I am back from a two week hiatus which really did me well all over. I even spent some time with aunts, uncles, and cousins whom I haven't seen in years up in the Manassas, Virginia area.
When I'm with certain family members, a good feeling tends to wash over me. I am reminded of how we are always growing, always changing. Recently, I have been reading up on the social, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual process involved in our development and how schools (for better or worse) are a place where a lot of this growth takes place. While most teacher education programs focus on the outer life of a child, shouldn’t educators be focusing just as much on a child’s inner life? Hmmmm....
What if school curriculums looked beyond transmitting information and cognitive skill training? What if children were taught how to pay attention to their breathing, their eating and sleep habits, to their world around them, to their emotions and those of others? What if we studied the way our minds work in terms of how we solve problems as well as how we deal with stress and anxiety? If schools want to be a place of tremendous discovery, then they must tap into all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, no?
Contemplative Studies
Fostering this sense of body, mind, and spirit is often referred to as contemplative education. While there is still debate concerning what contemplative education should entail, researchers at Garrison Institute have initially defined it to include classroom practices that foster attention training, secular meditation, and yoga. Reported outcomes (pdf) associated with these practices include increased self-awareness, mindfulness, self-reflection, and enhanced social and emotional intelligence.
The report (2005) goes on to state that "contemplative programs share a common set of outcomes consistent with those of mainstream education. The main short-term or immediate outcomes include enhancing students’ learning and academic performance, improving the school’s social climate as well as promoting emotional balance and pro-social behaviors. These programs also share common long-term or ultimate outcomes including the development of noble qualities such as peacefulness, internal calm, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, patience, generosity and love" (p.5).
While the notion of “contemplative” studies may sound a bit arcane, consider the current socio-historical context surrounding public schools. Tobin Hart, author of the book The Secret Spiritual Life of Children, defines contemplative as “a third way of knowing that complements the rational and the sensory.” In this sense, contemplative techniques are really a form of metacognition – a way of thinking about our thinking – with an additional element that includes thinking about our feelings and what our “spidey” senses are telling us.
In an interview featured in Shambhala Sun (Boyce 2007) magazine, Linda Wallace, an elementary school teacher in Colorado notes that “contemplative practices help them [students] to stop and get a different perspective, and then make a choice. Rather than imposing any belief on them, as some people might believe these practices do, it is quite the opposite. It asks them what their beliefs are and teaches students how to access them” (p.70).
Similarly, Linda Lantieri, an education activist who founded the post 9/11 school program Project Renewal: Building Resiliency from the Inside Out aimed at supporting students in lower Manhattan, notes that academic performance is always important; however, it should incorporate a broader definition of what it means to be educated: “A child who doesn’t have a sense of meaning and purpose, a child who is fearful and anxiety-ridden, is a child who can’t learn…. A bigger vision of education includes a wide range of skills that people need to be successful as they grow up and integrate into society. They will not only need to be academically intelligent but also emotionally, socially, and spiritually intelligent” (pp. 70-71).
Next step: Starting with ourselves
When I first read this article, I was struck with the notion of how this same type of contemplative education is needed by those working with children. When our schools’ teachers and administrators are fearful and anxiety-ridden, when lack a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives, can we really expect much from our educational system?
While many teachers are caring and altruistic, they can get stuck in a rut professionally and quickly burn out. Professional development that focused on contemplative techniques would work well if it was clearly defined and supported by practitioners. While most professional development is well meaning, what many teachers hear is that they are doing a poor job. Thus, there is a right and wrong way to communicate with teachers, and getting it right, whether teaching how to use delicious or how to concentrate on your breathing, can make all the difference. Selling contemplative studies might be easier in that what you’re teaching educators is how to incorporate mind, body, and spirit into one’s practice, to put their wisdom and insight to work through creative, supportive, and effective action.
Given that many of the issues facing our world are deeply spiritual, i.e., they deal with our identity as human beings, educators should not be frightened of this dimension and learn to engage themselves and their students in techniques that will make these internal processes more transparent.
For more information on Awareness and Concentration for Learning, please visit the Garrison Institute website: www.garrisoninstitute.org.
Boyce, B. (2007). Please help me learn who I am. Shambhala Sun, 15(3): 66-73; 119-120.
Garrison Institute. (2005). Contemplation and Education: A Survey of Programs Using Contemplative Techniques in K-12 Educational Settings: A Mapping Report. Retrieved on 02 January 2007 from http://www.garrisoninstitute.org/programs/Mapping_Report.pdf.
