I'd like to talk about one of my earliest discoveries, and the one that I feel is the root of everything I've accomplished since. It's a common misconception that human behavior is controlled by a storm of conflicting emotions. Hear me out on this. In reality (and this is corroborated by modern psychologists), everything in the human emotional spectrum can be boiled down to two opposite polarized extremes: fear, and love.
Picture Fear and Love as two concepts at opposite ends of a straight line. This is what I like to call the Lifeline. On one half of this falls everything that's a product of love: happiness, obedience, being a good citizen, hard work, honesty, and good habits. On the other side are the products of fear: anger, insults, addictions, taking the easy way, and any sort of violence. In fact, I've found this an interesting and educational classroom experience: draw the lifeline on a chalkboard (or a whiteboard, which I guess is probably more common now), and hand out cards to the students describing scenarios which can be traced to either fear or love. Watch the students decide where on the line their card belongs, and find yourself looking at the root causes of things in surprising clarity. Example scenarios include:
Cheating on a test, even though you had a long time to prepare.
Passing the ball to the team member with the least experience.
Breaking into a condemned building to draw grafitti.
Finding a missing wallet, removing the money, and returning only the wallet.
Informing a teacher of classmates' behavior even though it will mean additional bullying.
Not taking a school assignment seriously and choosing a sarcastic approach rather than a genuine one!
Spending all day inside staring at a computer screen.
Behind every behavior is a root cause. I've found that this is the sort of activity that allows students' creativity to really shine!
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