SYSTEMS IN EDUCATION

I have been working on a systems in education package for quite some time now.  It is nearly finished.  Have a look at my site and see if You see the application of this style of thinking…. 

www.edu.systemsandsynergy.com

It is what it is….

So much of what we think is packaged.  Free running thought is sometimes enjoyable, sometimes frustrating; all in all, it is what it is: “unbridled”. 

While the rippling enthusiasm of a young colt bounding and kicking, sprinting and zig zagging in a summer-lush field is sport to watch, it is only what it is… unbridled.  The colt’s purpose, though it has no knowledge of this, is to develop muscle and reactions that will serve in a contest for a mate or in a flight for survival.  The colt’s joyful actions are taken in service of an — though unconscious — anticipated need for reaction.

We are like that.  We have body, mind, and spirit too.  All of which from time to time have enthusiastic flexing, movement, and joy.  No real reason at the time, but reason enough in design.  The mind needs to be quick, as well the body in times of need.  In times of reaction.  The spirit is sometimes assuaged as well.  It has to have depth and stolid consistency to deal with times of hardship, and to have the resiliancy to withstand the tests then flourish once again in times of joy. 

Packaged thought is disconnected yet necessary.  I have to do this NOW. Whatever that is — groceries, pick up the kids, go skating… whatever it is, that is what it is at the time.  The art of living comes in drawing connections, or is it in managing connections, between one time an the next.  The art of living is in connecting, relating, pulling the experience of the past into the fore when needed, laterally drawing like experiences together when needed…. connecting the packages.  Bridling the unbridled for the purpose of being free.

The discipline of living free.  A paradox.  An oxymoron.  Discipline — free.  Juxtaposed… or not.  Freedom does have a ‘price’ we might have heard.  It does have a cost in action, for sure.  But energy is abounding, so where to put our energy except into actions that free us?  There’s no other reasonable answer.  Put energy into bondage?! Not a good answer.  The packages of thought, the boundaries of the moment are put to service in the well led life.  They are moments to be consumed, as they are because they are what they are.  There is not another moment to supplant the one you are in, so live it and be it and do what it is that moment demands, or wants, or requests, or needs.  That package is the present.  The one you open only now, and now, and now again.  The precious ‘present’ that we are given to live and connect and to find freedom within.

Unbridled, bridled.  It is what it is.

When GOOD turns to Dissapointment

“How We Too Often Make Our Good Feelings Turn Into Dissapointment”

It is really easy to do and we so often do it without even noticing.  Follow this and see if you are one of these people, even some of the time.

So, you get a good feeling, maybe a gut instinct and you feel like something good is around you or going to happen to you.  That’s a nice feeling! 

What do you — we — often do?!  We LOOK for confirmation.  We buy a lottery ticket, start dreaming of what would happen if….  We imagine that NOW is the time our ship will come in etc. etc.  Guess what?  When those things don’t happen, we get dissapointed, we even get depressd: “how come other people have this or that and I don’t…?”  “How come I didn’t win this or gain that?” 

Of course, the next thing that happens is… well, the good feelings are gone and we have served only to prove the good feelings false.  Not a great reinforcing cycle.

WHAT TO DO?!

As the Beatles said, “let it be”.  If you feel good or feel the presence of good, let it be!  If you do that, and DON’T look for anything the feeling lasts a long long time. 

My oldest daughter said to me at dinner tonight, after I was informing her about some writing I have been doing lately, “Dad, sometimes we weren’t meant to look too hard for things; sometimes we just have to let go and let things happen.”  She is right.  We then had a good talk about what I have just written for you to read.  We had a laugh and then agreed: “Let it be, and good things last so much longer… maybe your whole life long…”

Namaste

What we teach

When we teach, we teach three things:

content

processes

skills

That’s all.  Everything fits into those three categories.

We use four major methods of communicating / teaching:

relate

question

state

actuate

That’s in round figures.

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Fearing to be different … is just the same as most

If you fear being different, then you are the same as most people….

If you fear that someone will realize that you believe in something that is not accepted in the social norm, then you are just like most people.

Change.

Embrace being different.

Steve Martin poked fun at all of us many years ago in one of his stadium filled comedy shows: “Now, let’s all complete the non-conformists oath — repeat after me!”

