Archive for: May 2008

Perception is everything.  How you see things shapes how you interpret the world.  In the classroom the teacher’s perceptions can mean the difference between success and failure.  The verbal and non-verbal communication of the teacher lets a student know if he or she is capable and smart or inadequate and challenged. 

Consciously or not you tip people off as to what your expectations are.  You exhibit thousands of cues, some as subtle as the tilting of the head, raising an eyebrow or dilation of the nostrils, but most are much more obvious.  And your students pick up on these cues.   In other words once an expectation is set, even if it isn’t accurate an individual tends to act in ways that are consistent with that expectation.  Surprisingly often, the result is that the expectation comes true.

Students who lack academic and social skills continue to struggle sometimes even when they are capable and the help and encouragement is sufficient.  Could it be because no foundation has been built to give that student confidence?

Every student needs to learn in a quality environment.  This type of classroom allows for failure.  For students the perception is mistakes are bad and embarrassing and should be avoided.  When in fact mistakes are opportunities to learn something.  The more mistakes made the more a student will learn and the greater chance they will of have of succeeding on the next try.  The key is to learn from the mistakes, not making the same mistake twice.  

Thomas Edison would never have invented the light bulb if he did not take this principle to heart.  He failed more than 10,00 times before he found the filament that would create light for a sustained period of time.  He did not view these as failures. 

How a student views their failures comes from you, the teacher.  If you can eliminate judgment and comparing, you can give every student the mental confidence to know that they can succeed.  An interesting case in point is the story about a group of American schoolteachers who were visiting schools in Japan.  In one school they watched a Japanese boy struggling at the board with a single math problem.  For forty-five minutes this boy worked on the problem making repeated mistakes.  During this time the American schoolteachers became anxious and embarrassed for the little boy.  Yet the boy did not seem to mind.  The teachers wondered why they felt worse than he did.

What they didn’t understand is that in Japanese schools practice in making mistakes is accepted as a natural part of learning.  Once the boy got the answer right his classmates cheered.  Maybe in American schools it’s forgotten that achievement is just a matter of plain hard work.  If students are worried about meeting expectations they many never get on the path to success thus ensuring themselves of the very thing they are afraid of – failure. 

Teachers can empower their students to learn by making their classroom mistake friendly.   Create room to fail with collaborative and cooperative groups.  Give students a stretch zone in which they move away from what’s comfortable and challenge themselves everyday.  Let them learn from their mistakes.

Do you hit the brakes or the accelerator when you encounter stress?  What is your stress temperament?

You probably know someone who lives in the eye of a crisis storm; their life is a series of minor dramas, which replay over and over.  You also probably know another person who weathers all kinds of storms yet seems to be happy. Scientific studies have discovered a link between personality, temperament and the ability to deal with stress.  Individual responses to life situations vary greatly.  Instead of beating yourself up for your inherent temperament become aware of how you respond to changes.   This awareness can lead you to develop new habits and promote healthy hormones and neurochemicals.

Once you become aware of the language spoken by your autonomic nervous system you will discover the power you have to create joy, abundance and health the same way you create stress, fatigue and disease. 

The implication of using this information in teaching children in school is powerful.  Every teacher creates their own classroom environment and students respond in different degrees based on their own stress temperament.   The first step in creating a healthy environment is to recognize your own stress temperament.  Ask: how do you respond to periods of high activity and inattentiveness with your students and what methods do you use to calm and discipline disrupting students?  

One way to establish a healthy classroom environment is to factor in de-stressors every day.   Educate yourself about the practice of mindfulness.  The practice of mindfulness is an effective tool to enhance academic performance while promoting emotional and social well being.   Its focuses on developing a student’s capacity for attention and awareness. 

Begin every day with three minutes of silence.  Instruct your students to close their eyes and simply notice their breathing as they focus on the space between their nose and upper lip.  As your students get into this habit they will become more aware of their emotions.  This technique is a system that allows the mind to settle down and focus.  You can develop and expand this practice during the school year by adding more mindful minutes including the practice of loving kindness (sending loving kind thoughts to another person while you are silent).   You don’t have to become an expert to create a different kind of calm for your students you only have to be willing to experiment and create this peaceful space.  

The benefit is not just to your students but also to yourself.  It allows you to be the best kind of teacher; one who is truly present in the classroom engaged with students and subject making the connections that open the mind to real learning.

How much fuel are you putting into your refrigerator?

