As a student, the primary factor for my success throughout my classes boiled down to one thing, and one thing only: Getting good grades. Not for the sake of becoming a more educated person. Not to be a better person. Just for the A instead of the F. But as Daniel Pink points out, this is nothing different than dangling a carrot in front of the horses mouth. This book, along with now working alongside my CT at North Star, has really gotten me to start thinking literally, within the space of the classroom, about English education as something that is not just about the final product (the grade, the paper, etc.), but instead about the thinking behind the process that takes you to the final product.

Chapter 11 of Quiet really made me think about how our school system, and to an extent, society, does indeed favor extroversion. Students are punished for being introverted when it comes to working in groups, picking teams in PE class, or even the dreaded "participation points" awarded to those with the biggest mouths. As teachers, a lot of us will adore our extroverted students who contribute to the classroom community- and that's fine. We just have to remember that introversion does not equate to disengagement. Some students just learn best while being quiet.

-Donald

The chapter that had the most transferability for me in my future teaching career was ch.6 "The Flow of Thought". In this chapter, Csikszentmihalyi (1991) explains the history of the terms 'amateur' and 'dilettante'. In their early days, these terms were reserved for "someone who enjoyed a given activity" (p.140). These people also "drew attention to experiences rather than accomplishments" (p.140). This affirms my belief that education should be made into a less extrinsically rewarded field. Getting rid of grades isn't practical, but focusing the learning on the learner rather than the state testing standards may actually forge life-long learners who actually enjoy what we are teaching them. Csikszentmihalyi also states, "The importance of personally taking control of the direction of learning from the very first steps cannot be stressed enough," (p.139). I do agree with the author, and I would add that the more control we can give to students, the better. I thought about the concept of book clubs in the classroom (as I often do), and I thought that if students can choose the books they talk about, maybe they would be more excited to read. This also connects to me personally because I have to believe that I can be creative within my classroom. Yes, teachers have standards to meet, just like students, but that doesn't mean that I can't have a diverse and culturally rich learning environment at the same time. This section urged me to hold onto my beliefs that I can be creative as a teacher; that I have a choice in the way I educate students. -Erica

"The Gifts of Imperfection" by Brene Brown spoke to me on a personal level as well as a professional one. I honestly felt as though she was speaking directly to me at times. She talks about letting go of what you cannot control, living a life of gratitude, and not holding onto shame. These lessons (and many more) I feel translate well into my teaching life. I often second guess myself and I forget that not everything has to be perfect. She has a line that says "As a recovering perfectionist and an aspiring good-enoughist" that really hit home because that is what I need to do. aspire less for perfection, and realize that everything will work out the way it should. My classroom is going to be dynamic and students are not all going to be as excited about learning as I am. So, I need to find a way to be at peace with that and be joyful for the little moments; instead of waiting around for the big moments. She also talks about in moments of gratitude and joy, sometimes fear can arise. How do we deal with this? What can we do to combat it? Well, we must acknowledge the fear, and live in the now. Know that right now, things are good and we must be thankful and joyous when it is time to be so. This book has so many little wisdoms in it that I cannot sum it up well in any way. Just read the book, or borrow my audio version. It is worth it.
-Abby K

Brown in Daring Greatly challenged the way I perceive "bad" personality traits. She adds the human element, the "why" to a student's struggle. Why are they narcissistic? Why do they push everyone away? She presents reasons why and helped me to view these negative personality traits in a new approach. Vulnerability is hard. Not just for us as teachers to show, but for students to show as well. I feel more prepared to create relationships with students and how to handle difficult situations with students who are not yet at that level.

Brene Brown's examination of culture and perfectionism in her book Daring Greatly will help inform my teaching identity in the coming years. Brown emphasizes the effect of culture on the general productivity of a classroom, which translates into grave repercussions for learners. Classroom cultures rooted in shame (disrespect, embarrassment, blame) perpetuate disconnection and inspire parallel behaviors. Instead, I want to inspire students to mirror the values of a respectful and emotionally intelligent classroom culture in their actions. By engaging in and encouraging authentic interaction and the healthy embrace of vulnerability, I hope to involve students in a learning environment where they can step out of their comfort zones safely and without fear of judgment for volunteering their most authentic selves. For me, this culture starts by abandoning my own shield against vulnerability-- relentless perfectionism. -Carlie

