Bringing authenticity into your life and it's consequences.

As we look at the world around us, we see that no two things are identical. No two snowflakes are ever the same – nor are they intended to be. Rather, each form is a distinct expression, and this applies to us as well. The universe does not intend our life to be a copy of someone else’s life. We are each magnificently unique, and the inner impulse to express this is what drives us to be authentic. - 

A move into greater authenticity is always a move into greater levels of empowerment, creative self-expression, and overall wellbeing

This is because we are moving towards our truer and greater self. Our interactions with the world and with others become more fulfilling and more alive. Our joy and fulfillment rise to higher levels -

 See more at: http://www.chopra.com/ccl/authenticity-a-closer-look?utm_source=October%20Newsletter%20&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=October_2013_Newsletter#sthash.x5oIWswU.dpuf 

Moving towards higher consciousness..

The possibility of achieving the highest level of actualization exists only if we are surrounded on a regular basis with others moving towards higher consciousness.

In the face of overwhelming challenges all around us, the only thing we can do is make our little corner of the world more safe, welcoming, friendly, kind, caring and loving.

Read full article at:
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/relationship-skills/2013/09/breaking-the-cycle-of-loneliness/

Playing your instrument..

"Your Destiny is the level where you will play your time. You might not change your instrument, but how well to play is entirely in your hands."
(Elif Shafak, Forty Rules of Love)

Misleading Myth about education!

One of the most dangerous and misleading myths that still endures in the field of education is the idea that tests used to measure and compare students to one another are scientifically objective. They are not, in my opinion, absolutely not. 

Young people are not inert rocks or chemicals in a test tube, and they are not machines. They are curious, creative and continuously changing living beings. As such, the use of high-stakes testing to sort and compare children with one another can be very misleading and potentially destructive. 

That doesn't mean that assessments play no role in education, they most definitely do. What experienced teachers understand is that whenever you provide a child with an assessment on their abilities you must be very careful about it. 

Well designed assessments are given to help students become aware of their weaknesses, so that they can improve in those areas. 

This is how the best teachers and coaches motivate and inspire their students. They are constantly giving the learner feedback on little details of their progress, with the shared goal of helping them improve their skills and abilities, to master what they are learning. 

Assessment of learning is key, but the subjective component is always in the forefront of the teacher's mind. Feedback given in this way promotes growth, motivation and greater learning. It is a key component of the student/teacher relationship, grounded in trust, respect and an awareness of the learner's potential.

The care, flexibility and personal support the teacher demonstrates is a crucial component of the process. This is why teaching is more an art form then a science, as is also true of learning. 

Every child is different, with different strengths, weaknesses, motivations, learning styles and interests. If you use standardized test results to compare them to one another the effect is to decrease motivation for those who fall into the bottom of your assessment basket. 

The result is that schooling becomes "miseducative" for far too many children, as John Dewey described it.

~Christopher
The Art of Learning

Education is different from indoctrination.

A good education is one that liberates, empowers, and enhances individuals, not one that imposes and instills what external agencies believe individuals should learn. Education is different from indoctrination.

Intelligence!

Education is meant to be an active open-ended process of exploration and discovery.

"Education isn't something that happens to children. It's not a pre-packaged sequence of out-of-context skills and information and it's certainly not something that schools should be forcing large groups of age-segregated children to passively absorb at exactly the same time and in exactly the same way. All the while resorting to a whole bunch of external rewards and punishments to get them to do it. What education is meant to be is an active open-ended process of exploration and discovery. It's one that children are entirely capable of directing themselves.."

~Chris Mercogliano~

TED Talk: The Self-Organizing Child
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0fg73WnLWQ

How to succeed

“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person [or persons] other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it... Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”

~ Viktor E. Frankl,
Man's Search for Meaning

Making a difference as an educator..

This is a must listen for every teacher and educator out there!! beautiful talk

Determining the goal of education

~The Single Best Idea for Reforming K-12 Education- by Steve Denning, Forbes Magazine, 2011~

"To decide what is the single best idea for reforming K-12 education, one needs to [first] figure out what is the biggest problem that the system currently faces. To my mind, the biggest problem is a preoccupation with, and the application of, the factory model of management to education, where everything is arranged for the scalability and efficiency of “the system”, to which the students, the teachers, the parents and the administrators have to adjust. “The system” grinds forward, at ever increasing cost and declining efficiency, dispiriting students, teachers and parents alike.

