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See also...
About personal histories
Reviewing and revisiting a student’s personal history appears to be important for students
- to understand themselves,
- understand others and the interactions of which they are a part.
- recognising personal achievements
- sustaining improvements
History is important to understand change as movement from how things used to be
to how they are now. This is usually less judgemental than comparing today
(good) versus past (bad) especially if the discussion points are around gaining
insights
- what made that easy?
- what made this hard?
- when have you managed similar situations well?
- when have you had a similar problem before?
- did you use your 'new way' (of handling situations) or your 'old way'
Leading users of the Planner are beginning to work with particular students in the long term (even after they are no longer problematic) in order to help the students embed their achievements into their everyday life and work.
Two major insights from the Planner
Perhaps the two major insights from the Planner are that
- many difficult students do not really know (are not really aware) of what
they are doing despite their obvious intentions
- they dismiss, or fail to appreciate, the experiences of others involved
- they do not make connections between incidents - for these students each is its own separate episode
- they have little awareness of the long term implications for themselves - their inappropriate actions may enable them to 'win' in the short but their chances of long term success and well-being are close to zero!!
- 'logical' consequences are rarely as logical as they may seem
- when the situation is well understood 'logical consequences' are often irrelevant and a distraction
- at best there may be some 'logical' things to be done to retrieve and repair the situation - these should not be seen as consequences but rather reasonable responses
- on the other hand, the natural consequences are significant and it is helpful for these to be well understood by all concerned
