It's All About the Destination

Overly rigid and closed-minded people drive me nuts. They almost piss me off as much as handicapped bathroom stalls that open inward, but not quite.

I know plenty of people that are super-structured and rigid, and they are great people. I just don't enjoy that aspect of their personality, and I'm sure that it drives them nuts that I am on the other end of the spectrum. They probably see me as being scatterbrained and directionless.

Now, I have mentioned before that I am laid-back, but that doesn't mean that I shirk responsibility or am habitually late. In fact I am usually early, because I always account for the five minutes, or so, that it takes for me to reassemble my wheelchair after I take it out of my car.

I have taken the Myers-Briggs personality test several times over the years, and I always score right in the middle in the dimension that measures spontaneity versus being structured. So, I do believe that it is important to have structures and procedures in the classroom. It just helps things run smoother if students know where to turn in work, etc..

My belief in life, and in the classroom, is that it really doesn't matter how you arrived at a destination. The fact that you got there, is the most important thing. Now please don't think I am talking about a "win at all costs" kind of attitude. I think that it's vitally important to reach the "ends" only after an ethical "means." I just think that there should be a sense of flexibility in those means.

I have encountered so many teachers over the years that believe that there is just one way to accomplish a certain goal. I think that's b.s. There are tons of different ways, and according to the lyrics of Diff'rent Strokes (penned by Alan Thicke, by the way) "What might be right for you, may not be right for some."

But what my laid-back personality all boils down to, is this one fact...I don't mind chaos.

I love it when I have five different things going on in my classroom. I really enjoy giving my students plenty of choices when I want them to do a project. I also make a lot of my assignments open-ended, and this drives my super-structured students nuts! So to appease them, I tell them specifically how I want them to do the assignment, and it makes them feel better.

During my first year of teaching, I had a supervisor that was incredibly rigid. For example, she would criticize my lesson plans because they weren't as thorough as her's. She showed me her plans one day, and I was shocked at how she wrote everything down. She included all of her terms, definitions, examples, etc. It was more like a script than a plan.

She wanted me to do it that way too. Since I was a first-year teacher, I relented, but I hated it. My feeling is is that if I already know that profit is revenue-expenses, why the hell should I have to write it down in my lesson plan?!? But she didn't see the logic in that argument.

But realistically I know that the rigid people are always going to be rigid, and the laid-back people (like myself) are always going to be laid-back. But the world would be a much better place if we just forgot about the little details, and we just focused on the end product. Well that's at least how I see it, and it's my blog...so I win. :)