Thank you to all of you who have been contributing to our on line discussion of the book. My final reflection of Drive is mixed. There are some parts that I connected with and enjoyed. There were also parts with which I had a tough time connecting. The toolkit was also a mixed experience. I enjoyed a few parts, but I could not tolerate other parts. I saw Andrew and Kristin last week and said that there were parts of the toolkit I could not even make myself read including, "Thirteen Ways to Improve Your Company, Office, or Group." Overall, I am glad we read it; I don't think it was the best book we have read. My take away from the book is about intrinsic motivation and how important it is to tap into that.
For your final entry, please leave the best "TAKE AWAY" that you have from the book.
I will be sending out a time sheet on August 30 or 31 to people who blogged. I ordered 20 books and 20 books were taken. We did not have 20 people blog. So, only people who have blogged will be getting the time sheet.
Jen - Thank you for continuing the blog and adding a summer session. While I did not fully enjoy this book, it did get me thinking and reflecting on my teaching and parenting. I guess my take away would be to keep trying. Although the book was not what I expected, I did learn from it. I love the opportunity to communicate with people at different levels within our district. I would love to try to open this up with other districts contributing too.
ReplyDeleteOverall, my goal is to try to help students answer the questions on page 190. "Why am I learning this? How is it relevant to the world I live in now?" I want to help students see the purpose for learning the material, and I hope that they can connect with it in the present and see the relevance to the real world for them in the future.
Best of luck to all this upcoming school year.
I agree that there were parts of the book that I didn't really like (although I did force myself to read them) and I did learn quite a bit from it.
ReplyDeleteI think Dawn's goal is definitely one that will help students invest themselves more into their learning especially at the HS level. At the elementary level we try to do this through learning targets, however, I am still not sure they make it relevant to their everyday lives...
My take away would be that I need to contemplate my purpose more and come up with my "sentence." In order to focus my energy and tap into my intrinsic motivation I like their idea of reflecting each day on whether I am a little better than I was the day before. Just by looking for small improvements it can keep me motivated.
I did like the section in the back "Type I for Parents and Eductors: Ten Ideas for Helping Our Kids" and thought it had some good ideas. The 3-Part Type I Test for Homework was interesting. It made me stop and think about how I might do this more when assigning homework. My favorite idea was the "FedEx" day.
I look forward to seeing what book we will be reading next!
Thank you for doing this over the summer. I enjoy these blogs as they force me to read outside of my comfort zone. I did enjoy this book, but as Dawn and Mrs. Postilli said, there were parts I did not think were relevant to the world of education. I also saw comparisons to Learning Targets and felt some validation with this. I liked the idea of helping students be curious and to see the big picture. This melds really well with what we try to do in the library.
ReplyDeleteMy take away (and it is hard to pick one!) is that I need to work on being more intrinsically motivated and I need to contemplate what my sentence is! I am working on it!
Thank you Jen for having this blog this summer. I really liked parts of this book and thought that some of the ideas could be used in the school setting to empower teachers to pursue their own development. The idea of more autonomy for teachers and letting us strive towards goals using our own professional judgment is powerful. More autonomy could foster an environment that would allow for new ideas and strategies for supporting students. Autonomy works hand and hand with setting a purpose that motivates organizations to continue to improve. Teachers are naturally motivated to support kids and the ideas in this book could be applied with some creativity. My favorite idea in the book is the idea of 20% time. We may not be able to have that much time, but allowing teachers to work on what they feel passionate about makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteThe only part of this book that I really did not care for was on page 192 where he boiled down his solutions to fixing education. He stated, "we're better off raising teachers' base pay and making it easier to get rid of the awful ones." I don't disagree with raising the base pay, but this over simplification of how to fix the problem made me so mad. My thoughts went to how many factors there are in developing successful educators and I would have preferred he would have applied some of his business strategies to better support teachers. More autonomy, developing a culture of mastery, and developing clear purpose would have been what I would have expected from this book. Overall the book was good, but I was let down by his views on education.
Jen,
ReplyDeleteThank you for putting together this book study. I know I've expressed my complaints and frustrations with this book in person.
My feelings are similar to those who have already commented on this thread. While Drive was applicable in more typical business environments I think Daniel Pink has a long way to understand education and the way public education works. While raising base pay for teachers is something we can all agree on I think he missed the mark on his other comments of education.
My biggest takeaway from the ideas of this book actually didn't come from this book. This summer I read Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin. It's a great book and if you are at all interested in habits or improving your life by making changes, big or small, I suggest you pick this one up!
In the book she writes a chapter on Rewards and cites Daniel Pink's work. To quote Rubin "First, a reward teaches me that I wouldn't do a particular activity for its own sake, but only to earn that reward; therefore, I learn to associate the activity with an imposition, a deprivation, or suffering." Reading this quote in a completely different book after finishing Drive, really helped me look back at it's message and reflect. We don't want students to be think about activities in our rooms as impositions, deprivations, or suffering. Going forward in this school year I am going to think much more about my rewards and think about their impact. Honestly I'm sure I may pull out a carrot or two or even an M&M to help get through a day, but with Pink's insight at least I'll be able to reflect on the negative consequences on my way home.