Given that the factory model of management doesn’t work very well, even in the few factories that still remain in this country, or anywhere else in the workplace for that matter, we should hardly be surprised that it doesn’t work well in education either.

But given that the education system is seen to be in trouble, there is a tendency to think we need “better management” or “stronger management” or “tougher management”, where “management” is assumed to be the factory model of management. It is assumed to mean more top-down management and tighter controls, and more carrots and sticks. It is assumed to mean hammering the teachers who don’t perform and ruthlessly weeding out “the dead wood”. The thinking is embedded in Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind.

These methods are known to be failing in the private sector, because they dispirit the employees and limit their ability to contribute their imagination and creativity; they frustrate customers, and they are killing the very organizations that rely on them. So why should we expect anything different in the education sector?

When the problems have been caused in the first place by introducing the practices of “management”, then a more rigorous pursuit of this type of “management” only makes things worse. It is like medieval doctors trying to cure patients by bloodletting, using leeches, which only made the patients worse.

The inapplicablity of these methods is aggravated by the changes in the economy. Not so long ago, we could predict what jobs and careers might be available for children in their adult life. The education system could tell little Freddie or Janet what to study and if he or she mastered that, he or she was set for life. Not any more. We simply don’t know what jobs will be there in twenty years time. Today, apart from a few core skills like reading, writing, math, thinking, imagining and creating, we cannot know what knowledge or skills will be needed when Freddie or Janet grows up.

The best single idea for reforming education:


Given this context, I believe that the single most important idea for reform in K-12 education concerns a change in goal. The goal needs to shift from one of making a system that teaches children a curriculum more efficiently to one of making the system more effective by inspiring lifelong learning in students, so that they are able to have full and productive lives in a rapidly shifting economy.

Implications of accepting the shift in goal:

This is a shift from running the system for the sake of the system (“You study what we tell you to study, when we tell you, and how we tell you, and at a pace that we determine”) to a focus on the ultimate goal of learning (“Our goal is to inspire our students to become life-long learners with a love of education, so that they will be able to learn whatever they have to.”) All parties—teachers, administrators, unions, parents and students—need to embrace the new goal.

Once we embrace this goal, we can see that that many things will have to change to accomplish it. We can also grasp that most of the thinking underlying current “reforms” of the system can be seen in their true light as schemes and devices that are actually making things worse..."

~Steve Denning~
Forbes Magazine, 2011

Note: To read the rest of this excellent article please press the link below:: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/09/01/the-single-best-idea-for-reforming-k-12-education/

Education "Reform"

“The education ‘reform’ movement is destructive in so many ways – to education, teachers, children, to society and to democracy,” according to Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor of education at Lesley University.

“They promote the idea that the achievement gap exists because of bad teachers and we can close it by testing,” she said in a recent interview. “We then base everything on testing, whether measuring students’ progress, teachers, or schools.

“It’s all about ‘holding teachers accountable.’ What never gets addressed are the underlying inequities in society and in educational opportunity,” Carlsson-Paige noted. “Poor children come to school, many having to cope with homelessness, hunger, illness or trauma. It is so wrong to blame teachers for social and economic inequalities that affect children’s school performance and to claim that teachers alone can close the achievement gap.

“Students from different backgrounds have access to widely different schooling,” she added. “So often, children in low-income communities are forced into a lock-step, inadequate, and under-resourced education.”

“As a professor of education, an educator of teachers, and someone who creates curriculum,” Carlsson-Paige said, “I see the harm education reform is causing children—the disappearance of play, creativity, and the arts from our schools. Evaluation is now driving curriculum, and curriculum is being reduced to something mechanistic. This isn’t real learning.

Children are learning information by rote in the early years that cannot give them the solid foundation of knowledge they need to build on, as school continues. And the ‘drill and kill’ methods turn kids off from school early on and keep them from discovering the joy in learning. And this is mostly about poor children, because more well-to-do communities are able to provide all kinds of compensatory learning activities, such as trips to the museums, theater and music programs, summer camps.

