Midlife Meditation

A thank you ticket. It took me a long time to warm up to the concept of the thank you ticket. Thank you tickets are a PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) approach to school discipline: find a child acting appropriately in a given situation, and write and present him or her with a ticket in as public a manner as possible: "Thank you, Tina, for walking so quietly down the hall!" "Thank you, TreSean, for sitting so quietly in the circle while I pass out instruments!" Other children see the presentation of the ticket and quickly respond by imitating the rewarded behavior. Handing out another ticket or two should, according to the theory, get an entire class quieted, and any lingering disrupters--instigators for whom the personal rewards of misbehavior outweigh any benefit of getting a ticket--can be more easily addressed by the teacher. And why, you may ask, should the tickets be a reward? For some children, the ticket all by itself is rewar...

There are times when ideals have to be seasoned with pragmatism. I mostly keep my hair short these days. Very short. I go in to Great Clips and ask for a clipper cut, 5 comb on the top, 4 on the sides. The reasons are twofold: with my hair this short, shampooing is a snap, and I can do it with any soapy liquid; and more importantly, I've concluded that my receding hairline has finally reached the point at which I just look better with a buzz cut. Any concessions to vanity in the form of longer hair soon takes on the aspect of a comb-over, and if allowed to get too long, can become Hitleresque. Better just to keep it short. Very short. This is in stark contrast with my youthful preference for hair that came down to my collar, and occasionally beyond. I was a frustrated hippie wannabe. I had a cousin whose ponytail went all the way down to his waist, but I never quite summoned up the gumption to go that far. Mostly I went for shaggy. But it's been years since I could pull ...

Why be good? When I was first studying to be a teacher, the answer to that question was the subject of a great deal of controversy. Humanist educators (and yes, "humanism" was a word well-respected in teacher colleges in the early 1980s) believed that achievement should be intrinsically motivated, that the content of the curriculum should in and of itself inspire students both to study and to behave properly in class. This was especially true in the "electives," those subjects that students chose to take, rather than being required to take. A band or choir student's love of music would motivate him or her to practice regularly and to be fully focused during rehearsals upon improving performances individually and collectively; a drama student's love of theater would lead her or him to learn parts long before memorization was necessary; and so on. Ideally, all subjects would be intrinsically motivating, though it would require considerably more creativity...