A to Z – The toddler and the Educator

Teachers have often come to me during the time of the year when toddlers are being admitted to school and asked what it is that they are supposed to look for, how do they do it and why should it be done in the face of opposition to interactions and interviews from parents and psychologists. My answer is simply that we need to understand the child whose development we are going to greatly influence. We must be prepared to provide the best of support and the best of the opportunities for learning to each child who is placed in our care. To do so, we have to know the strengths and weaknesses that we need to work upon and therein lies the need to interact with the child and the parents.

In a school running a regular school programme, educators have to be especially careful while admitting those children into the school  who may be somewhat different from the norm. This includes children who may be special with mental, physical, behavioural or psychological deficiencies. Though inclusive education is an excellent idea, the educators have to be trained for it and sensitized not only to the needs of the child with special needs in question, but also to all the other normal children in class when special children form part of the class.

Whenever a child is to be admitted, a teacher must have an opportunity to look at him/her, and based on observation and/or interaction, first of all, identify physical deficiency or condition. I had a case once when a child was admitted, and during interaction wore full-sleeved shirt, full pants, shoes and socks, and shirt buttoned up to his neck even on the rather warm day. Though this seemed a little odd, I did not pay much attention to it in spite of noting what looked like multiple scabs and scratches on his face and hands. A few days later, his teacher brought him to me and showed me that he had a genetic skin condition, which though not contagious, was quite repulsive to others around him as his skin kept flaking off. Other kids wouldn’t go near him and many of the teachers were equally unkind. So, though the parents got him admitted, they had set him up for constant ridicule and rejection. Had we known earlier, perhaps we could have sensitized the children and the teachers to accept the child. Ultimately, the child stopped coming to school.

You can hardly judge a child in a 10 minute interaction as far as behavior and mental competency are concerned. So, just go with your instinct. Any educator who has dealt with children on a regular basis for a year or two can sense whether there is anything amiss or abnormal with regard to cognition, behavior or psychology of the child. One has to remember to make allowances for individual nature, idiosyncrasies, even the child’s mood, and make allowances for boredom, lethargy, sleepiness, crankiness, physical discomfort (wet diaper or underclothes, hunger, aches and pains) and newness of environment. A child who has suffered a recent injury, illness, loss, parental separation, or witnessed conflict or physical or verbal abuse will not be his normal self. It is not a good idea to separate a toddler from his parent for interaction or observation. The educator’s job is therefore one which requires an exceptional amount of sensitivity and knowledge. She has to draw on resources which may not be classified as being very scientific at times such as instinct, empathy, patience, and ability to discern and perceive nuances. She has to be fine-tuned to a task that requires a very keen perception and a very sensitized and sensitive heart. 

An idea of family background, siblings and parents’ attitudes are also important factors because a child is greatly influenced by his environment and by significant adults and individuals in his surroundings. You must be able to sense any conflict, abnormal behavior or unwarranted attitudes in parents during interactions. This prepares the teacher to handle the child with more understanding and sensitivity later on. This was originally the basis of the practice of ‘parental interaction/interview’ during admission of children to nursery and other classes. Of course, now neither do parents understand this need, nor educators remember that this was the original rationale.

There are certain conditions and learning disorders that may affect children.  Educators should be aware of these so that proper support can be provided to the kids. The most common ones include physical deformities, sensory deficiency, Down’s Syndrome,  Asperger’s spectrum disorder, autism, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and dyslexia.

Depending on the quantum of manifestation of symptoms, children may or may not be suitable for inclusive education. For example, it may be possible to include a child with a milder form of ADHD or Autism, dyslexia, auditory or visual deficiency, speech disorders etc.  into a regular study programme, but the teacher still has to be trained to handle the class as a whole. If the teachers are not trained for inclusive education, all children in the class suffer. Rather than doing a good deed, the teacher would end up doing irreparable damage to all the kids.

The earliest exposure of a child to the process for admission to school is a critical factor in chalking out a strategy for his overall development. It helps in the identification of traits and characteristics that lay the foundation of personality, character and learning preferences. Parents as well as educators should collaborate in the process so that we can actually devise methods that are child-centric and focus on wholesome development. The process should ideally involve multiple sessions spread over a few days so that educators get ample opportunity to observe and understand the child. An effective and feasible way is to organize a social gathering of the parents and the toddlers in small groups and have the teachers mingle with them to observe and gain insights into parental and child behavior as well as the developmental level of the child.

It is clear that in order to bring a change in the education system and methods, well-prepared educators are needed. The need for creating quality teachers is one that should no longer be ignored. A course like B.Ed that prescribes a one-size-fit-all approach must be revamped immediately. Specialized courses dealing with children of differing age-groups need to be launched to cater to that particular section of children effectively. Standardized requirements other than minimum educational ones should be laid down to choose people who are fit to be teachers. Potential teachers should be assessed for emotional intelligence, creativity, flexibility, learning ability and adaptability among other traits. In fact, the criteria should be made more rigorous to select those who can do justice to teaching, and then train them. Also, trainings and workshops should be incorporated as part and parcel of the teaching profession; not once-a-year in-house trainings (lectures mostly), but a continuous schedule of trainings through which educators may hone their skills, develop themselves professionally and personally, gain knowledge on latest pedagogy and research results, and share experiences on implementation and application of methods and techniques resulting in new insights into child development.  

