Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 336

Little girl makes little boy's dream come true.

It's nice to have a big sister who is willing to build you a jet pack that you can wear around the house. 

The Moth: Sex and Frozen Corn

The first gift that my daughter ever received was a stuffed ear of corn from our friend, Justine. It's been sitting on the corner of her bookshelf for the last six years. 

She knows that it was the first gift she ever received - given to her before she was even born - but she's never asked why someone chose corn in lieu of a teddy bear or a baby doll.

There is a reason. A good one. It's also one that Elysha and I have never explained to her, nor do we plan on explaining it anytime soon. 

The question is when? When do we tell Clara why a stuffed ear of corn made for the perfect first gift?

Watch this video of my Moth GrandSLAM winning story from earlier this year and you will better understand our predicament. Then offer your own suggestion about when we should tell our daughter this story. 

Management: Please stop signing your signs. It looks ridiculous and serves no useful purpose.

This sign was posted beside a plastic lion at Safari Golf, an excellent mini golf course near my home. 

The message itself is fine. Sadly, it's probably necessary to remind brain damaged teenagers not to sit on the pretend animals.

But here's the problem: 

What causes business owners to think that they need to sign their signage with phrases like The Management? To what purpose does this serve? Was it worth the additional expense (because it absolutely made the sign more expensive)?

Was management concerned that customers wouldn't take the sign seriously without an indication of where the message originated?

Did they worry that customers might think the sign had been placed there by someone other than management? A prankster, perhaps? Or maybe some strange offshoot of PETA that protects artificial animals?

Do they believe that the mention of management confers additional authority to the sign and therefore increases the chances of adherence.?

If any of this were true, then Stop and Yield signs would be signed by the federal government. Speed limit signs would feature the signatures of the local cops. Placards on airplanes would be signed by the pilot.  

Not every message needs to be signed. I barely sign my emails anymore. I agree to terms and service all the time simply by checking a button. 

We definitely don't need our signage to be signed. It doesn't make a sign more effective. It doesn't make it look more professional. It just makes the person who purchased the sign seem a little silly.   

13 Principles of Teaching

During my current book tour, I have been asked repeatedly about my teaching philosophy - probably as a result of a story that I tell about a high school English teacher. After 17 years of teaching, I could write a book about my philosophy (and perhaps someday I will), but for now, here is a list of my most strongly held beliefs. 

If you haven't given your students an authentic reason to learn, don't even bother teaching the lesson.The most effective tool for assessing student progress is absolute honesty.When it comes to discipline, you must only say things that you are willing to do.The first step to planning every lesson is to determine how it will be fun for students.Teachers must be reading and writing on a regular basis in order to be effective teachers of reading and writing. The student's voice should be heard far more often than the teacher's voice. Teachers must think of parents as full and equal partners in the education of the child.If your students are not laughing at least once every hour in your classroom, you have failed them.The most important lessons taught by teachers often have little or nothing to do with academics.The best administrators understand that teachers are more knowledgeable about instruction than they could ever be.Time is more valuable in the classroom than anywhere else in the world. Waste not a second. It is almost impossible to set expectations too high for students.The single greatest assessment of a teacher's effectiveness is their students' desire to come to school every day. 

A man who is proving that nothing is as complicated as people think or want it to be.

A phrase that I say often and believe strongly is this:

"Nothing is as complicated as people think it is or want it to be." 

That second part of that statement is the one that people don't always realize but is tragically true. There are people in this world - hordes of them - who revel in complexity. Processes. Systems. Norms. Checklists. PowerPoints. Agendas. Forms. 

Complexity is like a blanket that they wrap themselves within in order to feel safe and accomplished. Creativity, inspiration, and genuine problem solving are replaced by the physical evidence and meaningless detritus of marginal and oftentimes meaningless progress.   

Here is a man who is proving that nothing is as complicated as people think it is or want it to me. One man in the comfort of his home is accomplishing more than enormous government agencies and helping humanity in the process.  

5 new rules of etiquette in the digital world

Nick Bilton of The New York Times wrote a piece examining the shifting norms of digital etiquette. Among the issues he addresses are: 

Thank you notesVoice mail messagesEmail subject linesGreetings and closings in email messagesAsking for directions

For the record, my position on some of these changing social norms is thus:

1. A thank you note sent via email is perfectly acceptable and often preferable. While I routinely send hand-written thank you notes, I acknowledge that they are probably a waste of time, energy and resources. Much more often, I send a thank you message through email.

I also embrace the digital thank you note because I know how angry they make the socially entrenched person who believes that hand written thank you notes curry favor, adhere to implacable social norms, and/or increase their social standing through a traditional, well-written thank you note.

They don't. But making a self-righteous person angrily self-righteous is incredibly amusing.  

The truth is that I can say more via a digital thank you note than through a hand written note, and it's content - not contrivance - that is king in this regard. 

2. Voicemail messages should only be left if your fingers have fallen off and you therefore cannot send a text message or email. 

3. Email subject lines should be written such that I know exactly what the email is going to say minus the details.

Also, people who write highly effective email subject lines deserve reward and acclaim. There should be Academy Awards and Nobel Prizes handed out to these amazing people.     

4. Greetings and closings in emails are optional and oftentimes best avoided.

Furthermore, If the email that you are writing is part of a string of emails between you and another person, greetings and closing must be left out after the initial email.  