Brene Brown's Daring Greatly challenged me to reframe the idea of vulnerability. Previously, I've thought of vulnerability (in a classroom context and elsewhere) as weakness and liability. To me, "appropriate" emotion looked like a "poker face" and emotional disengagement for the sake of progress in work, school, and personal goals. However, I now understand that vulnerability is at the root of all engagement-- engagement with our work, our goals, and other people. Up to this point, I've avoided vulnerability, not only because it made sense, but because it was easier than engaging with the many different feelings, emotions, and experiences that life doles out. The reframing of vulnerability will help me reset my goals as a person and as an educator to live a more wholehearted, engaged life and encourage my students to do so as well. -Carlie

In Brene Brown's Daring Greatly, my mindset on vulnerability has reached a new found admiration. In Dr. Shaw's class, I did my manifesto on the importance of vulnerability in the classroom to relate to the students more closely. As Brown and I both stated in our works, we have to be vulnerable to receive vulnerability in return. Being vulnerable is a sign of courage and trust in one another. I never realized that hiding myself and what I struggle with was a sign of shame of how I func
tion as a person. I don't want to be ashamed of my story and who I am. I'm not that kind of a person. I am an open book, but I never realized how hard that can be for other people to do and listen to. As an educator, I want to become more mindful of how my students show who they are, and admire their ability to share and be vulnerable. -Alison

"Being rather than knowing requires showing up and letting ourselves be seen" (Brown, p. 16).
-Carlie

Throughout our time in the program, we've spent a great deal of time talking about what we should really be trying to help our students accomplish as the final result of our teaching. If you had asked me as a student what I thought I was supposed to get out of my final paper or project for an English class, I honestly probably would have said being better at reading books and writing papers. And truth be told, neither of those are exactly incorrect answers. But at the same time, our goals as educators go beyond just those two things. Those are merely the starting points. As English educators, we find ourselves with the heavy and marvelous job of helping our students learn to think critically, using mentor texts as a means to jump right in. Pink's Drive couldn't have come at a better time for me, explaining why our current model of motivation is deeply flawed, than now, when we have begun our practicum experiences. I have already begun to notice efforts by our cooperating teacher to dispel the myth that English class is only about the final product, and instead aims for our students to learn from the process by which they reach their final papers that they turn in. These combined experiences really give me a lot to think about how I'm going to handle grading in the future, and make me stop and think long and hard about "what do I hope my students get from this experience?" - Brandon Schuman

In Daring Greatly, I saw that there is great power in being vulnerable. When you are vulnerable, people are vulnerable with you. And, like all things, it takes a great amount of practice. In teaching, there will be a lot of ways to shift and change what we do. But there results are not gong to happen instantly. They are going to take time and effort to get to the point we are looking for. - Alison

In Chapter 6 of All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks argues that "cultures of domination rely on the cultivation of fear as a way to ensure obedience" (93). This reminded me a lot of Freire's writing, and it reinforced my beliefs that teachers should not be the be-all, end-all wielders of power in the classroom by bringing students to fear them through discipline; my identity as a teacher, bolstered by bell hook's argument, is as an active conversationalist in a classroom, meant to create a dialogue rather than a culture of scared submission. I believe the former is how we encourage students to grow and form an independent, confident identity.
-Faith

-Faith

In Creative Schools there is a major emphasis on maintaining interest in all of a student's potential intelligences, rather than just the traditionally academic. With this text, there is more room for multimodality, which makes for more engaging classroom life, in my opinion. With more opportunities to reach outside of themselves or show off their favorite talents, students are better able to show what they've learned, and format that learning in a way that will stick with them.
-Allycia

Creative Schools serves as an incendiary, "get off your rear" kind of text. It outlines a path for revolution and has clear strategies that have worked in other schools, regarding parental involvement, assessment, and a host of other improvements that could benefit education. I think that the clear focus on assessment was the chapter that really pushed me as an educator. Robinson is right in saying that a lot of attention has been placed on NCLB and its effect on student assessments. He has such a diverse range of assessment potentials and "what-if's" that I am inspired. Assessment doesn't have to be the way it has always been, and it by no means has to occupy one modality. I've always enjoyed assessments and projects that push what you know into new forms, because it allows for a greater level of problem solving, which can be part of the hidden curriculum that Robinson also mentions. Great ideas all around. -Allycia

Brene Brown's examination on vulnerability struck me. As a teacher, student, human, I always want to be perceived has holding power. In my mind I hold power through knowledge. I don't want to be seen not knowing the answer to a question because I feel weak. However, in the text, Brown talks about vulnerability saying, "vulnerability is recognizing and owning that you don't know something" (pg. 207) In this I was reminded that to help my student succeed, I need to be open and honest with them about my own struggles with my pursuit of knowledge.
Eric

