soul-inspired education and the future of education
TRANSCRIPT
The Sound Of the
GenuineAnd The Future of Education
Ojai Forum on the New Education
October 21, 2016
2
Ojai Village Academy
Teacher College for Soul-Inspired Education
Friday, October 21, 2016
Ojai, California
Kirsten Olson’s Keynote Address for Launch
Talk about education reveals our
deepest values,
what we think the purpose and
meaning of life is...
What Is The Sound of
the Genuine In You?
My search for
The Sound of the
Genuine…
“Now I become myself.
It’s taken time,
many years and places…”
-May Sarton
My Search Begins…
• Co-founding a school for
my own four children
• Doctorate at Harvard
• Taking one’s place
among “Those Who
Know Better” (George Lakey)
Uncomfortable “consciousness…”
Who is not allowed here?
CURIOSITY, WONDERINGDesire to hear in new ways
Students at Phoenix Charter Academy, Chelsea, MA
Experiences of school
“Kids who struggle are
so sensitive to
moments--especially
bad ones. These
moments shape their
whole lives, their sense
of themselves.
Teachers’ little
comments had huge
effect on me. ”
Underestimation of effects of
educational experiences on
self-concept
Even among “highly successful”
learners
• Sense of disconnection from learning
• Cynicism
• Perfectionism
• High SES students experiencing unprecedented pressure to be successful
My research
• 109 semi-structured autobiographical interviews over 4 years
• “Portraiture” method (Lawrence Lightfoot, 1997)
• Initial interviews from
1-3 hours
• Cross section of class, gender, race
• Subjects ages ranged from 11-67
• Themes generated from transcripts of interviews
15
“My math
teacher told
me, ‘You’ll be
flipping
burgers for the
rest of your
life. Don’t
even try to
learn math.”
16
“I went to kindergarten as a happy child. Throughout my years in the educational system, I lost a lot of my happiness, imagination and enthusiasm. It all faded away, confined to the labels of the outside world, based on the concepts of intelligence. School was focused on organizing and labeling students based on so called innate abilities. If you get good grades, test well, you are intelligent. This pierced my self-esteem armor over and over to the point of self-hatred.”
“ I told my teacher I
wanted to go to college. He said I’d be pregnant and drop out in
two years.”
“I’m one taco short of a combination platter.”
“I’m really good at school, but I’m very secretive about making mistakes. I always want to be right, and have the right answer. Otherwise, people think you are dumb.”
“There was always something mechanical about school, a mold I never fit into, never quite understood. Although I knew inside
that my writing was powerful and artistic, I was unwilling to make myself vulnerable to someone else’s critique. The years of
frustration and failures had taken a toll on my confidence and I found myself unable to trust my own ability in the classroom.”
“Crazy. Stupid. Lazy.
I believed I was broken.”
• “Top education book” by the American School Board Association
• Live book discussion on Teacher Magazine book feature
• 10 bestselling books Teachers College Press in pub year
• Nominated for Book of the Year, Notable
• A Best Academic Book, Choice
“Naming our reality is the only way to
be free.”
Learning from Elders
• Sara Lawrence Lightfoot
• John Holt
• Ivan Illich
• Parker Palmer
• Thich Nhat Hanh
“School is like the meat packing
business, designed to teach
children what grade of
meat they are, and to send
them off to the right market--
but make sure they
believe it.”
-John Holt,
What Do I Do Monday, 1970
“COUNTER PRODUCTIVITY”
“Once our institutions develop beyond a
certain scale, they became perverse,
counterproductive to the beneficial ends for
which they were originally conceived. The end
result of this paradoxical counter-productivity
was schools which make people dumb,
complacent and unquestioning; hospitals
which produce disease; prisons which make
people violent; travel at high speed which
creates traffic jams; and ‘aid and development’
agencies which create more and more ‘needy’
and ‘underconsuming’ people.”
