Week 4- Comments to My Classmates #2

Image retrieved and modified from FB profile pics.

Tracy's Comment re: The Art of Possibility-

Okay, I have agreed with most of the sections of this book up until now. I have to put my foot down on the Being the Board chapter. To a certain extent, yes, we need to take responsibility for the known risks we have put ourselves victim of. Take for example you decide to build a house on a flood plain as in the example in the book, you should not be devastated and blame others for the declaring yourself an unwilling victim of a known risk. However, we cannot always foresee the future, and sometimes, bad things happen to good people. I will not twist the situation so that I will somehow blame myself for every situation. It just might be someone else’s fault.

When you are in a position of leadership and you assume responsibility for failure at some level; I get that. I am the Yearbook Advisor for the district and try to allow the students as much freedom of responsibility and creativity as possible. However, when push comes to shove, the District will not blame or fire students; it will be the teacher that will feel the conviction. I am upfront and honest with my students while they choose every opportunity to put off their chores to make sure the Yearbook is completed in a timely manner. I call myself the Queen of the classroom and it has sent the appropriate message.  Time will tell.

My comments to Tracy-

Tracy, I see where you are coming from with regards to the ownership issue, however I think I may have another angle to approach the situation from.  The way I read the chapter, we are to not "blame" anybody, not others OR ourselves.  It is to take ownership for the possibilities that our behaviors afford us.  When we take a risk, such as buying that house, we must own every possibility that that experience opens for ourselves.  Yes it may be in a flood plain, but we may learn something and meet someone, and feel something that we could never experience from any other action than from buying that house.  The way a see it I want to own all the good things that come into my life, but in order to do that, I have to own the bad things as well.  But the bad things are more than just "bad things" they are opportunities to learn, opportunities to change, opportunities to walk away different from when and where you began and those things are valuable.  I think what the text is asking us to do is to change the way we look at things.  Yes, our administrators have the ultimate power to sign our pink slips, but is it not us who took the chance to apply, it is us who took the risk to think or act in a way that brings attention to ourselves, and it is us who then owns the opportunities that result.  So if our administrator does in fact let us go, the opportunities that open due to us being let go are also ours to own.  If we are not "let go" then perhaps we would never be afforded to opportunity to find our dream job or to meet that connection who changes our lives.

I think it all just comes down to changing our perspective.