1. Teen Success Ideas to Move Your Mind by Beatrice J. Elye
Slide Show of Significant Excerpts
for School Success
Compiled and arranged by Carolyn Harrell
Chapter 3
pages Observation: What Do You Really See?

2. Something to think about:
How do you know what you know?
Are you really aware of yourself and of what is going on around you?
Is there a common source for all knowledge?
I’ll share 3 scenarios with you (the pictures relate to each one) to help you answer the questions.
How are each alike and how different?

3. Sensory responses to the
Environment…
Cause and effect
Childhood play
First hand information
Second hand information

4. When you see something, what do you really see?
How accurately”
With what purpose?
With what influence of previous experience? cultural background? education?
Observational errors are perhaps the greatest threat to intelligent living! Let’s talk about that…

5. Consider these statements:
“I need to see it for myself.”
“I see a play only after I’ve read the reviews.”
“I know what the experts say, but if they disagree,
how can they be experts?”
“She’s the teacher, so she must be right.”
“It was on the internet or newspaper so it must be true.”
When dealing with secondary statements you must neither accept nor reject ideas without careful thought.

6. Let’s talk about selective awareness (which we’ll also consider in Whack on the Side of the Head)

7. Ideas and techniques to improve sensory skills:
Observe with Concentration
(all 5 senses, note unusual properties…)
Observe Repeatedly (note changes)
Observe for a Purpose (make hypotheses but be careful not to just confirm your first impression)
Observe to Trigger Your Imagination (our third course, dessert, will really get into this and so will Whack on …Head)
Observe with Feedback (double checking)
Observe Yourself (We’ll do a journal activity with this
(page 19) and with the poem, “Portrait”)

8. Summary Situations and conditions affect observation.
Your willingness to explore and observe is an inherent quality from childhood.
Passive sensory information can stunt your observational growth.
You should properly evaluate observations.
Sensory efforts vary. Methods exist to increase this sensitivity.
Different ways of practicing observing can sharpen your observation skills.

9. Words of Wisdom
All our knowledge begins with senses, proceeds then to understanding, and ends with reason Immanuel Kant
Observation more than books, experience rather than persons, are the prime educators. –A. Bronson Alcott
To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe –Marilyn vos Savant
People who don’t work with primary sources don’t understand reality –Franklin Burroughs
That is what learning is. You should suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.
–Doris Lessing
You can see a lot just by observing. –Yogi Berra
We cannot create observers by just saying “observe,” but by giving them the power and the mans for this observation and these means are created through education of the senses.
–Maria Montessori
Opportunities are often things you haven’t noticed the first time around –Catherine Deneuve