(From my "Mentoring in the Classics" online discussion) Ian Cox: 1) What is the main idea, activity, principle, etc. that you got from this book and the audios that you need to implement into your life? 2) Our environment can be one of our greatest assets or one of our worst nightmares. Don't you think? Me: This statement about the role of environment is my answer to your original question. My big ah-hah so far from this book has been to simplify, simplify, simplify!! After reading the "Channeled Whelk" chapter, I was impressed with the idea that American's have probably the greatest ability to choose simplicity or complexity in life and we so often choose complexity. I remember living in Hungary in a one bedroom apartment with 9 children and having to do our laundry by hand and shop for groceries without a car. The former was done in spite of storms and subsequent clothes in the mud and the latter with only a stroller that I got to drive up a steep...
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I am reading "A Separate Peace" and asked Oliver and Rachel DeMille (who are mentoring my "Mentoring the Classics" class right now): do you have any mentor prompts for me for this book? Oliver says: That’s a transformational book. The mentor prompt for that one is: Read it. When you come to a place where your heart wants to open up and change - let it happen. I have been thinking about this prompt as I read the book and I had some huge epiphanies this morning. I feel that the message for me from this book is this: I make assumptions of motives in relationships around me due to a heart at war. This leads to the following: --sabotaging relationships based upon mistaken assumptions, often almost without thinking about it; --a heart at war with others around me that leads to erratic behavior (like Gene's jouncing the branch causing Phineas's crippling even while sticking up for Leper, with whom his "war" is to not give into bu...
Please type in the "reply" section below effective and in-effective learning experiences. If it is negative, please keep names and identifying details out of it. It is the experience itself I need, not a venting forum for teachers you have hated :D. (Yes, I am protecting myself...j/k!) Bring it on! (I thought the cats would generate some discussion if nothing else...Spencer??)
As I read through"Norms and Nobility," Piaget's "The Child" and Dewey's "Experience and Education," I keep coming back to why the Vanguard Method is so effective in creating a whole learning experience. David Bednar captured the heart of what whole or complete education is when he outlined the process in his book "Increase in Learning." Simply put, the learning process is as follows: --Knowledge: information acquired without context --Understanding: information taken, considered and given context, allowing the individual to make meaningful connections with the knowledge --Intelligence: once that understanding it taken within, an individual should be given agency and accountability to act on that understanding to create intelligence.* Piaget references the power of this method of learning when suggesting that "socialization" (see post on "Piaget: The Child" ) as a component of mental development requires that t...