Only if we do this will teaching gain the respect it deserves and educators be able to call themselves professional in the true sense. Lastly, to attract the best talent, monetary benefits and perks should be made more attractive.

Of course, one expects the government to take the lead, among other things, by substantially increasing the funds allotted for development and education. However, other institutes of education, especially management institutes, should evolve courses that will prepare professionals to meet the challenge of creating a new breed of students who are intelligent, resourceful, knowledgeable, comfortable with themselves as individuals, are grounded in reality, are well-equipped with life skills and human values, are well-trained in critical and creative thinking skills, and who will take the country to new heights. 

Any institute willing to take up the challenge that will begin a revolution of a new kind?

TAKING HOLD OF LEARNING BY PRINCIPALS

Principals expect teachers and students to take ownership of their learning. They must expect no less of themselves as they continually seek to improve their professional knowledge and skills.

 

Consider this scenario: A new federal law obligates each public school principal to take an annual standardized test, with questions based on national standards of leadership. Schools must analyze principals’ scores- disaggregated for demographic characteristics- and examine whether their leaders are making “adequate yearly progress.”

Foolish we say. Yet we hold each teacher in a school community accountable for student achievement, and we hold students responsible for their own learning. Isn’t principals’ learning part of this chain? Can we ask more of others than of ourselves?

On the Cutting Edge

Good principals provide multiple opportunities for teacher learning because we believe that having skilled teachers correlates with strong student learning. But how often do we rely on information we recall from distant coursework, superficial mandated workshops, or district presentations?

Often, we neglect our own learning because we are too busy “working”. Yet we hold doctors, lawyers and car mechanics accountable for updating their knowledge and skills. Who would put their health in the hands of a doctor who relied on knowledge gained in medical college 25 years ago? Principals need to remain on the cutting edge of professional learning.

 

Many administrators do return to school. Doctoral programs for school leaders proliferate and provide great depth for principals’ learning. States demand compliance with a variety of standards for certification renewal, but complying with such laws differs significantly from personal efforts to maintain and improve professional expertise. True learning is job embedded, shared with other principals, and rooted in deeply considered ideas about leadership and schools.

Taking hold of our own learning requires more than compliance. It requires each of us to pursue knowledge voraciously.

Here are some practical ideas for working learning into your life:1.

1 . Read everything you can that relate to schools, teaching and leadership. Professional journals proliferate. Subscribe to several and read them religiously. Skim some articles and study others, looking for the ideas of fellow practitioners as well as those of thoughtful academics who push your thinking. Take time during the day to read- with the office door open. This action will speak louder than any words to encourage students and teachers to learn.

2 . Become informed about any programs your school is considering adopting or has initiated. Research them thoroughly and insist that teachers do the same. Avoid the pitfall of adopting silver bullets of educational reform. Easily accessible online resources provide extensive information about any creditable program.

3 . Attend professional meetings-and tell teachers you are “out learning.”

4 . Intentionally pursue conversations with other practitioners about the craft of leadership; listen to your colleagues and learn from them. Schedule and commit to these conversations as you would any other appointment.

5 . Reflect often and deeply about your effectiveness as a principal. View your work through the eyes of those you serve. If those you work with see no congruity between their core values and yours, they will simply wait out your tenure in the building. Teachers stay, but principals move on.

6 . Show by your actions that growth means more than complying with directives of the central office, the school board, or others. When our professional growth consists of superficial compliance, our teachers will practice without reflection as well. Professional learning communities hold learning and community, not fulfilling a prescribed role, as their primary core values.

7 . Seek feedback about your work. Ask teachers and others to give you feedback so that you can bring some change to mitigate hurt feelings, confusion, or a mistaken perception teachers had of you that you are unaware of. Teachers have a different perspective on principals’ effectiveness.

8 . Listen to books on tape or podcasts when driving. Good literature or public media broadcasts broaden our thinking and enrich us.

School leadership is not our job; it’s our profession. Some see school leaders as a profound calling; for most of us, principalship is at the core of our being and gives meaning to our lives. Surely the work we do calls us to place learning at the heart of our actions.

Seven Practices All Beginning Teachers Should Know

Whether you have just graduated college or entering the teaching profession from a previous career, there are seven practices that all beginning teachers come to understand. Implementing these strategies could help to prevent costly beginning teaching errors from occurring and will aid in improving one’s overall experience as a beginning teacher, whether on the K-12 level.

Rule #1:  Ready, Set, Practice and Go

Nothing is more damaging to a beginning teacher’s level of job satisfaction than dealing with a disruptive class, especially when that disruptive class keeps on reappearing each class period.  Students change, but the classroom environment stays the same.  What is important to note is that disruptive, chaotic classrooms are a sign that the teacher of record is lacking specific skills in managing his or her classroom.  The problem is that beginning teachers often times lack the skill set to thwart of such disruptive occurrences, so following these basic tips will help. 

