Marc+Levenson

Module 5 discussion post (STILL WORKING ON THIS - Sunday Noon):

How is SD important for YOU as a professional? - What steps do you need to take to promote the development of your own SD?

As an educator with ADHD, self-determination is a particularly important concept and I've found the elements of self-determination to be both elusive and instructive. In reading some of the ADHD literature years ago, the stories and themes pointed to a strong imperative that adults with ADHD seek working environments with a clear mission and clear expectations. To paraphrase a quote I've seen that may not be strictly true but has resonance for me: There's no such thing as procrastination, just an ill-defined task. The emphasis in the module readings on the positive correlation between professionals who are encouraged to be, allowed to be, or just are self-determined and the results of their efforts to promote self-determination in their students serves to reinforce the importance of my working on myself in this area. It is apparently not an area where those who can't, teach, and I have found success before with suggested tools such as becoming a partner in self-determination with my students. For example, with certain advisees I saw very regularly I would sometimes choose a goal to work on beside them while they worked on the goal(s) they developed (perhaps with my help) and with my Univ 101 course I would try to make sure I was doing the same time management exercises or the like that I was assigning to the students.

Steps I could take to promote the development of my own self-determination: Borrowing from an exercise done in one of my grad school classes, I could find my latest attempt (there have been many) to answer questions such as what do I believe in, what are my key values, who are the people I want to help, etc., and I could figure out a way to incorporate whatever comes of that exercise into my daily life.

//From Joe - you made me think of my experiences as a grad student, teaching study skills to students. I tried to learn and use the skills myself, and came to quickly realize that I had to do some modifications to make some of them work for me. But maybe more importantly was that I found some didn't work at all, and I moved on to something else. This is an example of SD, and was something that I could then talk to my students about. And I could appreciate when they told me that a strategy wasn't working for them. Rather than staying fixed to the book approach, we could come up with a Plan B. Or Plan C..... //