"I've always thought that people need to feel good about themselves and I see my role as offering support to them, to provide some light along the way."
In our text Whale Done--The Power of Positive Relationships read the introduction and chapter one. Reflect on the chapter and make a connection to our education system--how are our philosohies different or the same. These connections may be within your classroom or school.
- Do we accentuate the postive?
- Build trust?
- What do we do when mistakes occur
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4 comments:
So far Whale Done has been and extremely enjoyable book. It is interesting to see the correlation between humans and animals. Dave Yardley the trainer did a nice job explaining how the animals need to feel trust before the trainers can work with them. They do this by convincing the whales that they mean them no harm. He goes on to say it takes a long time to build trust and friendship, and that the whales know it is going to be a positive experience. I can’t say whether or not all students feel that same sense of trust in every classroom. Hopefully in my classroom they know me to be trustworthy and that my classroom is a safe and comfortable place for all.
I feel that one of the biggest ways to gain that level of trust is to accentuate the positive just as Dave does with the whales. He said they pay a lot of attention when the animal does what we ask him to do and performs a task correctly, and in turn ignore what he did wrong and immediately redirect his behavior elsewhere. The more attention you pay to a behavior the more it will be repeated. If you give lots of attention to what a student does right they do the right thing more often. In the classroom we can focus on the positive and it becomes a win win situation for all. If necessary we can redirect. Dave also talks about giving the whales another chance to complete a task correctly, which certainly happens in the classroom. However we do need to send home progress reports and grade each student at the end of the quarter. That is not always a positive experience.
Do all schools or classrooms share these qualities; I would tend to think not.
Wow! A great "story" so far. I am enjoying this book and it is amazing to see such a correlation between human and animal training. We as educators, no matter what our audience, need to focus on the "meat" of Dave's philosophy: Build Trust, Accentuate the Positive, and When Mistakes Occur, Redirect the Energy. I know my focus all year long is to be sure my students feel a sense of trust, not only with me, but also with their peers. Without that trust many more students would fall through the cracks coming from the backgrounds that many have. I can honestly say that I do my best at accentuating the positive, however I know that it is an area that I need to focus more of my time in. Some days in an 8th grade classroom are better than others...hormones, attitudes, lack of respect all come with the territory, however if I could redirect my own actions to remember "what we think and expect does have a direct bearing on my students' responses or lack of responses," then those frustrating times may go more smoothly. Maybe a Post-It note on my desk with that saying...a visual reminder on those not-so-fun days would help me to remember to accentuate the positive and redirect the energy!
After reading the first chapter, I thought to myself this is exactly what I need. Since I not currently teaching, I am applying all I am learning to becoming a better parent especially during the long summer break.
The technique I am focusing on is to accentuate the positive. I find myself going about my busy schedule noticing only the negative behavior. Rarely do I take time to catch my children being good!!! Well, I am changing that! It certainly takes a great deal effort on my part to slow down and compliment my children, but it is worth all my time. I have to tell you everytime I accentuated the positive, my children smiled. Yes!!!
Chapter one is right on! I have often noticed the correlation between raising my kids and raising my dog. In fact, three of the most important commands for young children and animals is sit, stay and come.
As Dave Yardley states, animals and people need to feel trust before they can be worked with.
Accentuating the positive works well for animals and people. It is always more helpful to say what people are doing right than to say what they are doing wrong.
Redirecting animals and students to get them to behave as we would like is another good point.
Are all of our classrooms run in a Whale Done way? Sadly many are not, but I try to use Dave's points to set up a Whale Done classroom.
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