On Monday, Mr. Tosh came to class for some reflective, team-building activities. For this post, share your thoughts -- as a comment, not as a new, authored post -- about what went on. You can comment about how the class behaved, the activities themselves, what you noticed (or can predict or assess) about yourself, what you discovered about the class, what you think the class can/should consider, how the activities/discussion may impact our dynamics, what you learned, etc. Don't feel limited by my simple list. We talked about PAPA in class, so I guess you can consider the PAPA of the activities. :) The overarching question is this: how can/might what we did with Tosh affect us as individuals and as a class? Looking forward to reading your thoughts. As always, feel free to comment to one another as you write.
Purpose: To reflect on our time with Tosh
Audience: Each other
Persona: That's a personal choice. How do you want to come across?
Argument: How will you accomplish your purpose?
Appeal: Probably a bit of all three: logos, ethos, pathos
Purpose: To reflect on our time with Tosh
Audience: Each other
Persona: That's a personal choice. How do you want to come across?
Argument: How will you accomplish your purpose?
Appeal: Probably a bit of all three: logos, ethos, pathos
27 comments:
When Tosh first announced the different groups, I remember me taking the opportunity to tell the other side how bad they were going to lose. I don't consider myself a competitive person; I don't play sports or do academic teams at all. But I thought it was interesting that I was so used to the idea of winning. When everyone gets their tests/papers back, there is the buzz of comparing answers, and half the class ends up feeling slightly smug while the other half feels slightly like a failure. It's not something that we can help, but I hope that because of the activity I personally will stop comparing myself to everyone else and aim more for what I can best achieve.
When Tosh split the class into groups and said that each group had to fill in 5 boxes in a row, I automatically assumed that it was competitive. In high school everything is competitive. Grades, sports, even friends can be competitive. The last thing on my mind was that the activity was only about filling in five boxes. I think competiveness is a good thing; it keeps everyone trying to do their best. But when competition is taken out of the picture, things can get done a lot quicker because everyone works together, not against one another.
When Tosh said that he never said that it was a competition, I thought that he must have because almost immediately, the whole class went into competition mode. I started thinking about what Tosh was saying, and I realized that everything was treated like a competiton. Competition can be good. For example, competition can push you to that extra edge to achieve your goals. However, competition can also be bad. For example, if we're always competing against each other, then we wont really help each other. Now that we all learned from this experience, hopefully we can all work together this year without all the competitivness.
I've noticed that everyone is talking about the five in a row game. I personally thought that the rope was more interesting. When he put the two ropes in front of us and people had to go up in the front of the class by themselves, we were all less willing to participate. I thought this showed that we are not completely comfortable with each other yet. I hope that we open up a bit more soon because that's what makes a great year. When the class is close we are more open to discussion and are able to get more done. After the five in a row game I think that we have realized that we need to work together to prosper as a class and working as a team will only benefit us.
The box exercise felt like a competition at first.It got so competitive, I heard someone say "you're cheating." If there are no rules on how to accomplish our task, how do we cheat? I think that's another part of the competition idea, to get something done in a specific margin as not to break the rules. But with hardly any rules or margins to break, is it really a competition? Despite how vague the initial rules were, I went along with it and cheered Dan on. Personally, from that experience, I feel less competetive in that class than I do with any of my other classes. But the message it sends across says we shouldn't have to compare ourselves or go against anyone if everyone has the same goal.
Tosh’s demonstration was interesting. When we were separated, the whole class, including myself, instantly thought it was a competition. I think this is a normal response, however. In life, competition is somewhat of a necessity. Sure, collaboration is important too-for example, group projects or any situation where you work with others to achieve a common goal. But without competition, there would be no diversity or desire to be great. No one would have an incentive to be better or try harder. I wasn’t entirely certain about what the attempts to tie the rope together illustrated, but I did notice that some students-i.e. Arjun and myself-did not go up because of the possibility of failing. Maybe one lesson is that you should take risks and at least make an effort to succeed every once in a while.
I thought that it was extremely interesting that during the ropes game, no one really wanted to give it a try. Personally, I didn't want to try it at first becuase I felt uncomfortable trying it in front of our class. But when Mercedes went up, I felt more comfortable going up with her because there was less pressure becuase there were two people trying at the same time. I think that no one trying has a lot to do with being comfortable in front of everyone, as well as being afraid of looking like a complete idiot. I hope that by the end of this year, our whole class will be able to mesh together and create an environment where no one feels uncomfortable of afriad. I think that will be the best learning environment for our English class because we have to share papers with each other. I think everything will go much more smoothly if we can all accept each other as we are.
