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It will not take long before the new term at our university starts.
It is going to be another 13 meetings with the students. 13 times struggle
of how to bring them some information and help them to learn something or at least
to prepare for the exam.

It is only 13 times 2 hours I can use and I am fed up wasting them the way I used to.
I do not want to help them to pass the exam. I want them to learn something.
They should be getting a degree in a year from now, but how to motivate them
to learn also something?
While reading some books about modern education, reading blogs on Internet,
I realised that I have to change my attitude towards the students.
And do what I am doing on the seminars of experience education for
teachers and students. It is to be open with your vision, offering the
vision and the goal and methods of reaching it. Doing this, part of the
responsibility of reaching the goal is transferred to the students. They should
be the actuators in this learning machine. I, as a teacher should only facilitate the action.
So the first step is motivation. Motivation for students to learn. To ask questions,
to get interested. This is what I believe I must do. So enough for the theory.

Here is my little proposal for the principles and actions I want to try out this term:

• discuss the goal of the class and agree on it together with students
• help students to make mistakes and learn from them
• make students ask questions
• work in groups on problems, forget about the frontal teaching, that is saved for the lecture, I am doing seminars
• link the work to their day-to-day life

There are methods how to do, there is a plan, a goal, so in a month we can start testing
my plan. Because there must be a way how to make a difference. I do not want to be part
of the system killing the creativity in students. I do not wish anything for the students,
 I just want to be proud of them. So let us see how shall I succeed.
This is an end of a post of one frustrated university teacher.

Hi Quantum Women!

For those of you who haven't yet experienced the (often highly addictive) world of blogging here are a few tips for making our blogging experience a rich one.  

Blogging is easy.  Yes, as easy as email.  Unlike email though, blogs are public to varying degrees and are a permanent searchable record. 

You don't have to be profound.  You do have to be authentic.

Regularity is helpful. Think about how much time you can devote to posting on a regular basis and make a commitment to stick to it (if we each posted even twice a month, that would keep our blog very active).  Consider keeping a notebook (paper or digital) to jot down sparks for posts as they arise during your day.  This can really speed up the process when you sit down to post.

Short and sweet is fine.  You don't have to write an essay; postcards from the edge are awesome.  

Consider posting pictures, art, poetry, music.

Link often. Blogs are all about networking.  The first way to create connections is to link to other web-based resources--like webpages, wikis or other blogs. If you look on the toolbar you will see an icon shaped like a chain link.  Highlight the text you want to create a link for then click on the link icon. A dialog box pops up where you can enter the web address of the resource.  You can also link to other posts inside our blog. Links also alert others that we are out here.  Others start to link to us and this creates the web of conversation and connection that pushes our ideas and profile out into the world.  Here's an example of linking:

On Friday i had a wonderful conversation with Robert Augustus Masters (who you may remember Marilyn mentioning in connection with a potential part 2 of Quantum Woman Inquiry).  Robert is an integral psychotherapist.  To get a flavour of his work you can check out his newsletter or his blog.

Comment on other posts (and on other blogs including a link back to ours).  This is the other way to create connections in the blogsphere. 

Add Tags.  This is something we will grow into.  Tags help us to find content by placing it in broader contextual categories.  You enter tags in the keywords box below the main blogging body box.

Check the access restrictions box at the bottom.  We probably want most of our posts to be public, so that we expand the circle of conversation (via comments).  

May you all enjoy happy and adventurous blogging! 

 

  

http://www.mushin.eu/en/blog/2008/01/14/which-side-of-your-b

Do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

Depending on which brain-side is dominant you see the dancer turn… (more below)

 

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS

uses logic

detail oriented

facts rule

words and language

present and past

math and science

can comprehend

knowing

acknowledges

order/pattern perception

knows object name

reality based

forms strategies

practical

safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS

uses feeling

“big picture” oriented

imagination rules

symbols and images

present and future

philosophy & religion

can “get it” (i.e. meaning)

believes

appreciates

spatial perception

knows object function

fantasy based

presents possibilities

impetuous

risk taking

Now all of that is theory, of course, well founded but nevertheless - so don’t worry.

Anyway, if you see the dancer turn clockwise you are right side dominated, and the other way around.

