I Am Not a Time Lord

Okay that confession probably comes as no surprise to the Whovians out there. What the heck is a Time Lord the rest of you are asking. In short, they live very long lives, can travel through and have some control over time. (That was over-simplified but that will do for a description)

For those that just saw someone's head explode and this blog is still open on the screen: Sorry about that.

For those didn't have their head explode: I will continue.

I was a little frustrated yesterday. Several things bothered me. For one, I had set a goal to have a story completed, revised and submitted for a contest deadline that was up yesterday. I missed out on the opportunity to work while I still had the energy last weekend. I was motivated and ready to go, but other things ended up taking higher priority and zapped that energy. I also felt really exhausted most of the week. Just happens sometimes I reminded myself.

Well I found several answers. Several discussions I have seen this week have involved characteristics of introverts. By many measures I measure far to the introvert side. All people need time to recharge their batteries, and as an introvert, my way of recharging is in silence and solitude. For years I felt like this somehow made me broken. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy being around people. My job involves a lot of contact with people, and a high amount of stimulation overall. I love what I do, but I need a lot of recharge time. When I don’t take that time, it starts building up on me. I think this week caught up with me. I am really feeling pretty ragged. It is frustrating. I am not Superman, I have to remind myself. During times like this I have to prioritize. I need to ask myself a few questions:

• Where do I make family time?
• What are the most important things that have to be done?
• What time and energy can I reasonably expect that I can put into anything?
• Where can I squeeze in even a few minutes of quiet time?
• How can I negotiate with those around me and express what I need, without that task also?
• How can I do the above and still keep some level of productivity? (Yes I am now realizing that my second job is writing.)

 I have to realize that there are times that I am not going to do it all. If I want to remain civil and keep from stumbling around like a zombie, the 4th point just can’t be sacrificed. It is a given that the first point doesn’t have much wiggle room.

If I figure out some device that makes more time. I will be sure to let you all know. Being a creative introvert, apparently I need some quiet and alone time to work on it. Looks like you all aren’t getting a TARDIS out of me anytime soon.

When Our Boundaries Are Stretched

I recently ran across a photo a high-school classmate had posted up of a beach somewhere in Florida. It reminded me of a trip that a group of us took during my senior year. A handful of us took a trip to the Orlando area. While were there we visited Disney/Epcot, Cocoa Beach, and we went to see a shuttle not launch. That’s right, we sat in a bus for several hours in early March to see a shuttle launch that didn’t happen.  I think we all were slightly disappointed we didn’t get to see a shuttle launch, but we still had an awesome time.

One of the things that made the trip enjoyable and a growing experience was for that few days, many of our barriers were down. We were in a different environment than we were accustomed. We were focused on a common activity and more or less we had similar goals for the time. This is one of the times I was stretched outside my comfort zone and my perceptions of the world were challenged.

Being stretched, placed outside our comfort zone, and challenging our preconceived notions of how the world works are all part of becoming educated. It is easier to stay stuck in a particular mindset and to keep doing things the way we have always done them. It is easier to do things that we have already learned how to do. The problem comes when what we have done before doesn’t work anymore. Sometimes, if we keep holding on to old patterns it makes inevitable change all the more painful for us.

I frequently see students that tell me something like, “How can they expect us to learn this, we haven’t done it before.” I just have to laugh inside when I hear that. Of course they haven’t done it before, that is why it is learning.

I hadn’t taken a trip to Florida before. I hadn’t spent 90 or so hours in a row without interruption around peers from high school. Because it was new, I learned. Because I let go of some of my old thinking, I learned. I learned that those peers were more like me than I had thought. My boundaries were stretched. I went back to my high school a few days later and couldn’t see things the same anymore. Thanks to those that stretched me.

Hooray! Now What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

Today I received news that I and a colleague will be presenting at a session for the Kentucky Center Mathematics conference in March. I first passed the message along to her, and then reality set in: we had a presentation to finish. We plan on doing a presentation on motivating students in learning math. Not fifteen minutes after notifying her, realization hit me. We have something to say, and I assume we will have an audience to show. We will be sharing our insight and expertise with others interested in what we have to share. Expertise-when did I cross over into that territory? I guess it snuck up on me. It feels difficult to realize that sometimes. I really feel ambivalent about this too. I don’t know if I need to hold a piece of it to keep me humble, or if it holds me back from doing more.
 

Part of this is connected with motivation, our topic for presentation. If people feel something is impossible for them to accomplish, usually they won’t even waste their time trying. As I pull from the strongest parts of myself, I know that sharing along with my colleague our experience, our perceptions as tutors, and the work we do to encourage our students is an important task, but I know it is possible to do. It does make it easier to know that I have a good team mate. Knowing that I don’t have to put out all efforts alone and that I can work in good support structures makes daunting tasks much more manageable.

Being an introvert, I have to remind myself that I don’t always have to do things on my own. It is okay to pull in others to share the work on important tasks. I don’t have to be a solitary voice to speak a message. Sometimes it can start by telling one person, and then convince them to join in spreading that message.  If we share our vision with the right kind of people, it can go so much further.