One of the essential elements to maintaining a classroom takes place before one even sees his or her students.  The key is planning.  Planning refers not only to planning out a lesson (which one should do in detail), but it also involves planning out ones rules and deciding how (in advance) to deal with rule breakers.  Create with a plan in mind.  In other words, it is very typical for teachers to come up with rules, but one’s approach at implementing the rules for first offenders, second offenders and beyond is often left to “on the spot” reaction to rule breakers or avoidance of rule enforcement altogether.  What is important for beginning teachers to discern is that students are constantly watching and observing what a teacher does, or rather, what a teacher does not do (inaction).  Indeed, a teacher’s inaction can severely damage the respect level students have for a teacher.  Inaction (even on small things), can lead to larger problems in the classroom.  Students need to see that the teacher is in charge.  For instance, if one implements a class rule that reads, “Trash must be thrown out at the end of the period,” letting a student throw trash out in the middle of the class, may seem incidental at first, but it is not.  The inaction was noted (by students). The key is to treat every rule that is in place with respect, and take every rule seriously (and act immediately when it is violated).  If not, get rid of the rule. 

It is also important to involve students in rule making process and discuss why specific rules are established in the classroom.  Ideally, rules should be limited in number (five to seven).  Having too many rules can be unrealistic and rigid tends to lead to rule breaking going unchecked.  Focus on rules that will support the learning environment you want to create, and remember, not all rules are written to stop behavior, some rules are written to promote a particular behavior (i.e., Respect others, no yelling, raise your hand, encourage others, etc.) (Brainard, 2001).   

Rule #2:  Managing the Classroom is Not a Public Affair

As a teacher, view yourself as the keeper of the peace.  The job of a teacher is to not only deliver a quality education to students, but it is also important to protect and nurture  students psychological health as well.  Having said that, it is of utmost importance that, when disciplining students, avoid the crippling error some teachers make—making discipline a public affair when it is not (Spitalli, 2005).  How would you feel if your principal held a faculty meeting and during the faculty meeting he or she called out your name and admonished you for turning in your lesson plan book late or admonished you for not handling a parental complaint properly?  Most, if not all of us, would resent living through an experience like this.  Well, students are no different.  No human being likes to be berated and rebuffed in front of his or her peers.  To the instructor, it may appear to be a momentary occurrence, but such experiences can damage a child psychologically (and beyond if other students antagonize through teasing) and has no place in the classroom. 

            Yelling in the classroom, sarcasm and the use of profanity are never options in handling or controlling discipline (Spitalli, 2005).  In fact, the use of either indicates there is a problem with the teacher’s ability to manage his or her environment.  An experienced teacher can do more with just a certain look of the eye or a through body jesters then all the yelling in the world.  Proximity is the key.  Research suggests that students behave better based on the proximity of their teacher.  Thus, instead of shouting across a room because three students are talking, it is better to move in the direction of the students and remind them to stop talking.  Often times they will stop talking because they see the teacher coming. 

Equally important, when disciplining students the key is to keep their esteem in tact.  Avoid, at all costs, personal attacks; they are never appropriate.  Indeed, nothing escalates a problem more than a personal attack.  It is better to talk to students one on one in private, away from their peers. 

Rule #3: Circulate, Circulate, Circulate

A key disciplinarian strategy is visibility.  Remember, the more visible you are, the less likely you are to encounter discipline problems in your classroom.  You cannot sit behind a desk and teach, and you cannot manage your classroom behind a desk either.  Circulation is the key to managing discipline.  The key is to watch your students and be aware of what is happening in the very class you are there to safeguard.  Circulation helps in doing this a great deal.  Thus, not only does it provide for a way of enforcing classroom rules, but it also deters negative actions from starting and escalating.

Keep in mind that circulation is also an effective tool in providing for more overall involvement in one’s classroom.  When one circulates, he or she tends to focus their attention on all of their students, opposed to just the ones sitting in the front with their hands up.  Circulating during a lecture, discussion, group activity (etc.), draws in the attention of all students and also demonstrates to students that they are all important. 

Rule #4:  Plan, Provide and  Know

When I was a beginning teacher, one of the hardest things I had to learn was how to plan my lessons so that I would not have left over time at the end of the day.   As a high school teacher, it was very difficult.  I remember clearly my 7^th period class.  I would always find myself (and my students) staring at the clock waiting for it to strike 2:45 p.m. (time to go).  The problem was that I had not yet developed a way to utilize every minute of my time with my students.  This skill is not an easy one to develop, but it is a necessary skill.  Keep in mind that if you do not have plans for your students, they will find something to do on their own.  And…this something, typically involves disruption and confusion.

Lesson planning should be taken seriously for it has a positive impact on learning and classroom management (Lang, 2007 and Brainard, 2001).  Planning is not something one just puts on paper (you live it).  It is something that one studies, improves and perfects.  It is the key to better teaching and is intrinsically linked to creating a better learning environment.  In fact, the better one researches various teaching strategies and plans, the more creative one will be and the better learning experience one can provide his or her students. 

