Friday, Nov 16, 2007

Where am I right now – between 1 and 10 – in taking absolute responsibility for myself as a learner in school? Joan Berland (part 5)

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How would you, as a teacher, get a young child to take absolute responsibility for their learning right now?

In part five I talk to Joan Berland about development scales as one way to make a vertical perspective, in regards to behaviour and learning, something tangible. We can use a scale of 1 to 10 to individually (Upper Right Quadrant) and collectively (Lower Right Quadrant) describe a particularly area of development.

Ten is where we want to be all the whole time; it is where the field is created and comes alive. It is where everyone is taking full responsibility for the direction the field is headed in. It is where I take full responsibility for everything I do and say, Life and learning has meaning, and I care!

One is where I take no responsibility for anything I do or say. I am barred from class. Life and learning is meaningless. I don’t care!

To find out more please contact nick.drummond@nordicintegral.com, http://www.nordicintegral.com

Posted by Nick Drummond at 2:52 AM |   

Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007

"What is your goal?" Creating a classroom that motivates vertical development. Joan Berland (part 4)

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Where am I now and where do I want to be?

Imagine if you where an impulsive, ten year old, Red, power driven, here-and-now, egocentric kid and had a teacher who was NOT stuck in a Green leadership style but actively judged your and everyone else’s behaviour, and did so openly on a scale of one to ten. At the end of each lession you got given a grade which you had to show your parents. And imagine if good behaviour not only received praise but even got rewarded – materially – and that bad behaviour was either completely ignored or completely stopped once and for all (see Introduction to the three-step model). How good would you be?

From a moral development perspective (egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to kosmocentric) what might you expect to happen in such a class after a nine month period?

In part four I talk to Joan Berland about leadership styles and fields of consciousness that motivate vertical development in the classroom.

To find out more please contact nick.drummond@nordicintegral.com, http://www.nordicintegral.com

Posted by Nick Drummond at 4:11 PM |   

Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007

Field accelerated development: Creating a field where individuals have immediate access to healthy levels in the Spiral and choose to express them. Joan Berland (part 3)

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We don’t have to wait until everyone in the group reaches second tier or beyond before accelerated development becomes possible.

In part three I talk to Joan Berland about one of the first times I used the model “It’s your choice” with a group of twelve year old students who were all centred in Red. I discovered that we don’t have to wait before taking responsibility for the choices we are making. Even kids in Red can identify the choosing faculty and be motivated to choose a vertical dimension almost immediately .

I discovered that even someone centred in Red can see themselves as being fully responsible for choosing the field of consciousness that is being created and shared in the group, and that they are already fully awake – at a very fundamental level – to the quality of the choices being made. My job is to bring awareness to the choices they are making, and motivate them into wanting to make positive choices, choices that lead to vertical development. When this happens a developmental field of awareness is created. Everyone in the group has access to it and is coming from a vertical perspective – a perspective that Green normally has great difficulty in seeing – and the atmosphere in the group just keeps developing and deepening each and every moment

For most Swedish teachers, centred in Green, all we really care about is having the atmosphere in the classroom either become or remain safe, secure and comfortable. So in effect Green is also consciously choosing to create a field of consciousness where there is no expectation of vertical development, or any kind of positive evolutionary tension or change, build into the fabric of our relationships. It becomes a moral issue because if we don’t care about vertical development then we really don’t care about Life.

To find out more please contact nick.drummond@nordicintegral.com, http://www.nordicintegral.com

Posted by Nick Drummond at 7:24 AM |   

Thursday, Nov 08, 2007

Creating the field: “If the field is not created then the future is not going to happen.” Joan Berland (part 2)

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Imagine if you had a teacher who was paying more attention to the field of consciousness being created in the classroom than the individuals in the classroom.

In part two I talk with Joan Berland about fields of consciousness, and that we as teachers and adults are fully responsible for the quality of the field being created in the classroom. When we see ourselves as being fully responsible for holding the field of consciousness being generated, then miracles of learning and development start happening. Only in this position are we always fully available and always on the edge, in a natural learning position of not knowing and wanting to know.

To find out more please contact nick.drummond@nordicintegral.com, http://www.nordicintegral.com

Posted by Nick Drummond at 4:22 PM |   

Wednesday, Nov 07, 2007

Creating a classroom beyond ego: From following class rules to choosing to be autonomous and taking responsibility for developing. Joan Berland (part 1)

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Imagine being nine years old and having a teacher with twenty five years of experience who was resolute in her intention to create the perfect classroom for learning and development.

In this episode I talk with Joan Berland, a third grade teacher working in the public school system in Upstate New York. Joan contacted me several months ago and wrote that she wanted to create a classroom beyond ego, a classroom where the kids would be coming to school each day entering and co-creating a field of consciousness where everyone’s attention would be more focused on continually taking responsibility for developing and learning than anything else. She wanted to know how this could be done. While we definitely do not have all the answers, we both found it a hugely inspiring question. This kind of question and the ongoing enquiry it has started points to, I believe, the future of education. It points to the potential of a collective engagement between individuals where we care more about our autonomous responsibility, going beyond ego, and exercise it to expect development from ourselves and each other.

In this first episode Joan talks about how she went from thinking about the need to create a set of class rules that the kids themselves formulate but seldom follow. Instead her class formulated seven statements, similar to a constitution, that inspires them to autonomously choose to take responsibility for developing.

To find out more please contact nick.drummond@nordicintegral.com, http://www.nordicintegral.com

Posted by Nick Drummond at 6:11 AM |