Tag Archives: assessment

Learning

Discernment: Harold’s Story

By Stu Whitley
Bio

This is the first post in a three-part series.

O body swayed to music,O brightening glance,How can we know the dancer from the dance?—W.B. Yeats (Among School Children)

I had lunch with an old friend, a Tlingit
elder, Harold, today. I’ve known Harold for nearly a dozen years. And I
know him to be a serious, thoughtful man; he’s someone who has taught
me many things, not the least of which was the powerful consequence of
even the smallest positive intervention in someone’s life. I have seen
it in action: Harold is the embodiment

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Fearless Aging

Act Your Age!

By Shae Hadden
Bio

I’m pondering this throw-away comment, something I’ve heard countless times before and never really thought about. What do we really mean when we say someone isn’t ‘acting their age’?

In
effect, we’re judging whether their actions are ‘normal’ and
‘acceptable’—as compared to the majority of people of that same
chronological age in our society. But our assessments are neither true,
nor false. They are simply our perspective, our evaluation, of what we
perceive.

In many cases, our assessments have nothing to do
with age—they simply mask our judgments of the individual’s social
behavior or growth (either emotional, mental, physical

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