Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Let's Talk About You for a Change

Try this exercise, please! It's easy and fun and will only take you a minute (OK three). Send your response by email (don't comment here) to jkrauss(at)mahonia(dot)us. Subject line: exercise.
Let's Talk about You for a Change
Directions: Forget about kids and teaching for a moment and recall a project you did recently away from school. Maybe it was planning a wedding, tracking your family genealogy, building a shed, organizing a community campaign or learning to knit. Choose one big or small that taxed you to a degree or took you into unfamiliar territory.
Now, open an email and put "exercise" in the subject line. In the body write a descriptive title for the project, then jot notes -single words or short phrases- that describe the personal capabilities the project called for or caused you to develop. An example statement might be persistence or budgeting time. Think through every phase of the project as you go. Write as many capabilities as you can in three minutes. Send them by email to jkrauss(at)mahonia(dot)com. I'll post a wordle with the combined results soon. I'll also share the facilitation that goes with this group exercise and we can discuss the AHA moment that results.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I completed making new curtains for our three glass doors. It took persistance to completed and time. Measuring, choosing the right fabric, sewing, and placing them in place.

Unknown said...

this looks like an interesting 'project'. I'll have to try it. and you have an interesting blog. I'll have to come back later.

Anonymous said...

Project: Presenting forums on Climate Change for a church group.
1. Talking and reading lots of stuff.
2. Thinking. Talking to husband. Alot.
3. Drawing concept maps.
4. More focused reading.
5. Feeling really overwhelmed and scared (scale of project, catastrophe of climate change).
6. Outline on powerpoint.
7. Start searching for graphics.
8. Confused. Have to edit down what I've got.
9. Talk to husband, minister and friends for back up and 'is this crap?' advice.
10. Get notes bookmarked and organized, reflected in ppt slides.
11. Side tracked by making a slide show set to music. SO fun. So powerful, fun to leverage loving to take photos with climate change education.
And on and on. Persistance, need to have the end in view all the time. Biting off little bits at a time.

It was a decent job in the end. Not perfect and that was hard for me - I love getting the A :-) But a big learning experience and in the end, it HAS changed the church attitude to green living a little.