-Ivan Ilich, author of Deschooling Society
(1971)
Photo on the wall of Phoenix Charter Academy, Chelsea MA
29
55% of Boston’s students of color would drop out of
high school
A SYSTEM
THAT
PRIVILEG
ES THE
ALREADY
PRIVILEG
ED Harvard College Graduation
Education can
be both
liberatory,
democratizing,
and reproduce
social and
economic
inequality.
DIFFICULT FOR US TO HOLD BOTH REALITIES
My Path:
Stops and Starts• Yikes! Teaching like an academic
• Finding my way
• Doing the heart work
• Leaving school
“IF YOU’RE NOT
MAKING TROUBLE,
YOU’RE NOT
WORKING ON THE
RIGHT
PROBLEMS.”
-HERB KOHL TO
ME, 2006
TO CHANGE THE
WORLD YOU HAVE
TO CHANGE WHAT
YOU THINK IS REAL
BUILDING NETWORKS OF PRACTICE
FOR POLITICAL
AND SOCIAL INFLUENCE
NOW: Souls of Educational LeadersWho Are You As a Leader?
Who Are We As A Team?
What Do We Want to Accomplish Together?
What is Required of Us To Do This?
Where Are We Now
As A Sector?
Learning Has Left The Building
NOW 2 CRITICAL
CONDITIONS HAVE
CHANGED THE WORLD
Internet
changes all
• Education system
based on information
scarcity
• Schools and teachers
were purveyors and
certifiers of knowledge
• “Active choosers”
already leaving system
RISE OF
NEUROBIOLOGICAL
REVOLUTION
We have learned more about how the human brain in
the last 25 years than we did in the last 200
“Old School” teaching attitudes that no longer serve
Moving beyond shame and blame
Neurobiologically ineffective,
morally reprehensible
WE ARE AT THE
END OF ERA
• End of test-based accountability
• New era has not yet been born….
• Discourse has run out of gas
• More successful systems...
• Invest heavily in skills/knowledge of teachers
• Broaden definitions of “good” education
• Focus on equalizing access and resources
Traditional Sector is in free fall
TEACHERS FEEL
EMBATTLED AND
UNAPPRECIATED• 3 million teachers trying to “save” a life way
• 50% of young teachers will leave sector within 5 years
• Teachers feel busted, angry, hurt
• Trapped within incredibly bureaucratic, unresponsive system
Teachers need to grieve a lost lifeway
SYSTEM’S DIFFICULTY
ADAPTING THE THE NEW
CONDITIONS OF LEARNING
We must ask the fundamental question...
Who will be served in
the new era?
MINORITY MAJORITY
NATION WITHIN 25-30
YEARS
US Will Be A...
Liberatory Learning
Practices
Sugata Mitra: Teachers on the ‘granny cloud’
Redefining meaning of
“teacher”
57
What would teacher training based on love and
personalized challenge look like?
What do you think?
A little about what I’ve
learned…
Message was
originally embargoed,
dangerous. Now
much more accepted.
Fundamental
Problem Still
Unsolved• School toxic to many individuals in it--
children and adults
• Resource-wasteful, time-sucking,
personally destructive
• Turns people off to learning
• Systems outmoded, floundering
Pockets of brilliance
all over the country• Self-Enhancement Academy in
Portland, OR
• Minnesota New Country School,
Henderson MN
• AltSchool, Brooklyn, NY
• Urban Academy NYC
• Big Picture School, South Burlington VT
High Tech High, San Diego
El Puente Academy of Peace and Justice, Brooklyn, NY
MINNESOTA NEW COUNTRY SCHOOL,
HENDERSON, MN
THE POINT, SOUTH BRONX
NORTH STAR SELF-DIRECTED
LEARNING CENTER,
AMHERST MA
How do we draw
these
exemplars together?
EMBRACING THE VALUES
CONVERSATION
WHY DO SCHOOL?
