62: Going Pro

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Characteristics of Going Pro:
  • Commits full-time (24-7)
  • Practices helpful routines regardless of mood
  • Fights The Resistance everyday
  • Knows how to Embrace the Suck (think like a Marine battling Life)
  • Shows up everyday
  • Shows up no matter what
  • Stays on task
  • Commits to the long haul
  • Gets paid
  • Doesn’t over-identify with the job
  • Knows the stakes are high and real
  • Develops mastery of one’s craft
  • Has a sense of humor
  • Receives REAL, not imaginary, praise and blame
  • Patient
  • Loves the game of the work
  • Conserves energy for the long haul, doesn’t flame out
  • Eliminates chaos to make room for creativity, etc.
  • Sees work as a craft, not as a mystical art
  • Acts in the face of fear
  • Makes no excuses
  • Doesn’t expect a level playing field
  • Prepares to accept the blows of  The Resistance
  • Has Style, but doesn’t show off (until it’s needed)
  • Dedicated to mastering techniques
  • Distances herself from her instrument – employs it, doesn’t become it
  • Doesn’t take failure personally
  • Endures
  • Isn’t hindered by external factors
  • Knows limitations
  • Asks for help
  • Reinvents himself
  • Respected by other Pros
  • Makes choices to beat The Resistance

 

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Going Pro inside us enables us to beat the Resistance and claim one’s destiny.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Reflect on one’s own experiences of Going Pro – what did you do? how did it feel?
  • Research scaffolds that teach oneself and students how to build up the 4 resiliences (weapons against the Resistance).  See  Agency articles for ideas.
  • Build up reflection prompts that get students to reflect upon ways they want to (or have already gone) Pro
Early Implementation Steps
  • Be aware of signs of the Going Pro in the classroom – praise individuals for efforts that hint at Going Pro
  • Teach students to recognize and thwart symptoms of  The Resistance
  • Teach students to acknowledge when themselves and their Peers are Going Pro and to celebrate those efforts
  • Ask students to reflect upon and share experiences of times when they successfully showed signs of Going Pro.  Use these stories to extract general principles and strategies that can be practiced by teachers and students.
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Let students listen to or read helpful excerpts from The War of Art for inspiration and generative reflections.
  • Have students reflection on classroom conditions & strategies that can be improved to help them Go Pro.  Trial, test, and refine these strategies.

 

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60: Super Better

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“Jane McGonigal: The Game That Can Give You 10 Extra Years of Life.”  YouTube.  YouTube.  13 Mar. 2016.

To learn more about Jane McGonigal, check out her interview here.

To play Jane McGonical’s Super Better game, try downloading the Super Better app.

 

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Top 5 Deathbed Regrets:

  1. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
  2. I wish I’d stayed in better touch with my friends and family.
  3. I wish I’d let myself be happier.
  4. I wish I’d had the courage to express my true self.
  5. I wish I’d lived a life true to my dreams.

How Games Counter Deathbed Regrets:

  • Games can help people stay connected and develop relationships
  • East Carolina study showed that 30 minutes of playing online games per day did better than depression medications to improve mood
  • Standford study showed that expressing selves through game avatars led to better attitudes – more optimism and courage

Jane’s Story:

  • Suffered severe concussion
  • Treatment reduced physical and intellectual stimuli to the point that she started having suicidal thoughts
  • Invented a game to survive because games lead people to approach problems with more positivity and creativity

Jane’s Super Better Game:

  • Adopt a secret identify.  Example: Jane the Concussion Slayer
  • Recruit allies – friends and family that helped her track and play the game
  • Battle bad guys – actively reduce bad stimuli
  • Collect power-ups – actively seek out positive stimuli

Effects of the Super Better Game

  • Her depression disappeared
  • She stopped suffering even though concussion symptoms persisted for 1 year

Why did this work?  Post-Traumatic Growth.  People who experience this say …

  • My priorities are more aligned to my true happiness
  • I am closer to my friends and family
  • I understand myself better
  • I have a new sense of purpose and meaning
  • I am better able to focus on my goals and dreams

