Happy Friday,

Congratulations, you have completed another work week! Hopefully you have finished it as a better version of yourself when you started it on Monday. Now you can ride that wave into the weekend.

Take a moment to consume an illuminating review of a segment from a book, a few quotes that will capture your attention, and a thought-provoking find from the internet - small bites of wisdom. Here is the Wise Bites memo for you to consider for the week.

Book Segment

This week I want to share a book segment review from Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcom Gladwell. Gladwell seamlessly weaves scientific research findings from diverse fields into an anecdotal style that gets the reader to see ordinary things in new ways. In this work, Gladwell brings to light an area of psychology, rapid cognition, to help us better understand what is behind our ability to make quick decisions. The three major concepts that I learned about were:

The benefit of quick decisions - decisions made quickly can every bit as good those made cautiously and deliberately.
Instinct Management - you need to know when to trust your instincts and when to be wary of them.
Snap Judgment Control - you can refine the efficiency of your judgment through a process called “thin slicing”, which is the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on narrow slices of experience.

Quotes

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
-Zig Ziglar
Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.
-Mark Twain

Internet Find

This week I found a political cartoon on LinkedIn, courtesy of Charles Jackson, that captured my attention. The image depicts an American teacher under the weight of social pressure and public policy outcomes. The cartoon shows a white, female teacher wearing a face covering and shield and carrying an assortment of supplies, both symbolic and literal. She looks to be impressively strong and focused, with her eyes fixed on the ground before her as she walks with an assertive gate toward an unseen destination. It is easy to see that the artist believes that teachers must “carry” remnants of every significant political debate, from guns in schools to the separation of church and state. I found the image to be arresting, revealing, and most accurate. Several questions came to mind. How did the American teacher become the poster child of political activism? Are teachers assuming roles and responsibilities as a result of the motivations of zealous politicians? Or have teachers voluntarily engaging in social movements because parents and community stakeholders are no longer doing it? Who’s driving what teachers do - school district leaders, policy makers, community members, or teachers, themselves?

In any case, the image is worth examining closely if we want to understand the role of the American teacher today and what their roles and responsibilities should be.

Stay tuned for future Wise Bites memos; share it online; and tell a friend!