U2 - Vertigo: Video

Vertigo (1958) Trailer - Alfred Hitchcock

Thinking About Medicine & Metaphors

Medical conditions provide fertile ground for art, as shown by Hitchcock - and Bono n the boys:

">

">

A Whole New World

In the last month, the Universe transported me from my comfortable, well-known world of K-12 education into the greener pastures of graduate medical education. New systems, new culture, new terms, new people! new to me, anyway. Exciting, exhilarating, occasionally overwhelming - yet I hope to add value to this enterprise with my knowledge of curriculum, instruction, assessment, professional development and organizational change.

First tasks include developing/enhancing curricula goals & objectives, working on new programs in hospice/palliative care ,sports medicine and group visits in OB, supporting teaching in the clinical skills arena and faculty development. This blog may serve as a place to explore the work of Parker Palmer with the faculty...

Meanwhile I also want to continue to find ways to infuse Web 2.0 tools into learning and teaching -- see my doodling with Wordle in the sidebar!

Thanks as ever for listening...

Some Thoughts on "Better"

In Better, A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, Atul Gawande talks about the core requirements for success in medicine "or in any endeavor that involves risk and responsibility." These core requirements include diligence, doing right and ingenuity. I think these are very important qualities and I like how he supports his thesis. He defines them briefly, then divides his narrative into three sections where he illustrates each thru vignettes.

Diligence is the ability to pay attention to those details that matter, being vigilant and steadfast. To do right means to maintain integrity and be ethical which can be very difficult for us humans. Ingenuity is a cognitive skill that enables us to think in new ways.

The one quality that I think that we need to be truly successful that Gawande does not address in this book is the ability to dream, to imagine how we want to be if we could be our best selves. When we dream we open ourselves to our higher purpose, to what we are called to do as participants in this cosmic endeavor. "We are spiritual beings having a human experience," de Chardin pointed out. Our success is not simply dependent on our own qualities - only when we step into the Flow can we truly fulfill our purpose here.

Greener pastures

OK, so I have an explanation for the long delay in posting. Not an excuse, mind you: an explanation. Not one, but really, two reasons for not posting sooner.

First, and most to the point: I am a digital immigrant, not a native. Altho I wish it different, I am of another generation whose original brain wiring supported pencil and paper expression, not digital discourse. So my initial impulse drives me to meditate, not blog, even tho I learn so much when I do.

Second, since my last post the Universe engineered a change for me, a pending move to what looks from here to be greener pastures. After toiling for 33 years in the field surrounding K-12 education I will soon be joining the staff of a family medicine residency program. This program sought an educator who can align curriculum to accreditation standards and ensure that the instructional path leads physicians to where they need to be as rural family practitioners. I am very excited to be joining this group and have begun reading in the field to ground myself.

In my next post, with less lapse than before I will share some thoughts from "Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance," by Atul Gawande, that may apply to educators across all fields.

To pique your interest, visit the entry in Wikipedia or get the book and read along:

Thanks for listening.

Spontaneously Joyful

My mantra for the week is, "I invite myself to be spontaneously joyful." And just to think it makes me feel, well, spontaneously joyful! As Taj Mahal sings, "Remember that feeling as a child, when you woke up and morning smiled?" It's time, it's time I felt like that again.

This morning on National Public Radio I heard a great story on a new approach to early childhood education based on the work of our good friend Lev Vygotsky. You can listen to the NPR story here. Called "Tools of the Mind", the approach intends to teach children to regulate their own learning. The premise is that children do not learn as well as they could because they have not learned how to regulate their social, emotional and cognitive behaviors. Self-regulation forms the basis of executive functioning, which research shows correlates more highly with academic achievement than early reading or math skills.And, those of us in schools know that the lack of executive functioning greatly impedes our ability to teach.

What I really like about this approach is it is rooted in play, what we used to call "free play." When children create their own scenarios and play them out, or experiment with tools of their own choosing, they are learning about the world. Much of children's experience in our modern world involves them in highly structured activities (lessons, organized sports) or electronic environments (TV, video games)which demand little in the way of imagination. In a Tools of the Mind classroom, children use their imaginations in their play -- yet with one important pre-condition: intention. Children learn a process that requires them to declare their intention before they play, to an adult who records it on paper, and then with whom they debrief when they are done. In this it is very similar to the seminal High/Scope "Plan-Do-Review" cycle. High/Scope's nearly forty years of research shows the unequivocal importance of high quality early childhood education. Tools of the Mind offers a new way of thinking how to support young children in learning about their learning.

Which, to my mind, is one of the many sources of spontaneous joy!