Today's topic comes to us from our friend and colleague
Eric Rosenbaum (HUB Manager, Bronx)
Leave a comment and read what your colleagues have to say!
Hello Elizabeth:
Many adult education programs have inspirational posters on the walls. They may exhort students to have greater self-esteem, higher aspirations, greater responsibility, etc.
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| An example of the posters |
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I might need to disqualify myself. I was once at a retreat where all the staff of my organization were asked to write their favorite inspirational saying. I was the only one who wrote the title of the piece of music I played through my mother's headphones during her last hour and hope to have the same done for me.
ReplyDeleteThat said, for students, my impression is that these kinds of sayings tend to put pressure on them, making them feel inadequate, guilty or ashamed.
For programs, my impression is that it's an unexamined assumption that there is value in these posters. What are we trying to do? Advertise ourselves as the place where people will become better human beings than they were before they had the good fortune to come through our doors? Do they actually provide the impetus for learning we would hope for? Or is that sufficiently accomplished by having a caring staff and good teaching? Hanging some good art without explanatory captions on the wall seems to me to be a better option.
Finally, my favorite inspirational saying was in a cartoon in MAD Magazine where a man is at his therapist's. The therapist reminds him to keep saying over and over to himself: "I do not look like a plate of spaghetti and meatballs!" As you can guess, he passes an Italian restaurant, murmuring this to himself, and what comes through the door and hits him square in the face...?
I think it depends on the message. I think positive reinforcements are useful. Not that we advertise they will be better human beings or are inadequate as they are, but use positive messages to support them. In an idea world, students would use their own words to create positive and support messages. But we can also provide these examples for them to grab hold of, use if useful, or modify. Positive psychology (PS) studies have shown the value of positive vs. negative thinking. However, we might be talking about different things here, ha. I do like the field of PS check out Martin Segilman's work in the field inhis book Flourish.
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