Consciousness-Based Education and Teaching

A new school year is beginning, and I am reminded again just how important Consciousness-Based^SM education is.

Maharishi University of Management describes Consciousness-Based education in the following manner:

The purpose of Consciousness-Based education is to develop every student's total potential to the maximum — their creativity, intelligence, and happiness. This is the foundation for professional success and personal fulfillment as well as for creating positive change in society.

The university's webpage provides further detail, saying that there are four components of CBE:

1. Direct development of consciousness
2. A unifying framework for all human knowledge
3. Special teaching & learning techniques that develop holistic awareness
4. Stress-free routine and nourishing environment

The school where I teach, Maharishi School, is a Pre-K through grade 12 school that teaches Consciousness-Based education. Right now teachers are meeting and discussing points 2 and 3 on the list above.

We are reviewing and enriching our understanding of how the experience of enlivening our awareness through Transcendental Meditation can be used as an educational tool to connect the student to the teaching of the curriculum. Education knows that material presented must be meaningful and relevant in order for students to assimilate it. Pretty hard for assimilation to occur if no one's paying attention!

Consciousness or awareness is the factor that unifies all fields of study. Connecting the disciplines of study to each student's own self-awareness provides a unifying structure for learning. MUM lists four ways in which a student gains by studying at a CBE school.

• You understand each discipline down to its depth.
• You understand the relationships among all subjects of study.
• You connect what you are studying to your personal growth of consciousness — knowledge becomes more relevant.
• You increasingly experience and understand life as a whole. 

As a teacher, our pre-year inservice at Maharishi School includes studying the tools to use to implement Consciousness-Based education.

• The whole course on the first day — In each course you take, you’ll learn all the main principles of the course at the start. The remainder of the course then elaborates these themes.
• Unified field charts — These wall charts ensure that you never get “lost in the parts” — you always see the big picture no matter how fine the details you are studying.
• Main point charts — These wall charts show the main points of each lesson at a glance.
• Opportunities for working with and expressing and summarizing what you have learned — We learn best when we can do what we are learning about.

Teaching is the hardest work I've ever done, yet it is also the most rewarding. Beginning my 34th year in education, I feel that teaching in a Consciousness-Based school system gives me a fighting chance to truly make the connections that need to be made when learning: the connection between the learner and his or her own self, the connection between the learner and knowledge, the connection between knowledge and the world, and finally the connection between the learner and the world.

Who am I? 
How do I fit in? 
How can I be happy? 
What am I supposed to do with my life?

These are the basic questions of education, and in this sense, we are all life-long learners. As a teacher, having techniques, procedures, strategies, and materials to better answer the basic questions of learning provides me with the tools needed to better do my job, which is to develop the full potential of every student.

Copyright 2012 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved

Using a Blog as a Classroom Teaching Tool

Look at the layout of this blog. (If you're receiving this as an email, click on the title to go to the actual blog site.)

It's got a header or masthead. It's got static pages and the tab link buttons to access them. It's got the active, changing (home) blog page. Archives and labels are available on the sidebar.

It seems that such a site should be useful in teaching a class, especially if the teacher has access to a smartboard or data projector so that it can be used with actual daily teaching. I've been experimenting with using a blog in teaching for the last couple of years, using closed blogs (blogs accessible only to invited individuals).

Things I plan to use next school year:

• Have the main page a static page, providing an overview and links.
• Provide static pages for each of the eras taught. These static pages will provide main points for the era unit, links to teaching pages, and ancillary materials.
• Teaching pages and ancillary materials will be posted as daily blog pages. Links on an era's static page will make posts more easily accessible in future years of teaching.
• With 20 static pages and with the blog posts, student writing will be able to be posted.
• My YouTube channel will be integrated into the site with links to appropriate videos on eras, authors, and particular works.
• Using blog comments for student homework
• Using Goodreads (especially reviews) as another site to provide interactive authenticity for students.
• Finding ways for students to become active on the site by using student websites.
• Connecting to Common Core standards and anchor models.
• The blog will be an open site, available to all.

Things that did not work last year:

• Posts were hard to access when just posted as a daily blog article. A year later, I'd have to search to find them. This should be solved by having a static page for each era, and the teaching blog posts added and linked on this page. 
• Posts became too long and cumbersome because of embedded videos. I liked embedding videos on the actual blog post, but they took quite a bit of time to load and provided a lengthy post. This might be solved by adding videos to folders on my YouTube channel and then adding links to those videos to the teaching blog posts. 
• Student work, such as slide shows, can be linked via Google Documents. This way, the best of student work as models can be available but not necessarily added to the teaching page.

As a last note, the blog can be a great site for distance learning. Take those words "distance learning" and think about daily teaching. For students who are absent, the blog can provide access for them. They may be able to get most of the day's lesson, even though home in bed!

I'm excited about the possibilities.

Copyright 2012 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved

How Is Teaching Like Marriage?

Whether a successful teaching career or a successful marriage, it is all about the relationship.

Now, this is an interesting idea, taking the current political and social climate regarding education.

Educators need to research best educational practices, plan an educational strategy (a curriculum), meet the diverse needs of the students, and evaluate the success of the students and the curricular practices. Who can argue with that? I don't.

Let's compare education with marriage.

To have a successful marriage, each partner individually and the couple together should research and find out what constitutes a successful marriage. They should also form a comprehensive plan that is aligned with these practices--consider the changing needs in the marriage from season to season and year to year, consider children, parents and in-laws, retirement and health and recreation. I'm sure I've left a lot out. No one can argue that these are important aspects to consider in a marriage.

What if all these good ideas, practices, and material needs were required by the state's marriage licensing agency to be written up and then regularly evaluated as having been met--and those evaluations be sent to the state Department of Marriage?

Even if the ideas and practices professed or the means of evaluation suggested were sound (a big if), many would say that it was too much work--too time consuming. Sure, the ideas are good, but to document them and send them off? Some would even say that so much time was being spent ensuring that the marriage was good that there wasn't time to be married!

Lots would say, "Forget it! We'll just shack up."

I think that is the state of education in America today. So many well-meaning people have accumulated so much good information about what constitutes good teaching, so much information and direction on best teaching practices and curriculum development has been amassed, and so much demand has been placed on "Show us you're doing it right" that teachers no longer have the time to focus on the one most important element in education--maintaining a lively connection with the students in the classroom and having the time to practice good teaching.

Teachers are so busy preparing to teach and proving that they are teaching that they don't have time to teach.

I believe fully in using the best teaching practices in the classroom. So much pressure is being placed on teachers to write down everything they do--to write down their planning, to document their teaching, to provide assessments of their success--that there is little time left to stimulate the natural curiosity that children have.

That takes a good student/teacher relationship. And, unfortunately, the current social and political environment has forced the "couple" to call off the honeymoon--so much time was spent planning and documenting what the perfect marriage would be that no time or funds were left for the marriage.

Maybe that Department of Marriage should be called the Department of Divorce--marriage is way too complicated for bureaucracy.

Copyright 2012 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved