Symphony

I am amazed how other sources of input reinforce my main reading, whether it is a novel or A Whole New Mind. So the chapter on symphony was quite interesting to me, as has been the whole book.

In fact, Dave, I was wishing there was a personal blog element to the course where I could journal my thoughts for myself, knowing the instructor would have access to read them, without worrying about subjecting everyone to all the thoughts swimming around in my head. This personal journaling could be a way of synthesizing ideas. This might help meet the time requirement to the course as well. It's probably too late for this course, but could this idea work with future courses? I think I would participate more often if this option were available.

Back to Symphony. The section entitled "Seeing Relationships" mentions multitasking and its prevalence in our time. The main speaker at Literacy Fest last weekend, Dr. Jack Pikulski, spent a few humorous moments on the subject of multitasking. His children do it all the time, and he is ready for them to just attend to him when on the phone. His main point was that we can truly only focus on 1 thing at a time. We have to acquire automaticity at one of the tasks before we can truly handle 2 at a time well. Therefore decoding competency needs to be at the automatic level so the reader can focus on comprehension. Dr. Pikulski's observation is that shifting focus is exhausting. No wonder so many people are so tired these days! Then of course I immediately started thinking about my life to see if I am guilty. I am more likely to call someone to chat when I have something to do in the kitchen, where I think my mother would sit in her rocking chair and make the call. Guilty!

The bottom of page 136 says "...great minds are androgynous." "...creative and talented girls are more dominant and tough than other girls, and creative boys are more sensitive and less aggressive than their male peers." I can think of examples to support this. I am having a harder time thinking of examples that don't fit. These seem to be characteristics children come to our classrooms with that are already fixed, part of their nature or personality. Observing this, we can encourage those creative kids we see so they nurture their talent rather than putting it aside.

One workshop I attended at Literacy Fest was on The Writer's Notebook. At the end of the presentation, we were encouraged to keep our own writer's notebook along with the students so that we would not run out of ideas, and for authenticity. When I learn and participate, I have more enthusiasm to share with students. Pink lends another level of depth to it, encouraging us in "...the search for appropriate personal metaphors that make sense of our lives. (Lakoff) The more we understand metaphor, the more we understand ourselves." This would be a great entry for my journal (and older students as well). And where symphony is concerned it would help me better see the big picture of my life.
K. Wilson