What if the glass wasn't half empty or half full?

The one nice thing about break is that it gives us time to think and reflect.  My goal is to do a better job of writing my thoughts down in this Blog.  I had a chance to run every day over break . . . I have a lot of thoughts 😃!!

What do you think when you see this?

Most people either see this as half-full (optimistic/positive) or half-empty (pessimistic/negative).  The metaphor of the glass being half-full or half-empty is used all of the time, but what if we approached the glass differently?  What if we didn't worry about how much water was in the glass or even if there was any water in the glass?  How would this transform your thinking?

Over the last five years our district has been on a journey to transform the learning experience of our students.  The one thing I have learned is that the current way of thinking about learning (no matter how you see the glass - half-empty or half-full) gets in the way of true transformation.  We need to look at situations/opportunities differently and develop alternative methods of assessing.  In other words we need to look at the glass differently.

What if we look at the glass like this?

What if we looked at the glass as refillable?  How would this change your approach?  I love this since no matter how much water is in the glass if we do something different we may spill some or all of the water.  This fear of having only a finite amount paralyzes us and prevents us from doing something different - something that may be better than what we are currently doing.

To transform we must think and do differently.  We must not let the fear of failure (or mistakes) prevent us from engaging all students in learning activities that are meaningful to them.  Trying to do this within the current system is difficult, but it can be done!!  We will spill some water, but that's ok . . . we have more!!  I challenge you to look at all situations through a different frame of reference.  An easy place to start is with a glass of water.

Here is the picture that got me thinking about this on a run earlier this week - saw it on Facebook