Blogging Around

1. Chelsea's blog - Connections: Collaboration in the Classroom, Collaboration on the Court

She talks about how learning how to work together on the volleyball court finds its way into the classroom.

Chelsea, you spoke words of wisdom :) I was especially struck by the part about how there are some leaders and some followers, neither one is better, but both have to work together for the team to be successful. I think that it's really important for there to be both in any sort of group. People forget that the followers make the leaders the leaders. Without the followers who would lead?

I've been on teams before where I've been a leader, and teams where I've been a follower. Last hockey season, I played on a U19 team with a bunch of seniors. As the youngest person on the team, I knew that my job was to follow the older girls. If I had tried to lead in any way shape or form, the dynamics of our team would have erupted into flames because nobody would have listened to me, and the leaders would have had problems with it as well.

In contrast, this year, I am playing at the U16 level again. I am one of the oldest people and a captain, people look to me to set the tempo. The other captain and I played badly today, everyone played badly, and now it's our job to fix it because we are the leaders.

The point I'm really trying to make here is that both leaders and followers have important positions in a group. Like Chelsea said, neither is better than the other. And the most important thing, I think, is being able to recognize your job and do it well, and, hopefully, the group will prosper accordingly.


2. Rebekah's blog - iMedia: STOMP

She reflects on how she never liked the STOMP commercials before movies, and, as time went on, she began to understand and appreciate the music.

Oh my gosh! I always loved those STOMP commercials before the movies because they reminded me of elementry school. My music teacher used to always make us watch STOMP videos, and, at first, I hated them too. But as the years went on we used to look forward to seeing what crazy idea that we never would think of STOMP had dreamed up this time. I guess that I miss them because they remind me of simpler times without essays, PLAN tests, GPAs, and PreCalculus books when we could just sit back and learn for the sake of learning. I didn't realize it, but STOMP itself is a great illustrator of that.