I recently ran across this essay Training Kids With Skills For Participatory Culture on the ProjectNML (New Media Literacy) website and thought these ideas were worth sharing.
As we consider the skills needed to increase the effectiveness and impact of educators, communication competencies cannot be underestimated. While mass media currently dominates our Western cultural ecology, we are starting to feel the affects of emerging participatory technology (e.g., social software) that is actively shaping and recasting the social, cultural, legal, political, and economic institutions and practices that surround us. While this new participatory medium does not replace existing media it does serve as another layer in an increasingly diverse and potentially hegemonic media ecology.
Many school children and college students readily circulate in this new participatory media landscape via formal and informal online networks (e.g., MySpace, World of Warcraft, Facebook, Second Life, message boards, YouTube, etc.). What differentiates this generation are the opportunities to produce as much of their media diet as they consume. The goal for educators should then be to assist students in developing the knowledge, skills, confidence, and ethical structures necessary to participate fully and meaningfully in the changes that result from new media technologies. The challenges include addressing a) the unequal opportunities and knowledge gained from these emerging practices; b) the ethical roles and responsibilities associated with venturing into this new risky and uncharted territory; c) the lack of critical reflection practiced by early adopters of new media; and d) the lack of clear evaluation standards associated with work produced utilizing new media as well as how it relates to previous forms of communication and expression.
The author(s) then offer a set of preliminary and emerging skill sets that they feel “kids” need in order to be full participants in the new media ecology.
Preliminary Skills:
Basic Literacy -- 'the ability to read and write.'
Technical Skills -- 'the ability to operate core technologies and tools desired for specific projects.'
Multimodal Literacy -- 'the ability to process information across multiple systems of representation.'
Emerging Skills include:
Play -- "a process of exploration and experimentation."
Performance-- "trying on and playing different identities."
Navigation -- "the ability to move across the media landscape in a purposeful manner, choosing the media that best serves a specific purpose or need, or that might best."
Resourcefulness -- "the ability to identify and capitalize on existing resources."
Networking -- "the ability to identify a community of others who share common goals and interests."
Negotiation -- "the ability to communicate across differences as you move through a multicultural and global media landscape."
Synthesis -- "pulling together information from multiple sources, evaluating its reliability and use value, and constructing a new picture of the world."
Sampling -- "mastering and transforming existing media content for the purposes of self and collective expression."
Teamwork -- "the ability to identify specific functions for each member of the team based on their expertise and then to interact with the team members in an appropriate fashion."
Judgment -- "the ability to make aesthetic and ethical evaluations of media practices and to reflect on your own choices and their consequences."
Discernment -- "the ability to assess the accuracy and appropriateness of available information."
The author(s) suggest that “these skills each lie at the intersection between the self and others,” and that these are more than simply individual skills -- they are cultural skills, that is, they are a part of the shared knowledge and values of our society.
Clearly, these skills are designed to emphasize active participation and the exchange of thoughts, messages, and information, not merely the expression of an individual’s own personality, feelings, and ideas. Moreover, these skills build on the notion of empathy and an “understanding of the impact of one's ideas on others,” and that “any ethical framework we develop should emerge from this understanding that media may have been personalized in the early 1990s but… is now collaborative and communal in an era of networked and mobile communications technologies.”
The essay ends with an example lesson plan that focuses on developing these preliminary and emerging skill sets to the specific subject area of digital storytelling.
In the end, The Project NML essay serves as a lesson in school reform that focuses on how educators should be thinking about literacy education, communication competencies, and schoolings impact on our collective citizenry -- not simply academic achievement. Getting educators to adopt such a stance will take longer than most of us are comfortable with, but alas, it comes with the territory.
I am involved in a project where I am working with a collection of teachers who have been assigned to facilitate action research projects with three to five other teachers. (Action research is defined as practitioners systematically studying their own classroom or administrative practice, through the process of defining research questions, collecting data, analyzing data, synthesizing and sharing with other practitioners what was learned, and taking action for change.)
We met on Monday to discuss the topic of data collection and how to facilitate and coach teachers through this process. During our discussion we took some time to focus on how to deal with panic.
When confronted with a new process or situation, it is natural for us to feel a certain amount of trepidation or fear. By natural I mean all creatures have a tendency to recoil when dealing with an unknown. Try approaching a strange cat or dog and notice how they react to your presence. Even when you put your finger near the soft, open body of a sea anemone, it closes up. Fear of the unknown is a part of what it means to be alive. It can even be said to be a “natural reaction to moving closer to the truth” (Chödrön, 2000).
