Chris Wondra . com

Two paths diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Ever felt like you’re just wandering aimlessly through life? Ever wish someone would just show you the way? Tell you what you should do next?

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

Having a bugger of a time figuring it out yourself, doesn’t it just make sense to find a model–someone you know and respect? Someone whose life you can, with good conscious (hell maybe even with conviction), emulate? What’s the harm in that?

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

Interestingly, Joseph Campbell has something to say about just this type of conundrum. From, Reflections on the Art of Living, A Joseph Campbell Companion:

In the story of Sir Galahad, the knights agree to go on a quest, but thinking it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group, each “entered into the forest, at one point or another, there where they saw it to be thickest, all in those places where they found no way or path.”

Where there is a way or a path, it’s someones else’s way. Each knight enters the forest at the most mysterious point and follows his own intuition. What each brings forth is what never before was on land or sea: the fulfillment of his unique potentialities, which are different from anybody else’s. All you get on your life way are little clues.

In that wonderful story, when any knight sees the trail of another, thinks he’s getting there, and starts to follow the other’s track, he goes astray entirely.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

Of course, thanks to Robert Frost, you knew how this post would end almost even before it began–didn’t you?

But it still begs the question: Do you buy it?

Does this ring true for you? Can you relate? Were there ever times in your life where you had the courage to enter the forest at its darkest and most mysterious, trusting in only your wits, luck and gut.

What happened? Did you then bring forth what has never before been seen on land or sea? Or did you go crying back to mommy and daddy with your knees all scraped up?

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No related posts

Alert and loyal reader, Jake Wisse, noticed that I’ve been “phoning it in lately with non-Chris content,” and was good enough to continue enabling my personal mediocrity by sending along the following interesting content (thanks Jake!):

Here is the Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational, which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus : A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxication : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you
realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright
ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign
of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of
getting laid.

7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high

8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person
who doesn’t get it.

9 Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon : It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really
bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a
serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido : All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15 Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve
accidentally walked through a spide r web.

16. Beelzebug (n.) : Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your
bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor ( n): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the
fruit you’re eating.

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Kinda Funny Vocabulary Test Answers

Unconfirmed Language Trivia

New Words: From the mouths of middle schoolers

“We have, consequently, the comparatively complex problem in educating our young of training them not simply to assume uncritically the patterns of the past, but to recognize and cultivate their own creative possibilities; not to remain on some proven level of earlier biology and sociology, but to represent a movement of the species forward.” The Portable Jung

If I could be so presumtuous as to (gulp) add to Jung, I would ask, why stop at “educating our young” to “cultivate their own creative possibilities”? What about the rest of us?

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Powerpoint Done Right

Paradigm Shift Ahead: Learning Just Got Heroic.

7 Discoveries Brain Researchers Say Can “Significantly” Increase A Child’s Ability to Learn

Can’t remember?

Don’t feel bad.

Seth Godin says:

“It’s easy to underestimate how difficult it is for someone to become curious. For 7, 10,15 years of school, you are required to not be curious. Over and over and over again, the curious are punished.”

Got a minute (or five)? Check out the rest of what he has to say in this video. Then let me know what you think. Out of everything he said, what jumped out at you the most?

Be honest–I’m curious.

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Spam anyone? I’m sharing.

Is This Normal?

The Tooth Fairy Letters

I know my timing may be a little off here, but is it ever too early to start talking about this?

. . .What?

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Things to do on vacation, or The joys of late childhood

Pick a card . . .

I love the smell of dead squid in the morning . . . smells like victory

I was scanning through educational articles this evening (because I’m a complete nerd) and found these interesting brain facts. Use them as you wish. But remember, with great knowledge comes great responsibility.

• Billions of bits of information pass through your brain every second of your life.
• Messages in your brain travel through trillions of neural connections at speeds of up to 250 miles per hour.
• Your brain generates 25 watts of power while you’re awake–enough to power a light bulb.
• Your brain uses 20% of your body’s energy, but makes up only 2% of your body’s weight.
• The brain of a 6-month old is already 1/2 its adult weight.
• The brain of a 5 year old is already 9/10 its adult weight.
• Human brains are getting bigger–on average about 1/2 a pound heavier than they were just 100 years ago.

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7 Discoveries Brain Researchers Say Can “Significantly” Increase A Child’s Ability to Learn

Lost Your Childlike Brain? Find It Again Here.

Pretty Windy

Often lately I’ve been reflecting upon my childhood.

Not so much in the psychoanalytical sense of searching for traumatic events or emotional scars or anything like that. But because, as I remember it, I used to have a lot more fun.