Like cori, I also remember talking down to the other team when Tosh announced different groups. I believe that when people are divided and are on teams, they feel they can't be together with the other team, so they assume that they are against them (you know how they say you're either with us, or against us?). I hope that our class doesn't divide like we did in the five in a row game, and we are all "with" eachother instead of "against" eachother. As for the rope game, I think the criteria for the people who went up are: 1. people who are comfortable with classmates 2. people who are creative and like a challenge 3. positive people, who like to make an effort 4. fearless people, who don't care about what others think of them. I wish i could say i was one of those people, but like some others, i'm afraid of failure, and i care about what people think of me. However, i would like to work on these things, i guess? Also, i hope eventually everyone in our class is comfortable with eachother, so we can all try new things=)
I wasn't suprised by the fact that the class automatically went into competition mode, so to speak, but i was suprised at how many people felt like we do compete in class. For me at least, its always nice to do well and to do better than other people in the class, but to do so would never be my source of motivation. I guess I didn't realize quite how competitive other kids were in class. We're learning about this in ap psych right now. We did an activity where we got to choose if we wanted 15 or 5 extra credit points. If more than three people chose 15, no one got any points. 6 people chose 15 in my class. I think everyone should stop trying to undermine and climb over our classmates and try to cooperate, so we can actually get somewhere.
For the box game, I was actually very surprised because, without knowing it, I also interpreted it as a competition. I realize that competition is a big part of this world. Without it, it's hard to really be modivated to try your best in all that you do. I don't think it's a bad thing unless it replaces a person's real focus completely to that of being better than another person.
The rope game was interesting. I think that game showed who is and who isn't scared of failure and embarrassment.I really respect the people who were able to go up and try. From where I was sitting I heard a lot of people talking to their friends around them about different ways it might work. However, not many had the courage to go up and actually try. I understand how those people feel because I was one of those people. As this school year continues, I hope our class can get closer and more comfortable with each other.
When Mr. Tosh split us into groups, i immediatly thought " This must be a fun competition or something". Not too long into this "competition", I got the idea that this wasn't just a game, and there was a purpose or idea behind it ( that's why i kept telling Joe that we should work together). When Mr. Tosh asked us after the square exercise why we are always competitive in school, I had a sudden realization. Why do we always work way too hard in school and always treat it as a competition to get the best grades? As students, we have to SLOW DOWN. Stop thinking about your class rank, and start enjoying high school. I'm sure if we focus more on improving our writing and learning something new and less on getting an "A", we will enjoy this class more.
Tosh's demonstrations pointed out that we are more competitive than comfortable with each other in our class. The tension and atmosphere was so different between the two demonstrations. When divided into groups, (I almost said teams) everyone got into attack mode. Shouting "you're going down" or "we got this" and making strategies to defeat each other when we weren't even told exactly what it was. In the rope demonstration it was an awkward silence type of scene. You could feel the fear of failure in the air. It took a while for some volunteers to go up and try the rope and not a lot of people went up too. Sometimes being competitive can be a good and bad thing. We must have that drive to do better but sometimes we must also work together to reach that state. I could tell there's going to be a lot of group work in our class and we to help one another be the best we can be. We should think more positive than negative to new things because you never know until you try and why think about failure already? We have to be comfortable around each other because we have like 100+ days of seeing each other. It'd be weird, awkward, and less fun of a class to just sit and have a grudge towards a person because they did better on a paper or something and I don't do awkward. Haha =)
That was waaaay longer than intended...
I don't think it would have made much sense for us not to be in a competitive mindset for the boxes game. We were given two groups and a win condition, the two basic aspects of any competition. However, I did think it was interesting observing the class adapting its own rules as the game progressed.
It was also interesting seeing who went to try the rope game, who tried to figure it out from their seats, and who tried to get others to go try.
In the first activity where Mr. Tosh split us up into "groups," we automatically competed (not serioulsy, I thought). However, I didn't see a deeper connection between our "game" and life and school etc, since the class game was an artificial environment with no real incentives (which drive competition). On the other hand, even if we had worked together, it would have been for an incentive to be the best group that Tosh had (that one cooperative group was probably pleased with themselves to beat other groups). Even cooperation and uncompetitiveness seems competitive.
The second rope one showed we (me) were reluctant to take a risk in front of class for fear of failure. But in the future, we should communicate our thoughts in class to allow the exchange of ideas.
