Art, Books and Connections

The last few years I have been reading business, entrepreneur, psychology, leadership and education books almost exclusively.  Daniel Pink, Seth Godin, Robert Cialdini, Sir Kenneth Robinson, Malcolm Gladwell are among the many different authors whose books I have explored.

With each book I read, I start by putting a 4 x 6 inch post it note inside the front cover to keep track of interesting words, concepts, people, websites and books as I read.  I also take notes in the books and use colored coded post-its to mark the pages.  For whatever reason, I use orange to mark ordinary notes. I feel they are the ones I want to be able to refer to later, but are not mind blowing.  I use yellow for the mind blowing ideas.  Pink are specific quotes I want to be able to use in the future and blue indicates connections between ideas. 

Before I started to use different colors, I noticed that many authors refer to each other's books or at least to the same books during their discussion of ideas.  In fact, it happened often enough for me to specifically mark those incidents.   

One of the things I have long thought is, with all of the connections between books I have read, is there a theme that winds through all of them that ties them together?  

Today as I was doing my Austin Kleon Steal Like an Artist Journal, I chose one which is an unlabeled web. with the instructions "Start in the Middle."  For lack of a better term at the time, I chose "Art" as my central word. I am using the definition of art I derived from reading Steven Pressfield's book The War of Art. To me Pressfield is saying that art is beauty created through someone pursuing their passion.

After I chose my word, I started placing names of authors and books I have read in the last few years in the circles in the web.  Unfortunately, the names I put in the list do not always come from the circle which precedes it. I think my best bet is to take my books and go into an empty room and examine the blue post its to attempt to determine which books inspired the others and how they fit together. Possibly then I will finally be able to create  a singular idea that each book explored to some level.  

Kids, the Resistance and Genius Hour

Every kid, and probably every person no matter what their age, wants to be known for something. For all people, including school age kids, the choices to eat, wear, play and/or listen to something so often it becomes their own individual trademark goes a long way to inform us as to what school should offer--individualized choices for each person.

At school there is the kid who wears socks up to his knees and shorts everyday, the jersey kid, the hair kid, the shorts and sandals kid (living in Wisconsin, it gets to be a challenge in the winter), the no jacket kid, the kid with funny sayings on his shirt, the branded kid eg. (Nike, Under Armor). The list is so long and diverse that kids take their identity and notoriety from what happens at other times of the day--before school, on the bus, at lunch or after school.

Think of the power that choice of what to be known for, has for people. To be an individual, to choose their own path and to celebrate what makes them different from everyone else, kids will even go so far as to eat something like a frozen pizza everyday. Pizza is great, but eating one everyday? Yuck! Think of what must go through someone's head everyday when they know they face 40+ minutes at lunch standing on the playground in shorts and sandals with a foot of snow on the ground  just to keep their streak going!

Robert Cialdini, in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (see a summary here), gives this willingness to do the same thing over and over a specific name--consistency. It is one of the things which causes people to do many things they would not ordinarily do just to make it seem to others like we haven't changed.

Dan Ariely discusses the fact that people continually make choices not in their own best interest in his book, Predictably Irrational.

According to Steven Pressfield in his book The War of Art, the bad choices we make are a result of the Resistance trying to distract us from what is truly important to us.

I think everyoneDon't we owe it to them to give them a chance to defeat the Resistance by giving students dedicated time in class to work on something they are passionate about so they will be able to focus on something they really want to do like: growing tomatoes, welding, trapping animals, writing computer code or any other topic?  Through Genius Hour, every student has the chance to be known for how well they can do something. If you haven't ever heard of or have had your students do a Genius Hour project, check out Joy Kirr's LiveBinder for a plethora of information from many veterans in Genius Hour. Most of us have about 2-3 weeks of summer without professional development, committees, or grad classes. Consider doing Genius Hour next year. Better yet, have your class do one, and have your district allow teachers to do one.

I'm not saying kids still won't make sure they have a Hello Kitty item visible at all times, but when they are known for the passion they have about a topic and how they have used that topic to help others, maybe that will take over for Hello Kitty.