"Whale Done" by author Ken Blanchard is this year's first book club posting.
The faculty book club was established as a way to promote the professional growth and leadership of our teacher leaders.
This blog site was created in order to facilitate our book club meetings without having to take time away from our instructional day in order to meet. Each week we will post comments by our faculty's team leaders as we read the book.
Our goal is to motivate our team leaders to develop positive and supportive ways to move their teams to excellence.
6 comments:
Chapter 1...What do middle school students have in common with an 11,000 pound whale? What do your fellow team members have in common with an 11,000 pound whale? They all perform best when punishment is not used as a motivator. The first chapter highlights the significance of building trust, accentuating the positive, and redirecting energy by not focusing on mistakes. The most difficult thing to change is our own behavior. In order to create a positive change in others, we have to stop focusing on the things that our students and fellow team members do that aggrivate, or displease us, and refocus our attention on what they do that is positive. "The more attention you pay to a behavior, the more it will be repeated".
I agree... but responding to positives is harder because negatives are more attention-getting. An article in the Business section of the August 31, 2008, Commercial Appeal recommended making FOUR positive comments for every ONE negative comment. I'm trying, but the accounting is keeping me busy!
On our team Mrs. Greene has a tree on the back wall that highlights students who stand out with good deeds. One student in particular has been giving all of us a hard time but he was highlighted for using good manners. Sometimes it is harder to notice the good. The children are so used to physical rewards that they have a hard time moving away from it. They don't realize that the reward is the feeling you get from the positive behavior itself. Just like the whales, we train dogs the same way. We reward the positive behavior with treats and ignore the negative. Eventually we wean the dogs off the traet because they have learned the expected behavior. With our own students it seems they have a hard time being weaned from the physical rewards and appreciating the self gratified feeling you get from an accomplishment. The reward of a good conduct grade or only words of praise becomes insufficient because the students are looking for the physical reward here and now. My question is how can help our students appreciate what they do that is good on their own?
I really like the idea of rewarding the positive. I often tell my students that it takes about ten positive things to offset one negative thing. You usually remember the bad things that happen during your day. An unexpected "whale done" can heal a lot.
One thing about the book I didn't enjoy as much was the narrative that surrounded the philosophy. It seemed a little corny and unbelievable at times.
Intrinsic motiviation is a tough topic, especially for middle schoolers. Moving from extrensic rewards such as candy, popcorn parties, ice cream socials, to self directed behavior has to be gradual. I think the book explains how it was done with whales...by implementing 'fun' things for the whales to do as a reward. This should be easy enough to accomplish for teens as well. Giving them 'talk time' through cooperative learning is a great motivation. Pairing them with partners, building time into the lessons that gives them 'choice' in learning...all ways that can help build self confidence and motivate them to want to have such wonderful learning activities.
Redirection definitely works. I witnessed this first hand with my grandaughter. My daughter-in-law who has a MS in Early Childhood Education uses this approach. mt husband and I commented to each other that she never seemed to tell her no or correct bad behavior. Now I understand why and how the redirection does work.
In the classroom, as long as the students understand the goals of the assignments, they know how to perform. This is very similar to positive reinforcement.
Teachers, who feel they are appreciated and recognized for their hard work, will work twice as hard. Students will do the same.
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