To facilitate our discussion, we conducted a Chalk Talk (pdf) to help participants explore what they know about a particular subject. Most of the written responses on the subject of how to deal with panic talked about sending soothing chocolate and emails, meeting one and one to discuss concerns and how to proceed, and even meeting for drinks off campus.
As we were debriefing the question and analyzing our collective responses, one participant chimed in and said to the effect: What’s wrong with panic? Isn’t a relative amount of fear a good motivator?
Getting to know fear
When I think about edublogger discussions that focus on the adoption of technology in the classroom, fear is regularly cited as a primary demotivator. Reasons for this sensation vary from issues associated with failure, self-doubt, and self-trust, to name but a few.
In reality, discussions surrounding how to deal with fear don’t quite convince us; they often pull us closer. The important point here seems to be getting to know our fear, examining it closer, staring at it square in the eye – not as a means of solving our problem, but as a way of undoing old ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling.
Confronting fear is really about waking our courage. It’s like adopting the perspective of a young child. Are young children naturally afraid of snakes or is that something they learn? Where do we learn to fear darkness or things that go “bump” in the night? Is it just our imagination or is it something somebody told us? Perhaps it’s a combination of both.
What happens when we become intimate with fear? Disassociating from fear comes naturally and it’s good to know that we do that. However, confronting it brings us into the present moment; it can teach us things we have never read, heard, or seen. Perhaps bravery is not being fearless; it’s being truly intimate with fear.
The “trick” is getting people to keep exploring and not bail out, especially when we discover something is not what we thought or expected it to be. That is something we find out over and over – nothing is what we thought it would be.
Pema Chödrön tells a story (p. 14-15) about one of her teacher’s that worth sharing. While visiting with elementary school students, her teacher, who grew up in Tibet and had to flee the country when the Chinese government was rounding up dissenters, was asked by a student if he was ever afraid. He talked about how his teacher told him to visit places he didn’t like, like graveyards, and encouraged him to explore things that made him uncomfortable. He told a story of traveling to a monastery where he had never been before. As he and his companions neared the gates, he saw a large, snarling, barking guard dog struggling to free itself from its chain. The dog seemed intent on attacking him and his companions, pulling on it’s chain, straining, barking, biting angrily. The teacher and his companions, keeping their distance, walked past the dog and entered the gate. All at once, the chain snapped and the dog rushed at them. The teacher’s companions froze in panic and screamed. The teacher heeled and ran as fast as he could – directly at the dog. The dog was caught completely by surprise and put his tail between his legs and ran away.
When we experience fear, our bodies and minds often freeze in terror. Chödrön suggests that when we “aspire to neither indulge nor repress” our fear – “a hardness is us will dissolve” (p. 15). Learning to be courageous as such is no easy feat, but it is something that we need to be able to model for our students whether they are 5 years old or 55.
As the participant in my group expressed, fear/panic can be an excellent teacher. It can remind us what our students feel when they encounter new material to learn. A little bit of fear is like a message telling us important information about who we are and how we feel about things. It also becomes a wonderful “teachable moment” allowing us to examine why we feel the way we do. Ignoring fear only perpetuates ignorance; confronting fear is not the solution to our feeling the way we do, but it does allow us an opportunity to look at it, examine our feelings, and perhaps take an alternate route.
So next time you are introducing new technologies to others and you sense panic and doom, relax and smile – you have just created a wonderful opportunity, a teachable moment, for people to learn about themselves as human beings as well as advancing their knowledge about teaching and learning with technology. To quote Bob Dylan, one of my favorite philosophers: “I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.”
Reference:
Chödrön, P. (2000). When things fall apart: Heart advice for difficult times. Boston, MA: Shambala Publications.
Photo Credits:
Panic by cboyle. Retrieved 10 January 2007 from www.flickr.com/photos/qualicum/20810634/.
Sea anemone by druk_die_knopple. Retrieved 10 January 2007 from www.flickr.com/photos/booshank/130038905/.
echo1 by Kristal. Retrieved 10 January 2007 from www.flickr.com/photos/kristyk/161966943/
As I go about researching social software in teacher education, a few questions have popped up that I was hoping to get your perspective on. If you are a teacher your response is invaluable. If you know one that blogs, please pass this post along.
There are no correct answers. Your thoughts are what's important. Please consider the following:
Where and when do you blog?
How much time do you spend blogging?
