Wk 3 Reading: Response to Heather Anderson

Heather’s Blog:

After reading about the rule #6, I found myself completely agreeing with every aspect of it. I grew up an honest person, but never as honest as to help someone else realize their true ideals and personality. And I was never honest enough with myself to find the humor in it all. This chapter reminded me of the chapter on giving an A. You need to allow yourself to make mistakes and learn from them in a positive way. In the Giving an A chapter, if you made a mistake, your just announce how fascinating it is. In this chapter, you discover your own faults and find the humorous way to acknowledge it, bring it to the surface and fix it.

I enjoyed reading about the argument between the senior and junior partners at the company. Clearly, they both had their ideas and they both thought that the other was in the wrong. They let their egos, pride and selves get in the way. I wonder if they had thought about what is best for the company first instead of thinking of themselves, would they have had this argument? Bringing out the honesty in both of them, the kind of honesty that addresses the company and their values and abilities that correspond to the company, was highly valuable and helped them resolve their issues quickly.

Occasionally, my mother and I have arguments on a level like this. But I have discovered that honesty in the situation can resolve things quickly. The honesty may hurt, but when I receive the feedback from her from now on, I will know to try and find a humorous way to look at it instead of focus on how it hurts my image. I just need to teach her the same thing so that we can always have an honest conversation, resolve our issues quickly and improve our relationship every time we talk!

My final thought on this issue is that I wish more people would let their images go and be honest with themselves. I highly dislike parent teacher conferences because I can never be as honest with them as I would like to be. Many parents hold up their guard for themselves and their children, but sometimes that guard is so thick that they are doing more harm than good. If we teachers could get through that barrier with a higher degree of ease and humor, than I think children could benefit from the home-school connection quicker and more successfully. Until then, I will have to keep sugar-coating everything!

My Response:

I completely agree with you about parent/ teacher conferences. In my job, we do not have parent teacher conferences, something I am very thankful for. In South Korea, the sugarcoating is taken to an even higher level than in the States. For example, one of the projects our ESL students do for the week is a Self- introduction. They write a paragraph about themselves on Monday, then present to the class on Wednesday. Although this was technically a graded assignment, we were never allowed to give students lower than a B, even if their skills were not at that level. In the end, the paper was changes so that grades were taken out all together. Nobody likes to hear negative things about their kids. However, we’re not really helping our students if we pretend that they are perfect. If they really were so perfect, they wouldn’t need teachers! ☺ If more of us, both parents and teachers, were able to realize that imperfection is not the end of the world, just space to grow, conferences would probably be a lot more productive.