The mindful teacher

If you asked me to read a book about assessment, I would politely decline. Assessment has never held much interest for me, as a theme in itself. Sure, I do my grades at the end of a unit like everyone else. But for me it's always been about the process, and reflecting moment-by-moment. And as an art teacher, I have conflicting feelings about grading something that should be an expression of the self.  But a colleague of mine has a strong interest in this topic, especially as her little girl is bumping into the testing monolith in her elementary school. So when I ran into  Anya Kamenetz's  book, " The Test: Why Our Schools are Obsessed with Standardized Testing–But You Don't Have to Be " (PublicAffairs, 2015), I picked it up and gave it a go.  I wasn't disappointed.  Kamenetz is an education reporter for NPR, and her expertise shines through every page. She starts with a meticulous critique of our current system, and also gives a historical overview of where a...

If you're reading this  blog, you've probably  heard of Mindful Schools , an outfit based in California that provides on-line classes in mindfulness (mindfulschools.org).  Right now they offer three coures, an introductory "fundamentals" course; a "curriculum training" course; and  a year-long "teacher certification" course. They also have links and resources on their webpage. As of this writing, I've taken both the fundamentals course, and the CT (curriculum training) course.  I had taken an eight week MBSR course many years ago (mindfulness-based stress reduction)- which is a very thorough introduction to mindfulness-  so I wasn't sure if I would learn anything new by enrolling in the six week "fundamentals" class. But when I took it with a colleague a couple summers ago, I really enjoyed it. There was information from neuroscience that wasn't available back in 2001, and there were, I found, some very subtle but helpful insi...