4 Ways to Experience Post-Traumatic Growth While Skipping the Trauma:

  1. Build physical resilience by staying active (not sitting still).
  2. Build mental resilience  (will power) by tackling tiny challenges without giving up.
  3. Build emotional resilience (ability to feel positive emotions when needed). People who experience 3:1 positive to negative emotions ratio tend to improve their health and problem solving skills.
  4. Build social resilience (drawing strength from relationships) by expressing gratitude and through touch, shaking hands for 6 seconds increases oxytocin levels which is a brain chemical that helps one feel positive and trustful.

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Learning how to use games to build ones’ physical, mental, emotional and social resilience can help one life more courageous and meaningful lives.   Converting challenges into games can help one unleash hidden talents and skills.  Teaching students skills for overcoming challenges can help them become more resilient learners.  Playing the Super Better game to achieve one’s goals can help one become better at modeling skills that relate to agency.

 

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Preparation Steps

  • Identify a goal that is worth being Super Better at.
  • Play the Super Better game to achieve that goal.
  • Document Super Better game play.  Use experiences to develop modeling skills and design agency lessons for students.
  • Research and develop strategies and activities that relate to 4 resiliences listed above.

Early Implementation Steps

  • Teach students lessons and run activities that build up 4 resiliences above.
  • Use student reflections to see if activities are helping them build up skills related to agency.

Advanced Implementation Steps

  • Teach students about the 4 types of resilience and have them research and develop classroom practices that build up these.
  • Trial student strategies and use reflections to fine-tune these.

 

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59: Scaffolding Agency

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Yay! Non-New Tech educators should be able to access this online video.  The presenter, Megan Pacheco, can be reached at @mpacheco11.

 

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Why teach agency?
  • Lack of awareness of the skills that are applied to succeed can make learners vulnerable to feeling like failures (incurable) when they do not succeed
  • Knowing that success it a product of effort, not traits, is important for all learners, not just learners who struggle
Dilemma #1: How can we convince struggling students that they CAN succeed?
  • Teach students to be aware of the effect that practice has on outcomes
  • Practice using effort & risk taking and reflecting on the outcomes of these
  • Provide high quality formative feedback from multiple sources (teachers, self, peers, community members) and teach students how to use that feedback to improve
  • Give specific feedback that clearly describes areas of strength and areas of growth
  • Don’t grade for content on newly learned skills
  • Unpack models to teach qualities and strategies related to high quality work
  • Use variety of assessment types so that more students get opportunities to use their preferred learning mode to demonstrate mastery
Dilemma #2: How to promote growth mindset (not fixed mindset)?
  • Explicitly emphasize how mastery takes time and sustained effort
  • Normalize mistakes
  • Ask students to work through problems before asking for help
  • Explicitly teach students how to learn from mistakes
  • Give agency grade on 3 revisions and content grade on 3rd revision
Dilemma #3: How to develop students’ sense of responsibility and ownership?
  • Allow students to test solutions in low stakes, safe environments
  • Promote norms that treat mistakes and risks as valued practices
  • Celebrate best mistake of the lesson or the week
  • Emphasize process over product
  • Encourage students to pursue their own learning using variety of resources
  • Provide high quality formative feedback from multiple sources (teachers, self, peers, community members) and teach students how to use that feedback to improve
  • Teach students how to set, track, and achieve individual and team goals
  • Allow students to make and document choices about their use of time
Recommended Reads:
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Agency is a critical skill that students need to be successful lifelong learners.  Breaking up agency into skills and developing scaffolds for these can help ALL students to develop the attitudes and skills they need to be successful advocates of their own learning.  Knowing how agency skills relate to good instructional & learning strategies can help teachers and students be more deliberate in their practice of strategies that promote successful learning.

