Dear One and All:
Welcome to the “official” final day our discussion. We’ve come a long way, focusing on frameworks and practices from positive psychology that show promise for helping our students learn, persist and flourish. I want to thank our panelists: Beth Tuckwiller, Stel Gragoudas, Lindsey Anderson, and Philip Trejo for their time, effort, and insights. A special thanks goes out to our student presenters, Mary Zrara and Alexis McGee, for making the time to share their experiences with us.
As always, we hope the discussion will continue here within the community of practice as we take time to digest all that we’ve learned. Mike and I will be posting a summary of the discussion and resources next week. Will you help us with that process by answering a few questions?
- What are some “aha” moments that you have found in this discussion?
- What have you learned that you didn’t know or understand before?
- How do you think this discussion can shape your practice?
Thank you for coming along for our journey. We look forward to hearing from you.
Mike Cruse, Disabilities in Adult Education Moderator
Cynthia Zafft, Postsecondary Completion Moderator
Comments
Dear Cythia and all,
I'm a Job Developer and ESL instructor who serves refugees. I've enjoyed the rich discussion and appreciate the readings and links. Thank you! My biggest take-away is that I should explicitly teach what a mindset is and why having a growth, rather than a fixed, mindset is important.
Also, the week's discussions reminded me of some resiliency practices that I learned when studying to be a life coach and made me take another look at them. Modeling resiliency would be a great basis for cultivating it in students. Here are the practices from a prominent and masterful coach, Doug Silsbee: http://www.presencebasedcoaching.com/subscribers/sixpractices
In reading your comments about mindset, I thought about the importance of positive emotions. Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a "broaden-and-build" theory. Under that, positive emotions widen our perception and encourage us to explore and this behavior results in our building knowledge and social relationships. Positive emotions, then, would be fertile ground for adopting a growth mindset. I took her free mass online course, Positive Psychology, available through Coursera, www.coursera.org. It was excellent and included specific evidence-based practices, such as Martin Seligman's gratitude practice, described here in my favorite blog, Brainpickings: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/02/18/martin-seligman-gratitude-visit-three-blessings/. This excercise could fit right into the study of health and wellness.
I'm sorry I couldn't participate in this discussion earlier. I wanted to mention that the body can be used to evoke emotions, including positive ones (Paul Ekman and Susannah Block have done work in this area). A slumped body creates or maintains different thoughts and emotions from a body with a smile or good posture. With both students and job seekers I encourage them, when appropriate, to observe their posture. During our break my class often does Qi Gong or other student-led exercises. We come away refreshed, smiling from someone's antics, and ready to learn. I have introduced Brain Gym exercises, taught them how to "center" as well. Amy Cuddy has done numerous engaging TED talks and YouTube videos on this body/mind topic. This reminds me to review my own practices and those I'm using in the classroom and with job seekers.
Thanks again for bringing my awareness to the important topics of self-determination, grit, and resilence!
I agree! Barbara Fredrickson's work is terrific and definitely related!
Thank you so much for your insight. I agree with how important it is for us to model these qualities/traits in how we interact and engage out students/clients. I am also grateful for the great questions and insights that everyone brought to this great topic. The more that people discuss and share, maybe the more such practices, that are proven to increase student success, will become more widely implemented. Some of the articles that have been mentioned would be powerful resources in moving this cause forward and eventually standard support programing practice.
Dear Kendra:
Thank you for these resources and for jumping in. I hope that this conversation and additions to any and all threads will continue throughout the weeks ahead. (And, I just changed my posture from slumped over my computer, typing, and chewing on a stale bagel to sitting up, looking out the window, and taking a deep breath. It's raining, the leaves are changing, the coffee and conversations are great!)
Cynthia