The Weather Rope

My older brother and I recently had a discussion about school journals that were a part of our reading program at school in New Zealand all those years ago.  He reminded me about a story that had made a huge impact on him called The Weather Rope. Perhaps it was the fact that we grew up in a farming community where the weather was always a topic of discussion "We need rain." Or "Wish it would stop raining so we can get the hay in." Perhaps it was the possibility of being able to control things over which we had no control.

The story told of a community that discovered a weather rope that hung from the sky.  All one had to do was to go and pull on the rope to get a change in the weather.  If the community wanted rain then the rope was pulled and hey presto there was rain.  Then if the rain was sufficient for the grass to grow, the rope was pulled again and there was the sunshine to dry up all the puddles.

This all went along very well until people started to disagree with what they wanted.  Some wanted it to stop raining so they could go to the beach.  Others wanted wind to dry the washing.  The gardeners wanted the wind to stop so that the roses would not be blown away.  The arguments began and people were pulling the rope so often and so hard to get what they wanted, that the suddenly the rope fell out of the sky.  People could not longer get what they wanted.

This is so true in life.  People have different wants.  We know that we are driven by what we want to match our Quality World pictures.  Our choices in behaving to get what we want may result, as in the story, in none of us getting what we want.

I have a favourite cartoon which depicts two characters in a stand off,  each with a rolled up magazine ready to strike .  The caption says "No way.  I'll put my magazine down when you put yours down."

I think if we both lay down 'our magazines' and negotiated, listened, supported- all the connecting habits, we would not lose our 'weather rope' and be more likely to both get what we want.

In the words of the Irish Blessing...

Quality Schools

In a quest for quality there are schools all around the world implementing practices that align with Choice Theory.  This is not an easy thing to do.  If we look at the conditions for quality we can see why this is difficult.


1.A warm, supportive classroom environment.
  
This is difficult when you are feeling out of balance yourself.  Someone once said " You can't give what you haven't got" If you are feeling out of balance then it is difficult to give that warm supportive environment so needed for quality work to be achieved. 


2.  Students are asked only to do useful work.

"We have the test coming up and I don't think that my students have had enough practice at doing those comprehension examples. We had better do more rather than that lesson I planned on setting up a class business."


3.  Students are always asked to do the best they can do.


It always seems that we put time ahead of quality work.  In a classroom where you have a range of learners  and learning styles; where some student complete work more quickly than others. It is very difficult to allow the time for students to do the best that they can.


4.  Students are asked to evaluate their own work and improve it.


This is the key to quality and indeed to intrinsic motivation, yet time taken to use this form of evaluation is not given.  Rather we tend to use teacher evaluation most often in our attempt to get the results that we want.

5.  Quality work always feels good


When the time is given to take something to a level of quality, when it is perceived as useful, when the classroom is warm and supportive and students are proud of their work, then it does feel good.


 6.  Quality work is never destructive


This photo was taken in a classroom in a New Zealand school recently. It demonstrates the quality work being done in this classroom.

 Henderson North School in Auckland

Revisit of Mental Health

In September 2005, Dr Glasser wrote a small booklet  entitled Defining Mental Health as a Public Health Issue.  The description that Dr Glasser gives for mental health - as opposed to mental illness is as follows.

You are mentally healthy if you enjoy being with most of the people you know, especially with the important people in your life such as family, sexual partners and friends.  Generally you are happy and are more than willing to help an unhappy family member, friend or colleague to feel better.  You lead a mostly tension free life, laugh a lot and rarely suffer from the aches and pains that so many people accept as an unavoidable part of living,  You enjoy life and have not trouble accepting other people who think and act differently from you.  It rarely occurs to you to criticise or try and change anyone.  If you have differences with someone else you will try and work out the problem; if you can't you will walk away before you argue and increase the difficulty.

You are creative in what you attempt and may enjoy more of your potential that you ever thought possible.  Finally even in very difficult situations when you are unhappy - no one can be happy all the time - you'll know you are unhappy and attempt to do something about it,  You may even be physically handicapped as was Christopher Reeve, and still fit the criteria above.

Stand Downs

This term is used in New Zealand schools when students stay at home for a designated period of time for some more serious behaviours at school. In July 2009 there was an article in the paper about this practice with numbers of students on "stand down " for each school in the local area over the year. In response I wrote the following letter to the editor.
I was interested in your article July 26 about the stand-downs in Waikato schools. The descriptors for stand down, suspension, exclusion and expulsion were useful for the the community to understand that there are times when a student's behaviour just does not, at this point in time, allow them to fit into the school.

I had some concern when the headline read 'bad' students. These students are not bad. The choices they are making are unproductive and disruptive to their learning and the learning of others or destructive to their hopes of becoming useful citizens, but we need to believe that they can be taught to become self-managing.

 As teachers of young children we do not teach the letter "A" once, and expect that it is learnt. We do not, as often happened in the past, punish student who do not learn the first time. Good teachers continue to teach them in many and varied ways to enable them to learn to read, It is the same with making better choices. This can be taught.

We are a nation of blamers.  We blame the coach when our team fails; the government for everything that goes wrong.  We blame the parents, blame the schools, and blame the students for behaviours they choose, but in reality this does not solve the problem. Blaming is designed to help us feel better but it does not address the underlying issues involved.

We need to think about ways in which we can teach students to make better choices and not to give up on them.  Standing down, suspending, excluding, expelling students is not teaching them a better way to behave any more than going to prison is teaching people not to commit crimes.  If it was working well we would not have repeat crimes or repeat stand-downs in school.
I want to link this with the article in the same paper about the Enderly community cop Mason Le Pou.  He knows that the key to success with alienated, disconnected people is through consistently building relationships.  Unless positive generative and trusting relationships are developed with these students who are not yet self-managing, they will not learn to make better choices.  They will not be influenced by authority figures who threaten and punish as the only way to deal with these behaviours.

I am not suggesting that we go soft on students who choose these disruptive and destructive behaviours.  I am not suggesting that this is easy for schools, but while we continue to believe that we can punish and hope for change, we will not  make a difference in the lives of these young people.  If something is not working we need to choose something different.  Discipline means caring enough to teach a better way to behave.  Are we up for the challenge?

Happiness

A fascinating study of 180 School Sisters of Notre Dame nuns, all born before 1919 has some interesting findings.  In his book “The Happiness Advantage” Shawn Achor describes the process that researchers used to track the positive emotional diary writings over 50 years.  The nuns who had a high level of positivity lived ten years longer than the ones who were negative.  By age 85, 90% of the “happy” nuns were still alive as compared with 34% of the least happy nuns.  This is pretty convincing evidence of the need to maintain a positive way of being in the world. If the nuns were all faced with the same life choices, it would be interesting to ponder why some chose to happiness over unhappiness.

We know that the feelings feed into the physiology and that illness often results if there are prolonged negative feelings. Helping people understand Choice Theory and by using Reality Therapy with people in need we can help them to live a more balanced life, and remain healthier and happier.    

Glasser Quality School

This site is about Murray High School - the first High School Quality School
http://murrayamericanstudies.blogspot.com/

Choice Theory in action

Jane Bond has been working together with Jeff Steedman with a group of teachers at a local school, and a couple of the junior grade staff went out to her kinder last week, wanting to see Choice Theory in action.  

Jane said “It was a special time, as I don't think any of us at the kinder fully realised the extent to which Choice Theory is so much a part of everything we do - from the relationships we have and how we treat each other, the way people speak to each other, and how negotiations happen”.

The school teachers both commented on how great it was to see all the children happily and comfortably and meaningfully engaged in what they were doing - a needs fulfilling environment