Two things:
1. I am finally taking the plunge to participate in a Fantasy Football league! Woot! Thank you to the NFL for actually having a season and thank you to the people at work for letting me participate and probably kick your behinds :)
I feel confident that I have decided on good draft picks, back-ups for those picks, and even more back-ups for those picks as well. 45 days until the season officially opens - Saints v. Packers.
2. Currently, I am working on reading "The Fifth Discipline" by Peter Senge. Today, I came across what I believe to be a powerful teaching tool. In Senge's book he mentions that during a presentation he attended he came upon the "left side of the list." Creating a conversation/script (as real as possible/possibly from a previous experience) to highlight a conflict and how you interacted in the conflict is step one. Then, for step two, you fill out the left side of the page with exactly what you were thinking/would be thinking. The purpose of the exercise is to highlight how quickly we jump from being a part of a conversation to having our own conversation that is not aligned with where our brain is supposed to be. We jump to conclusions. We make assumptions. We hide the truth of what we are assuming or thinking, often to the detriment of our relationship with whomever this conversation/conflict is taking place. How interesting of a concept.
I wonder how helpful this would be with student-groups. Taking the format of the exercise and applying it to how they are interacting with one another... and using the exercise to confront them about tone, perception and conflict resolution. Could it be a tool to help them learn to communicate with one another more effectively, more efficiently?
