Assignment inspiration from "The Heart of Higher Education"

Palmer and Zajonc's book The Heart of Higher Education is helping with assignment generation.  The authors advocate for 'whole student' education of heart, mind, and body.  [I like to remember that no Eastern language has two words for 'heart' and 'mind' but rather considers them one in the same.]   In general, they want educators and administrators to be mindful of the fact that none of us is composed of independent, separate parts, but rather always part of a larger, interdependent whole.

In terms of job satisfaction and spiritual integrity for the practitioner, the authors importantly remind me that "we can choose the way we teach" (pg. 89).  We are able to incorporate spirit in the questions, reflections, experiences, etc. that we emphasize in class assignments. 

In terms of assignments, I am reminded:

• I would like students (especially in Introduction to Sociology, but maybe in all courses) to have a dedicated notebook for the course that they will use to record daily questions, etc. in relation to the text.  The notebook would be exchanged with a peer at the start of class.  The peer would share the example(s) they liked best or had a question about.  The sharing would facilitate praise for student work from another and also community building and accountability.
  
• In Introduction to LGBT Studies, I hope to have more student assignments be extensions of the text.  Rather than having students just use the text to illuminate cross cultural comparisons, I would like them to pick a country and research attitudes and laws further on their own to bring back and share with a partner.
  
• In all classes, I think it will be important to have larger projects (interview, experiential, personal or group change or service learning) that will be formally presented in class.
   

• To consider beginning each class with a social construction framework with respect to identity and duality.  I think it may be more important to identify, up front, the dangers of divisive, dualistic identity construction.  I would like to start out by challenging the 'solidity' of big identity structures (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) and look at the damage done by reifying and creating inequality on the basis of these identities.  I would like to add the false duality of 'democrat' and 'republican' and the damage done by dualistic problem-solving approaches as well.
• I would like to integrate many 'thought' experiment assignments as advocated by the authors.  I no longer see the need for exams in sociology so much as for creative, imaginative, application and analysis based experiential assignments.  I could see using a derivation of the assignment on pg. 85 in Heart of... wherein students are asked to be mindful of consumption in considering daily costs (e.g., the cost of one latte could provide hydration therapy for 5 children in a developing country).
• Similarly, I would like to try the 'interbeing project' (pg. 85-86) whereby students observe in a service environment (e.g., fast food, big box store) and look at (without judgment) how shoppers are behaving.  The students then apply the same awareness/mindfulness to their own pattrns of consumption and compare.  For instance, "How attentive are they to what they are doing at any moment?  What would it mean for us if we were more aware of our consumption?"
• I also like the exercise on pg. 86 that employs technology to facilitate mindful consumption by asking students to use online resources available through smart phones, etc. to investigate products or practices just prior to consumption or use.
• As mentioned in an earlier blog, I also want to try the tonglen meditation and time for quiet reflection at the start/end of class mentioned in the appendix.  I think that students will grow to appreciate a brief silence to reflect.  I think they might truly enjoy the opportunity to direct 'peace' and 'happiness' to themselves as well as others (tonglen, as applied here, would allow them to send feelings of peace and happiness to those who are suffering as described in our readings and experiential assignments.

In all of these ventures, I see the authors affirming my desire to 'sit beside' rather than 'stand over' my students (pg. 171) upon my return.

In an institutional context, they suggest the importance of ambassadors helping to spread the word about mindfulness resources throughout the administration and faculty, which I would be excited to do via KCELT and other fall/winter faculty trainings.

And more thoughts from the retreat and "Active Hope"

In reading Active Hope this morning, I was reminded of a few other principles from the retreat I would like to implement in class.  It is important in discussing the problems of the world to remember that all is both infinitely hopeful and depressing at the same time.  For instance, present conditions for LGBT folks remain challenging at best and yet we are closer than I ever thought possible in my lifetime to receiving full marriage equality.  Likewise, conditions must be remembered as fluid and not static.  As mentioned in Active Hope, there is no static "this is how it is and will always be" but rather a process of noting where we are now, what we want to create, and what actions we must take in order to do so.  The authors remind that there can be subtle events that trigger massive shifts in the world ("discontinuous change") and also that almost all significant change goes through the process of first being treated as a joke before being considered a threat and finally as "normal" (this is certainly the case for marriage equality).

In addition to having students (especially in Introduction to Sociology) keep notebooks with their daily examples, questions, and reflections on the text readings, I would like to have Intro. and Social Problems students doing weekly, typed reports that incorporate interviews or experiences with the material.


Students would view problems in a step-wise manner and complete the following for each problem studied:

1. What is the present situation according to the text?
2. What would you like to be different?
3. When in the course of history and/or in a different location has it been different (research or interviews here)?
4. What is your role in making the changes you would like to see (think small in terms of life changes, e-mail, etc.)?
5. Choose one of the options you identified in question 4 and make the change.  Make a vow to do the change for a particular period of time as decided during class.  Record your progress, the impact you observed, and share your successes/challenges with others in the class (changes are more easily made with social support!).
6. Summarize the impact of the change and the feedback you received from others in class.  Identify next steps to complete this change (or talk about how you would modify it to be more successful based on feedback) and/or identify your next action step for completion (if you already successfully completed your first action).

Social Problems students would also complete "service learning profiles" of local agencies as done for national/global ones in their text as well as individual/group personal change projects as described above.

To infuse spirit into education...

...I learned that it helps to have a spiritual experience!

Turns out, as much as I read in the land of self-help and Buddhist dhamma, I just could not wrap my head around equanimity and egolessness without going through the experience of Vipassana meditation.

