After a sad end to the week with the news about Malani, I thought that it might be an ideal time to get to know ourselves and the people we work with a little bit better. So here is a link to a personality test devised from the work of Jung and Briggs Myer.
What would be great is if everyone did the test in your Grade level or Department and then you used 15 minutes at the start of your next meeting to talk about the outcome.
Unless otherwise notified there is always a 10 minute meeting at 15:00 in the MPR. Last week's meeting is the foundation for this weeks Food for Thought. Following the Paris bombing I raised the question about talking to students about events in the world. I believe that if we are to produce thoughtful and internationally minded students they have to be engaged in conversations about current affairs and the array of differing perspectives that might emerge for any one event. This link discusses why we should be initiating such conversations with our students no matter how old they are. The key point is that the approach may differ but there is no excise for avoiding raising such issues either in class or homeroom and advisory.
Arising from these events or even just our service activities is the difference between empathy and sympathy. This 3 minute video illustrates this difference very well and might provide the source for an interesting provocation in homeroom or advisory. The question this video should raise for us as teachers if we are going to develop a successful service attitude in the School, which do we need to develop most in our students empathy or sympathy? How do we do this successfully?
For your information, with Michael leaving we have been conducting a world wide serach for an appropriate replacement. We have had lots of good applications and are creating a shortish list today and will be Skyping candidates next week and then looking to invite the best ones to school to meet our community the first week of December.
Finally, on Tuesday I talked about how successful the PD day was on the 13th November, and how we would like to build on these workshops at the next series of PD days at the start of January. These workshops should support the theme energized, engaged and empowered. I have already received two applications to run workshops and would like to receive lots more. The aim will be to have two sets of workshops held over three sessions so that you can attend more than one workshop and so that workshop leaders also have the opportunity to join a session.
Have a good Sunday,
Yours
Adrian
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Dear all, Before focusing on our world at ISHCMC I think that we should give a minutes thought to all the innocent French men and women who lost their lives on Friday night as a result of the series of terrorist attacks that rocked Paris. Let's hope that politicians in the western world remember the words of Gandhi and look for a wise response to such a challenge to peace and security rather than meeting violence with violence.
I hope that you all enjoyed the professional development work on Friday. I was extremely impressed with the engagement that everyone showed both as workshop presenters and participants. Every time we do something like this it makes me more and more aware of the educational talent that we have in our faculty and how much there is to learn from each other. This link to Kath Murdoch's blog was sent to me last week and connects perfectly with the work we were doing on Friday. In this short post Kath gives six ideas that need to be considered when letting go and allowing students to inquire. Kath says......
"One of the great privileges of my job is bearing witness to the process of ‘reconstruction’ that teachers experience as they transit to more inquiry-based practice. Becoming an inquiry teacher can mean a significant degree of ‘unlearning’ as beliefs and roles are reconsidered and re-shaped. In a series of conversations I held with groups of teachers last week, I asked what they were noticing about themselves and how they were changing as they engaged in a year of learning about and through inquiry. We discussed the struggles and the joys of working this way and the new questions and goals that were emerging. Taking time to do this – to press the pause"
Finally, thought that you might like to watch this inspiring short video from the Atlantic that shares Maria Popova’s, a regular contributor to Brain Pickings, reflections on finding fulfillment, satisfaction,
and purpose in life. “I share these here not because they apply to every life
and offer some sort of blueprint to existence,” she writes, “but in the hope
that they might benefit your own journey in some small way.”
Hope you are all having a relaxing weekend, I certainly am in Quy Nhon. See you on Tuesday, for a four day week. Yours Adrian
I will keep my words to a minimum because this weeks food for thought has a couple strands that I hope you will take time to follow.
The first video is about 20 minutes long. It is primarily about high achieving and gifted students but I think it applies to many of our students at ISHCMC. When you listen to the speaker you will find lots to reflect upon and I am sure that, as I did, you will grimace and think, 'oh, I have done that.' It relates and refers to Carol Dweck's work, our achievement culture through the language we use to praise and motivate students and how we differentiate in our classrooms.
The next strand links to the work that is going on with mindfulness. We have made great strides forward with this so far this year. It is obvious that it is taking a better grip across the school and being taken far more seriously. We have colleagues attending bthe positive education courses in Singapore and feeling we are very well placed to become a Pos Ed school. Around the world more and more schools have introduced mindfulness into their curriculum. Mindful Schools have just expanded their resources which may be useful for you to browse. They also have courses that you can be done for those looking for those differentiating items for their cv.
As the 31 day Mindfulness summit came to an end so another opportunity opened up with another 21 day free Oprah and Deepak Chopra meditation course. Of course I signed up and have started and wanted to draw your attention to session 2 which I think was excellent. If you want to hear it you will need to use the link provided and register today (Saturday) or by mid afternoon Sunday to listen to it. If you can't spend 20 minutes just start at 3:00 minutes and listen to Deepak.........it provides some ideas you can use with your students. Here is the introduction too session 2:
“Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We learn that we are what we believe. We shape our identities around what we feel to be true about ourselves. Sometimes we don’t even clearly know what our beliefs are, because many are hidden and unconscious. Beliefs we hold about ourselves may be either mild or passionate, but they all still contribute to who we are. Our meditation today brings us greater clarity about how our beliefs form our identities, because to truly understand ourselves, we need to examine our beliefs closely in the light of our awareness.
Finally a 2:00 minute video recommended by the Mindfulness summit that brings so much of what we are trying to achieve by being mindful, being in the present and appreciating every minute that we have when we have it, trying not to miss that opportunity, BEING NOT JUST DOING. Sometimes we all need reminding to take a breath.
As you know Pink ISHCMC is primarily about raising awareness regarding female cancer. Obviously this is an important thing to be doing for our community as one never knows what tomorrow holds for any of us or our families and loved ones.. Following on from Friday, I saw this 10 minute video, and wanted to share it with you. It does not relate to pedagogy or directly to our fortunate lives but rather to the lives of 1,000's of girls/ women in developing countries. What I hope it does do is increase our awareness, compassion and empathy for people we interact with everyday in our lives in South East Asia.
This happens to be the story of a Guatemalan woman called Rosa, but as I said, it is typical of many woman throughout our world, deprived of a secondary education, mistreated and turned into outcasts, who despite their own problems maintains an inner strength, an awareness of others and a desire to work to help others. It demonstrates how important education is and how it changes lives and why we should not allow any of our ISHCMC students to waste the privileged opportunity that birth has given them.