“Why Use Systems Thinking In the Classroom?”

“Why Use Systems Thinking In the Classroom?”

“FREE REPORT”

My name is D. Ross Leadbetter M.Ed.  I’ve been studying systems thinking in education for 17 years.  I am still at it.  Enough about me, let’s answer the question.

World renowned systems thinker, Peter Senge, said in his book Schools That Learn that through the use of systems thinking we can actively develop an awareness of complexity, interdependence, change, and leverage.  Those are good things for all of us to develop!

Consider this quote from Einstein:

“You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it.

You must learn to see the world anew.”

Enough said? Of course we all know that we have to think differently in our emerging world; thereby, as educators, we must teach children to think differently – to see the world anew.

But HOW does systems thinking do this?

Consider this quote from Sir Ken Robinson Ph.D. in his book The Element: “If you have never learned to think creatively and to explore your true capacity, what will you do then?  More specifically, what will our children do if we continue to prepare them for life using the old models of education?”

We HAVE to change how we teach, and systems thinking ADDS to what you already do; it unleashes the interactive and creative power of you and your students.

Systems thinking IS creative and visual, and interactive, and contemporary…. definitely, creative and contemporary.

Again, from Sir Ken, same book:  “The human brain is intensely interactive.  You use multiple parts of it in every task you perform.  It is in fact in the dynamic use of the brain – finding new connections between things – that true breakthroughs occur.”

I LOVE THAT QUOTE.  The Human Brain IS Intensely Interactive, and connections DO create breakthroughs!

Systems thinking is a language; it’s a pattern language; a visual language.  It is broadly concerned with exploring interactions, interdependencies, and connections, especially over time.

Systems thinking is intensely interactive because you CREATE and REFINE your thought on paper or on a board, alone or with others!  It engages, involves, and draws in every type of thinker.  It the ultimate tool in your teaching toolbox. REALLY.

Imagine a group of people milling around an emerging diagram – a diagram that everyone helps create, and that doesn’t have to be pretty to be good.  Imagine the powerful conversation and debate as patterns and connections emerge.

Ask, “why does building more roads cause greater road congestion?”  And then get out of the way.

Or, ask “how does spraying to kill one pest quite often cause EVEN GREATER damage to a crop?”  Again, back away from the board….

That’s of course once you have taught the tools.

Now, systems thinking is a circular language and it is diagram-based.  It helps us look for and find causes and effects, relationships, and interdependence… it’s about as real as reality really is! (whew) “We must learn to see anew.”

We finally have a method for teaching concepts

JUST LIKE THINGS HAPPEN IN THE REAL WORLD.

Do YOU want to create GREAT THINKERS? You’ll be surprised at WHICH students are the BEST and most natural systems thinkers.  I WAS.  And I loved it!  Talk about a leveling tool!

Systems thinking as an approach, can create great thinkers for you… for all of us.

Consider Marzano’s discovery: …superior findings (are) reported for visual and dramatic instruction over verbal instruction in terms of percentage of information recalled by students one year after the completion of the unit.

Or, another great quote by Mr. Marzano:  “What is needed…is a comprehensive approach that allows for student construction of meaning while interacting with content, the teacher, and other students.”  (*****YES!*****)

Systems thinking:

• Helps us explore, understand, and share our mental models;
• Examines the patterns and structures that govern our world;
• Is creative, engaging, interesting, graphic, discussion oriented… because,

“People Gather Around Diagrams”

• An approach based on a visual language, thus allowing us to easily present and clarify complex issues by summing up the key elements involved.
• Is focused upon concision, clarity, presentation, and dialogue.
• Translates communication – stories, relationships, key aspects, causes, interdependence and more – into black and white diagrams that are easily understood
• Adds precision to communication.
• Decreases ambiguity.
• Allows us to poke and prod, inquire and examine WITHOUT ruffling feathers.
• Creates a collective view, so then a collective understanding.
• Discussions are not confrontational; they are about building the best representation of the problem or initiative and being able to consider it from differing angles: focusing on diagrams diffuses defensiveness.
• Looks at the whole, not a reduction of parts.

In seconds you can slam a Behavior Over Time Graph up on the board and have groups map out the “POWER” of (1) the Romans, (2) Christianity, (3) the Vikings, (4) the Frankish Kingdoms over a period of 1000 years.  I’ve done it!  It is absolutely engaging! Kids LOVE it.

