Tech Talk Roundtable 06-18 | The Pressured Child with Dr. Michael G. Thompson

Description Do you remember what it was like to be a student in grade school?  Are you getting flashbacks of Field days, recess, team sports and Mrs. Scranton’s music recorder class or…are you among the many that are breaking out in cold sweat thinking about tests, group projects, bullying and peer pressure!  Well today we […]

Description

Do you remember what it was like to be a student in grade school?  Are you getting flashbacks of Field days, recess, team sports and Mrs. Scranton’s music recorder class or…are you among the many that are breaking out in cold sweat thinking about tests, group projects, bullying and peer pressure!  Well today we revisit our childhood and put ourselves in the shoes of our students with our special guest Dr. Michael Thompson as we get his input on how technology has impacted this relationship.

Lessons Learned

Chris – Some lessons from teaching Morality & Ethics. Nothing gets an argument started more than perceptions of unfairness or intentional harm and that is because, of the five channels of moral decision making, fairness/reciprocity and harm/care are the two channels that nearly everyone agrees are extremely important. Add to that the reality that how we perceive issues of justice varies between individuals. Some of us see justice as equality of opportunity (freedom). Others see it as equality of result (welfare). One person’s justice is another person’s injustice.

On the personal level a whole bunch of negativity and friction can be avoided if we recognize that we hold differing understandings of what is fair and just. Instead of escalating tensions we can overcome the “us versus them” mentality by recognizing the basic good intentions in each other. We can do this by looking beneath the surface issues to the fairness/reciprocity and harm/care principles that underlie most conflicts, and separate the sacred from the pseudo-sacred. A great place to start learning the ins and out of conflict resolution and negotiation can be found in Robert Mnookin’s book Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight. Robert Mnookin is the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, the Chair of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

http://www.bargainingwiththedevil.com/

 

Daniel – Tableau Public is awesome.  You can take your LinkedIn data and you can play around with various viz charts.

Dennis – Student’s use iMovie to find main idea.  Grade 4 students had to take 1-2 minute interviews and edit them down to a 20 second sound bite.  Listening to teams discuss what is important and what is not, was education gold!

Fun Fact

Top 5 causes of stress

Jobs and The Workplace
Financial Problems
Personal Relationships
Children
Daily Hassles / Being Too Busy

So, which one is involved as families wrestle with the hopes and dreams of getting children into college? Answer: All of them!

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-are-the-main-causes-of-stress-3145063

 

Notes & Links

Michael G. Thompson, Ph.D. is a consultant, NY Times best-selling author and psychologist specializing in children and families.  He has worked in more than seven hundred schools across the United States, as well as in international schools in Central America, Europe, Africa and Asia.  Dr. Thompson is the author of several books dealing with today’s pressures of school and how to help students navigate this period of time with poise and confidence.

 

Resources:

http://michaelthompson-phd.com/

Twitter: @MGThompsonPHD