Does Talent Actually Exist?

       Recently in Open English we have been reading a very interesting book called Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. The book begins with Colvin explaining that few people will ever achieve what we call true greatness.  In that chapter he also explains that hard work and experience is not what makes people great.  In some cases it can make them worse.  He also goes on to try and prove that talent does not exist.  That natural born abilities are not real and they are not the key factor in someone’s amazing success.  He examines the rise in greatness standards throughout history to now.  So by the end of the first chapter he has his audience questioning what does lead to success, and he give them the answer in the next chapter.  Practice.  It all has to do with practice.  How you practice, what you practice, how long you practice; it all is the key to greatness.  Also it opens up the fact that anyone could achieve greatness.  The topic he keeps coming back to in these first two chapters is that what you need to achieve success and greatness in any field is to use deliberate practice and to have the drive to achieve.

            I was a little skeptical about Colvin’s claim of talent not existing at all.  And Colvin admits in chapter two that maybe talent does exist, but it doesn't matter because even if talent is real it seems to be irrelevant.  Colvin had proven through studies and examples that having a slight ability for something does not people at a high vantage point over others.  That’s truly amazing!  If what he is saying really is true it opens up a whole to world to achieve in for people who thought they could never doing anything because they didn't have a magical talent.  People often bring up two examples when faced with anti-talent thesis, Mozart and Tiger Woods.  But in reality both of them just worked incredibly hard from a very young age, and this caused them to achieve greatness at a young age.  The main influence on both of them was pushy fathers who wanted them to achieve.  Teaching Tiger was basically an obsession of his father, and Mozart's father strived  for him to be amazing.  These two stories make me think of a quote from the  author John Green's book An Abundance of Katherine's.  "The vast majority of child prodigies don't become adult geniuses."  I think this quote really connects because it's saying you can't rely on a "God given talent" per say to carry throughout life.  I think that's a main point Colvin's trying to make; you have to work hard to achieve and there is no way around that.  To conclude, though I was kind of skeptical about Colvin's original claim I think that he has proved his point, and he was able to portray his ideas to an audience in a clear connectable way.

If you are interested in reading this book now I'll put a link where you can buy it down below.

http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World-Class-Performers/dp/1591842948

The Acquisition of a Skill

In open lab, we had to pick a skill to learn that could be physically demonstrated in front of the class.  For my skill, I chose yoga.  It's something I've always wanted to get into, so this was the perfect opportunity.  So, by November 24th, I will have mastered at least ten yoga poses.  Yoga has always been intriguing to me because it's supposed to be very good for you physically and it is supposed to help with stress.  I am a very stressed person that last part was the real seller on the topic.  I hope to continue to use yoga in the future to keep me stress free, physically fit and flexible.  So far I have already mastered the forearm bridge pose (first picture) and the first preparation pose (second picture) to successfully complete a supported headstand. The link below discusses the physical and mental benefits of yoga.

http://www.naturalnews.com/025558_yoga_benefits_body.html

Question of the day:  If you could learn any skill what would it be?

Let me know down in the comments!

Creative Problem Solving Interview

We had to Interview someone on how they use creative problem solving in  their everyday lives. I interviewed a friend of mine named Micah.  His interview was very....interesting. I hope you guys enjoy it!

Independence

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2014/01/08/6-ways-to-become-more-independent-less-codependent/

http://www.exforsys.com/career-center/self-supervision/self-supervision-at-the-workplace.html

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

Collaboration

This past week in Open we focused on another tenet of the program, collaboration. Imagine making a decision that was based solely on your opinion. Now imagine having to make that same decision, but you have make it as a group of people all with different opinions. Sounds like chaos right? Well, that's exactly what we had to do last week. In our activity we were given a list of thirteen people and told to pick six that were being sent to another planet that could support life before the Earth was destroyed.  It was pretty simple until we had to pick the six as a group. Mostly because we all knew what we wanted our six to be, and we weren't very open to other people's opinions. There was a lot of yelling and bitter feelings. At the end of the activity, even though we had picked six people, no one was happy with the decisions. Then we discussed successful steps to collaboration and were given the chance to try again. The second time there was no yelling, everyone was happy or at least satisfied with the decision, and it took half the time of the first attempt. The difference? Structure. When you collaborate someone needs to step forward, take charge, and make a system of how things are going to get done. This skill is really important for me to learn because currently I am very bad at it. I would rather to almost alway work independently given the choice, but some day that won't be an option. For example, when I have job there will probably be plenty of times where I have to work with others to complete a project. So its important I know how to do it correctly and successfully. If you are looking for more collaboration tips check out the links below.  The first link defines four key steps for collaboration. The second has seven tips to help you master collaboration.
http://www.fieldstonealliance.org/client/articles/article-4_key_collab_success.cfm
http://www.inc.com/kevin-daum/how-smart-people-collaborate-for-success.html

Question of the day:  What's the best collaboration experience you've ever had?
Let me know down in the comments!

The Joys of Punctuation

A recent assignment in our open english class was about punctuation. A pretty standard topic to be discussing in a sophomore english, but it was different because we, the students, were teaching the lesson; we split up into four groups of three or four people, and each group was assigned one of four more atypical punctuation marks--colon, semicolon, dash,and hyphen. My group chose to do the dash. To teach our classmates, we had to design a lesson plan that contained the following elements:  correct and incorrect examples of the punctuation mark, practice exercises for the class, and an in our words definition of how to use the punctuation mark. This project really helped with our self-advocacy, I think because it was the perfect test of being really independent with our own learning. This assignment really focused two of the four tenets that our program is focused on--independence and collaboration. Independence was enforced mainly through the fact this project was done entirely on our own. No class time was given to complete this project; we had to be responsible for the quality of our own education for once. Since we worked in groups, that strengthened our collaboration skills because we had to use teamwork to complete the project. Also we had to split the work up evenly or we wouldn't be successful in our presentations. In my past grammar and me  grammar and I haven't been the best of friends. I'm pretty sure that once, in an essay I had at twenty-three grammar and punctuation errors. Most of them being commas. I hope that this year will be different and that me and grammar can become friends. I have set the following goals for the usage of grammar and punctuation:  to write a final draft with no grammatical and punctual errors, to fully understand how to use all punctuation and grammar rules, to be more confident in my grammar and punctuation usage.