Do you read other blogs? If so, do you leave comments and return to see what others have said?
In what ways has blogging helped you?
What are the benefits or rewards you receive from blogging?
Please feel free to leave your response in the comments section below or if you prefer, drop me a line privately (csessums@gmail.com).
And thank you for taking the time to respond.
Photo credits: Because by evetsggod. Retrieved 15 January 2007 from www.flickr.com/photos/evetsggod/102846157/.
la gabbianella e il gatto by ezra rhesus. Retrieved 15 January 2007 from www.flickr.com/photos/ezrarhesus/218270700/.
Riding the train of thought initiated by Will Richardson regarding sea change and What the Future Holds (?), I too got the shivers recently reading about a new interface design for composing music.
Reactable’s website describes their design as a “multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.”
Their instrument is intended to be
collaborative: several performers (locally or remotely)
intuitive: zero manual, zero instructions
sonically challenging and interesting
learnable and masterable (even for children)
suitable for novices (installations) and advanced electronic musicians (concerts)
Similar to screen technology the reactable’s tangible user interface allows a person to interact with digital information through a physical environment; it makes visible the processes associated with shaping and controlling wave forms that characterize the musical notes we hear. A colleague of mine refers to this type of design as “transparent reality,” that is, making elements once hidden open and viewable. The reactable allows you to see how combinations of filters work together to affect the music that is produced. The feedback is visual, aural, and tactile which is quite similar to acoustic instruments. Yet the reactable allows you to see the waves and patterns that are conventionally quite difficult to see with the unaided eye. The visual feedback allows users to see each other’s connections as well as play off each other’s ideas and movements as they evolve. (Call it eye-jamming!)
So why does this excite me?
While the world is not a computer, computing is becoming more ubiquitous. However, the ways we have of interacting and controlling digital media is somewhat limited (type, type, type, click, scroll). Social and tangible computing represents the next big sea-change in how we interact with the digital world, yet it has been rather slow in coming. What really excites me is what such haptic devices trigger in my mind about educational change.
I love listening to and playing music. I know may people who say they would love to learn how to but were never able to find the time or motivation to do so. Imagine owning such a device like a reactable where you could select rhythms and musical samples without formal musical training and create your own compositions. And since the reactable is not like a word processor, you could compose music and literally play with others simultaneously (Think tabletop Garageband).
The reactable also triggered an idea in my head about educational reform: One of the most amazing educators I have ever met was my daughter’s middle school band director. His program starts with an introduction to instruments and basic instruction the summer before school begins. He sets a goal of a winter concert and works each day with this motley group of 11-12 year olds teaching them how to read music, how to play their instrument, how to play together, how to play in time and in tune, etc. -- So many subtle yet critical details. By December the concert goes off with a squeak and a bang while parents coo and giggle over renditions of Jingle Bells and Old Macdonald. By the time students reach age 14, they are playing complex arrangements by Claude Debussy, Aaron Copland, and Count Basie. I found myself absolutely mesmerized by how far these kids were able to progress within a relatively short amount of time.
The music program took time, effort, patience, and persistence by all people involved. I thought about the mathematics teacher, the science teacher, the reading and social studies teachers and wondered how they would feel about designing their courses similarly? Why couldn’t we design courses that had a teacher working with the same students for three years, where performance could be measured regularly and demonstrated publicly?
Similar to the notion of embodied interaction outlined in Paul Dourish’s Where the Action Is, tangible and social computing represent an opportunity to reconsider how we interact and participate with our environment. The same ideological shift needs to take place in our educational institutions. Instead of arguing how to recruit and retain teachers into an environment and working conditions that are broken and uninspiring, we need to change the environment, change the ways schools operate.
I’m not really sure what’s holding up this change? It’s not a technology issue. Policies can be rewritten and adjusted. So why do researchers and politicians only talk about a crisis in education rather than taking action? Is an atelier model too foreign, too cumbersome, too unrestrictive? What keeps us from changing or trying something different? Really?
“Becoming a force of nature doesn't mean that all of our aspirations must be "grand." First steps are often small, and initial visions that focus energy effectively often address immediate problems. What matters is engagement in the service of a larger purpose rather than lofty aspirations that paralyze action. Indeed, it's a dangerous trap to believe that we can pursue only "great visions."” -- From Senge, P., et al. (2005) Presence : An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society. P. 138.
Photo credits:
reactable photo: at the exhibition by ben cerveny. “Let the Music Play” by CraigOppy. Christmas Concert by dgroth.
