Category: Ideas

Life-Action Planning

One of the things I learned from Amanda Itliong when she was with the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford was the need for an “individual learning plan” which charts out a person’s steps towards leadership objectives. Here is some text from the Haas website (http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/haas/principles/document)…

Reflection Questions
What does your personal plan for preparation look like? How might you creatively build preparation into your program design? How has your academic work prepared you for this experience? Where do you see connections between your academic/intellectual background and practical application? What have you not been prepared for in the past and what did you learn from that?

I picked up the book “Me: Five Years from Now” by Sheree Bykofsky. It provides some ideas on areas of life to focus on for life-planning. This showed me that there are at least two approaches: (a)  we could discuss how a learning plan is comparable to strategic navigation and risk management, or (b) we can keep it at simple by just asking “Where will you be 6 months from now?”,  “…1 year from now?”  or “5 years from now?”

I favor the latter for youth but it should be framed as an action plan where not only are there places/positions listed, but also actions/directions to get there (addressing the getting from point A to point B problem we often see). From Bykofsky, we also learn that we should ask ourselves “Which actions can we start today?” and “Which tasks will take time?” There should be a forward-moving tendency to the action plan and minimal chance of inertia.

Lessons: The Power of…

Based on the phrase “The Power of Observation” (which is one of the ideas to be employed in the Compare and Contrast exercise), we could create a series of skills titled “The Power of…” Other “vectors” that we could construct:

“The Power of Communication”…what you can achieve by communicating well (includes preparation, delivery and follow through)

“The Power of Service”…finding motivation to do something.

I’ll have to think up of some more.

The Homework Myth

I’ve just finished reading “The Homework Myth” by Alfie Kohn (2006) and found a few sections that are associated with creativity.
– on page 111, math is identified as a “creative enterprise” where students should be challenged to invent solutions to “unfamiliar problems” and understand how and why each other’s solutions work as a comparison.
– on page 169, it is suggested that homework may be excessive and therefore out of reach of many students from the get go. Punitive measures as a result of being put in this impossible position discourages students from wanting to take responsibility for learning.
– on page 178, there is a discussion about choice. “The best teachers know that children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.” The section also points out that students have the instinct to detect whether work is thoughtlessly assigned and therefore not really worth doing.
– on page 181, the author concludes that “this shift is associated with intellectual benefits: Kids are freed up to do more stuff that matters, that stirs their thinking,that both flow from and stimulates their interests, when homework doesn’t get in the way.”
This is an extension on the thought that schools stifle youth creativity. The school goes even as far as outside of actual school hours to ensure that youth do not get the opportunity to be creative (on their own) by (a) consuming what should be free time, (b) demoralizing students to the point where they mainly anticipate judgement, failure and punishment, and (c) burdening the student with perceptibly low quality tasks. For our YCISL program, we need to make it absolutely clear that they are to take charge and they can choose to pursue their creativity in their chosen context (even school) with ample free time in a no risk situation where they take responsibility for the quality of tasks.

Framework: The YCISL Assemblage

I’ve been thinking about the relationship between creativity, innovation and leadership that is the skeletal framework of the youth development program. I wanted to portray the concept that the workshop is intended to draw out and characterize one’s creativity (the raw material) and develop it into useful product (the action) in order to create (proof of) leadership (the result). “Teaching” will be minimal and focused mainly on the development stage. However, most of the instructional effort will actually be on removing barriers to creativity and getting ideas flowing.

So, I’ve drawn up a schematic that I have titled “The YCISL Assemblage.” It is a high-level and simple view of the framework that the YCISL program is founded upon. The annotations on the right include (a) a simple title that differentiates the various stages, (b) the “::” (double colon) to show the “is to” relationship, and (c) the meaning within the YCISL framework.

– I have labelled “Your Mind” as “The Safe” because it is a storage area where others cannot tell what is inside unless you show them. Things do move in and out, and can get mixed together once inside (or get separated).

– the Creativity is represented as a cloud to recognize the tendency to expand (and merge) when it is free to develop. It is a raw material and, depending on how it is positioned, is the potential energy from which great ideas and products can grow.

– the Innovation box (perhaps often perceived as a black box) has the aim to create something significant, impactful and life-changing; hence, if all this is achieved, then leadership arises.

– what I did not portray truthfully in this diagram is the directionality and “activation energy” requirement. With regards to directionality, this process does not usually run linear. And the “activation energy” needed to get from one stage to another must be available -> it’s not all downhill.

Debate Topic: Homework & Tests

All of the youth participants are going to be extremely familiar with homework and tests. One would guess that there are diverse opinions about the usefulness of homework and tests, and this should be a “hot topic” for most students. We should discuss whether the positioning of homework and tests in learning should change. Of course, I am reading “the Homework Myth” by Alfie Kohn and am now familiar with a number of objections to homework and tests. We could have polls or even do some homework – and analyze the outcome. The aim would be to generate “feelings” for something that has direct effect on their lives and see if they react enough to do something about it.

Concept: Adult-Free Frameworks

Just to remind ourselves: We wish to be certain to abstain from using any adult-centric situations in our exercises. This is to focus on the current age (youth) and leverage the personal experiences. We believe that utilizing adult concepts and ideals are restrictive and counter (stifle) any youth creativity. In school, what do they study? History…is there any history of youth? Math…what youth concepts are there? Language…how useful is it to youth communication? Again, the reason for having this program is to create “neutral ground” (maybe we can view this as an empty canvas) where entropy will help fill the space with creative ideas and spontaneity.

Idea from “the Homework Myth”

I am presently reading “the Homework Myth” by A. Kohn, and came across (page 111) how “terrific teachers” encourage students to create their own problem solving techniques (without prior demonstration of a specific solution) and have them discuss each others solution. This positions math (or any subject for that matter) as a “creative enterprise” and creates understanding of the problem-solution as opposed to black-box programming. This is probably a good example to mention in the discussion about creativity and how it leads to innovation and possibly leadership. For youth, this is a good situation to explain because there are many possible solutions – and the advantages may only manifest themselves best in particular situations.

Exercise: Tell A Story

One of the best ways to captivate an audience is to “tell a story” – of course, the story has to be in vivid detail and push one’s buttons. The stories that would be most readily accessible to students are about their lives. We could develop an exercise to sketch one’s life in say 15 minutes (it could be one’s own or that of a partner), and spend 5 minutes having someone review it for depth and interest. This may be a great way to identify key points to make in a personal statement – for a college application or a job interview.

Game: Shake Balls Out Game

This could be a game to encourage creativity and teamwork. Just like the contest called “Junk in the Box” (http://www.nbc.com/minute-to-win-it/how-to/episode-126/junk-in-the-trunk/) in Minute to Win It (the tv show), we provide some basic items such as empty Kleenex boxes (reusing!), ping pong balls and some sort of securing material (what can we reuse?), and the students have to design their own “regulation” boxes. They can design and test perhaps one or two days before the contest. We can also think up some twists to this game.

Drill: Compare & Contrast

Reminded again about all the design flaws of the Y2E2, would it be interesting to have students do a compare and contrast exercise? They would really only have to jot down notes as they do it, then we could get them onto PostIts and categorize each of them into “hit”, “miss”, “huge success”, “big failure”, “good try”, “could be better” and “what were they thinking?” These are all ways we personally evaluate innovations. Things we could use for this exercise:

(1) Y2E2 vs the Huang Building,
(2) Y2E2 vs an older building on campus,
(3) Coke vs Pepsi,
(4) Chinese language vs English language,
(5) iPad vs iPhone (or something similarly techie but audience would want to learn more about)