Sport Gestein flickr photo by WarrenMillerEnt shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license
“Do we want to measure skill as precisely as possible, or do we just want to feel alive?”
The question above comes from one of my all time favorite Youtube channels, Vox. A recent video investigates the relationship of luck and skills as they apply to sports analysis. In this post, I’d like to extend their text as an analogy to explore at your school, as your academic year comes to a ‘time out.’
In part, the idea is to help us think about what Seth Godin refers to as ’emotional labor,’ in this post here. There isn’t a school on the planet who couldn’t do with Godin’s advice to invest in the emotional work of engaging with one another in a productive (and compassionate) way. The emotional highs and lows of any sport, the disipline, and dedication of training, the camaraderie and spirit of fans, the skill, luck and evolution of talent describe not only that next playoff game–but also work as descriptors of an academic year too.
Before we jump into those questions, please take the seven minutes to watch the following:
The following questions could be used with staff, students, or just as a provocation for personal reflection:
Please feel free to share your thoughts on the questions, suggest a better analogy, or let me know when and where you could see those questions being used to spark conversation in the comment section below.
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