It’s hard to imagine putting fuel into your refrigerator but that’s exactly what happens every time we buy food.  The average American puts 400 gallons of oil into their refrigerator every year.  This number is calculated by adding up the distance that food travels from farm to plate and the amount of petroleum-based fertilizer used to grow the food.   If every American ate just one meal a week from locally organic produced food oil consumption would be reduced by 1.1 billion barrels of oil per week. 

This one small change in consumption could make a big difference.   But for many of Americans the sentiment is why bother?  For many it seems hopeless to imagine much less attempt a different sort of life.  The inclination is to put faith in market based solutions.  But much more needs to be done and right now.

All across America a quite revolution has already begun and the 1000 students at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley California are part of it.  This school is home to the Edible Schoolyard Project.   An idea that started with a vacant lot has evolved into a one-acre organic garden and kitchen classroom.  In this program children grow and prepare the whole foods they will eat.   Not only are these students gaining nutrition and ecological knowledge they could be the key to our future.   This systems approach addresses the crisis of childhood obesity while making food production truly sustainable. 

If this urban school of 1000 students can feed itself than the possibility of every American either growing or purchasing locally produced food is not just a talking a point.  

Here are some things to consider:

·      Growing some of your own food sets an example for others. If enough people bother, each one influences the other.  Consciousness is raised, maybe even changed.

·      Planting a garden is one of the most powerful things an individual can do.  It reduces your carbon footprint but it also reduces your sense of dependence.

·      Growing your own food begets a new set of solutions and changes other habits; you learn to provide other things for yourself.

·      The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is it changes your relationship to the planet.  It’s a long season from seed to vegetable and you get to experience it all.

Schools can introduce and nurture this concept with their students.  For many students school is the only way  to experience this lesson.  Every teacher can begin this simply by starting seeds in paper cups.  Start with popular and easy to grow vegetables, tomatoes plants, cucumbers, carrots, radishes are just a few.   Students can be encouraged to take these pots home to plant in the ground or a bigger pot.   Teachers can also introduce students to local produce by taking field trips to farmers markets and local farms.  With a little imagination and planning every classroom can begin to teach sustainability.   Students will discover a new way to provide for themselves without diminishing the planet.  Our future relies more on action than hope.

Schools in America are in crisis.   Is this a system failure or a response to the overall moral failure of our culture?

The history of civilization shows that every golden age is followed by a descent.  Throughout time this descent has taken on different withering forms: susperstition, prejudice, greed.  Perhaps our descent is apathy.  Too many children are at risk.  Neglected in the kind of nurturing that gives them the ability to believe in their own innate goodness.  Every child has the potential to be amazing.  The problem is our definition of amazing is limited.  Amazing has an infinite number of possibilities.  Amazing is not what we do but who we are.   Our children have not been given the right paradigm.   If one generation of children were taught loving kindness, first to love themselves and then to share it the larger problems we face would disappear.   Practicing this would diminish the attraction of competing and comparing because the only measurement needed would be: am I better than I used to be and not am I better than you.

The blame cannot be placed only on schools.  The blame has to be shared by all of us, all of us who have embraced the culture of materialism.   The demands of this culture are huge.  Children are vulnerable to the ideas of looking a certain way, dressing a certain way and having certain things.  The attachment to all of this diminishes our collective goodness.  Instead of cultivating what’s already there, we seek what’s outside of us.

Schools could become the leaders in changing this thinking because what children see and hear everyday shapes them.  Everyday the message in schools can be one of loving-kindness and like a drop in a bucket these drops will eventually fill the minds of our children. 

The challenge is not in doing this but in convincing everyone who is associated with schools to embrace this thinking.   It’s easy to mandate a program what’s harder is to grow it.   Schools are a human endeavor.  There is no product except in evolving the thinking minds of children. This is the ultimate product anyone can hope to be part of. 

So how can this be accomplished? 

Simple  - one day at a time.  Schools can begin by cultivating the spirit of gratitude  Establish daily goals for everyone.  Begin with the law of giving.   It is important to give something to everyone you come into contact with during the day.  This gift does not have to be material; it can be a smile, a kind word, encouragement, understanding, or friendship.  The beauty is this plan includes everyone, adults and students both.   And it is contagious.  The more it is practiced the easier it becomes.

It’s easy to become optimistic about our future by looking at the possibilities.   History shows us that we can find ourselves, in a new renaissance and a new enlightenment that can become a profound shift for a better world.