While the almost 12 day experience was the most arduous I've been through (imagine 11 hours in a single day thinking only about the sensations of the breath in the area above the upper lip!), it was also one of the most productive.  As I began to emerge from my own misery, I was left with the ability to again be of service to others.

In terms of my return to Kirkwood, I was also left with a clearer (though still exceptionally fluid) sense for where my classroom reforms must go in order to infuse spirit in sociology and higher education.  I feel strongly that duality of opinion and solution must be abandoned in favor of experiential sources of inspiration.
I see the need to design the curriculum around healing at all levels.  Amidst all of the pain and misery at the individual, societal, and natural levels, we must begin to identify what type of world we want in future and how to heal the one we have already created that is suffering so greatly.  I hope to start out with students getting to know each other better, but then getting to know themselves better.  I want them to identify ways that they (or their family) might be suffering and participate in solutions (e.g., service learning) to those problems.  I also want them to realize that they  are creating the future world in which they want to live and, therefore, must use the 15 weeks in the semester to carefully reflect on their role in that process.  Likewise, I hope they are able to reflect on their (capital J) job in the world not just in terms of vocation but in terms of service and spiritual nourishment.

Mindful undergraduates

The best thing about the silent retreat (Saturday, February 28th) conducted through the UIHC Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program was seeing all of the happy, mindful undergraduates involved.

During the debriefing after the retreat (when you are allowed to talk and make eye contact!), I spoke with two young men: One a physics and astronomy major and the other pre-med.  FIRST observations about the day for both of them were that they were "happy to not feel any pressure to respond to their phones or texts."

That response, along with the tonglen meditation used with classes by a practitioner in The Heart of Higher Education, makes me more inclined to try short meditations in class (see pg. 159-160).  I envision brief periods of "staying" at the end of class and periods of tonglen at the beginning.  The beginning meditation could start on day one with the sangha (or community-creating) goal of relieving the nervousness everyone feels about speaking in class.  It could later pertain more to course materials or current events and the relief of suffering in light of our interconnectedness.

I am finding The Heart of Higher Education to be more and more appropriate for a KCELT group and discussion as I feel many of the points raised are important things to consider both for the well being of professors and of students.  As it pertains to the former, the authors remind that community of practitioners is important to keep "fresh" the pedagogy as well as to provide support for those who are "experimenting."  As it pertains to the latter, the book's co-author, Arthur Zajonc, speaks about the importance of finding a mentor, community, and of "learning to animate what [he] was receiving" in college (pg. 55).  He quotes Emerson (pg. 55) adding:  

"We see only what we animate.  Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them."

According to the authors, animation is the result of lived (stories, emotions) and experiential (service learning, etc.) connection to the material.  Ultimately the authors wish for students to have a contemplative college education that allows them to divine the meaning of life, their place in it, and how they are meant to serve (vocation) the world.  The quote (pg. 49) that seems particularly applicable to sociology as a discipline in this mission is: "Giving students knowledge as power over the world while failing to help them gain the kind of self-knowledge that gives them power over themselves is a recipe for danger."

The book's authors are generally advocating "integrated education" as a means of producing students that are engaged and not distanced from the material or from each other.  In the course of engaging critiques of the inclusion of 'emotion' or 'humanity' in the classroom, they remind that "a large percentage of the people who oversaw the murder of six million Jews had doctoral degrees from some of the 'great' universities of the era.  We need to understand how integrative forms of teaching and learning can mitigate against educational travesties and tragedies such as this" (pg. 32). Likewise, they caution against classroom discourse that allows for dualistic us/them "fascism of the heart that would kill off anyone who threatens my cherished world view- not with a gas chamber, but with a mental or verbal dismissal that renders that person irrelevant to my life" (pg. 32).  Overall, integrative education is designed to have students "think the world together rather than think it apart, to know the world in a way that empowers educated people to act on behalf of [spiritual and intellectual] wholeness rather than fragmentation" (pg. 22).

Crucial to me at present is the emphasis on contemplation in education (via mindfulness and meditation) as a means of taking care of both teacher and student.  Without awareness of inner worlds, one is unable to respond (rather than react) to the state of outer worlds.  Noting the critique of a former Harvard dean that "students are not soulless, but their university is," the authors share a Yale Law School dean's assertion that "a college is not just a place for the transmission of knowledge but a form for the exploration of life's mystery" (pg. 3).  They ask whether "current educational efforts address the whole human being- mind, heart, and spirit- in ways that contribute best to our future on this fragile planet" (pg. 5) as well as whether education helps "students move past fragmentation and develop a sense of motivation and purpose in the world?" (pg. 7).

For both student and professor, the authors demand that education (pg. 11):

"...[place] primacy of the participating observer whose experiences and relationships form the core of the new sciences.  This emphasis on the lived experience of the scientific 'observer' links the power of scientific knowing with the feelings we have...and the compassion we feel for those who suffer, a shift of perspective whose implications are pivotal for higher education.  In this view, the relationships and experiences of our lives- and the lives of our students- are not dismissed as irrelevant or inconsequential but are fully granted their own standing as building blocks of reality."

In order to achieve the integrated education described in the book, both the focus of teaching and the teacher must be as integrated in mind and body as possible.  I will confess to spending the majority of my time in the classroom thus far abjectly lacking said integration.  I plan to participate in the activities (and many assignments as well) of my students in order to keep me accountable to my fragile, but inchoate, integration.  Ultimately, we must live in a way that reflects that we are "a dynamic whole whose faces are many but whose core is single" (pg. 70) if we are to be happy and healthy in relation to ourselves, each other, other sentient beings, and the Earth as a whole.