Today, as an adult, I worry too damn much. And I think too damn much. And I brood and I plan and I figure and I stew and tense and clam up. I clench my jaw and quint my eyes and forget to breath for days at a time.

And it’s starting to suck

me

dry.

Now all this might actually be fine and dandy, except I know I wasn’t always like this.

There was a time, I am certain, when I was filled with fearless wonder and excitement, and the world crackled with electric potential.

I’m certain because there’s this long lost tape my aunt found a couple of years ago. I’m not sure how old I was–maybe seven or eight. I don’t remember any of it, but one evening somebody had a tape recorder, and I had a story to tell, and a song to sing, and I just went on

and on

and on.

I was so excited about . . .nothing. It was nothing. Somebody got stuck in the snow and a dog got lost in the dark. A hunt ensued. Flashlights were involved. I was happy to sing songs from the spring music program–with GUSTO.

I wasn’t doing it for the tape recorder. I don’t think I was hamming it up. It didn’t sound like I even knew I was being recorded. It was just . . .

me

. . . being me.

People hearing it today, who didn’t know me then, don’t believe it. I don’t blame them. I don’t believe it. Adults who do remember me as a child are shocked to confront the change that crept in so imperceptibly over the years–and have to ask, almost in hushed tones,

“Where did that kid go?”

Quite frankly, I have no idea. It is, as my 9-year-old daughter would say, “Totally Freaky!”

But I do know one thing.

I want to find him again.

I could use a little of that kid’s fearless passion and boundless excitement. I could use some of that fun.

So anyway, like I said, I’ve been thinking about my childhood lately and badaboom–I run across this great hypnosis podcast by Michael White (hypnotist extraordinaire) at Know More Trances about finding your childlike brain again.

Perfect.

Now, by no means am I qualified to review hypnotic techniques or imagery. So I can’t really vouch for its effectiveness (I don’t think it hypnotized me), but it was a hell of a lot of fun to listen to. So if you’ve got eight and a half minutes, dim the lights, close your eyes and listen in. If nothing else, it should produce a grin, if not a chuckle.

Oh, the Jedi artwork? Somehow, a couple of years ago a rumor got started with the students that I am secretly a Jedi Master.

I do absolutely nothing to discourage that rumor.

And this being a post about mystical multiple personality energy forces and Jedi mind tricks, I thought, what the heck–where else am I going to post them?

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Brain Power

The Tooth Fairy Letters

7 Discoveries Brain Researchers Say Can “Significantly” Increase A Child’s Ability to Learn

Normally, when confronting salvation army bell ringers, I try to look very busy and avoid eye contact. They make me feel guilty. If I can go out of my way to avoid them by sneaking in a side or back entrance I will.

I’m a jerk, make no excuses for it, and have no defense. I’m a selfish, crabby, cynical, skeptical kind of a person.

So I wouldn’t be caught dead standing around, freezing my butt off, ringing a bell outside the doors of a busy shopping center–under normal circumstances. I mean, what if someone I knew saw me? I have a reputation to think about.

So what does Lisa do? During one of my Masters weekends, while the clipboard is going around at church, she signs us all up to man a shift of bell ringing outside of Walmart.

I hem. I haw. But eventually I come around. After all, it’ll be a great character builder for the kids, and a good family memory. Plus it’s not like I have much of a choice.

But then Lisa comes down with pneumonia which leaves me holding the bag (or the bell) on a blustery single-digit December Sunday morning.

Sheesh.

So I muster all of my courage, bundle up the kids and decide to make the best of it. It’s only for an hour, and we can always duck inside the store to warm up if we need to.

The ringers just before us got cold during the last half of their shift, so they bought hand-warmers and stuffed them in their gloves to help keep warm. Having no use for them, they gave them to us–which was very cool . . .I mean warm . . .I mean nice.

Next, we strapped on the aprons and started ringing–and saying thank you . . .a lot. The money poured in. I was shocked at how many people dropped spare change, and bills into that red pot. I actually saw a crumpled twenty spot stuffed into the slot–with a smile! Little children pleaded for coins then struggled with their mittens to drop them in the slot. You could see people digging out their wallets and into their purses while they walked toward us in the parking lot.

Not only that, but people actually started thanking us (you know, for standing out in the cold ringing the bell).

What did I learn from all this?

1. Most Salvation Army Bell Ringers probably aren’t all that different than myself.
2. Probably most of them couldn’t care less if you don’t drop anything into their pot.
3. Either a lot of people have really good hearts, or
4. Bell ringers under the age of ten can really bring it in.

