Life Makes Sense...Finally

(Author's Note: This post was originally written in the fall of 2008, but since tomorrow my kids are taking the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, I thought I'd look around my unpublished blog posts and see if I had written anything about personality in the past. Of course...there were several. A few modifications, plus a title change and here we are at a blog post. For now, I'm not linking to anything in this post yet...I will eventually. I'm simply too tired.)


Who I am? Last night I was reading my personality traits book. I'm not sure what this obsession is with my personality. It makes me think I'm trying to figure out who I am, finally, after all these years. Am I going through a mid-life crisis? I don't know. But all of a sudden I am once again intrigued with what my personality says about me.

It's not all of a sudden. For 20 years I've been infatuated. Consumed by traits and charactersistics of myself, my students, my friends, my family. In college, I took the Myers-Briggs as often as possible. I even stooped to the lowest levels of personality testing (and I'm not including the ones on Facebook.) I took color personality tests, animal personality tests, food personality tests, even biblical personality tests. Sounds narcistic, I know. Embarrassing to admit.

When I started teaching, I began to look at ways I could use personality testing in my classroom as a means to get to know my students and to experiment with collaborative learning groups based on the traits. When I first started learning about and teaching Shakespeare, I was in awe of his ability to put personality into the very being of all of his characters with precision and purpose. The Four Humours during Elizabethan times seems to snag the interest of my students...maybe talking about yellow and black bile does that. But moving ahead and transitioning to the modern era of the four personality types and reading Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey, hooked me into to using personality testing in my classroom. Since then, I've asked students take the Keirsey Temperament Sorter in my classroom, calculate their results, read through their personality characteristics, and respond in writing workshop to what plays out in front of them. Most are overwhelmingly shocked by the accuracy. I ask the kids to provide stories and details about their traits. "If your personality indicates you have a tendency to be late, can you write about time when this was an issue for you? Or possibly you already know this about yourself, have you reversed the tendency? If so, how?"

Using the personality test also helps kids think about the actions and personality of characters in the books they read. In their 3-week Letter Essay about what they've been reading, many students pull out distinct traits, and are able to write about decisions they think characters will make throughout the book once they get to know them. It's almost as if the book, in some way, becomes relevant to their own learning because they connect the real world of growing, living, decisive human beings to fictional characters. This produces some pretty amazing results in writing, too, and I can easily ask a student "Are you writing him as a Guardian Supervisor?" This sparks inquiry and research on the character traits begins.

I have to admit watching the students discover their personality is inspiring. It's not as if they don't know who they are, but for the first time, it's like life, their life, is making sense to them.

As for me, I'm always discovering who I am. For today, I'm an Idealist Champion...a catalyst, it says. If I were in Chem I, I'd be that substance that accelerates a chemical reaction. In life, sometimes I'm that person that helps activity happen between others. I like to think even, that sometimes I can help bring about change, or cause others to bring out their own energy, enthusiasm, and friendliness. Mostly, I like to think this lesson on personality is a simple catalyst for students to start leading a reflective life full of learning. One can only hope.

Who Inspired(s) Me to Write...

My 2nd grade teacher let me write a short story, "The Dragon in My Garden", and sent a letter home to my parents about me being a writer. I was hooked. I'm 30 years now into diaries, journals, and blog posts.

Writing gave me a new insight to its value when I started reading my mother's daily journal entries a few years ago, (she passed away 25 years earlier) and I noticed my own writing began to change with it. So did my motivation to write.

Although I never felt stifled as a writer during high school and college, I'm not sure I was ever able to explore my writing thoroughly, and I know I wasn't able to develop myself as a writing teacher until I learned to understand my own processing at the Greater Kansas City Writing Project in 2002.

There's an article floating around on Twitter right now from the New York Times about re-connecting with teachers on Facebook. I can't visit with my 2nd grade teacher anymore, but I'm blessed with teaching during the age of Facebook and just last week a former student posted a compliment on my wall to how I inspired her writing. Fortunately, I get to say back, "it was you, and all your classmates, who continue to inspire my own writing and being a writing teacher." This constant connection and re-connection continues to pull me toward writing and its value in my life.

How to Really Love Your Kids by Sara Allen

I was talking to Sara after SI today and I asked her why she thought her kids loved her class. She said "because I really love them." And then these gems started rolling off her tongue. I typed them as she said them. She teachers 4th-5th grade in Springfield, Missouri.


"Pick up their pencil when it rolls off their desk.

Make sure they're wearing their coat when they go outside...and zip it up.

Go outside and try to catch a football even though you never can.

Let them try on your high heels...who cares how much they cost.

Be yourself.

They know who you are...and they know when you are wearing a mask.

Be authentic.

Be true.

It's not all great--they will get mad at you and they will say things that you did even though you really didn't do it. They will say bad things, you can't let that change how you treat them the next day.

Hold the door open for them. Say hello every morning.