Rule #5:  Contact Parents for Both Good and Bad 

Parental support can turn out to be a major factor in making your school year successful.  You want parents on your side.  One of the biggest mistakes that many teachers make, not just beginning teachers, is that they tend to only contact parents when something goes wrong.  In fact, many parents get upset simply by receiving a message that a teacher has called home (they assume something is wrong).  This trend of only calling home when something goes wrong with a student not only helps to foster poor relations with parents, but can ultimately hurt the very thing you are trying to build, a good relationship with your students. 

With that in mind, it is important to find ways to contact parents for positive reasons as well.  For example, why not give a parent a call when a student is performing well or participating at a high rate.  Or, why not call a parent when a student’s behavior is getting better.   Creating these Win-Win opportunities not only helps to build a sense of trust between you and the parent, but it will also helps you later if you ever have to call with something more negative to report.  In addition, when positive calls are made, a student’s response to the call only fuels their interest in your class and builds their cooperative spirit within your class.

Rule #6:  Students are Not Your Friends—Recognize the Line

The relationship between a student and a teacher is a close one, but remember to draw the line.  Students, by nature, are intrinsically interested in their teachers.  They are naturally curious and want to know everything about you.  Indeed, many students will come to admire their teachers greatly.  However, do not mistake respect and admiration with personal friendships.  Indeed, while many teachers may friendly towards students, it is “important for…students to understand that [teachers are] not their friend—or, at least, not the same way their peers are (Johnston, 2005, C1).   Students are not your peers, so it is important to draw a line with them.    It is important to care for the well being of students, but it is also important not to share too much information, especially as it relates to one’s personal life.  Discussing one’s personal life with students or intimate details of one’s life is not appropriate.  Surface information is generally safe but to discuss personal experiences (i.e., a hard divorce, psychological challenges, living situations, sexual orientation, etc…) is not appropriate and demonstrates poor professional judgment.   

In addition, when students are seeking advice or counsel, remember to limit personal advice and refer them to school professionals on staff.  It is okay to listen (of course), but avoid providing students with a To Do List of actions they should take.  Teachers are typically not licensed psychologist, psychiatrist or counselors.  Therefore, do not assume that role.  The role of a teacher is to teach and nurture a child’s development, but that role is limited in scope (Benton, 2004).  Giving a student who is in need of professional advice, the wrong advice could not only endanger that student, but could jeopardize your career legally.  So again, listen but use good judgment, and when in doubt, seek support from your administrative team.  Be mindful to report abuse or neglect allegations or suspicions of such to an administrator immediately.

Rule #7:  Seek and You Shall Find (Support)

Most beginning teachers leave the profession within the first five years of teaching (Justice & Espinoza, 2007 ).  This high attrition rate is due to many factors to include poor classroom management skills, lack of support, discipline issues with students, and poor induction programs.  These teachers who leave the profession sadly never experience the true joy of teaching because they are leaving the profession at a time when they were in their infancy of discovering how to be an effective teacher (Brainard, 2001).  Thus, beginning teachers need to understand that during their first five years in the profession, they are learning and growing into the teachers they will one day become (their ultimate joy). 

With this being said, it is important for beginning teachers to take advantage of the wealth of knowledge around them.  Beginning teachers should be encouraged to confide in other teachers and seek advice and mentoring from their instructional leaders.  For, “to achieve a successful career, every teacher must master the fine art of classroom management (Brainard, 2001, p. 2007).  Asking to observe a seasoned teacher at work in the classroom or asking a seasoned teacher to come in to a beginning teacher’s classroom are both proven practices that work.  Such experiences will not only help beginning teachers to understand their strengths and weaknesses as classroom teachers, but could also improve their overall job satisfaction levels. 

Conclusion

To that end, one’s decision to enter the teaching profession can be the best decision ever made by a single individual.  Teaching is truly a joy, but in order to reach that state of joy, beginning teachers need to study the profession and practice some basic safeguards to better ensure their success on the job.

Five Minds for the Future By Professor Howard Gardner

Introduction:

I am an admirer of the International Baccalaureate.  I consider IBO the source of strength in education, because I believe the International Baccalaureate is more forward looking, more globally oriented, and less faddish than other educational enterprises.

 

Education is fundamentally about values, but we have a great deal of difficulty talking about values. In the United States now, we rarely teach Philosophy of Education or History of Education, because people would disagree too much. There is a local joke in the United States called the “Jesse Test”: You could never, in the United States, come up with a curriculum that would please: Jesse Helms, a conservative Southern senator; Jesse Jackson, a fiery, African American leader; and Jesse Ventura the wrestler-turned governor of Minnesota. And therefore, we simply don’t talk about values.

 

 The economist J.M. Keynes said that you can put down economists as much as you like, but whether we know it or not, we are all acting according to the theory of some long dead economist. I believe the same about education. People who have never heard of Rousseau, Hobbes, Kant, or Dewey, are living their educational philosophies, erroneously thinking it is their own philosophy.  

 

I welcome the platform of this conference. My presentation is somewhere in between must and should. Must in the sense that the Five Minds are competencies which young people and the society need in the twenty first century going forward.  My talk is also about should in the sense of my own values. If I were the Tsar of education worldwide, this is what I would prescribe. However, I remember what happened to the Tsar, and so I am more cautious.

