Ode to Pink

Both of my daughters love the color pink. We recently moved, and they had a hand in helping to decorate their new room. It came as no surprise to me that their room is now pinkified--pink curtains, drapes, throw pillows, wall art. . . you name it, it's pink.

I'm (professionally) infatuated with another shade of pink these days. Dan Pink's Drive. When I read A Whole New Mind, the first of Pink's books to come to my attention, I will admit to being a little underwhelmed. Why it was pleasantly put together, I didn't feel that I learned anything new from AWNM. I had a completely different experience while reading Drive. Yes, Drive referenced and distilled the work of others I'd already read, most notably Carol Dweck's thought-provoking work published in Mindset. However, in Drive, Pink put his thoughts about what motivates us (people, humanity, etc)together in a way that gets the people in my school talking on a high level about topics such as motivation, assessment, student autonomy. . . conversations well worth having.

One nice thing about Drive is that Pink and others have done some of the work to help get conversations going with a group. His Two Questions video is perfect for opening a discussion.

Two questions that can change your life from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

At my school, we felt like the second question was not one we wanted to encourage. I'll talk more about that more in another post in the future.

Once the group has discussed the first video, it is worth seeing this collection of responses made by people from around the world to the prompt "what's your sentence."


Who knows--as a group, you may be inspired to make your own video of sentences. We've started our own--there's much more to come.



Finally, if anyone read the book a while back and needs a brief refresher/overview, I highly recommend these two videos:

Why are we teaching this stuff?

I follow with avid interest the musings and ideas of leaders in the Independent Curriculum Group. The NY Times article about changes to the AP.

Great--I'm reading good stuff. Now what am I going to do about it?? That's the question I'm asking myself. Because if I'm not doing anything about it. . .

On Connected Principals, Dave Truss wrote a brilliant post Less is more. Teach less, learn more. I left a comment and he wrote me back--causing that thrill that happens when a nobody like me gets a comment from someone who is a somebody. DT is the creator of the Brave New World Wide Web Video seen by just about everybody.

In our exchange (I had an exchange w/ Dave Truss!) I thought of something that made me realize it was time to blog. We must be wary of teaching kids that the academic grindstone is the way to ensure life-long success. That is clearly not true for many now. But, to break that grindstone for students, we’ll have to free the teachers first.

What are the essentials?

Give teachers time to collaborate and learn. I can do that. But it isn't just about time. Given time, even good teachers will often fill it with the tasks of teaching rather than expanding their own thinking. "There are so many papers to grade. If I have more time, I can read each draft as well as the final copy to help students be better writers." What do we need besides time? How do we create an expectation of learning and collaborating in that time?

Access to resources that expand teachers' worlds and provide tools for collaboration. I admit it, I'm a professional media junkie. I want to drag more folks into my world. I need to make sure that I'm not neglecting other realms though. Why on earth do teachers have to buy books about learning with their own money? Where are the professional libraries at most schools? How old are the books in them? Do teachers read and discuss books as part of their professional day or is that supposed to be done "on your own time?"

Authentic accountability. What if each teacher set some indicators to show how s/he has grown as a learner at the beginning of the school year and was evaluated with those in mind? Some schools approach teacher evaluation this way, how does it work?

Finally, that 20% time Daniel Pink espouses (see video below). Started (?) by Google, educators have been talking about it. we keep hearing about. Do we give teachers and students 20% time? How about 10%? 5%?