. That is a way to move beyond ok and sameness.

Michael Michalko is an in depth researcher on Creative Thinking and creativity. On his website creativethinking.net are many free articles to open our mind to deeper levels of creativity. His popular book, Thinkertoys, is one I would highly recommend if you are looking for creative thinking ideas. It is full of techniques for you to try as an individual or in a group setting. Also you can do some reading research on creative people who you think highly of as examples of creativity such as Alexander Graham Bell, Enrico Fermi, Cyrus Hall McCormick, Leonardo Da Vinci, Claude Monet, Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonin Dvorak, Maya Angelou, C. S. Lewis. Pick up and read a biography on their life or research them on the internet. Of course my choice as a Bookhead, would be a book on the creative person of your choice. Accept and celebrate your creativity!

Reflection:

Have you accepted that you are creative? Where in your life are you letting “I can’t” or “that is impossible” stop your creativity. Draw up a list of creative people in the present or history you would like to research and draw inspiration from their stories.