Random Acts

Yesterday, for no real reason at all, I decided to write notes of congratulations and encouragement for my students who struggled so mightily last year, but are managing to Take Care of Business (TCOB: my motto and favorite saying!) much more successfully.

I felt that their hard work and success needed to be recognized, and while I do so verbally fairly often; I know that the feeling I get when I get a hand-written card or note is much stronger than when someone verbalizes the same thing.

Giving my at-risk and potential dropout (PDO) students this kind of recognition had a much larger impact than I expected. A great many of them responded with a note or quick visit of their own expressing how wonderful it was to have their hard work recognized.

Reflecting on the success and impact of this simple gesture, I hope to continue this practice in the future. It felt good on my part to give positive feedback and recognition to students who are all too often on the receiving end of negative feedback. In the end, it was very selfish of me to send these brief notes, and I hope everyone finds the time to be equally as selfish, as it is a great feeling!

Gamification: Easy vs. Right

I've been pursuing the idea of gamifying my room and program for almost a year now. After viewing several ready-made programs and websites, I had selected one to utilize and implement, even though I wasn't terribly happy with its user interface or theme. I chose it because I knew that if I were to custom build my own system using websites and/or Google Docs/Sheets there would be a very great deal of work to do.

After travelling to ITEC this week and listening to Mike Matera speaking about gamification, I've come to the realization that I have to create my own system. The reasons are many, but they all essentially boil down to the fact that when I create my own system, it's exactly what I want it to be. That is to say, I will have complete control over every aspect of my own system; anything I'm unhappy with I can change!

I also came to the realization that I was breaking one of the rules or ideas I communicate to my students on a daily basis: oftentimes the right thing to do is not the easy thing to do; instead it usually involves a deal of work, and trying to avoid that work because it's hard or there is a lot of it, is an almost certain way to fail at the endeavor. Luckily, my eyes have been opened before I rolled out a program I would've been displeased with, which would've led to disappointment and a lack of ownership on my part, and thus on my students' part as well.