the back of the napkin

just finished the book ‘the back of the napkin’ by dan roam and it was tremendous, i think there are clear connections between what this book has to say and what i do in pds. the subtitle is ‘solving problems and selling ideas with pictures’ and i think that aligns well to what i do when working with teachers. something that got me thinking is the idea of solving problems – do the teachers that attend the gifted training see the idea of serving gifted students as a problem that needs to be solved. sadly, i feel that in many cases teachers who have gifted students don’t see their need to be served as a problem that needs solving. so, perhaps a good way to go about the professional learning experiences we conduct would be to highlight the need as a problem that needs to be solved. i think there is a fair amount of discussion of the needs of gifted students and how we need to meet those needs, but maybe this book will help us with the tools to address the issue as a problem and then there will be some urgency seen in solving it.
the second part of the subtitle has really intruigued me because i am not afraid the grab the pen and start drawing, despite my very limited art skills. we are in the era of pure facilitation over the old hat powerpoint and the idea of using drawings works perfectly to meet these ends. having finished the book in a few days my fear is that i’ll forget the genius of the book if i don’t put it into practice, so these next few days i’m going to look at what i do and see if it can be improved or enhanced by the use of drawings. sounds silly, but it’s genius.