Today I had the pleasure of combining two of my favorite loves during one of our beginners’ workshops, Dove Dark Chocolate and the SMARTBoard . How, you ask, did I manage to combine those two items in a training? Mom and I had just finished our lunches of fresh ripe juicy peaches and Clif Bars and were heading back into the ROE training room when I spotted a basket of individually wrapped chocolates. Dove Dark Chocolates to be exact. Well, yum! I had to pick one up to finish off my healthy lunch. I mean come on, Dark Chocolate is full of healthy flavonoids and antioxidants. I couldn’t NOT have one. It would have been detrimental to my health.
After unwrapping and enjoying my after lunch treat, I noticed the message that was inscribed on the copper foil wrapper. It said “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” Well…I love that. There is nothing I hate worse than failing. But to have that outlook regarding failure sheds a whole new light on the topic.
During the afternoon hands-on portion of our training, a participant asked if it was possible to hold down the shift key on the SMARTBoard and drag the corner of a circle to keep the shape in proportion. Well, to be honest, I had never tried that, so I wasn’t for sure if it would work or not. I pulled up the keyboard and gave it a shot all while Mom said, “Shan, that isn’t going to work because you have two points of contact.” Of course, there is that failure thing again…I immediately made my “zip it” noise and indicated that I wanted to TRY it.
Thank goodness my mom is VERY patient. She sighed a short sigh, smiled, and politely said, “Go ahead.” Well of course it DIDN’T work. Not only is my mom patient, she is one smart and tech savvy lady. That must be why I wanted her to be my partner in this corporation in the first place.
As soon as I demonstrated the “failure” of the shift key/circle drag, I reached over, grabbed my Dove wrapper and read it to the participants. They all smiled politely and then I proceeded to re-answer the question. “No sir, you are actually not able to press the shift key and drag the corner of the circle simultaneously while at the SMARTBoard. The reason this will not work is because you are trying to command the SMARTBoard to do two different things with two different points of contact and the SMARTBoard only recognizes one point of contact.” 🙂
You see, I was able to “begin again more intelligently” with my response to his question.
So thank you Dove, for the great piece of advice wrapped around a great piece of chocolate.
I saw it…in a classroom on the first day of student attendance. The empty wide mouth glass container with the label “Marble Jar” scotch-taped to the side. And it reminded me of the “Incentive” slide in our SMARTBoard: “What’s It Good For Anyway?” presentation. We try to incorporate the use of the SMARTBoard into every imaginable facet of the teaching day, including the use of the marble jar. Or in this case to replace the use of the marble jar. But before I go any further, I must step back in time a bit. You see, we recently did a full day SMARTBoard training in a southern IL Catholic school. Mom had been looking forward to this training all last spring. (They booked us early). She taught for quite a few years in a small Catholic school and refers to her time there as “The Golden Years”. The strong parent-support, the church community and various self-contained groups of 8th graders all contributed to wonderful teaching experiences. So having this opportunity to go back to her roots (so to speak) for a day of SMARTBoard training was right up her alley. As we pulled into the black iron-gated and perfectly manicured grounds of the school, I couldn’t help but to be impressed. And it only got better. The school was old..and I mean O-L-D. I am not sure what year it was built, but it reminded me a lot of the 4th grade school that I attended in the 
My niece, Allison, came into our lives thirty years ago. She has provided us with a glimpse of another world that we can’t begin to understand, only because we are limited in both our intellect and ability to “see” things the way she does. As a child, Allison “danced with the fairies” and was lost in thoughts that we could only wish to share with her. She was first diagnosed with significant developmental delays with “islands of ability” or possible “childhood schizophrenia”. When Allison was five, her pediatrician called my sister, Diana, at work. He had just returned from attending a conference in California and was very excited to have found an “answer”. Allison eventually was “labeled” autistic, and was placed in special classes in schools in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Diana worked as a political consultant at the state and federal levels, and used any and all connections she had to educate herself on autism. She became an officer in the Autism Society of America, and became proactive in securing the best help to enable Allison to become all she could be. Eventually we learned that Allison’s symptoms were best described as Asperger’s Syndrome, and she was not only very high functioning, but had an IQ that was far above anyone else in our family. When she was twelve, Allison described to me a book that she was reading about “parallel universes” in terms I could understand. My “Allison Stories” include finding piles of miniature notebook pages under her bed with hieroglyphics of different thoughts and messages filling each page, all easily translated by her at the age of eight. On a visit I took her to buy a bathing suit, and she absolutely needed the black one-piece with a huge beautiful sequined pineapple filling the front. How could I refuse? She loved nothing more than to sit in front of the television under a huge open golf umbrella watching Comedy Central and laughing with the audience. Her humor is quick, dry, and catches you off-guard bringing you to your knees. She has been to “Burning Man”, belonged to a tango club, belly-dances, and has taken Diana and me on a trip to southern France for the “Gathering of the Gypsies”. On our trip to Paris, her first request was to go to the cemetery to see the grave of Jim Morrison. On our trip through the Louvre, she was our personal guide. Just this past Sunday her post on Facebook read, 
Today 
Both the school and the restaurant are within blocks of my first “home” as a young married bride. My husband was attending Eastern Illinois University on the G.I. Scholarship,
