No impact man lecture

Yesterday, I attended a lecture by Colin Beavan, the author of No Impact Man: The Adventure of a Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes about Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process at Illinois Wesleyan.   In the book, he describes his experimental project where he and his family tried to produce no trash, use no electricity or motorized transportation, and live sustainably for a year.  In a process, just like the title says, he reflects on our ways of living, and how the No Impact Project actually helped him focus on family, community and environment and lead happy and sustainable life.  I picked up this book originally to get ideas of sustainable living (which I got a lot of ideas), but ended up benefiting more on reflecting my ways of living, instead.  I feel a little awkward to say that this book changed my life, but it definitely had a lot of impact in me.

Since I’m writing this  for CTLT and our central mission is to help faculty with teaching, I thought about ways to tie his lecture to a philosophy of teaching.  In the book, Beavan talks about how No Impact Project helped him to slow down and to focus on most important things in his life.  By cutting down take-out food and all modern convenient tools like cell phones and gadgets, they basically had to do less, which helped them prioritize activities and do things that make them happy.  This idea of prioritizing and simplifying has definitely personal effects on many of us, but additionally, this may be a good outlook for classroom situation as well.  For example, I have so much of information I’d like to (or have to) give to students.  I often hurry through one concept after another and in the end, they don’t remember much in a long run.  Instead, if I could come up with ways to present fewer concepts in a way that sticks in their mind, I might be more successful as a teacher because it actually helped students learn more.  I really don’t have any answers to it, but it’s just one of those things I’d like to keep remembering when I’m planning for a class.

This is just my personal reflection on the event and book, but if you read the book or interested in the topic, we’d love to hear from you (To comment, click on “Comments” link below).  If you’re interested in “No Impact Man”, we have a copy of DVD you can check out from our resource common’s library.