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"Lighten up your email with the Emotional Labor extension. Works on any email sent through Gmail. First write an email. Then click the smiley face to brighten up the tone of the email before sending. "

Maxine Greene (1995) writes:

"The role of the imagination is not to resolve, not to point the way, not to improve.  It is to awaken, to disclose the ordinarily unseen, unheard, and unexpected" (p. 28)

In this age of constant information and busy lives, it's difficult to get teachers and parents to read large amounts of research, or to understand the importance of boycotts, resolutions or petitions. The information we wish to share regarding the ill purpose and effects of corporate ownership of education must be expressed using all of the senses, in our bodied actions-instantaneously and with the emotion it warrants. As Nick Sousanis considers, we have to remember that conception (i.e as what we believe, what we think of as "real") largely comes through our perception (i.e what we see with our eyes and how we construct meaning).

Greene writes that through the "art of knowing"-"The experience and knowledge gained  by this way of knowing opens new modalities for us in the lived world; it brings us in touch with our primordial landscapes, our original acts of perceiving" (p. 149).

We need to redesign the social landscape with new images, new stories, new ways of understanding what corporate reform "is" and how it works.  What we need is action-creative action collectively inspired in local communities and through national organizing-to UNFLATTEN our worlds.

One thought on "How does it feel to think?"

Profile photo of Yin Wah Kreher Yin Wah Kreher
January 19, 2015 at 3:45 pm Edit

I don't think in music. It's fascinating that you can identify a particular tune that guides (facilitates?) thinking. When I need heavy mental effort, I need total silence. :-) It's interesting how different people think and feel when they think. Like you, I've never thought about my feelings when I think. It's after thinking that I may feel various emotions, or not. Feel free to drop by my thoughts on this. I wrote a post on it: http://justywk.blogspot.com/2014/06/thought-vectors-how-thinkaholic-feels.html

"If we've let the fickleness of history and public policy describe the bizarre set of standards (looking at you, Math) and therefore the metrics that we'll measure all students against, you'll end up with a system designed for those metrics. Instead, if you define your own measures, and actually study longitudinally their validity, we'll end up in a place where perhaps we'll value the emotional-intelligence development of a teenager above their ability to comply with outdated curricula. Maybe we'll come to value the nuance of entrepreneurial thought opposed to attempting to cram a line of reasoning they stole wholesale from Reddit into five paragraphs 20 minutes before the paper is due. "

"The best performing teacher in the whole system was a woman named Zenaida Tan. Up until that report, she was completely unheralded. The skills she possessed were invisible. Meanwhile, less important traits were measured on her evaluations (three times she was late to pick up students from recess). In part, Lemov is talking about the skill of herding cats. The master of cat herding senses when attention is about to wander, knows how fast to move a diverse group, senses the rhythm between lecturing and class participation, varies the emotional tone. This is a performance skill that surely is relevant beyond education. This raises an important point. As the economy changes, the skills required to thrive in it change, too, and it takes a while before these new skills are defined and acknowledged. For example, in today's loosely networked world, people with social courage have amazing value. Everyone goes to conferences and meets people, but some people invite six people to lunch afterward and follow up with four carefully tended friendships forevermore. Then they spend their lives connecting people across networks. People with social courage are extroverted in issuing invitations but introverted in conversation - willing to listen 70 percent of the time"

"Cliff began this project because he was noticed that there were "recurring patterns of procrastination and motivation" going on in his life. He began trying to understand them by turning to the large body of literature on human psychology. Then he asked himself, "Would it be possible to use some quantitative methods to track what was happening." Using what he'd learned in his research and his experiences he decided to track his body, emotions, and mind. "

Understand first the purpose of gesture. It's more important than you might think. Intents, ideas, emotions, desires, decisions, wants, urges - they all originate within our unconscious minds. Once the unconscious mind has cooked them up, the next thing that happens is that you begin to act on them. Only after you begin to move does your conscious mind kick into gear and become aware of what's going on.

You need gesture, in fact, in order to know what you're thinking. Literally. Stifle your gestures and limit your thinking - your conscious awareness of what's going on in the depths of your mind.

Interesting commentary that could be applied to the classroom as well.