5. You may only ask for directions if you are in a place with spotty and unreliable cellular service or your phone has been eaten by a bear.

How to graduate with an Associate's, Bachelor's and Master's degrees without ever taking the SAT or completing a college application (or paying tuition!)

The New York Times writes about how some colleges and universities have stopped requiring SAT scores when applying to their schools.

“For all the gripes some people have with the SAT and ACT as gauges of aptitude, the tests are certainly standardizing forces in one regard: taking them has become a shared moment of anxiety — a rite of passage, in its way — for students wishing to go to a United States college or university.

Yet some students defy this rule. The list of colleges and universities dropping the admissions requirement of standardized test scores continues to extend each year, and with it, a growing number of prospective applicants are treating the testing process as an optional exercise.”

— http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/20...

I have never taken the SAT.

In fact, I have never completed a college application or written a college essay, despite the fact that I have an Associate's degree in liberal arts from Manchester Community College, a Bachelor's degree in English from Trinity College, a teaching license from St. Joseph's University, and a Master's degree in educational technology from American Intercontinental University.

Three degrees and a teaching license, and yet I have never taken a standardized test and never completed a college essay.   

You could do this, too, if you followed the same path I did. 

1. Attend a community college. 

For me, it took me five years to finally make it to college following high school. You don't need to wait five years, but for me, I had no choice. Poverty, a lack of parental support, homelessness, post traumatic stress disorder following a violent robbery, and an arrest and trial for a crime I did not commit prevented me from attending college any earlier.

I suggest you skip all that and just go to college.

Community College does not require an SAT score and does not require students to complete formal applications like four year institutions. 

2. Do exceedingly well in community college.

For me, this meant an 3.92 GPA. I was also Treasurer of the Student Senate and President of the National Honor Society. I was a Truman Scholarship finalist. A USA Today Academic All American. The Connecticut debate champion for two consecutive years.

This is not an impossible task. I also worked more than 40 hours a week managing a McDonald's restaurant while attending school. If I could work full time and still do well, I am convinced that most students could do the same if they truly applied themselves and had a modicum of parental support. 

3. Accept an invitation to transfer to a four year institution.

Upon graduating from Manchester Community College, I received scholarship offers on the strength of my community college performance from several Connecticut schools, including Trinity, Wesleyan, and Yale. I accepted the invitation and scholarship from Trinity because the school had a program designed for nontraditional students like myself and was close enough to home and work to make travel convenient. I would still be working full-time while attending Trinity (and would soon add another 20 hours a week in the Student Writing Center as a paid tutor), so proximity to home and work was important. 

If I didn't have to work in order to support myself, Yale would've been my first choice, but it was not meant to be. I still have the letter from Yale inviting me to attend and offering me a scholarship, but that was as close to the fabled university as I would ever get until I told a story at Yale last year for The Moth as part of a conference on storytelling.     

4. Don't complete an application. Don't write college essays.

It turns out that if a college invites you to transfer to their institution, they don't require you to apply. I filled out s few forms in the Registrar's Office, but it was about 15 minutes of paperwork and a small fee. All but one of my classes from Manchester Community College transferred to Trinity, making me a junior when I arrived. It would take me three years to complete my Bachelor's degree at Trinity, but this was only because I also completed a teaching degree in addition to a degree in English.   

5. Graduate.

It should also be noted that my teaching license - which amounted to a second major - came thanks to a consortium of colleges in the Hartford area. Students from Trinity, St. Joseph's, and the University of Hartford were permitted to take classes at each other's schools. Most students never took a class via the consortium, and those that did took one or two classes at most, only when the class was not offered at their school or did not fit their schedule. 

I took advantage of the relationship between the schools and completed a full major's worth of educational classes at St. Joseph's in order to graduate with both a degree in English and a teaching license. As a result, I did not need to complete an application for St. Joseph's University, since the grades for those classes appeared on my Trinity transcripts.

My Master's degree was completed at an online university (though several credits came from Trinity College), and the online university did not require SAT scores or a formal application.

Just a large tuition payment.

It should also be noted that I attended Manchester Community College for free based upon my financial need, and thanks to the scholarship offered by Trinity, I paid almost nothing to attend that school (and therefore St. Joseph's University as well).

So... want a path to college that eliminates the SAT, college applications, college essays, and tuition?  

There you have it. It wasn't easy, but if you don't have to work 40-60 hours a week supporting yourself as you make your way through college, it might not be too bad.   

First they dance. Then they attack. Kind of viciously.

The worst thing about parenting just got a whole lot better.

My daughter, Clara, can now buckle herself into her car seat, which is barely a car seat anymore. It's simply a platform that raises her body to a safe level in the backseat. No more fighting with anchors or straps. It simply sits atop the backseat.  

Yesterday, when I picked her up after dance class, I climbed into my seat behind the wheel as she walked around the car, opened the door, climbed in, closed the door, and buckled herself. 

Parenting has officially become easier by at least two degrees of magnitude. 

As you probably know, I am highly averse to the constant complaining from parents about parenting, but when specifically asked what is the worst thing about parenting, my answer is always the same:

Car seats. They are truly the worst.

If Steve Jobs were still alive today, I would write to him, requesting that he address the astoundingly terrible design of car seats. 

At last my daughter is free, and with her new found freedom, so am I.  

One down. One to go.

An observation about the movie Stormpiercer that will blow your mind. Maybe.

It's the Quentin Tarantino version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

Right?