 

I will begin with a disclaimer, then show some images of the future, and move to the heart of the talk which will be about the Five Minds that I am interested in. Finally I will mention the two most frequently asked questions/challenges to this conception.  I hope there will be time for questions.

 

People who know my work in education think of me as the man who proposed seven, eight, or nine different intelligences. When I write about intelligence, I am trying to be a scientist. If we really understood human evolution in detail, we would see that the mind and the brain are composed of a number of relatively autonomous computing systems. For example, one system is for language, one for music, one for spatial cognition, etc. In talking about Five Minds I am of course interested in psychology, but I am really speaking from the perspective of policy. And in that sense, there are many other minds that I could have talked about.  As the policy maker/Tsar, these are the minds that I would try to promote today and tomorrow.

 

Here are some images of the future: The genetic revolution: within all of our lifetimes, young people will go to school with gene chips which contain their entire genome and they’ll say to teachers and administrators “these are the genes that are inactive, these are the ones that are working- teach me effectively!” and we will not be able to ignore that plea. More images of the future include: Mega cities, images and fashions that circulate around the world; trillions of dollars traded 24/7 each day; machines which do thinking, carry out tasks which used to be done by human beings; virtual realities like “Second Life”.

 

 A hundred years ago, most people didn’t go to school, and those who did left school at twenty years old, confident that they would never have to be further educated. But nowadays as one biologist told me, if one doesn’t keep up for three months one will never be able to catch up again. All of you know the speed with which knowledge accumulates in almost every sphere.  Much of our education has to be self-education.

 

Here are some descriptions of changes which will impact educational thinking. Many people work on problems which cut across disciplines. They converge on a geographical area, work together in teams, build on one another’s knowledge, then separate and maybe connect electronically, but maybe never work together again. Linear thinking doesn’t end, but non-linear kinds of thinking, systemic thinking, and dynamic models are in the ascendancy. So much of “thinking within the box” can be done by automata, and so the capacity to be one step beyond computers takes on additional importance. Most of our students are already way ahead of us digitally whether we are teachers or parents, and that raises interesting questions about what it is that they have to give to us and what it is that we have to give to them in terms of the educational dynamic.

 

The plan for the rest of the talk will be to describe the five minds. I will be concentrating more on the Synthesizing Mind and the Ethical Mind because I think that they are less familiar, and frankly, I find them more enigmatic and thus more energizing to explore.

 

The Five Minds:

The Disciplined Mind:

I was asked in the year 2000, “what was the greatest invention of the last two thousand years?”  My answer was classical music. The real reason I gave that answer is because I wanted to be quoted, and I knew if I said something such as ‘the wheel, the pill, or nuclear energy”, many other people would have said the same thing and I might have been quoted.  But, if I say classical music, I would have the prospect of being cited in a magazine.  

 

A better answer, and an answer which I think we can all feel at home with, are the scholarly disciplines. I would include: Classical Music, Science, History, Economics, etc. Those of us in academia take these disciplines so much for granted, that we forget they are all human inventions. It took hundreds of years to invent Experimental Science, Classical Music, linear Perspective, and Calculus. And they might well never have been invented. Often, when tyrants come to power, they try to eliminate the disciplines and the disciplinarians because they/we get in tyrant’s way. Therefore, I believe that one needs to begin with disciplinary thinking.

 

When I use the term disciplinary thinking I am playing on three connotations of the English word discipline. Firstly, what our grand-parents knew — you should work regularly and steadily on things and eventually you will get better. Indeed, any practice will build up disciplinary muscle.

 

The second—is the heart of what happens in middle and secondary school—is mastering the major ways of thinking. Before university, they are Science, History, Mathematics, and one or more art forms.  I make a very sharp distinction between discipline (a powerful but typically non-intuitive way of thinking) and subject matter (facts, information).

 

The third connotation, which is so important if we want our children to be gainfully employed and have a full life is becoming an expert in at least one thing. Because if you are not an expert, you will not be able to work in the world of the future, or you will work for somebody else who is an expert. And that is so different from two hundred years ago during agricultural times and a hundred years ago during industrial times. Now, we are really in a knowledge era, and expertise is the only thing which will take forward real value.

 

Now, I just introduced a distinction between discipline and subject matter. In most schools, in most parts of the world, though probably not in your schools, we “do” subject matter. Subject matter means information and facts. Things like, “Which king followed which queen? What was the year that something happened? What’s the atomic weight of lead? How many planets are there in the Solar System?” But that has nothing to do with disciplinary thinking. Disciplinary thinking is the deeply different ways in which scientists or historians or artists approach their daily work.

 

To illustrate this point, I’ll compare Science and History. Scientists create models of the world; they try to explain the physical, biological, psychological worlds. They develop theories, they carry out experiments, or they do observations—and when those empirical works are carried out, the theories are revised in light of the outcome.

 

Historians on the other hand, try to figure out what happened in the past. They primarily use written documents, more recently graphic documents, and in some ways human beings are no different from how they were three thousand years ago. Historians have to understand the missions, fears, and purposes of human agency. But in other respects, over time and across cultures, people are very different. Historians always have to play with that antinomy.

 

 Finally, every generation has to rewrite history. If you are an American, when you write the history of the Roman Empire today, it is totally different than it was fifty years ago. Not because we know so much more about Rome, but because the United States today is the Roman Empire, for good and for ill; not to think about that state of affairs is to be in outer space.

 

Those are the things which you can’t just pass on to people.  In contrast if I want to pass on a list of American presidents, I can carry that around in my hand and pass it on. And so disciplined thinking is very different from subject matter thinking. It is our responsibility to our middle and secondary schools to engender the disciplinary habits of mind of the major disciplines. Because otherwise, we won’t be able to make sense of what is happening in our world in terms of current events and new discoveries—whether good or ill. This is what history has needed, and we won’t be able to make decisions about health and about policy unless we have cultivated those ways of thinking. The more international comparisons (like the PISA rankings) focus on subject matter rather than on disciplinary thinking, the more anachronistic they will be.

 

No cigar. When I was a young boy we used to go to Carnivals and they would have Kewpie-dolls on a ledge. You would be given a ball and your job was to throw the ball and knock down a doll. If you got the doll you could keep it, but if you missed the barker would say “close, but no cigar”. So, in each case of each of the minds I am going to talk about false or faux examples.

 

One example of the poorly disciplined mind is when people see everything through one discipline: economists who see the whole world through rational choice; psychologists who see the whole world through evolutionary psychology; the lawyer who sits down with his children who are two and three years old and writes down a constitution which gives the children their rights and their responsibilities. That is hyper disciplinarity.

 

The second example comes from the life of Arthur Rubinstein. He was a world famous pianist.  From the age of twenty, he gave concerts which had an enormous reception, but then he became lazy and he relied on pyro-techniques rather than careful practice. But, he came to realize that if he didn’t practice for a day he knew it; if he didn’t practice for a week the orchestra knew it; and if he didn’t practice for a month, the audience knew it. Therefore, he stopped his wild and carousing ways and began to practice each day and essentially recovered his discipline. The lesson here is that you can think disciplinarily for a while but ultimately you have to keep up the disciplinary muscle if you want to be taken seriously  by those ‘in the know’.

 

The Synthesizing Mind:

I began to think about the Synthesizing Mind when the great physicist Murray Gell-Mann made an off handed remark.  He opined that in the twenty-first century, the most important mind will be the synthesizing mind. A great example of a synthesizer is Charles Darwin. He travelled for five years aboard the Beagle, and collected a huge amount of information about the flora and fauna of the world. He did his own experiments and observations of the world, corresponded with everybody who was a naturalist, and then twenty years later put forth one of the great intellectual syntheses “On the Origin of the Species.”

 

The Synthesizing Mind realizes that nowadays, we are all inundated with information. If you looked up the word “evolution” on your search engine, you could spend the rest of your life just reading secondary sources. Many of them are of questionable value and you need criteria for deciding what to pay attention to and what to ignore. Additionally, to synthesize for yourself, you have to put information together in ways which cohere, which make sense for you. And if you are involved in communication, as every teacher, parent, and professional is, the synthesis has to be transmittable to other people.

 

 I thought that psychology would have something to say about synthesizing because it is so important, but my research revealed that in fact psychology doesn’t have much to say. Some of you are thinking: “well, isn’t synthesizing what teachers have always done?” But let me introduce Monsieur Jourdain from the Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Molière.  M. Jourdain got very excited in middle age because he found out that he was speaking prose all his life without realizing it. I think we have been in the business of synthesizing, but we haven’t been aware of how important it is and how we might help other people to become better synthesizers.

 

 How one might be more reflective about synthesizing? The answer is: looking for the current best synthesis, deciding what our ultimate synthesis should look like, picking a method, deciding what are we going to look at, listen to and why, examining what are we going to ignore and why, and importantly, how are we going to record information, using equations, mind maps, stories, formulas, taxonomies, or whatever. Again, the kind of things that most of us do already, but we aren’t really reflective about it, we don’t spend much time explicitly transmitting that lore to people who are less experienced in synthesizing. Life is short, syntheses are due, term papers are due, lectures are due, but you want to finish the proto-synthesis some time beforehand, so that you can get informed reactions. Not only from people who know a lot but also from people who don’t know so much.

 

Finally, “no cigar” syntheses which try to do too much, which are too narrow, or which are eccentric are not adequate.

 

The Creative Mind:

 The Creative Mind is embodied by Einstein in the Sciences and by Virginia Woolf in the Arts. People who are creative are those who come up with new things which eventually get accepted. If an idea or product is too easily accepted, it is not creative; if it is never accepted, it is just a false example. And acceptance can happen quickly or it can take a long time.

 

I believe that you cannot be creative unless you have mastered at least one discipline, art or craft. And cognitive science teaches us that on the average, it takes about ten years to master a craft. So, Mozart was writing great music when he was fifteen and sixteen, but that is because he started when he was four or five. Same story, with the prodigious Picasso. Creativity is always called “thinking outside the box.”  But I order my quintet of minds in the way that I do because you can’t think outside of the box unless you have a box.