With some training you can see both directions - they say (I haven’t managed to see her turn anti-clockwise…)

Jackie is 14 years old and she plays soccer. Following the conflicts in our country (Kenya) after the December 2007 general elections, Jacky found herself in the dark alleys of Kawangware, running for safety. She ran together with five other girls, one of whom is Jacky's older sister, 17 year-old Susan. Kawangware is one of the slums in Nairobi and was affected by the chaos that left thousands of Kenyans displaced and traumatised. I am using Jacky's journal of gratitude to share this story.

"My name is Jacky Keya.  I come from a  family of eight; our mother and dad died a long time ago when I was a little and when we were all much younger. I have two sisters who live upcountry, two others in Nairobi and one big brother in Nairobi as well. One of our sisters in Nairobi took care of us till the time she got married and her husband said that he didn't want to see us at all. At that time, I was in class seven. I don't know why he didn't want us anymore. He asked us to move out of his house and go find some other place to live. He said that it didn't matter that our sister was his wife. I cried. I really cried and begged for him to let us stay. My other sister, Susan and I, went to live with our big brother. Even though he allowed us to stay with his family, he treated me angrily each time I asked him for money for lunch at school. When I tried to ask his wife, she always called me a stupid girl and added that she didn't want to see me and Susan in that house. They had just accepted us because no one else wanted us and that we were a burden to them. 

I decided to joing the Binti team to deal with the stress in my mind. I joined last year but even though I trained, I now know that my mind wasn't ready for change. Eventually I realised that the team was helping me in many ways. Now I know football; I can kick, dribble, give passes and even score goals! I don't want to leave this team. I want to go far. I want to be in the National girls' soccer team. I want to succeed in life. I want to be a good player till the end of my life.

I finished class eight last year (2007). During the K.C.P.E exams, my brother's wife kept discouraging me. "...You won't even pass your exams", she told me repeatedly. I then decided to go for soccer practice so that I can be a good palyer. She also didn't want me to go for practice and she scolded me all the time after practice. Instead of going for practice she gave me alot of housework to engage me till late at night. That way, she ensured I missed practice. The coach was not so happy and I didn't want the coach to be angry with me. 

Once I get my K.C.P.E results, if I didn't perform well I will repeat class eight. If my performance is below standard eg just one hundred marks, I will be ready to repeat so that I can do well. I promise myself, if I repeat I will get 350 marks! I will live to keep that promise."

Jacky's needs a sponsor to either continue with her education at the secondary school level or repeat the last class in primary school. I am grateful that Jacky shared her story with me. For I believe if you tell your story you will heal someone else for you never know who else is listening.  

Over the past two weeks, my students and I led three research groups with young people. Two groups were high school juniors and seniors while the final group was college students, predominantly freshmen and sophomores.  The process we used was to take them through a three hour series of steps that concluded with teams do a 4' X 6' painting of their dream for the high school of the future.  The research still centers around the question, "How do you teach young people to thrive in a world of possibility?"

 

We adapted the appreciative inquiry technique and modified it to fit our time frame.  It has been a wonderful experience and we hope to do more.  Some of the dreams are amazing! 

http://www.mushin.eu/en/blog/2007/12/12/my-daemon/

Having seen “The Golden Compass” and thoroughly enjoyed it - C4Chaos has a wonderful review on his blog - I went over to the website to find out what my daemon would be - and it is…

Well, crows played a big part in what I call my Grand Delusionment, so it’s only fitting.

http://www.mushin.eu/en/blog/2007/10/31/autumn/

Blogged with Flock

Tags: autumn

This entry is based on a short piece I wrote for the Integral Leadership Review…

Hosted by the Dutch chapter of the Center for Human Emergence, organised by Peter Merry, Anita Floris and Anne-Marie Voorhoeve, with participants from the Netherlands, Belgium, Iceland, Israel, the UK, USA, and Switzerland. We were sorry that our spiritual father, Don Beck, was prevented from attending by a vicious bout of flu. But we did him proud by going ahead without him, creating a buzzing and blooming learning environment that never wavered in intensity.

The Dutch Human Emergence family knows more than most about collective, integral leadership. They are quite a small core team of individuals working together in different combinations inside different teams and communities, bringing spiritual depth and integral awareness into different spheres of public and civic life.

This three-day event was a balance between plenary sessions and self-organising open-space breakout groups, with plenty of space in between for networking and intense one-on-one bonding and collaboration.

