Week 2-Transformation

Transformation

"Provide an uncommon experience for your students and they will reward you with an uncommon effort and attitude." (Dave Burgess)

Burgess writes this chapter as a way to show us that too often students and teachers fall into a day to day rut..."we've got to get through the content" type of day.  You can hear that one teacher you had saying "c'mon you guys, I know this is not exciting but you need to stay with me."  

Burgess references Seth Godin's Purple Cow principle to paint the picture of why you want to not fall into that day in and day out rut.

"Students are hit with so much information and stimuli every day that to stand out in their minds, you must be remarkable." (56)

"Standing out from the crowd is the only way to guarantee your message is received in a culture that is increasingly distracted and where attention spans are plummeting.  If you feel your message is important, and I do, it is worth the effort to go to any lengths to make sure it is successfully delivered." (56)

The two above quotes make one think of the work that has to be put into make a memorable lesson.  You want your students to leave after a day know what they learned and understanding why and how the content they learned is important to them.

Burgess poses two questions for you to ask yourself to determine if your lessons are truly remarkable.

1. If your students didn't have to be there, would you be teaching in an empty room?  If your students didn't have to come to school, would your lessons and how you teach them, drive your students to come to school on their own or would you just be alone in an empty room.
2. Do you have any lessons you could sell tickets for?  Are there lessons or teaching strategies that you use that really engage students to the point where you walk out that night floating on cloud nine.

Reality says that we will not be able to answer yes to each of those questions every day, however striving to get there will push you to design more engaging lessons.  Set your vision and ask yourself every day if you're reaching that vision.

Positioning and Reframing:

Burgess ends this chapter focusing on Positioning and Reframing.

• Positioning is how you put your class out there for all to see.  "Why should students bother to learn what we are teaching?  Why should they bother to give us their attention and active engagement in the first place?" (61)  As noted earlier in the chapter, students have so much stimuli in a day, you have to find a way to keep your message positioned in front of your students.  Why is it important for students to listen to what you have to say. 
• Reframing focuses directly on the content you're teaching.  What we're teaching may not seem important to our students, so how do we reframe it so that our students think that they cannot live without knowing the content.  "Our job is to create a mental paradigm shift by reframing the content and its value and relevancy to their lives." (62)  How can you connect the content to the students...again, why is it important to them?  If we can't, we'll never have their full attention.

Discussion Questions:

• Have you had to Re-Position a lesson or Reframe the content you were going to teach to make sure it would engage your students?  If you have not, can you think of a lesson/content that you will try to Re-Position/Reframe?

Don't forget to respond to at least one one other person's comment.