 

As a psychologist, I thought that creativity was mostly an issue of how good your mental computers were. But my own studies and those of others have convinced me of two other things. First, personality and temperament are at least as important as cognitive powers. People who are judged creative take chances, take risks, are not afraid to fall down, and pick themselves up, they say “what can I learn from this?” and they go on.

 

The other day I was giving a talk and the first question asked was “How do we make people creative”? And I answered that “It’s much easier to prevent it than to make it”. You prevent it by saying that there is only one right answer and by punishing the student if she offers the wrong answer. That never fosters creativity.

 

Second: People think of creativity as a property of the individual and therefore they say “I am creative”, but that doesn’t work. The only way that creativity can be judged is, if over the long run, the creators works change how other people think and behave. That is the only criterion for creativity. Therefore, the bad news is that you could die without knowing that you are creative, but the good news is that you will never know for sure that you are not creative. Because maybe after you die, people will make a big fuss about you and then, post-mortem, you will be creative. That’s what happened to Emily Dickinson and Vincent van Gogh.  We call that the judgment of the field.

 

 There are many examples of false, or no cigar creativity.  In the eighteenth century people thought materials burned because of a substance called phlogiston, but it turns out that there is no phlogiston. In the nineteenth century people thought that we all existed in something called the Ether but there is no Ether. In the twentieth century, people thought you could produce virtually infinite amounts of energy by passing some electric current through water, but cold fusion didn’t work. And if you go through most best-selling books and most art shows, in ten or twenty years they will be forgotten. Consequently, there are alas a lot more examples of failed/no cigar creativity than there are of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “Big C” creativity.

 

If I had given this talk ten years go, I would have stopped here, because my work as a cognitive psychologist has been about thinking, problem solving, and intelligence. Also, there is a natural progression from having a discipline, to being able to synthesize, to creating something new. But for the last dozen years, I have been working chiefly in the human sphere, relations of people in groups and to one another, and thus the last two kinds of minds deal with this human sphere. They are called the Respectful Mind and the Ethical Mind.

 

 

The Respectful Mind:

The Respectful Mind is quite easy to explain, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to achieve. The Ethical Mind, as I think about it, is more complex.  The respectful mind is no more or no less than what gave rise to the League of Nations and the United Nations. It is recognizing that the world is composed of people who look different, think differently, have different belief and value systems, and that we can no longer be hermits and live in complete isolation. Therefore, our initial choices are to make war, (which is what we did in a tribal society), or to hold our nose and tolerate others. But we can be more ambitious.

 

We can try to understand better, make common cause with, and give the benefit of the doubt to other people. This process begins with birth. It is how the father, mother or care-taker treats the child; how parents treat one another, how siblings treat one another, etc. I can go to a school in the United States and I can determine within minutes whether there is a respectful atmosphere.  You can observe it in the ordinary interactions between teachers, staff, kids and so on.

 

Here are some examples of no cigar: respect with too many conditions, mere tolerance, bad jokes (jokes at the expense of others), and then something which we are all becoming familiar with:  Kiss up or kick down. Kiss up is when you flatter people who are more powerful than you, people that you want something from, and once that dynamic stops, you ignore or give them a kick. There are plenty of examples of disrespect anywhere.

 

There are promising examples of those who try to institute respect in the world: Commissions in peace and reconciliation which take formerly warring groups, the victims and victimizers, and try to arrive at an understanding which can include forgiveness. As a music lover, I am interested in those musical efforts, such as the Middle Eastern Orchestra (associated with Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said) and The Silk Road Project (associated with Yo-Yo Ma). These are efforts to get people from different societies and cultures to make music together to understand their relationship to music, and to use this kind of “aesthetic ping pong” to break down barriers. And we need to be very much on the look out for whenever institutions and practices can enhance respect.

 

I actually changed my own mind as a result of this work on respect. Concerning the Danish cartoons that mocked Islam in 2005, my initial reaction as a civil libertarian was to think of free press; people should be able to say and draw what they want. But, I’ve changed my mind about that. I think it was a mistake to publish the cartoons. I wouldn’t put anybody in jail and indeed with blogging nowadays you cannot prevent anybody from transmitting anything on the internet. But I make a distinction between the respectable press and the not respectable press. I think the respectable press should say what it wishes to say clearly—in plain natural language, be it Danish or English– but not inflammatorily. And I think the Danish cartoons were unnecessarily inflammatory.

 

The Ethical Mind:

The Ethical Mind involves a higher level of abstraction. Being in the world involves a higher level of thinking. Because the Ethical Mind does not say, “how should Howard Gardner behave towards others?” But rather, it says, “I am a worker, in my case a teacher, writer, scientist and I am a citizen, in my case of my university, my community, my nation, the wider world—how should I behave?.” Not in terms of what my rights are, but what are my responsibilities as a citizen, as a worker, within the school context, what are my responsibilities as a student and as a member of a school community? And of course it’s great to know your responsibilities but it is not sufficient; to be sufficient you have to act on the basis of responsibility. Thus, the Ethical Mind reflects on different roles that we fulfil and talks about what are the proper ways to fulfil those roles and tries, though not always successfully, but at least makes the effort, to fulfil those responsibilities.