The plenary sessions really showed how Spiral Dynamics and integral practice are gaining ground in mainstream Dutch and European society, with speakers and facilitators from IBM, the Dutch Police Academy, the European Commission, and the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment. On the first evening we had an interactive world café to explore the meaning of European citizenship. Elza Maalouf showed up by Skype to share what’s cooking in Palestine – with Neri Bar-On, present with us in Holland, to fill us in on the Israeli perspective. All topped off by a Saturday-night bop-till-you-drop with a difference: an eight-zone experiential journey around the quadrants guided by an integral dance master Dylan Newcomb.

The parallel sessions were so mouth-watering that I yearned to split myself three or four ways so I could attend them all. Participants stepped up to ask for thinking partners to help them crack the challenges at their learning edge:

• memetic profiling of the past and present of Holland - by the authors of the new book ”Nederland op doorbreken” (alas not yet available in English)
  

• memetic data collection using PeopleSCAN;

• the School of Synnervation (integral and 2nd-tier leadership technology);

• using SDi and integral in a Dutch municipality;
  

• guiding collaboration through “meshworking” among 20 public/private stakeholders in a project to crack Millenium Development Goal No 5 (Mothers’ health);

• integral business performance and transformation software (Gaiasoft provides software and consulting to build integral management systems for businesses and governments. Customers include multinational Philips, the City of Johannesburg and the $32 billion Crossrail project building a tunnel under London) and a values-based social networking platform (Gaiaspace);

• energetic psychology up the spiral (using kinesiology muscle-testing to explore one’s relationship - healthy or otherwise - with the different memes up the spiral);

• connecting to life and the earth from 2nd tier in all four quadrants - a riveting session with Peter Merry

In case it’s not clear what these have to do with leadership, let’s take a closer look at the meshworking project with millenium development goal 5. The project is part of the Dutch government’s drive to mobilise its country’s contribution to the Millenium Development Goals. In this instance, it is supporting a groundbreaking approach to public/private partnership which we can hope will be a prototype for other such complex projects throughout the world in future. The CHE itself has the leadership role here, initiating and supporting the project organisation in the form of a “meshwork” of the 20 participating organisations (spanning the spectrum of the maternal health sector). Where a network exists to enhance its individual members, in a meshwork what is primary is the collective purpose. Creating an effective meshwork, then, involves aligning the parts to their collective purpose. The meshwork can be said to be the “organising form of life force in its turquoise manifestation” (to quote Peter Merry).

The CHE team is facilitating the contribution of each participating organisation from an evolutionary perspective. So far, the work has been to lead the participants step by step through Otto Scharmer’s U process to surface the collective purpose. This kind of deep collective inquiry is already working its developmental magic on the consciousness of the participants, helping them to break free from their individual perspective and move towards an overarching set of principles from which can be born initiatives that are resilient, interconnected and vitalising.


 The pattern that emerged for me throughout the Confab was that each of these real and inspiring case studies was born from an act of individual vision and leadership. Men and women coming up against the edge of meaning in their lives and stepping out into the emergent void to become someone unknown in their known—and often threatening and hostile—environment. Not all of them are ‘leaders’ in the traditional sense of ‘CEOs’ and top managers. But each one has dared to embody and enact the new world they envision, with the courage to face the incomprehension and fear of their communities and provide a vision and a compelling experience for those they seek to persuade to step with them into the unknown.

It’s always a thrill to congregate with a group of peer spirits. Coming together with some of the shakers and movers at the leading edge of human emergence in one of the world’s most advanced democracies—as well as a number of players on the global stage—was nothing short of breathtaking. I came away intensely stimulated and exhausted, but above all open-hearted and full of hope.

In his book, “Authentic Happiness,” Martin Seligman condenses what it takes to be happy to a very simple statement.

Discover your strengths and use them often.

(If you want to discover your strengths, you can do so with the strengths assessment test)

Want a truly meaningful life?

Discover your strengths, use them often, and give them to something bigger than yourself.



And, if you are curious about my "signature strenghts", they are: 

1. Appreciation of beauty and excellence
I notice and appreciate beauty, excellence, and skilled performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience. 

2. Creativity, ingenuity, and originality
It's important to me to think of new ways to do things. I'm never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible

3. Love of learning
I love learning new things. I have always loved reading, and take every opportunity to learn

4. Curiosity and interest in the world
I'm curious about everything, always asking questions, and you find most subjects and topics fascinating. I like exploration and discovery.

5. Leadership
I excel at the tasks of leadership: encouraging a group to get things done and preserving harmony within the group by making everyone feel included. I do a good job organizing activities and seeing that they happen.