BFTP: Achieving consistent happiness

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
John Stuart Mill

I don't tend to be anxious, stressed, depressed, bored, or angry the great majority of the time. So by default, I must be a happy person. Quite honestly, I don't spend much time analyzing my happiness level - I tend to focus more on how productive I've been. 

For those who are looking for ways to become happier, I'd endorse the recommendations of Joel Gascoigne who wrote "6 things I do to be conistently happy." He recommends:

1. Wake up early.
2. Exercise daily.
3. Have a habit of disengagement.
4. Regularly help others.
5. Learn new skills.
6. Have multiple ways to "win" each day.

Read the whole post. It's worth your time.

Like Joel, I believe my happiness is a direct result of doing most of the things he lists on a daily basis. I'd also add the following habits:

1. Have an interesting book to read and find some time each day to read it.
2. Have something to anticipate - a trip, an event, etc.
3. Spend discretionary money on experiences rather than material goods.
4. Take a lot of photographs, especially of your kids and grandkids, and look at them.
5. Indulge in a guilty pleasure without feeling guilty.
6. Maintain a regular schedule.
7. Always have a project or two that challenge you.
8. Be less critical of both yourself and other people (I think the two are related in some way.)
9. When given a new task at work, look at it as job security and a chance to learn rather than a burden.
10. Enjoy your own company when alone. Turn off the apps, TV, and radio - and think, fanaticize, plan, and dream.

Nothing very profound here. But it seems to work for me.

What do you do each day that makes you a happy person?

Original post 8/20/12

BFTP: 7 stupid mistakes teachers make with technology

stupid (adjective): given to unintelligent decisions or acts m-w.com

Stupid is as stupid does. Forrest Gump

Stupid is not my favorite word. It sounds mean and harsh and ugly. But after reading that according to Newsweek that 25% of employees visit porn sites from work, and that the adult video industry claims hits on porn sites are highest during the work day*, it was truly the only term that seems to fit this sort of human behavior. I don't have any overwhelming objections to pornography per se. But perusing it at work? That's stupid.

I use stupid under fairly constrained conditions. To me, a stupid act has a degree of willfulness about it and is serious. Making an error once is ignorance; making the same mistake multiple times is stupidity. Unfortunately, I see stupid acts and beliefs related to technology in schools all the time.

These would be my nominees for the most stupid things** a teacher can do related to technology...

1. Not backing up data. "You mean having two copies of my files on the hard drive doesn't count as a backup?" The first time a teacher loses his/her precious data my heart breaks. The second time, well, stupidity ought cause some suffering.

2. Treating a school computer like a home computer. Teachers who use a school computer to run a business, edit their kid's wedding videos, or send tasteless jokes to half of North America (including that fundamentalist English teacher down the hall) are being stupid. Teachers who take their computers home and let their kids hack on them are being stupid. Teachers who don't own a personal computer for personal business deserve to get into well-deserved trouble.

3. Not supervising computer-using students. It is really stupid to believe Internet filters will keep kids out of trouble on the Internet. For so many reasons. Even the slow kids who can't get around the school's filter, can still exploit that 10% of porn sites the filter won't catch if they choose to do so. They can still send cyberbullying e-mail - maybe even using your email address. Or they can just plain waste time.

4. Thinking online communication is ever private. Eventually everyone sends an embarrassing personal message to a listserv. I've heard of some tech directors who get their jollies reading salacious inter-staff e-mails. You school e-mails can be requested and must be produced if germane to any federal lawsuits. Even e-mails deleted from your computer still sit on servers somewhere - often for a very loooong time. Think you wiped out your browsing history? Don't bet that that is the only set of tracks you've left that show where you've been surfing. Your Facebook page will be looked at by the school board chair and your superintendent and principal know who the author of that "anonymous" blog is. Not assuming everyone can see what you send and do online is stupid.

5. Believing that one's teaching style need not change to take full advantage of technology. Using technology to simply add sounds and pictures to lectures is stupid. Smart technology use is about changing the roles of teacher and student. The computer-using student can now be the content expert; the teacher becomes the process expert asking questions like - where did you get that information, how do you know it's accurate; why is it important, how can you let others know what you discovered, and how can you tell if you did a good job? The world has changed and it is rank stupidity not to recognize it and change as well.

6. Ignoring the intrinsic interest of tech use in today's kids. Kids like technology. Not using it as a hook to motivate and interest them in their education is stupid.

7. Thinking technology will go away in schools. The expectation that "This too shall pass" has worked for a lot of educational practices and theories. Madeline Hunter, Outcomes-Based Education, whole language, and yes, some day, NCLB all had their day in the sun before being pushed aside by the next silver bullet. (I think that metaphor was a bit confused. Sorry.) But it is stupid to think technology will go away in education. It isn't going away in banking, medicine, business, science, agriculture - anywhere else in society. Thinking "this too shall pass" about technology is pretty stupid.

That was fun. What would make your list of the top stupid mistakes you've seen teachers make with technology?

Oh, I am not above making stupid mistakes as well. Maybe this posting was one of them...

* And you wondered what those strange noises were coming from the next cubicle.

** While surfing for porn at work might qualify as THE stupidist mistake a teacher could make with technology, those CIPA-required filters that only the kids know how to get around are keeping this act off my teachers' stupid list. And here I bet you thought CIPA was about protecting kids.

Orignal post 12/5/2008

BFTP: Lit teachers, don't despair

On a recent morning's windy walk, I caught our neighborhood red-tailed hawk on her raptorial patrol. The first few lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem "The Windover" came to mind when I saw this creature...

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding 
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding 
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing 
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, 
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding 
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding 
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!  

I was introduced to this poem in either high school or college and don't remember being particularly impressed by it. But fifty years later, the sound and images came back. Imperfectly. Probably misinterpreted. But strongly, adding depth and beauty to my walk and to my life.

English teachers, librarians, poets - don't give up. It just takes some of us a little longer to get it.

Image source

Original post