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Hat tip to my dear friend Angela Maiers (I can't wait to keynote with her in Maine in two weeks!) for this great video about motivation. This is a quick, funny video to get conversations started. Administrators beware: sometimes the tasks teachers have in the classroom are mundane because the content is mundane. Alfie Kohn vs Dwight Schrute

There is a moment between thought and action. It is good to ponder, to research, to think. And yet, we reach a point where it is time to put those things behind us and act. To do. [URL=http://img8.imageshack.us/i/bystandereffect.jpg/][IMG]http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/1461/bystandereffect.jpg[/IMG][/URL] For truthfully, to decide not to act is also a decision to do something. It is a decision to do nothing. What are you pondering today that requires action? People fear action for it means accountability and surely, none of us is perfect. And yet, I can think of nothing worse than a person watching a drowning child and doing nothing. Yet, we all see things before us that require our action. Decide to do something. Doing nothing is also doing something and to do nothing is to refuse accountability and responsibility for something that is yours to act upon. What will you do? Related articles by Zemanta Getting Things Done: The Power of the Next-Action Decision (thesim...

One of my students shared this on our private Ning. I was grading tonight and feeling overwhelmed, but watching this gave me a mood boost and I thought you'd like it too. Let me ask you this... How often do you just laugh and be in the moment? So many times the problems we worry about never come to pass. Now, I the list-making Mama would never tell you not to plan, however, I find that I stress myself out way too much. So, here are a few more: Baby Laughing at the Wii Or a summary of three funny ones So, do you feel better? tag: motivation , inspiration , learning , humor , funny

To bad businesses and coffee mugs wrung most of the meaning out of this movie, however, it is worth re-seeing and remember the true meaning of this scene from Dead Poet's Society. The teacher has the students come over to the trophy case at the school, here is some of what he says: "I want you to step over here and peruse the faces from the past... they're not that different from you are they... did they wait till it was too late to make from their lives one iota of what it was capable... you see boys, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils." He asks them to lean in and hear what they say: "Sieze the Day, Make your Lives Extraordinary." Many teachers have walked these halls before us. Many will come after. We can muddle through, just get by. Put one foot in front of the other... do the bare minimum. Or we can do something with our day. We can make our lives extraordinary. We can make our classes extraordinary. Never mind that we're exhausted and ha...