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Personality Influences Our Personal Reality

 

It's one day before students are set to arrive and you've spent the last few days, weeks, or maybe even months preparing and all of a sudden you get the notification that your entire program has changed!  Better yet, you don't even have your schedule yet.  Regardless of the circumstances and reasons why, you're expected to perform magic.  How do you respond in this situation? Does this upset you and throw you into a frenzy?  This situation is so common and real that it may even create a visceral response in your body just reading that scenario.  

How about whole staff professional development?  Those are fun times!  Imagine you're already in the middle of teaching a unit and you're introduced to a new approach for tracking student progress.  The approach seems logical and perhaps even more efficient than the method you're currently using.  How willing would you be to change your approach? If there is a better way to achieve the goal in supporting students, would you be willing to adopt the new approach and let go of your way of doing things up until that point?

Your response to these scenarios believe it or not, shine the light of awareness on aspects of your personality.  In other words, your unique patterned habits, traits, attitudes, and preferences.  The study of personality dates back thousands of years to theories proposed by Hippocrates relating temperament to bodily fluids and their impact on traits and behaviors.  Research suggests that personality is influenced by a number of different factors and has the potential to change throughout adulthood.  Unfortunately, we generally lack a sense of awareness around how our personality can impact interactions with ourselves, students, and colleagues. From this place of increased awareness, the opportunity is in investing time to take audit of the ways in which we are impacted by situations that occur and in turn, being accountable for our actions in response to those situations.  As we come to better understand our personality, we increase the potential for learning and growth even in the circumstances that get us riled up.

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