Thank you for sharing your insight. I also came to realize that the practice of mindfulness may be beneficial not only in reducing our stress but also in better achieving in the educational settings. The fact that we have limited time to finish a heavy work load pushes us to choose the easiest and rigid ways to handle our tasks. Yet taking the time to observe and reflect on our practices, we may come up with more creative, interesting and/or efficient solutions to our tasks.

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Thank you for sharing some updates on the NCLB and CCCS, I wasn’t aware of that until you mentioned. Indeed, there is no educational reform that has not a side of controversy but I consider Standardized very detrimental ti student’s learning as they encourage passive learning and plain rote culture.

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When I teach the introductory engineering class, I am mindful of what it means to be an engineer, and that engineers may look and think in ways that are not necessarily consistent with my idea of what engineers or engineering is. However, there are some universal characteristics, such as the need for engineers to be ethical. Some students strike me as not cut out for engineering. I reflect often on how to best serve these students. This is not the same as not being cut out for college, but that might be the case too. It’s not for me to decide who gets to be an engineer and who doesn’t. (Or is it? As a licensed professional engineer whose engineering practice is teaching new engineers, one may argue that I am obliged to “hold paramount safety and welfare of the public” by admitting only qualified members to the profession.) I don’t know the answer to the professor as gatekeeper issue. All I can do at the moment is avoid being judgmental, assess the students fairly, and have faith that it will sort itself out, with students who are not “cut out” for engineering arriving at their own conclusions and eventually finding their way along their educational and career path. Thank you for your thought provoking post.

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You are absolutely right to mention laughter! Laughter and Humor maintain students’ attention and help them memorize more the key content of the course. It also creates a great environment in which students are immediately comfortable to participate.

As for you grandmother, first of all; THANK YOU. I love the Moss Arts Center, it is one of those places that made Blacksburg so much more entertaining culturally speaking.

Indeed, professors can have a tremendous impact on their student if they interpret some difficulties as a potential to expand, grow and explore. They can change a lifetime through their dedication to students.

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It sounds like, until less focus is placed on standardized exams the focus of standing and delivering cannot be separated from the idea of teaching. When I read your sentences “…professors’ believe their job is to structure and deliver material..” I thought to myself do professors really think this or are they not bothered enough to actually facilitate learning. To me it seems that at the university level there is not much emphasis placed on teaching so professor tend to not care as much. For example my adviser always tells me that as long as you are doing research, graduating PhD students, and are not the absolute worst professor in the department when it comes to teaching than you are in a good position. That just sounds crazy to think that you could do a lousy job at teaching, but still be great professor.

I like how you mention that being a teacher is a creative career rather than a business-orient career. I know when I was going through grade school I found that teachers that were excited by what they did and had a creative way of conveying information has a positive impact on me. Those teachers that were boring/went line-by-line through the information they had to teach were the ones that I got the least out of.

I understand the need for making sure a curriculum is uniform across at least a state. But when making sure the curriculum is uniform stifles the creativity then something has to change.

I’m a little fuzzy on CCCS, but from what little I have read about it and what the acronym means I feel that they are just a set of standards/requirements that a teach needs to make sure to meet when teaching. Aside from that, the teacher has the ability to decide how to teach the information. If that is the case then why can teachers not have a creative way of teaching the information they need to make sure to cover?

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I wholeheartedly agree with this post. Being mindful doesn’t entail the appropriation of new skills or knowledge, but rather simply remembering how we naturally learn. Actually, it’s almost the opposite process – clearing away the mental baggage so that mindfulness can happen naturally.

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Thank you all for these wonderful replies! It is helping me to see learning in yet another way, as my post seems to be doing for many of you also. I am also one of those people that won’t remember to look up a word later, so doing it in the moment is just so much more effective. I hadn’t even thought about how Google could help those who don’t have English as a first language. English is my first language, and I still have to look up words in the classroom. Maybe this is cause to rethink the policy that some have for no technology in class.

This exchange of ideas is also giving me much more confidence in the learning that can come from blogging!

“Galen, oh Galen, that’s just some people talkin’…”

Might it not be a good thing to draw our attention, that is, to make us mindful of infant learning, perhaps the most rapacious kind of learning? And had not LRRR learned more rapaciously, would she not then have been more suspicious of the wolve’s rapey tactics? Hmmm…

Excellent short read! I found myself laughing out loud at Starbucks when reading your article. Thank you!

I think you point out to a fundamental dilemma in this passage:

How am I to embrace the diversity of my student body while accepting the conformity of the curriculum? How do I allow my students to express themselves and engage with me and each other, while still transmitting the entirety of each lesson? How do I allow them the time to ponder ideas and gain an individual ownership of them while staying on schedule?

This is something that every professor grapples with, between allowing room for creativity and discussion in your class and the imperative of the Syllabus and delivering course content. There are time and space constraints that are always there, which leads professors like you and me to try our best to avoid monotony in the classroom. I would be interested in discussing how you organize the online class discussion since it’s something I would like to try as well!