Another Point on Talent

One other interesting thing the Talented Teen brought up was that the authors discovered in their study that "average adolescents appeared to do chores around the house twice as often as the talented." The same spread also described how many had jobs outside the house.

So I'm torn. Part of me can see, yeah, if a kid is really talented, then maybe they should spend relatively more time pursuing their talent rather than doing menial labor. The other part thinks "Put down your #$&!ing accordion and bring out the @#$*!ing trash!" My big question is why should these things be mutually exclusive? Ideally, there should be time for pursuit of talent, and for the work that it takes to be self-supported or part of a family. I can't imagine that talented kids are better off for being let off the hook on these things.

A Lesson In Sticktuitiveness

One flaw I have found in myself is that I often get part way through something and then feel compelled to move on to something else. Halfway done with the laundry, it's time to clean off the counters. Those almost done? Time to check email.

I even have trouble flossing all my teeth at once. I kid you not. Two more teeth to go, and some little gremlin says "oh, you can do those tomorrow...if you stop now you can get to bed 7.5 seconds quicker!"

So today, after a therapeutic bout of lopping off rampaging bittersweet, I decided to take out one of the trees that's been growing in our front flower bed...uh...obviously long enough to have grown into a 15 foot tree with a roughly 4 inch diameter trunk. I sawed half way through, and guess what? Started thinking "this is really tedious and I'm tired..."

Then it occurred to me that having a half-sawed down tree is a tremendously stupid thing, and a thorough waste of time. If only everything else were so obvious :-)

The Nature of "Flow" and its Teaching Implications

I'm currently reading Talented Teenagers: The Roots of Success and Failure by Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi (thank you heartily to one of the previous BookMooch owners for the wonderful highlighting job). He writes:

"...flow in consciousness emerges when one perceives a well-calibrated balance between the challenges that an activity poses and the skills with which one can immediately respond. These conditions correspond to an experience of optimum balace in which just enough information is present to occupy attention fully without overloading it...over time as a young person learns to master this balanced tension, there will emerge an enduring personal project or life theme as well as a distinctive styleof engagement with the world.

Thus...(these) individuals should enjoy clear advantages in realizing the development of their talents to the fullest extent. On the day-to-day level, where others see only difficulty, their deep sense of interest aids them in recognizing new challenges, with new opportunities pitched just far enough ahead of current skills to mobilize butnot overwhelm psychic resources. In the long run, the emerging sense of a life theme ats as an organizing agent in consciousness, authorizing the devotion of extensive time to projects that reflect deep personal interests."

Now, it seems to me that it's a rare child that will have the natural balance to perch at that growing tip (to use a botanical analogy). Csikszentimihalyi (thank God for cut and paste) in fact describes this ability as a personality trait. So clearly the ideal role of the teacher is to guide a child to this point (ok, not my idea--I think some guy named Vygotsky came up with this) frequently enough that they can internalize the awareness and enjoyment of being there.

So my question is, how the heck do you do that? I imagine it takes quite an amount of sensitivity, a whole lot of mistakes, a few successes, and a good amount of self-knowledge.

What a job.

Thank God for box wine.

Artie

This is Artemisia, one of our ameraucanas. She likes to sit down a lot.