Persistence, motivation, resourcefulness and enthusiasm on display at the beach.
Last week I was in Ohio visiting my childhood preschool which "gets it right." Above the office door was a sign entitled "Personal Qualities Not Measured by Tests."
It reminded me of the many articulate comments left on my blog last week, including this one: "You don't learn SELF discipline from other people making you do things."
As an author, I'm always thinking about human character traits so I can develop rich characters. As a mother, I'm trying to guide development of good traits. We can guide, but so much of it comes from the child herself, based on "what's inside" and her own experiences.
I'm still overwhelmed by the sheer volume of visitors who stopped by to read my "no homework" post (20,000+ and counting). You are all welcome here. Since the post generated such rich discussion, I thought I'd share this list with you. It serves as a simple reminder of what lessons are not necessarily taught or measured in school.
PERSONAL QUALITIES NOT MEASURED BY TESTS
- CREATIVITY
- RESILIENCE
- MOTIVATION
- PERSISTENCE
- CURIOSITY
- HUMOR
- ENDURANCE
- RELIABILITY
- ENTHUSIASM
- SELF-AWARENESS
- SELF-DISCIPLINE
- EMPATHY
- LEADERSHIP
- COURAGE
- COMPASSION
- SENSE OF BEAUTY
- SENSE OF WONDER
- HUMILITY
- RESOURCEFULNESS
- SPONTANEITY
How do we foster these traits? Where do we foster them? For me, some of this self-discovery came from books. How did you discover your own character traits?
Heather - I love the photograph. It brings to mind "The Little Engine that Could." I'm over the moon for you on the number of hits your "no homework" post generated. That's fantastic! And it goes to show that oh-so-many people share your rich vision.
My parents gave me the gift of being allowed to make mistakes. Because of this, I discovered many things by trial and error.
The picture in today's blog could have been of me or my brother about 50 years ago.Going to any beach was always a favorite activity.
My parents went out of their way to expose us to new activities, places, people, and ideas. We three siblings did such diverse things as origami class, art classes, ballet, classical music, theater, many sports, visiting Mexico for some Hispanic culture, Montreal for some French-Canadian culture, travelling across much of the US, camping, eating "new" foods (new in one case was huge fresh caught jumbo shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico on a camping trip to Padre Island National Seashore--words can't describe the difference between those and the typical frozen processed and packaged shrimpy shrimp from the grocery store).
We also regularly listened to a huge diversity of music at home. Our house was stocked with atlases, encyclopedia, classic books. We were encouraged to try anything we were interested in, were never told "no you can't do this or that activity," and weren't pushed into something our parents wanted more than we did. All we had to do was try something once. If we didn't like it, fine. If we did, fine.
But we also had regular chores, were expected to behave politely in public, had bedtimes and curfews, and were gently but firmly punished if we misbehaved. We knew what the limits were and could express our dislike of those limits, but always in the end, our parents made and enforced the rules.
Best of all, we were raised before the helicopter parent phenomenon, admittedly in a safer world than today, but it meant often times we were shoved out the door on a beautiful summer day and only told to be home for lunch/dinner and call if you had a change of plans and wanted permission to do something else.
Seems simple. Just like being a Renegade Parent today seems like it should be simple. I hope the Renegade movement catches on.
Most of the personal qualities can be measured by tests, here are just a few:
PERSONAL QUALITIES THAT "CAN" BE MEASURED BY TESTS:
■CREATIVITY - Ways to solve problems or points of view, i.e., essay questions.
■RESILIENCE - Be able to overcome failure (If at first you don't succeed, try and try again)
■MOTIVATION - The students willingness to learn and succeed.
■PERSISTENCE - See Resilience above.
■CURIOSITY - How interested they are in the subject matter, i.e., do well in Science but lackluster in Social Studies.
■HUMOR - Irrelevant to testing.
■ENDURANCE - How a student perseveres in learning a subject to which they had a weakness.
■RELIABILITY - Test scores reflect how much they already know (pre-test) and how much they learned on the subject (post-test).
■ENTHUSIASM - Shows how much interest the student has in the subject.
■SELF-AWARENESS - Makes the student aware of how much knowledge they have of the subject.
■SELF-DISCIPLINE - Achieving the acceptable standard of the subject.
■EMPATHY - Irrelevant to testing.
■LEADERSHIP - Taking ownership of their learning and achievement.
■COURAGE - Taking on the challenge of testing.
■COMPASSION - Irrelevant to testing.
■SENSE OF BEAUTY - Applied in Art and Writing assessments.
■SENSE OF WONDER - Applied in Science, i.e., solar system, 7 Wonders of the World.
■HUMILITY - Boasting about their high grade.
■RESOURCEFULNESS - Essays, offering options for solving a problem.
■SPONTANEITY - See Resourcefulness.