Hold the door when they leave. Say goodbye.

If they are having a bad day, a piece of gum can turn things around.

Let them write a note or journal if they can't get into their math that day.

They can totally tell if you're just there and you are not honing in on what they are saying...this is one of the most important things.

They will feel love if you know they really care. It's not a perfect formula for getting them to do what you want, but you are acknowledging that the are humans and you are in a human relationship with them.

Be determined to get through the bad times. When you are pushed, and pushed, and pushed...at the end of the day you must reconnect and wish them a good evening.

Your tone needs to be respectful.

When you do something silly--tell them how you are breaking yourself out of the box.

Know their ages--they are cute and they are dolls--but they are little people.

Let passion ooze out of everything you do and everything you say.

Let students feel your energy.

Let your room take on that energy...and feed off of that energy.

Maybe that's love. I don't know. But that's what it boils down to...love, honesty, and willingness to learn, grow, and change.

Say no occasionally when they ask for a piece of candy.

Don't give compliments that aren't true. It loses it's meaning.

Be explicit with your feedback--things are just "great."

Recognition is important.

When they give you a picture with your name spelled wrong, hang it up anyway.

When they make you a happy anniversary poster and it's spelled totally wrong and it's 4 feet long--take up the wall space anyway.

When they give you a cookie with their dirty little fingerprints on it, eat it anyway. You won't die.

Be geniune.

Be truly thankful.

When they bring you a wilted flower they forgot to give you last Friday, you put water in a vase and you put it on your desk and you leave it there until it's totally dead.

When vomit splatters on your heels and your skirt...remember that it washes away."

Disturbing the Status Quo: Reflections from Recruiting for Diversity

I'm starting to think, (which isn't surprising seeing as I'm attending a National Writing Project event.)Somewhere in the middle of Margaret Wheatley's book turning to one another, she reminded me that the moment we start to think, we start disturbing the status quo. In fact, I think she says it's dangerous even. A good dangerous I would add. I want to write a little bit later about an earlier chapter in Wheatley's book, but for now, my journey2learn this weekend is focused on diversity. Accessing the diverse contributions in my community, making recruiting for the OWP relevant to the work needed to be done in our service area, and learning to connect with the rich and diverse world that the Ozarks is.

My real thought to that...open my eyes. Look around and start noticing. Begin. Don't say it, but live it and commit to seeing all as blessings and not problems. Commit to seeing the diversity around me as the contribution. Commit to serving the underserved.

Already I'm beginning to open my eyes to how I DON'T live this in my life. And it's embarrassing.

At this point it's my first personal reaction to the literature I've been reading at the NWP's Recruiting for Diversity Institute. "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua gave me insight into the culture of language and how that culture reflects the identity of self. How you view yourself based on the dominant culture's behavior, words, actions, etc. This must be true in any situation. Actually I know it's true in any situation. I'm thinking of how my sense of self is connected to the dominant culture in the house I was raised. I felt worthy and whole if I was doing, saying, and thinking what my parents thought. It's got to be this way for our kids in school as well...tying identity to what the "popular" kids want and think. We all attach our identity to someone else, and that reminds me of a powerful phrase I pulled out from Margaret (Meg) Wheatley's chapter "Willing to be Disturbed" (pages 38-41 in the book turning to one another: simple conversations to restore hope to the future.

"We don't have to let go of what we believe, but we do need to be curious about what someone else believes. We do need to acknowledge that their way of interpreting the world might be essential to our survival."

What you say, do, and believe is essential to my survival as a growing, learning, thinking human being. My challenge to myself is to remember this luxury of learning from and listening to others.

Another challenge to myself: I want to try not being part of that dominant culture, although that is who I am, but instead, step outside of myself and understand and learn to value, no, I want to say "honor", those who feel domininated.

I feel like there are a lot of mixed ideas in this reflection, but I can't work through my own thinking without being confused and convoluted at first.

Personal Response: Writing Process: A Shining Moment by Sondra Perl

I read the last two pages and it's reminded me of learning to become a teacher researcher in my own classroom. Last week I attended the OWP Teacher Inquiry Institute and I'm thinking in researcher terms, but these pages led me there as well.

Sondra Perl reminds us of some key points as the researcher: that you are not "testing" and coming to a conclusion, but your research is ever growing, ever changing, ever moving along with the study. It's important to know that you stand outside to conduct the research, but that within the context of your own work what you consider relevant will appear in your classroom. In fact, it's vital that you are engaged in what is being study, but it's equally vital, as much as possible, but us to understand our own impact on the results.

Important reminder: It's not a test, but pay attention to the details.

Important reminder: Attend to the work in slow and careful ways. Do not rush the process.

Important reminder: I am not alone. We do not work in solitude--we work with writers, use the students.

Important reminder: Studying about writing is never done. There is always more to see, more to do, more ways to look at how students create and how new texts are always evolving.