• Courage/Bravery
• Justice
• Open-mindedness
• Love of learning
• Capacity for perspective-taking
• Compassion
NEW TEACHER EDUCATION MUST
EMBRACE THE PARADOXES
OF LEARNING
3 Big Paradoxes
1. Pleasure of
learning... will lead
us to do tough
intellectual stuff
2. As education
becomes untethered
from school, place
and community will
matter more
3. We need to invest
more in
community/and place
(humans learn in
community) in face of
worldwide learning
“When the heart is touched by
direct experience, the mind may
be challenged to change.”-Peter Hans Kolvenbach,
Jesuit global leader
What I’ve Come To
Believe
1. Educational
transformation won’t be a
one-way,
but dozens of ways• “Here comes everybody”
• Grown in communities
• Grown out of core values and what we
think makes life meaningful
• A “meteor shower” not a blacksmith’s
anvil
2. Learning really is
rocket science
• Every brain is different
• Brain incredibly plastic
• Profoundly influenced by emotion,
context of learning
• Explosion of neurobiological knowledge
also explodes old-fashioned school
3. State control of
content will diminish
• Yet commitment to places of caring for
young people should increase
• Radical redefinition of role of “teacher”
• Adults will increasingly
teach/model/coach how to learn
• Must be learners themselves
4. “Choice” masks
cynical individualism• Market solutions privilege the already
privileged
• Reclaim the moral commitment to
children/young adults
• Make the moral conversation part of the
discourse
• Caring is cool, caring is effective
Educational centers
become• Places of hospitality, community
“hearths”
• Places of intellectual exploration
• Places of inspiration and positivity
• Places of creativity and perspective-
taking
• Focus on what is best in human beings
• Teachers become something more like
a wise elder, a coach…
What is required of us to
make this vision come into
being?
Developmental Work
of Teaching
• Tranforming the culture of our building
• Transform ourselves
• Inner
“To transform my teaching I began with myself...”
“We don’t see things
as they are;
we see them as
we are.”
-Anais Nin
The Power of Not
Knowing
• “Truth is a pathless land.”
• The necessary spiritual equality
between student and teacher
• Holding curiosity, not control
Jiddu Krishnamurti,
1895-1986
“This is the first, wildest and wisest
thing I know...
That the soul exists, and that it is built
entirely out of attentiveness...”
-Mary Oliver, “Low Tide” (2001)
Teachers Are Running on a
Reactive System
“Donkey work of daily practice...”
How does change occur?
“Your path to success is through a continuum of mundane, unsexy,
unexciting, and sometimes difficult daily disciplines
compounded over time.”
“What does it take to become an authentic
leader?
You must have practices that you engage
in every day.”
—His Holiness the Dalai Lama
The Mindful School
Leader
Practices To
Transform Your Life
"
By Valerie Brown
and
Kirsten Olson
Skills
• Breathing
• Pausing
• Ability to be present to the moment
• Reflection
GLOBAL,
WORLDWIDE
MOVEMENT
Why this is essential
now
• Education is a rudderless ship
• A broken monopoly
• Feeding on self-interest and fear
• We must do reinvention with feet
touched to ground
“CHILDREN ARE OUR
ELDERS IN UNIVERSE
TIME.”
-BUCKMINSTER FULLER
A small group of
people...
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed people can change the world.
Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”
-Margaret Mead
HOW MUCH
YOU
MATTER
The Sound of the Genuine
There is in every person something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in herself. There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. Nobody like you has ever been born. And no one like you will ever be born again.
You are the only one.
If you cannot hear it, the sound of the genuine in you, you will never find whatever it is for which you’re searching. And if you hear it and then do not follow it, it were better that he had never been born. You are the only you that has ever lived. Your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all the existences. And if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.
-Howard Thurman
The Sound of the
Genuine In You…
• What is the Sound of
the Genuine in you
around the future of
education?
• To what are you
committing?
101
“Being listened to is so close to being loved
most of us cannot tell the difference.”
-David Oxberg
102
Thank you!