“We’re losing out on the opportunity to have a well-educated citizenry,” she said. “True citizens need to be able to not take things at face value, to think critically, to question authority. Tests don’t measure critical thinking or imagination. They reduce the whole learning process to lower level kinds of information that can be tested. It’s really sad and scary to see this happening.”

Carlsson-Paige deplored the fact that education reform is being driven by businessmen, politicians, and wealthy foundations who don’t understand education and want to subject it to business values, including privatization. “Public education is the primary democratic institution we have left, and it is eroding out from under us,” she said. “I fear that one day, the American people are going to wake up and realize that we don’t have a public education system anymore.”

However, she added, “There are rumblings beginning to be heard. I see more and more people questioning what is happening in education. Many people realize they are losing local, community control of their schools. People are starting to organize. Groups such as Parents Across America and Citizens for Public Schools are gaining momentum. Every day more people sign on to the Save Our Schools movement that is organizing the March on Washington D.C. in July. These signs, among many others, give us hope that change will come – and, as it always does, from the bottom."

Interview by Jackie Dee King

http://www.citizensforpublicschools.org/editions-of-the-backpack/may-2011-backpack/rally-against-arne-duncan’s-‘reforms’-for-public-schools-on-may-26/

Further reading:

Diane Ravitch explains problems with the policies of the U.S. Education Secretary - "Flunking Arne Duncan"
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/mar/07/flunking-arne-duncan/

Personalizing education..

"To improve our schools, we have to humanize them and make education personal to every student and teacher in the system. Education is always about relationships. Great teachers are not just instructors and test administrators: They are mentors, coaches, motivators, and lifelong sources of inspiration to their students. Teaching is an art form. Great teachers know they have to cultivate curiosity, passion and creativity in their students."

~Ken Robinson=

- Why We Need to Reform Education Now - "TEDTalks Education" premiering Tuesday, May 7, 2013 at 10/9c on PBS

"What should America do about its disastrous high school dropout rate? That's the focus of TEDTalks Education, the first ever TED/PBS television special, hosted by John Legend, the award-winning musician. The program looks not only at what's going wrong in high schools, but how to put it right...

One of the themes of TEDTalks Education is that current policies are based on a tragic misdiagnosis of the problem. They treat education as an industrial process rather than as a human one. They are driven by a culture of testing and standardization that has narrowed the curriculum and sees students as data points and teachers as functionaries rather than as living breathing people.

Ramsey Musallam is a high school chemistry teacher, who shows how achievement soars when teachers fire the imaginations of their students with a true spirit of inquiry.

All students have their own stories, motivations and circumstances and teachers have to connect with them personally. Psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth talks about the importance of encouraging students' positive attitudes to life and learning -- or 'grit', as she calls it. Pearl Arredondo is a powerful example of grit.

She who grew up as the daughter of a 'ranking gang member" in East Los Angeles. After being 'saved' by inspirational teachers, she qualified as a teacher herself and returned to her old school to help transform the lives of others. "Everyone has a story," she says. "Everyone has a struggle and everyone needs help along the way."

All young people have unique talents and interests. In his moving poem, Malcolm London argues that education has to connect with the real lives of young people and not stifle their hopes and dreams.

Geoffrey Canada is the founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, which has a 100 percent graduation rate. We have millions of young people walking away from education, he says. But "right now, we could save them all," if we're prepared to innovate fundamentally and not just do more of the same. He sees schools everywhere following the same dull routines as when he was at school over 50 years ago, "and no-one is going crazy enough about it to say that enough is enough... America can't wait another fifty years to get this right."

The key to personalizing education is to invest properly in the professional development of educators. As Bill Gates argues, teachers need mentors too. Supporting educators to become the best they can be is one of the surest routes to improving the nation's schools. In my view, we should then give them the creative freedom to innovate and do their jobs within a proper framework of public accountability.

There are those who say that we can't afford to personalize education to every student. The fact is that we can't afford not to. Watch the program and see what I mean."

~Sir Ken Robinson~

TED Talks Education, hosted by John Legend, premieres Tuesday, May 7, 2013 at 10/9c on PBS

http://www.ted.com/promos/TEDTalksEducation

Ken Robinson's full Huffington Post article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sir-ken-robinson/reform-american-education-now_b_3203949.html

Shifting paradigms in education (Finland Model)

"Many of us have heard how awesome the schools in Finland are. How their students rock international tests in reading, math and science year after year. How respected their teachers are, and how motivated their students. But that wasn’t always the case.