This post is the beginning of a conversation I hope to see developed collectively/collaboratively over the coming months. It represents the tip of the iceberg and the ideas herein will continue to be discussed, debated, and refined over time. So, without further ado, let’s start with the basics:
Our current educational system/structure/policies in the United States are too rigid to meet the demands of a changing social and economic landscape.
The Read/Write Web has opened the doors to significantly shifting the way teaching and learning takes place.
To overcome this unbalanced and inflexible system, we need significant changes in educational policies starting at the federal level.
As such, our next president needs to be an educator -- a visionary who understands the importance and value of teaching, learning, technology, and its social significance.
At present, there does not seem to be a viable candidate articulate in these matters.
Therefore, it necessary for us, the blogging and edublogging communities, to make education and read/write technology a social/economic priority.
We need to tap into the collective social capital of edubloggers and the overall blogging community to articulate this issue clearly so that it becomes a manifest political priority.
Failure of the next president to make education a personally significant issue will lead to continued institutionalized mediocrity and social injustice.
A clear agenda (nee manifesto) and strategies to achieve both manageable and sustainable outcomes must be articulated and disseminated across the spectrum of available media.
We’ve got less than two years to make this happen. We have an opportunity to make a difference.
It is incumbent on you to speak up and let your thoughts be known.
To quote Alvin Toffler: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Photo credits: Affordable Education (no text) and Community Flag by The Opportunity Agenda.
Good news! Here is the press release regarding the re-examination of the Blackboard patent from Groklaw. How this ever passed muster in the first place is anyone's guess. Yet, it appears the legal system just might live up to its promise of fairness before the law. Albeit, this was a mighty unctuous way for it to happen....
"The US Patent and Trademark Office today ordered re-examination of the e-learning patent owned by Blackboard Inc. Once again, we have the Software Freedom Law Center to thank for filing the request. Their press release tells us this:
"The Patent Office found that prior art cited in SFLC's request raises "a substantial new question of patentability" regarding all 44 claims of Blackboard's patent....
"A re-examination of this type usually takes one or two years to complete. Roughly 70% of re-examinations are successful in having a patent narrowed or completely revoked."
Here's the press release:
NEW YORK, January 25, 2007 -- In response to a formal request filed by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today ordered re-examination of the e-learning patent owned by Blackboard Inc.
SFLC, provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software, had filed the request in November on behalf of Sakai, Moodle, and ATutor, three open source educational software projects. The Patent Office found that prior art cited in SFLC's request raises "a substantial new question of patentability" regarding all 44 claims of Blackboard's patent.
The patent in question, "Internet-based education support system and methods" (U.S. 6988138), grants Blackboard a monopoly on most educational software that differentiates between the roles of teacher and student until the year 2022. In July, Blackboard filed a lawsuit against Desire2Learn, a competing educational software maker, alleging infringement of its e-learning patent.
Although Desire2Learn's software is not open source, the open source and educational software communities responded with concern to the possibility of an additional lawsuit that targets them.
"We filed this re-examination request to help free software developers create and distribute their original software without having to fear being sued over this patent, a patent that should never have been awarded in the first place," said Richard Fontana, the SFLC attorney who filed the re-examination request. "We are now a step closer to keeping everyone safe from this patent."
A re-examination of this type usually takes one or two years to complete. Roughly 70% of re-examinations are successful in having a patent narrowed or completely revoked.
Shortly after SFLC filed its request for re-examination, Desire2Learn filed its own separate re-examination request. The USPTO has not yet acted on that request.
About the Software Freedom Law Center
The Software Freedom Law Center -- chaired by Eben Moglen, one of the world's leading experts on intellectual property law as applied to software -- provides legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software. The Law Center is dedicated to assisting non-profit open source developers and projects. For criteria on eligibility and to apply for assistance, please contact the Law Center directly.
I have begun drafting some theses regarding educational reform for your consideration. You might notice they have somewhat of a Cluetrainian flavor, and they do.
Please do not be afraid to share your views. Tell me I'm right, wrong, on target, and/or out of my mind. Your input is critical to a bottom-up, socially emergent voice of change. Remember, we're in this together.
Learning is a social activity. It is built upon conversations.
Schools are people.
Every child can learn and grow socially, cognitively, and spiritually.
Teaching and learning should be a transparent process.
The Internet is people. Educational technology is about people.
People have opinions and perspectives; this is how we distinguish each other.
The Internet is enabling conversations around the globe.
