Post #11: Reframing

 My whole life needs a constant reframing toward positivity. 

I am reminded of Martin Luther's first of 95 theses:  When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matthew 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

I do not take this to mean, as perhaps Luther did, that we are constantly sinning and need to repent in sorrow every minute for our errors and disobedience. I take it to mean we must constantly "recalibrate": reflect and get back on track. 

We are like a car with really bad alignment, and if we don't consciously hold the steering wheel and make choices in the minute, we are going to go off the road. Course correction is needed, and sometimes that includes confession and forgiveness; Luther is probably correct that we need it more than we think we do and more than we practice it. 

As for me, my "car" goes off the road to negativity. Daily practicing positivity is getting my tires aligned, not just fighting the bad alignment. 

It starts with my dogs. I used to say to them in the morning, "Love you, mean it, not really." As dogs, they didn't care. But it was a self message. I was denying that I did have affection for them, and I was lying. I was also using "humor" in a bad way. 

Then I would journal, and it focused on the negative. My teaching tended to be more about what they shouldn't do than what they should or could. That bad alignment into the ditch of negativity ruled.

I'm exaggerating, but it was too much. My students in the fall were the worst I had ever had, and my teaching experience in one course was the worst in 45 years of teaching. 

And then I came to my DEI class. I found the faults, I was resistant (as I was warned I would be), I rolled my eyes a lot, I said I wouldn't buy into this "stuff." Why? Maybe I didn't want to accept I could have been wrong about something. It wasn't the privilege thing; I know I am privileged, and it's stupid to argue otherwise. (There you go--another viewpoint is stupid--negativity.) 

At least I was fair--I was hard and negative on myself. It's sort of like the old joke: "I'm not prejudiced! I hate everybody!"  

More later. This post is getting negative. But the core of anti-negativity is gratitude, which is under-researched and under taught, especially in the communication discipline. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflecting on Reflection in Learning

Reflection is the subject of my next couple of presentations, so here are my recent jottings. Hopefully a reader can make some sense of them;however, the whole point of this post is that reflection can follow a structure but will not necessarily create a structured record. The reflection record will need to be reshaped to be palatable for a "judge" or "critic" or "instructor." Reflection tends to be framed negatively. If we dig too deep we will only find bad stuff; if we reflect on teaching practice, we will focus on what failed rather than succeeded. Why? Assessment focuses on finding the nonlearners and changing to get more learners, but it ignores that most of the students did learn, so why were there successes? Leads to burnout. Boud & Walker’s idea of validation not well developed but relevant. It is most close to critical thinking—testing it against other knowledge, theories, internal consistency, other data (other learner’s data) Ref
Read more

The LAST Word on Learning Styles

That title might be extreme, but this article nails it, plus giving some good links to other research. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-learning-styles/ What is mostly important here is that we do know what universally works in learning (time, multiple modalities, application rather than rote, spaced out study) rather than an overfocus on "what makes me special."
Read more

Lessons in Leadership Failure

This is the outline for a presentation I gave at Toastmasters recently. It was to finish a pathway in their curriculum, but it also my life. There is no lack of books, articles, magazines, and speakers about leadership. A quick look on Amazon shows there are X number of books with leadership in the title.  Ive even written one. But I would venture to say all of them have one thing in common: the writer thinks they are a good leaders and have this leadership things figured out. Although my topic today is leadership I don’t think I have it figured out and recently I learned a lot about failure in leaders and in myself as a leader.  I was asked to lead a large part of our accreditation. I’ve spoken on this before that it’s called a Quality Enhancement Plan, whereby the institution has to pick a problem and construct a specific plan to address it.  I’ve had a year not to reflect—or not—on how it went and what I learned about myself.  I could share  lot, but in the time I have
Read more