Question of the day: On what terms do you consider yourself with grammar and punctuation? 
Let me know down in the comments!

A Fixed Mindset Vs. a Growth Mindset

A couple of weeks ago our class had an in depth discussions about fixed mindsets versus growth mindsets.  What that is exactly is the debate on a person's natural intelligence level and whether it can be changed or if you are born with certain natural caps to your learning ability. It was once theorized that people were born with a definite set of skills that they develop throughout their lives, but they can't exceed their natural cap for any one skill. Although this theory is no longer correct many people have not realized it and continue to hold themselves to these false standards. People who have a fixed mindset tend to be more afraid to ask for help and are more grade focused. Recent studies have shown that a person's brain is always growing and learning, and a person does not have any natural caps on their learning abilities. People with fixed mindset do not fear failure, they see it as an opportunity to grow. Also they are more focused on mastery of skills over a given letter grade. A social experiment was conducted to help prove this theory. Two identical classes of fourth graders were used in this experiment, class A and class B. In class A the teacher always told the kids what a perfect job they always did. She told them they were the smartest class ever all time, and they got full credit on every assignment. In class B the children were told they that they had great effort on their assignments, and they were encouraged to keep trying. Can you guess which class started doing worse? Surprisingly enough it's class A. Their effort in class work started to decline test grades got worse. This happened because they were worry about looking stupid by asking questions and they no longer saw the point in doing school work since they would just get full credit. Meanwhile the children in class B flourished. They were engaged in class work and more concerned with mastering skills than a grade on a paper. Personally I consider myself mostly a growth minded person, there are some aspects in which i'm a fixed minded person. Mostly when it comes to grades because it's been pounded into my head since I was little kid that getting good grades is the key to being successful in life. So when I complete assignments sometimes I still focus on the grade aspect instead of understanding the whole assignment. Currently though, I am constantly working on trying to improve upon that way of thinking. Having a growth mindset will become really helpful to me in college because once I become just one face in a crowd I have to be comfortable with going to my professor and asking for help without the fear of judgement for not knowing something. I've provided some links down below if you are curious on fix vs. growth mindset. The first link talks about the differences between the two and how having one or the other affects your life. The second link discusses fostering a growth mindset in the classroom setting.
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2012/10/response_classroom_strategies_to_foster_a_growth_mindset.html
Question of the Day: Do you have a fixed or a growth mindset? How could you develop more of a growth mindset? Let me know down in the comments!

Creative Problem Sloving

This week in Open the theme was creative problem solving. Our program is based around the idea of four main tenets, and creative problem solving is one of the four. So this week we centered our activities in open lab to focus on improving our creative problem solving skills as a group and individually. We started our week with what seemed like a very standard classroom activity. I'm some of you guys have done things like this in school. Your teacher splits the class into groups, gives each groups a bag of materials, and tells each group to build the tallest tower possible with the given materials in a certain amount of time. Most of the time it's seen as a competition. Which group can build the tallest tower. But our teachers gave different materials in each bag. Also it was never explicitly stated in the instructions that it was a competition. So while we did find creative solutions to lack of materials in each our bags we could have solved our problems together as a class by pooling our resources. Another activity we did was called Saving Sam. We were given a  problem where Sam, a gummy worm, was stranded on a capsized boat, a plastic cup, and his life preserver was under the boat, a life saver.  Individually we were given four paper clips and told to find as many ways to save Sam without touching the boat, Sam, or the life preserver with our hands. This really helped with my creative problem skills because you had think outside of the box of normal thinking. Also you had to find more than one way to solve said problem instead of finding one way the works and being done. That was really helpful to me because I tend to find one way to do something and just stick with it. A teacher of mine once told me that was a very math-minded way of thinking, but it is also helpful to have a least one failsafe in case your first method ends up not working for everything. I think there are several ways to be successful in solving problems creatively. First, you have to be able to look at the problem from every perspective because if you don't you will never get full picture. There will always be the possibility you missed a side of the problem that would have provided you with information that was crucial to your success in solving the problem. Second, you really should try to find more than one way to solve a problem because sometimes you come up with solutions and they can't be implemented or do not work quite perfectly with your situation. Creative problem solving is a very important skill to have at one's disposal. It can help you in everyday life and in the work place. If you were curious and wanted to know more about creative problem solving check out the  links below. The first link is for the Creative Education Foundation. It defines what creative problem solving is and list specific steps on how to do it successfully. The second link is about being a creative problem solver in the work place.
http://www.creativeeducationfoundation.org/our-process/what-is-cps
http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2012/12/24/how-to-be-a-creative-problem-solver/
Question of the day:  How do you guys use creative problem solving in your lives?
Let me know in the comments!

Hello!

Hello and Welcome! Today marks not only the beginning of a new school year but a new adventure! starting soon I will be posting assignments and updates on the open program! I hope that people stick around and find out the result of this trail and maybe pass it on your own schools. Hopefully it will be a big success and who knows...maybe one school at a time we can change the way education is conducted! Well I'm signing off for now so sayonara fellow people of the internet and keep marching on!