How about having students use Causal Loop Diagrams to show how drug use affects drug dependency in a circular and reinforcing – vicious cycle.  Again, you step out of the picture as ‘giver’ of information and simply facilitate, illuminate and expand upon the very creative and engaging thoughts of your students!

LET their Minds Free!  Students are amazingly creative and thoughtful, and finally you have a tool that you can use in ALL your classes:

• Relate climate change and dinosaur mortality over time.
• Track a hypothetical virus as it becomes an epidemic.
• Predict the outcomes of ‘sustainable fishing or harvesting’ practices.
• Look BEHIND events to see the patterns and the structures that are creating behavior.
• Lock ideas into diagrams.
• Keep conversations focused.
• See the relationships between problems and solutions.
• Understand complexity.
• Create a visual record.

And, there’s so much more at EVERY level of education, K to Adult

Daily, we use the power of metaphor, story, diagrams, graphic organizers, and models.  Kick it up a level!  With a few systems thinking tools and a comprehensive, tried and true approach, you can ACTIVELY ENGAGE EVERY STUDENT!

See student become completely absorbed whey they solve riddles or search for answers using systems thinking tools.

Inference, cause and effect, circular thinking, prediction, relationships, unintended consequences… THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT YOUR STUDENTS TO BE ABLE TO DO.  Moreover, you want them to WANT to do this!  This is it…

It is here.

Systems thinking in Education: www.edu.systemsandsynergy.com

Ross Leadbetter M.Ed

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Heidi is back from Confronting the Elephant…

Remember Heidi’s article in Confront the Elephant?

Well, she’s back to tell us just how all the work her team has done has paid off.  Here’s her gues post below. Read the rest of this entry »

The Subconscious

Section #27 of The Synergy in Life System

The Subconscious

Our Ego laden conscious mind spends a great deal of time navigating, assessing, reacting to, and logically engaging our perceived outward reality.  Our other mind, the subconscious mind, is largely internal and relatively unconscious.  The subconscious mind is that mechanism which is involved in reflexively moving your hand to turn the page; it beats your heart, and fires the muscles that draw in and express breath.  These are examples of action that exist in the realm of the unconscious that I will call the subconscious mind.  It is a powerhouse.  If you spend a moment to think about how our bodies naturally heal a cut, defeat a cold virus, spontaneously avoid danger, and oxygenate cells one should be greatly awed.  Think of the infinite number of actions that are performed by this consciousness with grace and ease.

The subconscious is the storehouse of memory, it is central to creativity, it plays a crucial role in learning and language, is the master of habituated action, and does more than we can possibly imagine.  Of extreme importance to our study of this powerful mind is this stunning fact: it listens closely to and acts upon input from the conscious mind, without judgment.  Having just looked at the unbridled Ego and the sway it holds with conscious thought, this should cause a cold shudder of realization.   The subconscious’s dutiful subservience to conscious thought accentuates the point that utilizing and directing conscious thoughts is necessary; directed thought is an influential mechanism for deliberately developing and unleashing the natural power of the subconscious; good input is imperative!

You likely know that scientists have proven beyond a doubt that the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between a real experience and an experience imagined vividly in detail.  That is why you salivated when eating the imaginary lemon.  In a sport psychology class I once took, we studied the results of an interesting experiment that demonstrated the power of directed thought fed to the subconscious mind.  University basketball players were randomly selected and placed in three separate groups.  Each group and each player was measured at the start of the experiment to determine their success rates in shooting free-throws.  This information was used as a base-line from which improvement or lack thereof would be measured at the end of the study.  Next, each group was given a task to undertake each day for a month.  The first group would spend 20 minutes a day, outside of regular practice time, on the court practicing free-throws.  The second group would spend 20 minutes a day, outside of regular practice time, sitting relaxed in a class-room visualizing successful free-throws.  The third group did not practice free-throws physically or mentally outside of regular practice time.  The results were astounding.  When measured again after one month, the control group who did nothing beyond regular practice demonstrated little or no improvement in free throw abilities.  That makes sense, and as you would expect the group that spent twenty minutes a day on the court physically shooting for twenty minutes after each practice session demonstrated a marked improvement in their free-throw accuracy and skill.  Astonishingly, the group that sat in the classroom visualizing had the same level of improvement in accuracy and skill as the group that stayed on the court an extra twenty minutes a day!  This improvement was completely the result of high quality input being fed from the conscious to the subconscious and then to the body’s nervous system.  Astounding and powerful information for your use! 

