"One Thing" for Thurs. Nov. 14

For my VP study group last year, we had to read a book called "The Art of Possibility". An ex-husband and wife team were the authors and he was a music conductor while she was a writer. The liner notes referred to the book as "A Book of Practices." What I took away from it was one chapter. This chapter was called "Giving an A".

image taken from: Here

To sum it up, Mr. Zander, our teacher/conductor/author would promise his students an A in his course, before they had even started. His purpose was to eliminate their anxiety over the measurement of their performance, thereby allowing them to take risks with their musical playing. It worked. Mr. Zander suggests that we should do this in education and all walks of life. Giving people like mother-in-laws and breakfast waitresses A's too. It will allow these people to work from a place that lets them realize themselves and not have to stack up to your (sometimes too lofty) expectations of what a server or a mother should be.

At my school last year, I found that I was able to apply this teaching principle in one situation and found that it worked extremely well. We ended up getting a new student that joined us from another school midway through the year. When this student arrived, there were a couple of meetings and certain expectations seemed attached to this student based on where they had been and come from. I conscisously decided to try out the technique with this student and "give them an A". I simply gave this young adult the respect I felt they deserved and the space and time to prove themselves on their own merit through their actions at Diefenbaker and not anything that had happened to them previously. I believe it worked. I got respect back and this student worked well for both myself and my teaching partner. Perhaps I'm just lazy, but I do the same thing when I purposefully don't read the reports of students who are coming into my class (not because I don't trust the opinions of their previous teacher-I certainly do!) but so that I can form my own opinion of them as a student-learner in my classroom.

So, what might happen if we do as the Zanders suggest when they write: "The practice of giving the A allows the teacher to line up with her students in their efforts to produce the outcome, rather than lining up with the standards against these students?" Try it and you might find it works for you too.

And a great little clip that sums up the "Art of Possibility". Shoes in Africa...