 

The work that I have done has been in collaboration with many scholars, particularly William Damon and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It is called “The Good Work” project. We define good work as a work that embodies three Es: excellence in a technical way; engagement—that people are meaningfully involved with what they are doing and they find it motivating.  They look forward to Monday and are even willing to come to the meetings on Saturday! and ethical, behaving responsibly in your world as a worker. I think of these three Es as a triple helix. And interestingly these three Es don’t necessarily coexist. You could be excellent but not ethical. You could be ethical but not engaged. 

 

The challenge of good work is to intertwine those three Es. And we have carried out a very large scale and careful project over twelve years, almost entirely in the United States, trying to understand what makes for good work and how one carries out good work at present.  Things are changing very quickly, our whole sense of time and space is being altered by technology, markets are very powerful, and especially in the United States there are no forces able to mediate or moderate or modulate the markets. Therein lies the challenge of good work.

 

My colleagues and I did a study of good work in young people from the ages of 15-35. Wendy Fischman and others wrote a book called Making Good: How do Young People Cope with Moral Dilemmas at Work and we found a very disturbing picture. I give you this picture although it may not exist in your country.  But alas just as in the United States what starts in California ultimately tends to make its way across the country, often in the world what starts in the United States travels all too quickly elsewhere.

 

We found that the best and brightest, those young people who are the elite of your schools and are already winning awards, knew what good work was. Some of them tried to be excellent and ethical and engaged, but many of them told us that they could not afford to be ethical. Because, they said, it was very important for them to succeed, to have money, power, prestige, prominence. Since they were in competition with their peers, they suspected that their peers were cutting corners and they were not going to be upright, if that meant that they were going to lose to somebody who was less ethical. And so they told us that someday they would be ethical, that they would be the cream of their community, serve as a role model, support good causes, and hire ethical people. But they couldn’t afford to do it now. We are reminded of what Saint Augustine said “Oh Lord, make me chaste, but not quite yet”.

 

And that is what these young workers were telling us. They were not typically bad workers since they weren’t doing things that were illegal, but they were doing compromised work. They were doing journalism and making things up, or taking things from the web and not verifying the source. They were doing science but not running the extra control or not sharing the data with people who share the data with them. They were compromising.

 

This finding has changed my life. I am now spending my time with people in secondary school and colleges. We are exposing young people to ethical dilemmas and having them think about them, as well as role playing, and essentially trying to make them carry out what we call meaningful work and a meaningful life. Not focussing so much on the next prize, but thinking in the long run what kinds of human beings we want to be and what kind of world we want to live in.

 

An example: Marilee Jones was a very successful Dean of Admissions at MIT for many years, but it turned out last year that she had faked her own resumé by inventing the degrees that she didn’t have. And MIT had no choice but to fire her, because how can you judge other people’s records and ask for their honesty when you yourself have lied about your past? There were only two reactions among students whom I was teaching: one reaction was that she was doing a good job so why was there a problem? The second reaction was “well, everybody lies on their resumé, right?”

 

Conclusion:

I want to close with two interesting quotations from Americans who have a deep sense of what is important. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Intelligence plus character— that’s the goal of true education”.  And philosopher Ralph Emerson said, “Character is more important than intellect”. You are all in the business of educating young people and there are enormous pressures to make them excellent and especially IB schools which are good at achieving that end. I have nothing against excellence, but at the end of the day we do not need more of the best and the brightest, but we need more of those who have good character.  That is why the issues of respect and ethics, which are hard to measure objectively, are so terribly important. In conclusion, these are the main elements of my Five Minds.

Speech by Howard gardner

'How to teach effectively in a 40 min. period. '

I have seen so many articles on the net regarding teaching etc., but all these methods are good only in reading, but very difficult to follow in 40 minutes period & limited time target for completion of syllabus. When I was in job as PGT teacher, I encountered so many such problems, but now as the admin of institute I can easily understand the teachers point as well administrator point of view. So in this context I would like to mention some points for teachers as well - 

1. Teacher should have clear goal in mind - what he wants to give to student & what he wants in return?

2. Understand your class psychology in advance through 1 or 2 interactions.

3. Student always mimics their teacher, so behavior of teacher, his appearance his confidence, his VOICE should be highly impressive.

4. NO loose talks regarding school or any other teacher any other student should be encouraged.

5. First of all identify distractive child of the class and give them some responsibilities.

FOR TEACHING - 

1. Always prepare your lecture well in advance.

2. Must revise previous day lecture through question answering session in first 5-10 minutes.

3. Use your board up to maximum extent.

4. Voice of teacher should be commanding.

5. Try to address students as - My students. It will create a personal teacher - student attachment.

6. Keep eye contact with all the students, take rounds in class.

7. Your lecture should include some exercise or questions so that some thing should be their for the students to work with.

8. Some laughing comments make class environment comfortable.

9. Last but not least famous word RECAPTULATION. A teacher must recapitulate his lecture.

Now a 40 mint period is sufficient to achieve all the aims for teaching