FACE Is Social Currency
Saving Face: How to Preserve Dignity and Build Trust by Maya Hu-Chan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is one book that you will want to put on your “to read” shelf and then move immediately to your “currently reading” shelf. While reading this book there were many things that became immediately applicable and usable. This, to me, is the greatest of compliments. There were also times when, as I read, I would literally say, “So, that’s why I screwed that up so bad.” “Face,” as Maya Hu-Chan said is like social currency. The more you have, the easier and faster you can get things done.
Immediately after reading my advanced copy of the book I had the opportunity have Maya be a part of a professional development webinar I put on for teachers. Maya and I used Angry Birds as the throughline for presenting the professional growth. We actually watched part of the first Angry Birds movie and picked the part of the movie where Red is asked to be a leader and he says, “I’m not a leader.”
“I’m not a leader!” ~ Red
This provided a great springboard for Maya to connect the teachings of her book. One of the things she discusses in the book is using the Platinum Rule instead of the Golden Rule (not that the Golden Rule is bad, mind you). The Platinum Rule is, “Treat others the way they want to be treated.”
Think about how just doing this would improve relationships – “face.” Needless to say, Maya’s teaching is a huge hit with educators.
One of the most impactful parts of the book dealt with psychological safety. Hu-Chan posited that, “At the very heart of creating psychological safety in an organization is the ability to honor face, save face, and avoid situations where someone loses face.” Psychological safety is one of the number one variable for team performance. Psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind, creativity, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off — just the types of behavior that lead to ideas, creation, and breakthroughs.
Finally, Maya also taught us the BUILD model in the book. BUILD stands for Benevolence, Understanding, Interacting, Learning, Delivery. By putting the BUILD model into action in our lives we will be able to live a life of significance while saving face. As you can see, you are going want to start reading this book right now.
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Angry Teachers 2
Today we started the second part to a great professional development webinar that I am calling Angry Teachers. The title of this webinar is “Angry Teachers 2: Interactive Lessons and Engaging Tools.” The through-line of the webinar is the game Angry Birds. At the beginning of the webinar I always say, “Everything you need to know about teaching you can learn from Angry Birds.” In Angry Teachers 2 we pondered the question, “Many people believe that learning should feel like work.” We then discussed the Finnish model of education where learning looks like play.
During the gathering, we actually play the game and we do a “design the solution” activity where the participants actually design a lesson while playing Angry Birds. At completion the groups had to answer the following:
- Explain your lesson’s objective(s) and standard(s) covered.
- Explain what teaching strategies will be used.
- Explain why you chose what you chose.
With over 25 groups in some of these webinars time does not allow for all groups to share out. So, I offered to the groups that if they would send me their designs I would post them in a blog. Since I’m facilitating six sessions of Angry Teachers 2, I will add to this after each session. So keep coming back to check it out for the next week or so. Here is what has been sent in as of 04/28/2020:
Group 7 (04/28/2020
7th Grade Geometry
Group 4 (04/23/2020)
- Small groups based off of levels (scaffolding of groups with high, medium, low in reading and math)
- Social and Emotional (ok to make mistakes, but we have to learn from them our next chance and how to recover from failure)
- Rewards chart (every so many levels gained, trip to treasure box on Friday’s)
- Balance of wanting to play, but must get work done first
- I Do (model on board, discuss elements), You Do (choose children to go to board and take 1 turn), We Do (small group break up)
- Respect (each bird is a different shape and size, but have their personal strengths, so they work together as a team for best practice of the task ahead of them)
- Build on lessons taught (can go back and retry lessons to practice a skill needed in level)
- Feedback (given as an OREO method (GLOW, GROW, GLOW))
- Include cross curricular ideas
- Rigor (levels get harder the further you get, so have to use critical thinking skills)
- Incorporate the 4 C’s (collaboration with group, critical thinking of what to do next, creativity to beat the level with what birds are given, and communication amongst group members to help those struggling succeed)
Group 5 (04/23/2020)
This group made a great Doodly® of what their lesson would be. Check this out:↓
Doodly® created by Dawn Eibel of Manatee Charter School in Bradenton, FL
Group 11(04/23/2020)
- characterization
- social-emotional: anger/empathy/hidden feelings, etc
- compare/contrast video game with movie segments
- mapping/sequencing/ordering (steps to get most boxes, etc)
- groupings of characters by traits
- writing a backstory event for a character – a childhood moment, embarrassing situation, etc
- LOTS of writing: setting, events, characters, develop themes or moral of story
Our objective had to do with a 3rd grade standard of sequencing order of events. The objective specifically stated that SWBAT provide a sequence of events in order for each level of the Angry Birds game that they have gotten through.
This quickly turned into what we said could eventually be a “strategy guide” of sorts that the students could collaborate on because we don’t do work just for ourselves but we are creating for the world to see and consume. An extension activity that we thought would be beneficial is if the students could do a STEAM ativity to where, over time, they create a real world Angry Birds level to test out different scientific principles.
On a personal and professional note I have enjoyed your PD’s so much because I’ve been a proponent of looking at different mediums to promote and incorporate into education. I actually started a You Tube Channel for parents that covers different pop culture references and relates it back to education. If you have any amount of time please check it out. www.youtube.com/c/jeremywhiteeducation (It’s called LIFT Tutoring)
I hope your blog post for this specific idea of incorporating Angry Birds into the classroom is beneficial to a lot of educators as we continue to rethink what education is, especially during this time of remote learning.
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