2 salesman are sent to africa to sell shoes. One telegrams back – situation hopeless. They don’t wear shoes. The other – Glorious opportunity – no one wears shoes here.

These are reflections of attitude – not statements about circumstances.
scarcity versus abundance.
scarcity – students are competing and worried and anxious and he talks about a downward spiral of negativity that we can be consumed in – I am not good enough, complaint, no chance, it cant be done, it is too difficult, the resources are not there, other people are doing better.
abundance – is about possibility and what can be done and achieved.

He teaches exceptional students who are held back by the competitions and grades and pressure to perform. See’s the student’s being affected by the scarcity principle – I am not good enough, what if I make a mistake etc.

Gives each student an A at the beginning of the course if they write a letter to him and explain what they will do in the next year to achieve that A. He tells them to fall in love with that person. He finds that the person they write about is the one who turns up to class.

Michaelangelo – in each piece of marble their is a beautiful statue, all you need is a hammer and a chisel to get rid of the stone that is in the way of that beautiful statue.

Model of education we use is teacher is above student and student tries to reach the teacher. In michaelangelo’s model the teacher and student are equal and work together.

Leaders we need are those who can recognise the scarcity downward spiral and move it to an area of possiblilty.

This got me thinking about the ways I may inadvertently promote the ’scarcity’ principle in my classroom, and how I can move that to an area of possibility.

To me this seems to be a key difference between the two groups. Even though most students may be adept at using technology, being able to use it for educational reasons is not generally a strong point and I think there is a lot that we as teachers can add to their ICT usage to help them harness the power of the technology they use. A glaring example here is their use of social networking sites and online safety. Go search through a few of your students facebook/myspace/bebo etc profiles and you will learn a lot about them that you may not want to know and more importantly they probably don’t want you to know. A lot of students don’t seem to realise that what they post on their site is available to ‘everyone’ that they need to think carefully about the online profile they are developing.

This is one of my favourite quotes and it underpins the way I present information as a teacher.

As a teacher I see our job as being to help our students understand and grasp complex ideas in simple ways that make sense to them. This does not mean that we attempt to take the complexity out of the ideas but that we are to present the ideas in a way that they can get their head around to be able to explore the concept on a deeper level. I am guilty at times of trying to present ideas in a complex form to students which often leaves some a little lost and the concept can go straight over their heads with having a chance to engage with the concept or issue. 

To balance that quote out I like the following quote also. They almost contradict one another but I think it comes down to explaining things in ways that are relevant and meaningful to students so that they can comprehend them and work with them. 

Teaching is a fine art – hope I can master it someday!!

Image from http://prblog.typepad.com

While I can see the huge potential for learning using web 2.0 with students I am thinking at the moment that the benefits are even greater for teachers. The ability to develop professional learning networks in a really simple, time efficient manner has so many benefits which include the sharing of ideas and resources and tapping into the wisdom of the many experienced teachers out there.

From my experience teaching is a fairly ‘closed’ profession in that we don’t regularly share ideas between faculties and schools and a lot of great ideas are confined to a very small group of people within a school or faculty. If we could open up this information to a wider audience and get more people sharing their ideas then the benefits of this could be huge. The one’s to benefit most could be new teachers who get to see the ideas and thoughs of experienced teachers and who would have the potential to reach out to others outside their school environment for advice or information.

I would particularly like to see more experienced teachers, lectures and policy developers in the area of PDHPE share their knowledge and philosophies on teaching. While there is not a lot out there at the moment in our area I think this may change a lot over the next 5-10 years.