Tag Archives: psychology

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5:1 Says that KIPP Journey has Relationships Figured Out

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Two days ago, I wrote a post about visiting KIPP Journey in Columbus. In that time, it has become the most popular post on this site. Which is pretty cool. And it’s doubly cool because I didn’t even include everything that blew me away about the school.

In every classroom, there was a blue poster on the wall. All it said was “5:1.” As the day progressed, my peers and I routinely whispered about it. What did it mean? Why should a simple ratio have such a prominent place in the classroom?

We got our answer when we had the opportunity to sit down with Dustin Wood, the School Director and OU alum (Go Bobcats!).  He said 5:1 is a ratio that comes from psychologist, John Gottman’s study of marriages. Gottman found he could predict the success of marriages with 90% accuracy based on the ratio of the number of positive remarks said on a daily basis to the number of negative remarks said on a daily basis. If a relationship stayed around 5:1, it was probably going to succeed.

Wood and the teachers at KIPP Journey have started using the ratio as a way of ensuring the success of their students. When Wood does teacher evaluations, he records how many positive and negative remarks a teacher makes. The goal is to keep everyone above 5:1.

Observe any class at KIPP Journey, and it becomes exceedingly obvious that all of the teachers are constantly thinking about this ratio. They are like parents. They constantly hand out “I love you”s and terms of endearment and encouragement to their students. Even failures are repackaged as successes.

In one class, student had bell work. The teacher used two different students’ work as examples. One of them didn’t get full credit on the problem, though. But he had done something really great to deserve the first point, and so he was applauded for what he had done correctly instead of chastised for what he had done wrong.

I am convinced that interactions like these make all the difference.

I made a comment the other day that I wish the whole world was run like a KIPP school. The more I learn about the program, the more I am convinced that a wish like that could change everything. What if we made a conscious effort to follow the 5:1 ratio in everything we did? What would that look like?

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Normal is the New Weird

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Today in my psychology class we watched the movie Stand By Me. I’m kind of a sucker for movies about relationships – father and son relationships, brother relationships, and friendships. So Stand By Me, as a movie about four preteen friends, is kind of right up my alley.

There’s this scene in Stand By Me where cool-kid and group-leader Chris is talking to artsy intelligent-kid and narrator Gordon. Gordon asks Chris if he is weird, and Chris says “definitely” in jest. But Gordon keeps pestering him, and finally Chris says, “Yeah, but so what? Everybody’s weird.”

The delivery of this scene, like every scene in Stand By Me is perfect. And so, even though it seems like a cliche, it comes across as profound.

But I was thinking, even though this idea is kind of cliche, we never really think about its implications. If everybody is weird, then weird is normal. And if weird is normal, then everybody is normal. So it kind of makes just as much sense to say that “everybody’s normal” as it does to say “everybody’s weird.” But no one ever says that everybody’s normal.

I think we make up weird. It’s a narrative that we decide to use to self-gratify or to help our world-view. If we can label other things as weird or our own behavior as weird, it creates a gap between those things and behaviors and the “normal” world.

I knew this girl once who described herself as weird. It was something she talked about a lot. But to me, she was no more weird than the rest of the world, but I found it difficult to relate to her simply because she believed she was weird. I think sometimes we assume that the world is normal and we are weird. But it’s actually that self-talk that isolates us from others. Not our perceived weirdness.

What makes you weird/normal?

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What You and Augustine Have in Common

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I think about a lot of things when I think about the word “indoctrination,” but I don’t really ever think of myself as an indoctrinator. I am in the pursuit of truth! Of reason! Of other opposites of indoctrination! I do not indoctrinate. Indoctrination is left for people who don’t agree with me.

There’s this really cool psychologist – Albert Ellis. He was a bit eccentric, but he has perhaps the most humanistic and realistic of the personality theories. Ellis believed that we weren’t a passive victim of the things that happen to us. He thought that we indoctrinate ourselves – that we latch on to ideas and then present those ideas to ourselves as fact when, in reality, these “facts” are nothing more than irrational beliefs.

For example, when we say things like “I’m stupid” to ourselves, we are practicing indoctrination. It’s not factually true that we are stupid; it’s a belief. And we can change beliefs. But we rarely do because this kind of self-talk is indoctrinated.

Ellis believed that unwanted emotions were simply irrational beliefs. Who decides that you are unhappy? There is no objective unhappiness machine that calculates good and bad events in your life and pops out an unhappiness quotient. We decide that we are unhappy so much so that when someone asks us how we are doing, we think we are lying if we don’t tell the questioner that we are, in fact, unhappy. But you can’t lie about something that isn’t true, and unhappiness is never a truth.

Ellis also believed that we are slaves to false “musts.” There really aren’t that many “musts” in the world. But we think there are billions. We must be successful. Everyone must play fair and nice or else must be punished. The world must give us what we want when we want. These are all false false false.

So stop thinking about what you think you must do or must happen and start thinking about what you want to do. And indoctrinate yourself with those thoughts.