5 Ways That You Can Improve Communication in Tutoring (or life)

This week I took part in training for our consultants at the community college where I work. Here are a few thoughts related to what was presented.

To clarify on terminology, we use the term consultant rather than tutor. We do try and distance ourselves from the stigma that students often perceive from receiving tutoring. If you are asking a consultant, you are seeking advice or guidance in an area that you may not be familiar. We feel that this sets the stage for a different type of thinking when working with students than the general perception that students can come with, “If I need to see a tutor, I must somehow be a failure.”

My parts in the training had to do with communication. In many jobs where we provide a service, our communication skills are often what really determine the success of an interaction, not necessarily the content that we deliver. So one of the most important areas we can improve is in the way we connect (or fail to connect) to others.

1) Be approachable. When we are working with others, does our demeanor invite others to speak to us, or do we give an appearance that they are bothering us? Greet the student. Ask their name, and when you speak, address them directly. If we put up barriers, whether literal or figurative, then people will stop trying to communicate with us. In the end that will kill business.

2) Go to where they are. This one is big, and is really a follow-up to #1. If we expect people to communicate with us, we often have to make the first step and go to them. This has a double message. Sometimes we have to speak using terms that they will understand before we can introduce all they fancy technical language. In addition we might have to go meet with them where they are comfortable, to bring them in.

3) Listen first. This is harder than it sounds. Many of us have developed a habit of being ready with a response before we have even heard the full content of the message. This happens a lot in many contexts, but (and here I go blaming the media) it is displayed a great deal on television. Pundits are notorious for cutting each off. We often see them responding to the first word they disagree with before the speaker even gets a sentence out. Instead of this, it is better to let the speaker finish and wait for a pause or break in thought before we respond.

4) Check for understanding.  What this means is, make sure that the message that was received was in fact the message was intended. Our speaking is full of many ambiguities, and people tend to leave content out that they believe is obvious. Be aware, that just because it is obvious to you, another listener may be completely oblivious to the message sent. One of the best ways clarity can be gained is with a mixture of paraphrasing and follow-up questions. Something like, “ Let me see if I got this right, you thought in factoring you were  supposed to…”, might be a useful to check the message you heard.

5) “I don’t know,” is not a bad phrase.  It is okay to tell people this, but remember it is not the end of the story. It is better to express our limitations, rather than take a wild guess and be wrong. Some things that are helpful when this situation comes up:

• Have a list in mind of resources you can pull from. This includes other people you can refer to.
• Modeling good study skills, questioning skills, and problem solving skills may actually be the solution that is necessary.
• Have the student to contact the instructor via email, phone or an office visit, and let them know that instructors are approachable, and are normally glad to have students come and ask them questions.

These are things that it took me quite a while to learn as a tutor, and I still slip into bad habits once in a while. Marshall McLuhan is famous for saying “The medium is the message.” I think this may be a big part of working with people in service jobs. The way we convey our message to others is in fact itself a big message to them as well. As you can see, much of this is directed at the tutoring situation, but I really think several of these points may apply to other areas of communicating as well. Well, minus the send to instructor part. I don't think a server in a restaurant can send a rude customer back to their teacher, but who knows?

Finding the Gift That Makes Us Unique

“We get trapped in patterns of thinking, including the way we’ve learned to perceive the different aspects of ourselves. We learn what is wrong with us – or rather, what other people perceive as wrong with us. Those external voices get internalized and become the inner voices that we carry around with us until we decide (if we decide) to finally stop listening to them.

What we often don’t recognize is that it’s the things that we get criticized for, that get declared as the ‘weaknesses’ that we must fix and fix and fix (until we fail, give up and watch American Idol), that hold the key to our potential Remarkableness. In our weaknesses lie our strengths (and vice versa). If our brains can only learn to perceive them that way”. -Justine Musk “the art of letting your freak flag fly”

Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between well-meaning alternatives. Sometimes people that think they are doing something to help someone may be doing more harm than good in the bigger picture. As an educator, I find myself in a strange position.  There are things that people do that are dysfunctional behaviors. There are also things that people do, that just aren’t the way I would do them. Sometimes I have myself whether my critique of what they are doing comes from an honest sense that what they are doing leads to self-destruction (which I have seen far too many times as a tutor) or if their actions are just not my preferred way the world works.

“Self-discipline needs improvement”: nearly every year in elementary that showed up on my grade card. That’s fine, I was a kid. It turned out later I found that I was a child with A.D.D.  The one that strikes me as odd though came from my Art Teacher. Our school had the same teacher for all grades, so I came to know her well over the span of four years. Conversely she thought she knew me. But really, I wonder how that mark would even work in Art. Self-discipline needs improvement in Art?

How does this lead to the quote I posted? Well, I was a talker and a dreamer. I look back and many of my daydreaming times in elementary school were interrupted by times of talking to my neighbors. I loved to talk and to hook classmates into my stories. What was perceived as a dysfunctional behavior for my education, some things that needed to be fixed, have turned into things that are my strengths. What I have learned to do is find the niche where those things work well.