This study proves that the conscious mind has an important role when working in a positive and directed manner with the subconscious.  That is why belief is so important to this system.  The conscious mind provides input to the subconscious in the form of both structured and unstructured thought, and the subconscious will accept the beliefs and conclusions of the conscious mind without judgment, act upon them and feed that information to the body and to our life-force mechanism; therefore, good input must be deliberate and purposeful because the Whole Self will react to and resonate with what we think about most.  It just makes good sense.

The subconscious has an important role in working both with the conscious mind, the body and our life-force.  The subconscious will work feverishly to look for and find the name that is resting on the tip of your tongue; it will bring forth information and memory to the application of a task at hand; it can become a source of creative energy and inspiration; it will regulate the body’s functioning and guide habituated action; and, it will react to thoughts and emotions created in the conscious.  The final point is the most important, and is worth stating in the positive: when it is given the right guidance and is motivated by healthy inputs from the conscious, the subconscious will avail its own massive power to provide insight, intuition, inspiring and creative thoughts, and it will work towards the realization of the input provided; further, it will gather with and through life-force and Universal Consciousness everything needed to realize your desires; it will pass along healthy inputs and help to nourish and develop the body, and it will do so with grace, ease, and power.  It simply craves the thought structures provided by the conscious mind and will act on them immediately and completely. The subconscious is the primary bridge to body and individual life-force and thereby indirectly to the powerful generative energy of life-force reverberating throughout the entire universe.  The installation of consciously generated healthy input will have profound effects upon the Whole Self, and it will be due largely to the work the powerful subconscious does with what it is given.  Let’s look at the relation that the body has to the whole.

Counterclockwise

Scientific American often has great articles about the human mind.  The one that I will reference today is again, quite satisfying.  You can read it here. 

From the article:  “Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility
by Ellen J. Langer. Random House, 2009
When she was in her 20s, Harvard University psychologist Ellen J. Langer fainted occasionally, and doctors said she might have epilepsy. She decided to take the matter into her own hands, mentally “catching” herself sooner and sooner when she felt faint, until the fainting disappeared. That empowering experience set the tone for her remarkable 30-year career, much of which she has spent figuring out how to help people take almost miraculous control over their lives.”

It goes on to explain how test subjects lost weight, gained weight, appeared more youthful, became healthier all as a result of their perspectives in particular situations.  An example is given of cleaning staff in some Boston hotels who were told that the work they did every day definitely satisfied the government guidelines for a healthy lifestyle.  Guess what?!  They started to become more healthy.  Then there are the elderly gentlemenwho were ‘taken back in time’ by having them live like they did when they were younger… they became more youthful and healthy — they also gained weight, which was a desirable outcome.

AMAZING.

A chance meeting

I was out riding today.  Took my mountain bike along the old railway trails that run for 100’s of kilometers around the lower island.  Met a man.  An older man who had just rode 115 k’s and was on his way to do another 40 or so in the afternoon.

To say that I was impressed is to state it lightly.  Especially when I placed his age in the 70’s.

He was so interesting.  His perspectives on the world were enlightening.  Leaving the Ukrain as a child and moving to Canada;  as an observer in several eastern European elections; as a retired medical technician; as an outdoorsman, cyclist, park host… We talked for at least two hours.

His perspectives on life were summed up in  a statement he made to me: “you cannot plan the next hour, only live it.”

and, “a person is not good because of his race, creed, or color; and he is not bad because of it: a person is either good or bad in spite of his race, creed, or color.”

Ahhh. Philosophy in the rain-forest!  Didn’t get his name — didn’t seem to matter to either of us.  Did get his vibe, however.  Alive, healthy, wise, happy, and doing alright financially.

I am ever grateful to have met this kindred forest spirit.  So clear in thought, so kind, generous, and exceptionally interesting.  I really do hope that he remembers the website address that he asked me for and does drop by for a visit or to say a few words.

Namaste all.