MAC Week 2 Post 1 - Reading

Picture courtesy of Creative Commons at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Week 2 Postings – Reading

The chapter on making a contribution made me think about how I act when I work and I am not talking about when I teach. As with most teachers I hold other jobs to fill in the gaps. Many people wish to work with me in those other jobs; some even ask to be assigned to me. This confused me a bit as I tend to be very demanding, precise and critical how the job is done. Yet, they still want to work with me. I certainly did not see myself as making a contribution to them or myself, I just want the job done right. I took the question to a colleague that knows how I work and can be rather insightful. Again she was. She mentioned that it was not how I worked, but what I was working for. When I work at something it is about the experience. Not necessarily gaining experience, but rather creating an experience for the customer, client or guest. In effect, that is making a contribution and those that work with me see that and want to know how to do the same thing. I then began to see that the same must hold true in teaching as well. How can we make a contribution to our students? I believe that when we make a contribution we are doing something that is more than what others are doing around us, so the usual arguments of the nobility of teaching seem to fade. The answer is creating an experience for my students the same way that I create an experience for my clients and customers. If my classroom is a better experience than others, then I am going to be more effective as an educator and that is how I will make the best contribution. The idea of waking up and believing that I am a gift to others is a great notion too, but I won’t get into that here.

The next chapter flows right into this same thought. The chapter is titled Leading from Any Chair. The concept being that it does not matter where you sit in the orchestra you can still be a leader. Basically, I see this chapter as discussing confidence. If you are confident, believe in what you are doing and how you do it, then it does not matter where you are. You can still influence everyone and everything around you. I have often heard teachers mention that they do not feel like they are accomplishing much with the resources they have and if they ran the district this is what they would do. This shows that they are not leading from the chair they are in. They want to be in the big chair making the decisions instead of making the best of what they have. The other part of this chapter seemed to say to me that if you lead from wherever you are then you make believers. Not that they are blind followers of your ambition, rather they want to spread the excitement about what you do, whether that be teaching, selling, building, creating or anything.

The Chapter about Rule # 6 starts out humorous, but takes a nasty turn for the maudlin. It is odd how a chapter on not being so serious can be so serious. From tales of Auschwitz, to battling business partners to couples going through a split this chapter was very difficult to read in light of the subject matter that it was about. I understand that when you are talking about not being too serious you will have to be examples of people who are being too serious. Still, I don’t think that means that you have to be Oprah Book Club depressing in how you go about it. I have never taken myself that seriously. Professional, yes, but serious, no. I have always done this because I believe in the old adage that if I am laughing at myself and my situation then I am not angry about it. I do not believe that anyone has the perfect life, but being overly serious about who we are or what we do just makes us look silly. That often creates a paradox, as we see ourselves as serious, but are perceived as silly. This paradox can create anger and disappointment. If we see ourselves as silly first then, often, people take us seriously as they see we are able to see humor in what we do and how we do it.