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Secrets of a Flash in the Pan

das wiked. buh yo! u wanna get tada nxt levl? wateva.

Shocking! You Won’t Believe What I Learned About Peter Answers

My students have to write every day in a journal/planner that I’ve developed for them. Most of the time I don’t care what they write about, as long as they do it. I always give them a prompt in case they can’t think of a topic, but rarely do I require them to write on it.

So most of the time it’s just mundane everyday stuff. Sometimes it’s filled with the drama of eighth grade social strife. Sometimes it’s stories. Sometimes it’s poetry.

A few years ago I stopped letting them draw pictures. I hated doing it because I hate limiting creativity, and I love the visual aspect of literacy. But it got to a point where there was more drawing going on than writing or reflecting. And it wasn’t even good or thoughtful drawing. It was just filler.

This year a particularly talented student has discovered a loophole. I only saw these while checking their binders before Christmas break. So I had no prior knowledge of them. After her first entry of the kind, it didn’t take long for her buddies to catch on.

Sometimes teaching sucks. And then sometimes–when you see stuff like this–it totally rocks.

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Student “Work.” Sometimes they say the darndest things.

Lost Your Childlike Brain? Find It Again Here.

Football: A Metaphor for Spit Wads

. . .but still not as magical as the “P” word (no not “please”, the other one).

We’re in the middle of a unit on persuasion right now. I love this unit because it’s so rich–it’s a great topic from which to teach so many cool things. Yes, students learn persuasive techniques so that they can better manipulate their parents and teachers, but we also hunt for these techniques when we read sales letters and advertisements (reading standards); we search for them on the radio and TV commercials (listening standards). Writing with these techniques requires discipline, a keen understanding of audience, and attention to details (writing standards). From a Language Arts perspective, it’s good stuff–great stuff.

But it’s also a blast because we get tap into a little psychology, human behavior, and begin to think a bit about thinking.

One of the mind benders I introduce is famously known (in psychological circles anyway) as the “The Copy Machine” study, conducted by Ellen Langer, the first woman to earn tenure as a professor of psychology at Harvard.

The following is an excerpt from an article originally published in the New York Times by Philip Hilts.

In that study, she stationed someone at a copy machine in a busy graduate school office. When someone stepped up and began copying, Dr. Langer’s plant would come up to the person and interrupt, asking to butt in and make copies. The interruption was allowed fairly often, about 60 percent of the time. But the permission was granted almost 95 percent of the time if the person stepping up to interrupt not only asked, ”May I use the copy machine?” but added a reason, ”because I’m in a rush.”

That seems to make sense. People heard the reason and decided they were willing to step aside for a moment. What was odd, Dr. Langer found, was that if the interrupter asked, ”Can I use the machine?” and added a meaningless phrase, ”because I have to make copies,” the people at the machine also stepped aside nearly 95 percent of the time.

The idea, she said, is that the listener at the copy machine heard a two-part statement: a request and something like a reason. That was all their mental script for such a situation required. They never did reflect on the fact that the interrupter’s ”reason” was not meaningful.

As a teacher, I get dozens of requests an hour. Most are fairly pedestrian:

• “Can I borrow a pencil?”
• “Can I go to my locker?”
• “Can I get a drink?”
• “Can I go to the bathroom?”

Now, after we learn a few persuasive techniques, I tell the students to persuade me. After learning about the power of the word “because,” most of them use that . . .because it’s relatively simple.

And it works even better than “please”. Still, most of them forget.

“Mr. Wondra, I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Persuade me,” I’ll say.

They’ll roll their eyes, sigh heavily, do a little potty dance.

“But Mr. Wondra! I REALLY have to go . . .BAD!”

I nod and smile. Eventually, they realize I’m not budging and so fumble around until they construct coherent request. After awhile they begin to do it automatically–or at least they remember after I look at them and say nothing.

I figure this is good teaching–reinforcing the content using a real world application–right? Plus I get to play the powerful-hoity-toity teacher role.

This was the case the other day. I was in the back of the room spot checking (quickly assessing) an assignment, when a fairly quite but confident a girl walked over.

“Mr. Wondra, can I go the bathroom?”

I looked up.  There was a slight pause, but her expression never changed, and she never broke eye contact.

“. . .because I have my period.”

Talk about a persuasive argument. She knocked that one out of the park.

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Unconfirmed Language Trivia

Ask Jud: Evil Spirit or Scary Prank? The Answer is Magic

New Words: From the mouths of middle schoolers