In the 1970s, Finland’s schools were sputtering after 108 years under Russian rule and the many wars that followed their 1917 liberation. Not only were their schools struggling, their economy was too. Unemployment was near 20%. Then the Finnish parliament made an historic decision to revamp their schools.

They believed that education was the best way out of their country’s predicament. So the Finns decided to really leave no child left behind and implement a system promising every student in their country a stellar education regardless of how much money their family made or where they lived. Their goal was to give every single student a great education. Their success caught the attention of the world.

It’s hard to point to just one thing that’s the key to Finland’s success. The rise of their schools was a slow and steady one; more tortoise than hare. There’s no doubt that their approach to education is vastly different from the US and many other high-achieving nations. In fact, it’s almost the complete opposite approach.

The emphasis in Finnish schools is on cooperation, not competition. Nina Brander, a Finnish teacher with 17 years of experience, says this is a key to Finland’s success. “In Finland we orientate more towards learning and working than towards marking and evaluating,” she said.

Schools aren’t ranked and they’re all equally funded so parents can rest assured that whether they live in a city or a small country town, whether they are wealthy or not, their child will get the same education. “We have an equal elementary-school education for all children,” said Ms. Brander.

Unlike the norm in the United States and many Asian nations, there aren’t a ton of standardized tests in Finland—there is only one right at the end of their equivalent of high school. Progress is charted by exams the teachers devise themselves.

“We do have tests at the end of almost every course, but the only standardized test is the matriculation examination at the end of high school,” said Ms. Brander. “We evaluate the students during courses,” she continued. “I usually give marks and oral feedback. Positive feedback is the most effective way to promote good learning!”

~Finland’s A+ Schools~
by Deva Dalporto

For the full article:
http://www.weareteachers.com/hot-topics/special-reports/teaching-around-the-world/finlands-a-plus-schools

Self-Direction-The key to mastery

Thomas Edison, Vincent Van Gogh, Bob Dylan, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Lennon, Jimmy Hendrix, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln and Malcolm X, what do they all have in common? What's shared by all of them- and key for many who we call "gifted" or "genius" is that their learning was highly self-directed.

They didn't develop their skills in schools, and much of what they learned did not come directly from teachers. Yet they were students and learners, who learned by imitation and absorption from talented people who went before them, then applied themselves tirelessly to what interested them.

Bob Dylan was obsessed with Woody Guthrie, listening to his records endlessly and imitating his style. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning educated herself by reading literature and studying Shakespeare on her own.

Einstein was bored and frustrated in schools but thought about physics all day long as he worked in a post office. Jimmy Hendrix imitated the styles of blues guitarists he loved and walked around the house with his guitar, practicing non-stop throughout the day.

Malcolm X initially did well in school, but then dropped out after being told by a white teacher that his dream of being a lawyer was "no realistic goal for a nigger." He got into crime, was arrested, and then continued his education on his own, with the help of the prison library.

Van Gogh was an art seller who (inspired by the paintings around him) didn't start to paint himself until he was in his twenties. He then began by imitating a wide range of artists, including Japanese prints and Impressionistic pointalism, out of which he eventually developed his own unique and expressive style.

Abraham Lincoln failed in business before he started to study law, with only one year of formal schooling. Most of his learning came either through books or his own efforts and life experiences.

Thomas Edison did terribly at school, but once he put his mind to a problem he didn't give up. John Lennon also was a failure at school, but with the Beatles he practiced tirelessly, imitating records from other bands, learning what kinds of sounds and playing excited people by watching the reactions of the audience for years, as the early Beatles played live.

Talent is not something we are born with (in my opinion) it is something we grow and develop. All people have great potential for learning many things, but it's only through countless hours of practice and effort that one's skills reach higher levels of mastery. It's a process of self-construction, that takes time.

I'm highly skilled at drawing. Why is that? Since age three I drew for enjoyment several hours a day. No teacher, no extra courses, just pencils, paper and encouragement from my parents.

One thing I learned early on was the importance of imitation. I would trace and imitate my favorite cartoons, then return to drawing in my own style. Every time I imitated something from someone more skilled than myself I noticed that my skills improved. And I came to understand that someone doesn't need to be there next to you in the room to be your teacher.

