Drive by Dan Pink

[Sarah Hanawald]

I was surprised that we didn't have a book discussion yet centered on Dan Pink's Drive.  When I read A Whole New Mind, the first of his books to come to my attention, I will admit to being a little underwhelmed.  Why it was pleasantly put together, I didn't feel that I learned anything new from AWNM.  I had a completely different experience while reading Drive.  Yes, Drive referenced and distilled the work of others I'd already read, most notably Carol Dweck's thou

ght-provoking work published in Mindset.  However, in Drive, Pink put his thoughts about what motivates us (people, humanity, etc) together in a way that gets the people in my school talking on a high level about topics such as motivation, assessment, student

autonomy. . . conversations well worth having.

 

Is your school doing a read of Pink's work this summer (the book just came out in paperback)

?  If so, please encourage faculty to share their ideas here!

 

Sarah

 

PS:On his website, Pink offers a video that can easily be turned into an activity for any group.  I'll post more about that as a reply to this discussion.

 

[Sarah Hanawald]

Both of my daughters love the color pink. We recently moved, and they had a hand in helping to decorate their new room. It came as no surprise to me that their room is now pinkified--pink curtains, drapes, throw pillows, wall art. . . you name it, it's pink.

I'm (professionally) infatuated with another shade of pink these days. Dan Pink's Drive. When I read A Whole New Mind, the first of Pink's books to come to my attention, I will admit to being a little underwhelmed. Why it was pleasantly put together, I didn't feel that I learned anything new from AWNM. I had a completely different experience while reading Drive. Yes, Drive referenced and distilled the work of others I'd already read, most notably Carol Dweck's thought-provoking work published in Mindset. However, in Drive, Pink put his thoughts about what motivates us (people, humanity, etc)together in a way that gets the people in my school talking on a high level about topics such as motivation, assessment, student autonomy. . . conversations well worth having.

One nice thing about Drive is that Pink and others have done some of the work to help get conversations going with a group. His Two Questions video is perfect for opening a discussion.

Two questions that can change your life from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

At my school, we felt like the second question was not one we wanted to encourage. I'll talk more about that more in another post in the future.

Once the group has discussed the first video, it is worth seeing this collection of responses made by people from around the world to the prompt "what's your sentence."

Who knows--as a group, you may be inspired to make your own video of sentences. We've started our own--there's much more to come.


Finally, if anyone read the book a while back and needs a brief refresher/overview, I highly recommend these two videos:

[Fred Bartels]

Sarah,

 

I'm also a big fan of Drive. A lot of the research reported on in Drive comes from Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at MIT. He has some cute videos here: http://danariely.com/videos/

 

He also has a couple of very enjoyable TED talks.

 

[Anthony McGrann]

Drive is a great book (as is Dweck's). As an optional read, our faculty read it over the winter break, had a great discussion and implemented a FedEx day on one of our half-day in-services (really successful and well-received by the faculty). Pink's book Drive even inspired me to write something for Independent Teacher which came out a few weeks ago. We all shared what we accomplished during that FedEx time, and it was great to learn from one another.

Thanks for putting it out there - I loved the book!