I agree with most people that the five in a row game felt competitive, but I think that the rope challenge was also competitive, because each person wanted to be the one to figure it out. I also thought it was interesting how each person reacted differently to the situation placed before them. Some people were very talkative and others, more quiet observers. I think that this aspect of responses is important to note, because everyone felt the competitive nature of the activities, but still worked differently. Another thing that I noticed myself thinking from the beginning was that I thought the activities were going to be some sort of team building exercise, but once he split us into teams the objective, in my mind, was altered to simply win. So overall, I think that Monday was about working cooperatively as a class, almost like turning the competition into a team exercise, but at the same time we must respect others and the way that they work.
When he separated us into groups, I didn't think of it at all as a competition until Joe and Dan ran up to the board and tried to beat each other. I think this was because I was so confused about what we were doing that I just planned on watching to see what everyone else did. With the rope thing, I didn't go up and try it because I was trying every way I could think of in my head and nothing worked, so if I went up there, I knew that it would be useless. Mr. Tosh's activity showed me how competetive everyone is and it kind of scared me because I am entirely NOT competetive, and I believe that competition results in one or two winners, while cooperation results in everyone achieving their own potential.
While we were participating in the activities with Mr. Tosh, I noticed that everyone in our class has at least a bit of innate competitiveness. Although it was just a simple activity and we weren't being graded, everyone was eager to win. I think competition is a good thing because it drives people to do their best. Of course, too much competitiveness can bring about a negative effect, causing one to feel unneeded pressure. As the year goes along, I hope we students can help each other out and not worry about who gets better grades than who. There will probably be a whole lot more competition in college and afterwards. Perhaps it would be best to think of high school as prep time to learn how to benefit and deal with competition effectively.
I was only there for the first part of Mr. Tosh's activities but I had a pretty good idea of what he was getting at with the whole competitive thing. There are many disadvantages of being competitive in the classroom, like not sharing ideas. But there are also advantages, like pushing people to their limit. I am a competitive person because I play sports and I hope as a class that we can all cooperate instead of compete. In Psychology we are learning about competing and cooperating and we played a game in class that showed that if people cooperate we would be better off as a whole.
I wasn't surprised at all that the activity immediately became competitive when Tosh said that we were being split into groups. I feel like everything we do in high school is turned into a competition, even the things that are supposed that are supposed to be fun. I also wish I had tried the rope activity. I did find it interesting how everyone became really competitive with the box activity, but very few people really cared about being the first to solve the rope problem. I wonder why that was. I think it was the way Tosh introduced the box activity...It made it seem competitive.
When Mr. Tosh was in our class, it seemed really fun and enjoyable. Everybody was relaxed in the beginning, but then they all felt nervous towards the end. I was kind of nervous but I wasn't scared. I think we benefited from this activity because we all understood that we have a competitive mindset, and not necessarily a cooperative mindset.I think after what we did with Tosh, we all start to work as a team and not against each other, and this will make us get along with each other much better and not have any competitive feelings against each other.
When Mr. Tosh first came in I really had no idea what we were doing. I didn't even understand the box game we started playing! When he started asking us about our motives for competing and other things, I finally started to understand that this was some sort of team building activity. I think he really challenged us and some of us are still lost as to what the point of it all was, so I'm very excited for him to come back in and hopefully continue our activities. He seems like he really knows what he's doing and could greatly benefit our class.
The moment Mr. Tosh split us into separate "groups", my competitive mode set in. Even if this activity was not a competition, I wanted to win anyway. I believe this is how most people felt in our class which can be seen in a positive and negative light. In a negative sense, this type of attitude could separate the people in our class. However, the box activity showed to me that this class can remain competitive while still maintaining a feeling of togetherness. Dan and Joe both wanted to win, yet chose opposite sides of the box with the same goal in mind, which was to complete the task faster than the other. In the rope task, it was interesting to see the different approaches to a problem that my classmates and I had. I agree with Amber in her analysis of the people who went up there, yet find myself in between both groups of people because I went last. I found that I have a fear of failure, but that the fear was not going to stop me from at least trying the task. I can't wait to do some more of these team building demonstrations to better understand my classmates and myself.
In the first activity, immediately, it was a competition to me. I moved my desk away from the "opponents", towards my "teammates". I then gave my team a pep talk, thinking of ways to win. Looking back on the event, it is weird that everyone just assumed it was a competition. It seems like it is just human nature to compete somehow. It is what drives a lot of people in todays world. The second activity was just an example of how outgoing or confident a person is. Everyone was very tentative at first. Maybe it was because we all feared failure. That is was kept me from going up there in the beginning.
All in all, it was a fun day of English, and I am looking forward to the next day with Mr. Tosh.
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