Productive U Podcast

Decoding my students’ assignments in the days of handwritten papers was almost always a chore. Sometimes it was because of bad or cramped handwriting. Occasionally it was due to loud and obnoxious ink colors. Every so often, however, I would get students who, in their haste, rearranged the letters in their words. Those students also often used inventive and unusual abbreviations. Their only goal was to save time, but the result was a paper that made me feel like a translator who needed to decipher text from a language with which I was unfamiliar.

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Some of my most treasured possessions are pictures of my students. Each and every one packs considerably more power than the proverbial “thousand words”. They don’t help me just see my students, but also hear their voices and laughter. Sometimes I can even smell the scene from the picture, which, as anyone who has spent time at a school can tell you, isn’t an unmitigated positive. Pictures and other kinds of images can be powerful communicators. Like anything else powerful, it is wise to understand how to use them well.

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