What Did You Say?
Dec 23rd, 2011 Donald Mitchell
Have you ever started a comment by remarking, "I'm sure you agree that . . . ."? You might have been thinking, "Anyone can see that . . . ." However, it wouldn't be polite to speak that way, so you indicated instead that you were assuming consensus.
After such a preamble, most of us expect to see nodding agreement as we launch into a prolonged explanation of our views. It makes you feel more relaxed and confident when those smiling nods follow, doesn't it?
Because the speaker is confidently assuming approval, it can be quite startling and more than a little unsettling when someone stridently responds to the statement of beliefs with the question, "What did you just say?" In fact, such a reaction can seem more than a little threatening.
Yet it is through spirited give-and-take discussions that people learn the most from one another, more experiences are shared, knowledge advances, and improvements are made. While anyone in difficult circumstances who is eagerly seeking practical solutions will welcome such verbal exchanges, many graduate school professors, by contrast, would be shocked if a student attempted to challenge their views.
An insecure educator will instead expect adulation and agreement, stroking an ego that's easily inflated by positively bobbing heads. While that feels good to the professor, the response doesn't do much for advancing knowledge.
Imagine instead that you are an experienced person who has been succeeding in your work for some time, and you choose to come back to school to gain some advanced training or a credential-boosting degree. Naturally, you'll expect that your experience will count for something with your professors, some of whom may be younger and less experienced than you are.
Choosing to advance his or her ideas in answers to a test can be a costly decision for such a mid-career student. Many graduate school professors expect their students to simply parrot back the views captured in the books and articles the professor has written. Anything else will be rejected and marked as a "wrong" answer.
Naturally, when confronted with such tenured foolishness by a professor in a seminar, it's natural for the knowledgeable, experienced student to respond with a sharply punctuated, "What did you say?" In this context, the question is simply the uncensored expression of the thought, "I can't believe that anyone in her or his right mind would say that."
Lest you think that such circumstances rarely occur, Dr. Elaine Lewis reports having similar experiences as a student in several state university graduate schools. Wanting more academic freedom and personal growth, she instead earned a Ph.D. degree from Rushmore University.
Let me tell you a little about Dr. Lewis. She is a pioneering expert in educating autistic people (those with reduced abilities to notice, to respond to, and to communicate with others). Educators in this field are good at getting attention so the students learn more and become more self-reliant.
Unlike your typical wet-behind-the-ears graduate student, Dr. Lewis brought to her courses many years of successful experiences with her ground-breaking methods for helping autistic youngsters, especially those with Asperger Syndrome (socially limited children who can learn effectively as well as complete academic work). As a result of her observations and experiences, some of what the state university professors tried to teach her struck her as being wrong.
Naturally, she wanted to speak up but didn't find a welcoming reception for her comments. Feeling discouraged by her studies, her sympathy increased for difficulties autistic youngsters experience in overcoming their communications barriers.
While working within the public school system, Dr. Lewis sometimes ran into the same lack of interest for improvement. By the year 2000 she found the public school environment could be more discouraging of her work than encouraging because autism was often ignored until a law suit loomed.
After resigning from her public school teaching job, she and her husband founded The Open Doorway, Inc. in West Palm Beach, Florida, to provide private services to children and adults with autism and other related developmental disabilities.
With her business, new challenges loomed. Regulations and compensation were constantly shifting in ways that made it difficult to provide the services. Despite these challenges, her company grew as it successfully served many families while assisting some public and private schools.
One day, a seemingly catastrophic blow fell. Regulations shifted so that most of the families her company served could only continue to receive state-funded benefits if rendered at a brick and mortar school. Once again, Dr. Lewis found herself in a "What did you say?" moment.
Despite having no plans to open a school, no experience in doing so, and not many financial resources to draw on, she was determined not to leave the families without her staff's caring, knowledgeable support. With barely a moment to take a breath, she and her husband decided to launch a special needs school.
As sometimes happens when regulations change, the warning time wasn't very long and the requirements were very onerous. If you think that athletes sometimes are called upon to scramble around to make some positive result out of a difficult situation, Dr. Lewis's scrambling would probably have qualified her for the all-star team in most entrepreneurial and educational circles.
Despite the enormous difficulties she experienced, the school was qualified and began operating. Although the doors were open, it was at a high personal cost including lots of unforeseen expenses, very long hours, and turmoil while recruiting and training an outstanding staff. Whenever the load on her seemed to be too much, she remembered how much the families were depending on the school. She soldiered on.
What did she do in her very limited spare time? Well, Dr. Lewis earned a doctorate, began a book spelling out her methods, conducted advocacy for those with autism and related disabilities, and nourished her family. Her work often required driving, and she became a big fan of books on CD to make better use of all that time in a car. On rare occasions, she was able to break away to watch a relaxing movie or to play with her two very large dogs.
Having accomplished so much in so many ways despite such an arduous set of challenges and regimen, I was curious to learn what she recommended that others do when they are in situations similar to hers when she began her successful Ph.D. studies. Here is how she responded:
I encourage them to see the reality of the situation they are in and to start problem solving for themselves, rather than accepting the limitations of the current situation. If they are strong enough to look for the solution, they will become strong enough to change the situation. While that occurs, they will open their minds to really learn for the first time.
What did you say?
Wow!About the Author:
Donald W. Mitchell is a professor at Rushmore University, an online school, who often teaches people who want to improve their effectiveness in order to accomplish career breakthroughs through earning advanced degrees. For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore to increase your effectiveness, visit
http://www.rushmore.edu .
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