Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Food for thought

Instead of spending today playing with Pixie, PJ and my other new friend, I sat in the first day of Mandt training learning the Mandt method of reacting to people's behavior in ways that encourage positive relationships, trust, collaboration, and what to do when things go very, very wrong. (We'll do that part tomorrow, today was all about behavior and how to keep things going right.)

Today's workshop was fascinating and gave me a lot to think about. Throughout the day I found myself being reminded of Responsive Classroom- so much of the Mandt method supports the same theories and ideas taught in RC- understanding your student's basic needs and making sure they are met, pre-teaching your expectations, and being aware of your own teacher language. Not to say if you have RC training you don't need Mandt and vice versa- but the two truly go hand in hand. It's always reassuring to see common themes and philosophies across trainings- it reminds you that you're doing the right thing!

A few quotes from today struck me.

"I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in my ______ (as teachers we'd fill in classroom). It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make _____ (student's) life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is MY response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a person humanized or dehumanized." ~Dr. Haim Ginott (1956)

"A person is a person through another person, that my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with yours. When I dehumanize you, I inexorably dehumanize myself." Desmond Tutu, 2000).


2 comments:

magpie said...

That's the trouble with quotes.
They strike a chord at particular moments when really the person was talking about something else.

I try to always reassure myself that primary school children are surprisingly more adaptive than older students because all they really think about is themselves 24/7.

Snippety Gibbet said...

If you hear of any good books on Mandt, would you let me know? I need to learn some new things in this area.

jan