 

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Preparation Steps
Early Implementation Steps
  • Regularly teach lessons that build up skills related to agency and that promote a positive learning culture.
  • Use formative feedback to fine-tune activities, routines, and policies that promote agency.
  • Have students regularly reflect on how their learning experiences are impacting their attitudes and skills.
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Have students research and develop strategies that promote agency.  Build up a reliable database of articles and books to support this research.
  • Trial student researched strategies in the classroom.  Use teacher observations and student feedback to refine these.
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58: Factors that Improve Intrinsic Motivation

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Extrinsic Motivation
  • Good for short term algorithmic tasks; bad for creative tasks
  • Can diminish intrinsic motivation
  • May be helpful when situation is stressful & requires immediate attention
  • Need for baseline extrinsic motivation.  Examples: clean classroom, engaging lessons, caring teacher
Factors That Promote Intrinsic Motivation:
  • Autonomy
    • Give students voice & choice.  Types of choice:
      • procedural – choice of task
      • organizational – choice of logistics (e.g. seating, agendas)
      • cognitive – choice of learning
        • Students create own solutions to relevant problems
        • Students publicly share problem solving approaches
        • Use thinking routines to scaffold & express thinking
  • Competence
    • Praise process, not just product.
    • Plussing protocol: I like … and … and .. what if you tried ….
    • Use responsive teaching strategies.  See Differentiation articles for ideas.
    • Anticipate misconceptions and subtle concepts/skills and proactively prepare extra scaffolds for these.
    • Use formative assessments to adjust instruction.
    • Use variety of formative assessments.
    • Use multiple grouping styles.
    • Use scaffolds to guide conversations & thinking.  See Literacy articles for ideas.
    • Pre-teach up to 6 vocabulary words with visual support
    • Use message abundancy (amplification) i.e. use several strategies to scaffold same content
  • Relationships
    • Take genuine interest in students
    • Be courteous and friendly
    • Be flexible – It’s more important to DO RIGHT, than to BE RIGHT.  Reminder the end goal is learning.
    • Don’t give up on students.
    • Have authoritative, not authoritarian classroom management style.  Being authoritarian is like a dictator approach to classroom management.  Being authoritative means demonstrating control relationally, through listening and explaining.
    • Develop empathy and attunement for students.  Empathy is understanding students’ feelings; attunement is understanding students’ thoughts.
    • Teach students how to collaborate well.  See Classroom Management articles for more ideas.
  • Relevance
    • Have students write and talk about how current learning experiences relate to their own lives.
    • Use student interests to design scaffolds and projects.
    • Teach students how to set, track and achieve goals
    • Use strategies that frame content in authentic contexts such as problem-based learning and project-based learning

 

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Lack of intrinsic motivation can lead students to withhold effort and withhold their presences (absenteeism) in the classroom.  Learning how to create the conditions that promote intrinsic motivation can help students to be more engaged in their own learning.  Treating related attitudes as skills, rather than as traits, can help teachers develop scaffolds that build students’ intrinsic motivation.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Reflect on current classroom management & instructional practices using the 4 factors above.  Which factors are strongly present in the classroom?  Which are less present in the classroom?
  • Brainstorm and research how to enhance intrinsic motivation factors that are already strengths in one’s repertoire.  Larry Ferlazzo’s blog has many resources.
  • Brainstorm and research strategies that relate to gaps in one’s repertoire.  Larry Ferlazzo’s blog has many resources.
  • Research and design lessons that build up students’ skills and attitudes that relate to intrinsic motivation.  See Agency articles  and Larry Ferlazzo’s blog  for ideas.
Early Implementation Steps
  • Regularly implement lessons that build positive learning culture and build up students skills that relate to intrinsic motivation and learning goals.
  • Develop and implement systems that relate to responsive teaching.  See Differentiation articles for ideas.
  • Ask students for feedback on scaffolds, routines, and practices and use this feedback to fine-tune them.
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Ask students to brainstorm practices & routines that can enhance 4 factors related on intrinsic motivation.
  • Teach students about intrinsic motivation and about strategies to enhance it.  See Agency articles and Larry Ferlazzo’s blog for ideas.

 

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