Hey Cowboy, Where’s Your Hat?

                As a student at Sinclair Community College, I was introduced to the “Hat” concept in small group communication class. The textbook introduced the idea of six thinking hats signifying six approaches to decision making and problem solving¹.This was easy for me to understand, I was introduced to the concept when working an open pit copper mine in the mountains of the southwest. In a high risk environment such as mining, this was one of many tools used to minimize the risk. Sound teaching from an excellent class!

Out in the western world, you most often have to stuff all those hats under one hat. Your small group consists of a couple of good horses and a cow dog, if you’re lucky. For the most part hazards are minimized by considering the consequence of actions taken. You put your hat on in the morning, or the consequences are brain fry, or brain freeze, depending on the season. My hat was a necessary piece of equipment.

Here in school, my hat is a distraction. There is enough “noise” in our learning environment without me adding to it with an unnecessary appendage. I would be compelled to take my hat off in class, adding to the noise around us, and I’d wear a hole in the brim tipping my hat to the ladies on campus!

I wore my hat on campus on two occasions; once for a speech class topic on the unwanted horse problem in America, and once for the Martin Luther King Jr. walk. I did this in an effort to break stereo type, and because I marched not for his color, but for his character. My hat is off to the man no matter what!

How do you wear your hat?

Works Cited

¹Myers, Scott A. and Anderson, Carolyn M. The Fundamentals of Small Group Communication  Los Angeles, Sage Productions 2008 print