Second-Order Thinking

                                Brief Overview:

Photo by ALP STUDIO on Unsplash

Imagine for a moment a pebble in your hand. Your hand hovering over a pond. You gently unclasp your hand and let the pebble fall, ever so, into the pond. What happens? You get ripples. Plural. A lot of times we make decisions we barely even think about what might be one ripple effect, let alone a second, third, nth effect. This is what second-order thinking is. You map out just what might happen (both positive and negative...WHAT?! A negative effect from one of our grand decisions??!) so that you acknowledge the different possible outcomes out there. 

Another important part of this is to make sure you revisit decisions that have been made, to see if there were any ripples that may have popped up that you weren´t expecting.

Classroom Connection:

This one stresses me out! Just think of all the interventions we do, the responses that we create, the reactions that come out of us, and all of the ripples that we create, every, single, day. So just start with one. If you intervene with a student, might their be negative consequences? What if your intervention is one that has to happen at home, after school. What if the student in question has a TON of stuffing going on outside of school and your intervention is something they have to do at night, before they go to bed. A suppose, just for a moment, that they have to stay up later than normal, to work on this wondrous intervention. And now multiply that by two weeks (or four, however long your intervention is ((it´s not the whole year is it?)). Is this student worse off, because they are tired and not getting enough sleep and so they are missing out on other information that they are unable to learn because their brain is not functioning at optimal levels...and so they need another intervention...

A Video Reflection:

Hanlon´s Razor

Photo by Heather Mount on Unsplash

Brief Overview:

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. We have a tendency to think people do things to us on purpose. That time someone cut us off in traffic...bum! The lady who shortchanged us on our bill...thief! The HR department not telling you before hand when a meeting was scheduled...their out to ruin my day!!  Most of the time (not all, nothing is 100%) people do these things not because they wish us ill, but because they have made a mistake. Our car was in their blindspot.. the waitress´s child is sick, and she´s worried about her..the HR department is understaffed.

This Mental Model allows us the chance to respond, not react, to the situations that we find ourselves in.

Classroom Connection:

The next time a student behaves a certain way in your class, take a moment and think. He probably isn´t doing it "on purpose" to cause you misery. He´s not out to get you. He probably is telling you he doesn´t have some sort of skill, and that he needs your help to develop it. 

Video Reflection: