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Tina Fey’s 'Rules of Improv': guidelines for leadership and learning

9/17/2014

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I love Tina Fey. There is something about her clever style of humour, her quirkiness, and honesty that make me want to be the woman’s friend. Not to mention her amazing impersonation of Sarah Palin or the gem of a show she created in 30 Rock (some Jack Donaghy highlights here).

But one of my favourite contributions that Fey has given the world boils down to two simple pages from her book “Bossypants”, in what she calls “Tina Fey’s Rules of Improvisation that will Change your Life”. She starts with the idea of open-mindedness:
The first rule of improvisation is AGREE. Always agree and SAY YES. When you’re improvising, this means you are required to agree with whatever your partner has created. So if we’re improvising and I say, “Freeze, I have a gun,” and you say, “That’s not a gun. It’s your finger. You’re pointing your finger at me,” our improvised scene has ground to a halt. But if I say, “Freeze, I have a gun!” and you say, “The gun I gave you for Christmas! You bastard!” then we have started a scene because we have AGREED that my finger is in fact a Christmas gun.

Now, obviously in real life you’re not always going to agree with everything everyone says. But the Rule of Agreement reminds you to “respect what your partner has created” and to at least start from an open-minded place. Start with a YES and see where that takes you.

As an improviser, I always find it jarring when I meet someone in real life whose first answer is no. “No, we can’t do that.” “No, that’s not in the budget.” “No, I will not hold your hand for a dollar.” What kind of way is that to live?

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The Unschooling movement: promising, extreme.. or both?

9/10/2014

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https://www.facebook.com/homeschoolingunschooling
Recently I’ve seen some posts on the “Unschooling” movement, a distinct form of homeschooling founded on a philosophy of freedom-based learning, allowing kids to learn through natural exploration. They don’t follow a set curriculum; instead these kids are encouraged to initiate their own learning, spend a lot more time outdoors and exploring their creativity, with facilitation by their parents.

Traditional homeschooling has a fundamental difference when compared with unschooling; the former still involves the following of curricula, just from the home environment, with more flexibility.

So what are the proposed benefits of unschooling? As this article by Sarah Boesveld explains:
Proponents say it (unschooling) raises self-aware, inquisitive and worldly young adults who care about learning and have pursued passions they wouldn’t have otherwise found on the scheduled treadmill that is school.
The same article estimates 100,000 students homeschooled in Canada, with 10% of those students being “unschooled”.

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