The Six Enemies of Greatness (and Happiness)

The Do's and Don'ts of Supporting the Reluctant Teacher I want to talk about a mythical creature – the Reluctant Teacher. This teacher has no desire to try anything new – it either does not interest them, or they do not see how it can possibly improve the way they teach. Despite the whole school, and even the whole profession heading in a particular direction, the Reluctant Teacher does their bit in holding back the tide.

Seven Habits of Highly Creative People Seven Habits of Highly Creative People is an homage to Stephen Covey (Oct 24, 1932 – July 16, 2012) Creativity is the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality. Creativity involves two processes: thinking, and then producing. Innovation is the production or implementation of an idea. If you have ideas, but don’t act on them, you are imaginative but not creative. So What? As the new school year approaches, many principals around the country will be implementing a new teacher evaluation instrument. As you visit teacher classrooms looking for specific indicators, I encourage you to ask the simple question, “So What?” These two words can cause you to go beyond the surface and get a deeper understanding of what is really taking place in any classroom. For instance:

John Cleese on the 5 Factors to Make Your Life More Creative by Maria Popova “Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.” Much has been said about how creativity works, its secrets, its origins, and what we can do to optimize ourselves for it. In this excerpt from his fantastic 1991 lecture, John Cleese offers a recipe for creativity, delivered with his signature blend of cultural insight and comedic genius. Happiness Takes Effort As I was waiting for my latest video to upload to YouTube, a Facebook post caught my eye. It’s subject? An article entitled “6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person” on Cracked.com.

Thoughts on Will Richardson’s fine 19 Bold Ideas for Change in Education. Enjoy the short video above- it is very much worth the six minutes. It is the time of year when many are looking ahead to opening of the school year faculty and departmental meetings, so it is a good time to start sharing valuable short videos which can be used for inspiration and illumination at these meetings. This six minute video is a great candidate (and I intend to share a list soon); it is a very current (ISTE 2012) talk in which author and provocateur Will Richardson lays out his challenge to us: Bold Ideas for Change in Education. (Another alternative would be Will’s TEDx talk.)

Why conviction drives innovation more than creativity By Doreen Lorenzo, president, frog FORTUNE -- In business circles, "creativity" has become a buzzword to describe a desired trait among employees. It's widely believed that having creative thinkers on staff will boost overall team levels of innovation. Yes, creativity can lead to a surplus of original ideas. But when it comes time to sell those concepts internally, and then later take those ideas to market, creativity is not enough. The Keys to Happiness, and Why We Don't Use Them "It requires some effort to achieve a happy outlook on life, and most people don't make it." —Author and researcher Gregg Easterbrook Psychologists have recently handed the keys to happiness to the public, but many people cling to gloomy ways out of habit, experts say. Polls show Americans are no happier today than they were 50 years ago despite significant increases in prosperity, decreases in crime, cleaner air, larger living quarters and a better overall quality of life. So what gives?

ARTICLES: 21 Solution-Focused Techniques © 2011, Coert Visser Several informal surveys have given an impression of the relative popularity of different solution-focused techniques. The following 21 techniques seem to belong to the most well-known and popular solution-focused techniques: scaling questions, the past success question, the preferred future question, the platform question, the exception seeking question, reframing, indirect compliments, the miracle question, summarizing in the words of the client, the what-is-better question, normalizing, the usefulness question, the observation question, the perspective change question, the coping question, the continuation question, the prediction suggestion, leapfrogging, and mutualizing. Below is a description of these techniques.

Real Innovation: What It Really Is, and How to Really Do It (Really) Page 3 of 3 Here are the questions, and some examples of how they’ve been used for the greatest innovations in history… Benjamin Franklin looked at the American Colonies in a different way from everyone else, and as a result what he saw was a fledgling America, rather than a bunch of Englishmen struggling with their parent country. When the naturally occurring phenomenon of fire was used in a number of new ways, it became a source of heat and light, a powerful weapon, and a way to cook food–radically changing the world in the process. When the ancient Sumerians moved language from the verbal to the written context, they greatly amplified its power and importance, because now language could transcend time and space.

10 Things in School That Should Be Obsolete Flickr: Corey Leopold By Greg Stack So much about how and where kids learn has changed over the years, but the physical structure of schools has not. Looking around most school facilities — even those that aren’t old and crumbling — it’s obvious that so much of it is obsolete today, and yet still in wide use. 1. Time to redefine "innovation" By Doreen Lorenzo, president, frog FORTUNE -- Despite the many case studies and op-eds you might read on the importance of "innovation" as a strategy, in real life many businesses are struggling to be innovative. It doesn't mean that they can't come up with enough new ideas or that they don't have creative people on staff. Instead, executives might find that they cannot implement innovation within their company's structure, or that they get bogged down by distractions that only seem to be taking them on the path to inventions that are timely--and potentially profitable. In addition, many of the barriers to corporate innovation are forces that are much bigger than internal ones. But perhaps the biggest dilemma that businesses face when it comes to innovation is that the concept of "innovation" itself must be constantly re-thought to remain relevant.

Brief Thoughts On Leadership And Connectedness... My friend Kristina said this today: What's wrong with "the box"? It confines & doesn't make you stretch your own abilities.