So I guess the point is, maybe there is something that those critical voices you have internalized would have fixed, that may be the best part of your uniqueness. Look closely: is there a way that it could be your greatest strength? How can you develop it, bring it out as a gift, rather than a curse?

The Importance of Making Mistakes

Working as a tutor one of the big barriers that I see many students face is the fear of making mistakes. Many students that I work with feel like they have completely failed and need to just give up when they make a mistake, meaning to them, get a wrong answer in the learning process as I work with them. The conventional wisdom is that you learn things correctly and repeat them correctly so that they become drilled into the brain. Some research indicates that this may be inefficient and isn’t really in line with the way our brain is designed. 

I talked with a friend and colleague of mine the other day about where I was going with my writing. The direction I wanted to go in my writing and a couple stories that I really want to write were discussed. I told him that I felt like I needed to write about some others things to get practice before I wrote on those issues that I really cared about. He mentioned something to me, that perhaps I should go ahead and write them now, and improve them as I went along. He told me that I should write about them while I found them interesting. I went home and got to thinking about this. I realized when it push came to shove, I was afraid of making mistake with what I felt strongly about expressing.

 I can see, there are some flaws in this thinking:

1.  I really need to write most about the things that are important to me, because I will “put my all” into them.
2. I will learn more along the way, and may pick the pieces back up later and improve them.
3. Perfect is an ugly monster that I have a love/hate relationship with and I just need to get over it.
4. If I write them “wrong” I will learn from the experience than if I get it right.

So, I am making it a goal this week to work on the handful of stories I really want to write, even if I do write them wrong this go around. The mathematician in me does want things precise in the end, but I can make some mistakes, take a few dead-end trails, backtrack, experiment, and more importantly: have fun in the process. So, what are you going to try even if you think you are going to do it wrong?

On Nurturing a Creative Spirit

At least as early as 5th grade and perhaps earlier, I loved involving people in my stories. I had two friends that I played with regularly at recess. The three of us worked out what might have been a very simple version of serialized fiction. Each of us had a particular role, and when recess came, we would rush out to the playground and assume the identity of our respective characters. I came up with the story line, and each day told them where the story was going. They jumped into their roles from there. Although I didn’t have the name for it at the time, our serial was a “space opera.” I was a local commander for a particular intergalactic agency that was responsible for patrolling this part of our galaxy. One friend was my director for intelligence, and the other was responsible for handling the diplomatic and political ends. We had many fantastic adventures together.

I had not heard of E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series when I was this young, but some of our themes echoed the struggles of Kimball Kinnison against the Boskonian Empire. A couple of years ago discovered this series, and of course absolutely fell in love with it. How could I help myself? I had grown up on a steady diet of “Star Wars” with generous helpings of “Star Trek” and “Buck Rogers” mixed in. As I matured, I discovered the likes of Issac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein and Philip K. Dick. Their great stories fed my imagination. I developed a love of science itself and astronomy in particular in part from their fictional worlds that I found myself so immersed in.

I don’t think my active imagination was that much different than many boys my age, except that perhaps there was more richness to the material. I think part of what has driven me is the desire to draw others into those imaginations. I could not help but be a storyteller. My dad is a storyteller as well. He loves telling stories. It amazes me how he is able to capture attention and draw his listener in.

I can see some of this coming out in my son’s highly active imagination as well. It amazes me, and I can’t help but feel proud when he plays with his toys and builds these great fantastic worlds and weaves tales set in those places.

I feel like most kids are born with a good spark of imagination, but only some environments really nurture that imagination to really grow. I was fortunate to have some around me that encouraged that spark to grow in me. Sure there were some that didn’t see the value in it, but in the end their voices haven’t completely ruled. In a way I can thank them: they have given me ideas to develop antagonists in my stories-- writer’s revenge!

Caught in a Whirlwind Called "The Freshman Year"

It’s open registration time for the spring semester now. This reminds me of my beginning at college. I can remember the strong sense of just being overwhelmed.  That was August of 1990. I arrived at Berea College in Berea, KY. Berea is a private liberal arts college with a total student body around 1600. I had come from a high school that had a graduating class around 50 people (I think). I recall the sense of being overwhelmed as I took my first steps on Berea’s campus. My parents brought me to the first orientation day; we were directed to go to the gym. Inside there were tables set up all over the gym floor. Each table was a station that represented a college office: from financial aid to academic affairs. So much happened on that day, and it all felt like being caught up in a white-out snowstorm: I had few landmarks to get my bearings. Most of the people working the stations were friendly, and I think I remember most of them being patient. There were so many things that I needed to do in the week of freshman orientation. I was assigned my new home for the next few months. I had to make sure my student account was in order. I had to check in with my work-study assignment. Since I was a first generation college student, some of this was completely foreign to me.

Watching many of the students arriving this week, I can see the looks on their faces. Some of them look dazed, some terrified, and some have a look of nervous excitement. Many of them will be in a similar situation to mine so many years ago, but their world is different now. The economy is in a different place. Many of them have families at home to take care of and some have jobs already. It is hard for me to imagine the level of pressure that would bring now were I in their position.