There were several things that caught my eye during this reading, but I think the two things that impacted me the most were the ongoing theme of the downward spiral and us "being the board." As I read about these two concepts I kept thinking about leadership and how I as a teacher can influence so many minds with each learning opportunity in my classroom. One thing that I connected with this "being the board" concept is how I present content to my students. I am a huge believer in the way that I present my material is how my students will receive it. For instance, if the lesson is something I am not that excited about, my students will receive the lesson the same way and not be motivated to learn what I want them to learn. "Being the board" sort of confirmed to me that I 
have control of the situation no matter what the scenario with my students. This especially holds true when I feel that no matter what occurs during the a common day of teaching, I can "declare that I am the framework for everything that happens." In other words, I am the leader of how each situation and each aspect of my day is approached and dealt with. The kicker with all of this is how easy it is to get caught and brought back to the downward spiral. I don't think that Zander ever wrote in this book that any of these concepts were going to be easy to put into practice. So I must be conscious of the fact that the downward spiral is close by and take me right back down into my old ways of pessimism and negativity. My vision is to understand that my goal is to keep these concepts in the forefront of my mind. These new ways of thinking are just that: NEW! So I know that I won't be able to ascend as quickly as I want to, but rather, I probably will find myself on the downward spiral. But just like anything, I know that it has to get harder in order to become easier when a new way of thinking is out into practice.
The photos used in this blog are from Flickr, under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.
Photos Attributed to:
"Stockmann spirals" - hugovk
"chess board" - niznoz
Dear Gregg,
ReplyDeleteI could not agree with more with you in how this book has challenged me to rethink the way I do things at home and work. I really like Zander's image of us being the board because then that gives us control of situations we would otherwise consider hopeless.
Last night I was watching "Waiting for Superman" and it brought to my mind the analogy of the board, we as teachers can make the difference in our classrooms. We are the ones who have the power to modify the circumstances so that all of our students can learn. Sometimes, we get caught in the downward spiral because it is easier to put the blame on the students, their parents, our administration, our lack of resources, etc. But, if we take seriously the work of Zander & Zander, we will start acting as agents of change and make the necessary changes in our classroom to open up a world of possibility to our students. I think this reading could not have come at a better time.