Fugitivus Discussion Forum

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notro ... l-physics/

Unsurprisingly, the solution has to do with boosting students' self-esteem and allowing them to focus on what's important to them. The simplicity of this technique is so brilliant.

How wonderful. Still, I have a hard time understanding how the writing exercise works. How does writing about your values boost your self-esteem?

It's possible that it allows you to focus more on the things you're passionate about, reminding you that you are a person with passion and focus; it's also possible that, rather than actively boosting self-esteem, it just centres you inside the best parts of your own head, away from any negativity that might come from the outside world. Pretty much just speculating here, though.

That is a thing of beauty.

Thanks for this! I may have to share it on my blog. ETA: OK, I did. And Facebook.

I think it not only changes your focus, but I think it does it in association with the classroom setting in which women and people of color's POVs are usually made invisible. So, affirming that their values are important in that setting may be a major boost to people who usually are not made to feel like they matter as individuals.

This is fantastic.

@Eirwyn: Psychologically speaking, it can also provide really valuable insight into whether or not you've been privileging societal values over your own. If your core values are not the values espoused by society as 'vital', it can get pretty hard to feel validated as a person - the combination of feeling that you're failing at '____' with the secondary 'I don't even believe in '___', shitshitshit I'm even more of a failure' is pretty pernicious.

I was reading this yesterday! It's pretty awesome, and if I'm ever an instructor I'll totally do something like this.

That is so awesome! I might do that next semester as a first-day-of-class exercise for my comp classes.