Education

Centres of education that succeed will engage students actively in their learning and encourage the freedom of thought. Professors that take the time to talk with students will sow the seeds of knowledge. TJS


"Every single major push in education has made it worse and right now it's really bad because everything we've done is de-humanizing education. It's destroying the possibility of the teacher and the student having a warm, friendly, intellectual relationship. " William Glasser

Education

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”

B. F. Skinner

Are you educated?

"The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change."

-Carl Rogers

How to learn

“What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning - and some of them many times over - what do you find? That you can swim? Well - life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!”

Alfred Adler

Listen to your life!

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Rollo May

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
- Oscar Wilde

Poetry As Spiritual Practice

In his inspiring book, Poetry As Spiritual Practice, Robert McDowell challenges our education system to explore creative thinking that includes poetry and spiritual understanding:

"In our schools, grades K through 12, students are not so much educated as trained to perform well on standardized tests. They aren't taught to think for themselves, question, or be curious. They're encouraged to accept what they're told without hesitation." Robert McDowell

Being a new teacher...

"I am a new teacher fresh out of university. I moved up north and started teaching within four days of accepting the teaching position. Nothing that I took in university prepared me for this experience. I find each school day to be full of challenges and rewards. You need to really reflect on what classroom management means to you. If you expect students to attend school everyday, raise their hands, sit still for any length of time you need a reality check. These students need hands on activities that are engaging, relevant and meaningful to their schemas. My biggest fear of teaching up north for a long period of time is that I will lower my expectations or give up on these kids. The children I teach do not get to leave their baggage at the door."

---Amberlee

Behavioural Bridges

The schools of the Canadian North require special teachers. Teachers who work outside the box and create bridges of opportunity where there is only misbehaviour, violence and profanity. Thousands of students in the north come from broken homes and live in communities that are bogged down in addictions, poverty and crime. Teachers, often in their first placement, move to isolated northern communities and try to help. Teaching here you learn that control is an illusion and sitting still and being quiet are distant forms of colonialism.

Our universities must train teachers to build 'behavioural bridges.' The bridge begins where the student hurts, traverses the 'terrain of school' and arrives at the 'student self.' Teachers who can find these bridges make long lasting connections that see through chronic behaviour challenges and find the source of the students 'confusion.' Today I had the privilege to travel with one courageous teacher to an isolated home of a difficult student. The student beamed with pride as he toured his teacher through his home and showed him his ATV and snow mobile. It was wonderful!!! It didn't solve all of the problems but it created a 'behavioural bridge' that helped the teacher understand the 'student self.' This is when education becomes really exciting!!! This is where excellence in teaching is defined. TJS 2009