The key factor with self-directed learning is the time put in to master what one loves and has in interest in. As I mentioned, I would draw for about 2 hours every day from age three. That's 60 hours a month, over 700 hours a year. By the time I was 5 or 6 years old I was labeled a "born artist" by teachers at school. But few realized how much practice time I was putting into it.

Schools and teachers have a part to play in helping to educate children, but I think we need to pay much closer attention to the role that a child's own motivation and self-direction play in learning and mastery.

The greatest gift a parent or teacher can give to a child is to encourage them to pursue their passions and show them how to develop their skills. Give them the support, guidance and tools they need but be careful not to get in their way.

~Christopher
The Art of Learning

"Self Educated People Who Have Made a Difference"
http://www.autodidactic.com/profiles/profiles.htm

taken from:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Art-of-Learning/402701759761659

What does it mean to be smart!?

"Our system of education is, to a large degree, a closed system. Students are tested and classified in terms of two kinds of abilities—their ability to memorize information and, to a lesser extent, their ability to analyze it...

Students may, however, excel in other abilities that are at least as important as those we now reward. Creativity and the practical application of information—ordinary common sense or "street smarts"—are two such abilities that go unappreciated and unrecognized. They are simply not considered relevant to conventional education...

The consequences of this system are potentially devastating. Through grades and test scores, we may be rewarding only a fraction of the students who should be rewarded. Worse, we may be inadvertently disenfranchising multitudes of students from learning.

In fact, when researchers have examined the lives of enormously influential people, whether in creative domains (Gardner 1993), practical domains (Gardner 1995), or both, they have found that many of these people had been ordinary—or even mediocre—students..."

~Robert J. Sternberg

Source: "What Does It Mean to Be Smart?", Robert J. Sternberg, Educational Leadership March 1997 | Volume 54 | Number 6 How Children Learn Pages 20-24

Build a Life! Dont live one! Great message!

"The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart, And being thoughtful, and being generous. Everything else is crap, I promise you. It’s just crap that people try to sell to you to make you feel like less. So don’t buy it! Be smart, be thoughtful, and be generous...

Everything around us that we call life was made up of people that are no smarter than you, and you can build your own things, you can build your own life that other people can live in. So build a life — don’t live one, build one."

~ Ashton Kutcher, Acceptance Speech, 2013 Teen Choice Awards

Source: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/13/famous-actor-reveals-real-name-gives-incredibly-insightful-speech-about-hard-work-and-generosity-at-teen-choice-awards/

Education vs. current Schooling system!

"What is education for? Is it for pouring facts and formulas into students’ heads, or is it for creating learners? 

At its best, was the U.S. educational system known for producing memorizers and test-takers or was it known for producing innovators? I think we can agree that we want to create learners and innovators— people who seek challenges, stretch to learn new things, and bounce back from (or are even energized by) setbacks.

If this is what we want, we are going about it in exactly the wrong way. High stakes testing may in fact be creating the very opposite in our students.

Research shows that an environment that emphasizes evaluation and testing creates a fixed [achievement] mindset. That is, it sends the message that intellectual abilities are fixed and that the purpose of school is to measure them. Students come to see school as the place to look smart and, above all, not look dumb— not a place to create and learn.

A fixed mindset also breeds low effort (because students believe that high effort advertises low ability) and poor reactions to difficulty (because they believe that difficulty also reveals low ability). These are not the habits of people who achieve or innovate in adulthood.

Growth mindset environments, in contrast, portray intellectual abilities as skills that are acquired not inborn, and put the focus on the learning process. When students are taught a growth mindset — when they are taught that every time they stretch themselves to learn hard, new things, their brains make new connections and over time they can get smarter—their motivation to learn increases, their desire for hard tasks increases, and their resilience in the face of difficulty increases.

Even their achievement test scores increase— because they want to learn, not because they drilled for the test all year. Plus, when students are taught a growth mindset, girls stay in math and students from underserved minority groups earn higher grades."

~ Carol Dweck ~

Full article over at Education Nation:
http://www.educationnation.com/index.cfm?objectid=F8275747-8283-11E1-8459000C296BA163

Carol Dweck is a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.