Social software enables a new type of teaching and learning that subverts conventional forms of teaching and learning.
When learners have questions, shouldn’t they be allowed to ask for help from each other?
People have the power to educate themselves.
People can gather more information more quickly then they could before the Internet existed.
The Internet is about emergence.
The Internet permits new forms of knowledge management.
The Internet encourages multiple forms of participation.
Internet security is more about stemming conversations rather than encouraging them.
When rules of usage are top-down and policy driven they disenfranchise users. Rules that regulate usage should be decided by users themselves who then self-manage their activity.
The need for control is inevitable, however it must include checks and balances that support all stakeholders.
Communities of practice can support students and teachers personally and professionally.
School is a metaphysical construct. It provides a means for people to interact.
Schools can change lives of individuals for better or worse.
Students and teachers are knowledge creators. They are more than mere passive receivers of knowledge and information.
Schools have turned into bureaucratic hegemonies. Policies drive curriculum, not authentic learning.
As such, schools are in crisis. They no longer serve learners.
Learning is a political activity. Learning involves social relationships that relate directly and indirectly with issues of authority and power.
Learning that involves building on social capital is powerful. Learning that taps into the opportunities afforded by social networking technologies will be smarter.
Learners can communicate with each other directly across the globe. Time, space, and distance thus take on a new meaning.
Schools must share the concerns of their community.
A school must belong to their community.
Schools (administrators, teachers, staff) need to be more involved with the people they hope to create relationships with.
Learning is about examination of our selves, our individual and collective thoughts, our values, our societies, and the roles assumed by each.
To succeed, schools need to examine the conditions within the communities in which they operate and address the needs of that community directly with active participation from community members.
No Child Left Behind is not a position. It is a bombastic, under funded mandate cast in a pejorative rhetoric.
Many schools operate out of fear of their constituencies and stakeholders. Many schools are afraid what the public would say if they knew what was going on inside.
Changing schools requires experimentation, trying things differently.
Schools need to be picky in terms of who is allowed to manage the infrastructure and who is responsible for working with students.
Schools must openly examine their assumptions and hidden curriculums and communicate their findings their stakeholders.
When schools cannot examine and share their goals and assumptions openly with community members, they will die.
School policies can be poisonous and generate distrust if they are not negotiated with stakeholders.
Emergence happens. Schools need to let it happen.
Stakeholders (parents, teachers, students, administrators, community members, local businesses and government) want to be involved in planning and curricular decisions.
Jargon kills conversations.
Standardized tests should be diagnostic tools, not school grades.
High stakes tests should never be tied to teacher or school evaluations or merit pay.
If schools are broken and broke, who designed it?
Who needs school?
The prosumer has power. If schools fail to recognize this, then learners should go elsewhere.
Schools can be a part of something special. They can promote social justice, confront issues of poverty and disenfranchisement, and set the stage for a brighter future.
The report (2005) goes on to state that "contemplative programs share a common set of outcomes consistent with those of mainstream education. The main short-term or immediate outcomes include enhancing students’ learning and academic performance, improving the school’s social climate as well as promoting emotional balance and pro-social behaviors. These programs also share common long-term or ultimate outcomes including the development of noble qualities such as peacefulness, internal calm, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, patience, generosity and love" (p.5).
While the notion of “contemplative” studies may sound a bit arcane, consider the current socio-historical context surrounding public schools. Tobin Hart, author of the book The Secret Spiritual Life of Children, defines contemplative as “a third way of knowing that complements the rational and the sensory.” In this sense, contemplative techniques are really a form of metacognition – a way of thinking about our thinking – with an additional element that includes thinking about our feelings and what our “spidey” senses are telling us.
Clearly, these skills are designed to emphasize active participation and the exchange of thoughts, messages, and information, not merely the expression of an individual’s own personality, feelings, and ideas. Moreover, these skills build on the notion of empathy and an “understanding of the impact of one's ideas on others,” and that “any ethical framework we develop should emerge from this understanding that media may have been personalized in the early 1990s but… is now collaborative and communal in an era of networked and mobile communications technologies.”
Similar to 
The music program took time, effort, patience, and persistence by all people involved. I thought about the mathematics teacher, the science teacher, the reading and social studies teachers and wondered how they would feel about designing their courses similarly? Why couldn’t we design courses that had a teacher working with the same students for three years, where performance could be measured regularly and demonstrated publicly? 
I have begun drafting some theses regarding educational reform for your consideration. You might notice they have somewhat of a Cluetrainian flavor, and they do. 
