This year has started off with a bang!
I have a full class of eager and incredibly
bright students.
My biggest challenge is
keeping up with them.
I can tell that
this will be our most successful year yet.
I already have some of my brand new students running around and helping
with workorders around school.
They have
been well received and capable.
I would
like to share this feedback with you:
Amy, I just wanted
you to know that your students who have been taking care of IT related work
orders in the Health Sciences Department have been very helpful and
professional. A big thank you to them!
Amy, Your students have been very
helpful and patient. We appreciate you banding them together to take care
of our IT and audio-visual issues. It was a great idea and it made us all less
grumpy to see that things were being taken care of.
In general, the beginning of every school year is stressful
technology-wise. I am incredibly grateful
that we could turn it this year into a learning opportunity for my students. That is in large part to my students and the
learning culture that they have created.
Kudos to them!
I would like to share with you a theory called “Hundredth
Monkey Effect”.
The story goes that there were scientists studying monkeys
on an island not inhabited by humans. The
monkeys ate sweet potatoes. One day, the
scientists observed a monkey washing his sweet potato in a stream before he ate
it. On the second day, there were two
monkeys who washed their potatoes. (The
idea is that it is the first monkey and a second who learned the habit from the first.) Day after
day one more monkey decided to try the idea of washing the sweet potatoes until the hundredth
day. (This is an arbitrary number to
show critical mass.) On the hundred and
first day, EVERY monkey on the island started to wash their fruit! Not only that, but monkey on neighboring islands were reported to be washing their food as well. Washing the sweet potatoes became part of the group
consciousness and therefore the norm for the microcosm of the society (the
monkeys) living on the island.
This effect can be related to many societal norms and also
an inspirational story for grassroots efforts for change.
I have been thinking of this theory since I started teaching
in June of 2012. I started with three
students who were eager and wanted to learn.
Two of them had started a couple months before with another instructor
who interacted little with the students and pretty much “let them do their own
thing.” These two were starting to
become disengaged until I drew them out and got them working and thinking. (My philosophy is that I want to train my
students to get jobs not just pass Industry Certifications.) When August classes started, I got back the
students who were completely used to doing their own thing. About 8 of them. And doing their own thing meant, playing
games and talking about sports, music…Anything except technology.
It was rough.
A couple of those students embraced actually learning and
were successful. A few of them
resisted. One actually had to be removed
from the program. But there was always a
divide, the slackers and the workers.
New students gravitated to one group or another. I kept teetering on the precipice of that
group consciousness that we are here to learn.
(If you don’t want to be here, get out.)
We have had a lot of success in the last two years. That has to do with the individual drive of
those students. I was lucky to be able
to facilitate it.
And admittedly, I had tragedy strike. Personally, I was not on my A game for a
while to really push and inspire my students.
My hundredth monkey fell through the cracks of my personal struggle.
I am in a better place now, and was prepared to start basically
from scratch. However, I have been so
surprised to see my attendance numbers jump, students return to me and the
group consciousness be one of learning and desire to succeed. My friends and co-workers attribute it to
me. I know it is sheer luck! But in the end, I do not care how or why they got here. My classroom and students are AWESOME! We are going to have a spectacular year.
And my students are the ones to thank for that.
#itechrocks