The Gifts of Imperfection focuses mainly on improving your own lifestyle through living wholeheartedly. While the book didn’t focus directly on teaching, it can be so beneficial for educators. Education is a profession with one of the highest burn out rates. If we can’t take care of ourselves mentally and emotionally, we will not be able to be our best selves for our students. By not overworking ourselves we can give more energy and attention to our students. Furthermore, when we accept ourselves we can better accept others. This applies to our students as well. We will have students with many different backgrounds, personalities, and abilities. While we may connect more with some students than others, this self acceptance and wholeheartedness Brown discusses helps us foster more acceptance and compassion for all our students.
-Sara

I feel like I've always been sensitive to the needs of introverted students- as I myself was (and still am, to an extent) fairly shy in a classroom setting. However, reading Quiet really taught me off all the boons of introversion. I always viewed introversion -my own included- to be an inherently negative trait. Quiet has opened my eyes to how capable and beneficial being introversion can be; rather than viewing it as something to work past, I view it now as something to work with. It's also opened my eyes to how much damage teachers can unintentionally cause their own quieter students by heavily structuring curriculum and classroom activities to favor extroversion. As future teachers, hopefully we can make our classroom a safe haven for introverts and extroverts alike.

-Donald

I'm realizing that I'm now looking more critically at the things I read and not accepting essentialist-sounding maxims, however prosaic or comfortingly absolute they sound. Csikszentmihalyi has a way of saying things that are not research-based in the midst of things that are research-based that makes it imperative to discern what are the facts and what is the analysis he's doing with the facts. For example, in chapter 6, Csikszentmihalyi writes that, "As far back as there are records of human intelligence, the most prized mental gift has been a well-cultivated memory" (123). This is purely a maxim he's using based on his own analysis, and might not be as well-founded as it sounds as a fact, but still his point stands that human memory is a prized phenomenon. This book became a good test for my own discernment because it is so rich and useful in both facts and conclusions drawn from facts, that in that space between information and analysis, valuable questions can be explored. --Timmy

Csikszentmihalyi writes of flow activities, "What makes these activities conducive to flow is that they were designed to make optimal experience easier to achieve. They have rules that require the learning of skills, they set up goals, they provide feedback, they make control possible" (72). Immediately, my mind wandered tot he questions, "How can this principle of flow be instituted in a classroom? How can classroom activities become flow activities?" He goes on to describe the feelings produced by flow (which almost sound like medieval humors so I'm a bit skeptical on that end) as well as the conditions that allow for flow. The overarching theme that emerges in all of his discussion of facilitating a flow-friendly environment leads me to believe that flow is dependent on a sense of control that could be translated to achievability in a classroom. The work must be some kind of engaging, but it must also present something that is just beyond a student's immediate grasp so they have to wrestle with a challenge and affirm their own competence in engaging the challenge before ultimately achieving the aim of the classroom activity. It dawned on me as I wrestled with how to do this, that the friendly space for flow is Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. So, in the end, the transferability to flow is about putting kids in a position that they can be scaffolded to learn something, while still being given agency to work for it. --Timmy

There are so many ways we can help empower introverts to speak in class! Given adequate preparation and analysis time, introverts will add insight and depth to our discussions. Maybe have a minute of downtime to collect one's thoughts before raising a hand? Perhaps incorporate silent exercises, like gallery walks to allow those who become overwhelmed by public speaking to be heard. We should also consider a flipped classroom, where some discussion happens outside of class, away from the distractions and noise of the room. These practices should add to our repertoire of activities, and extroverts will benefit too. -Logann

I have always been someone who looked at my introversion as something that I needed to change. I always wanted to be an extrovert and wanted tried to fake it till it made it. After reading Quiet, though, I realized that being an introvert is just a tool that I need to learn to use. It also made me think about my own experience as an introvert in high school and how I felt about certain activities and assignments and how I can apply that to my students. I want to pull my introverted students into a place where they are comfortable, not force them into things that make them retreat farther into their shell. Abby M

In my analysis of Brene Brown's Daring Greatly*, I was struck by the idea of what it really means to be a leader. A leader in essence is someone that has the power and skill to influence those around themselves. Leadership in the classroom setting is key, it will be uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers at the beginning of the year and try to develop meaningful conversations and personal connections. This discomfort is necessary to achieve successful relationships within the classroom. In my own experience I am honestly excited to work with people that I don't know because it will challenge my leadership capabilities.

Eric