Much of middle school and high school education is mind-numbing, with students being taught to the test, based on a rigid curriculum that elevates breadth over depth and memorization over critical inquiry. How might it be done differently? Educator Ira Rabois spent almost three decades teaching secondary students at an alternative public school. He discusses an approach to pedagogy that emphasizes compassion and Socratic questioning.
Resources:
Ira Rabois, Compassionate Critical Thinking: How Mindfulness, Creativity, Empathy, and Socratic Questioning Can Transform Teaching Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2016
Fantastic interview! So relevant and useful to my experience as a teacher.” This part resonates particularly strongly for me right now:
“Mindfulness is not just about looking inwards, but also about looking outwards more clearly. Needs to be connected to consequences and ethical behavior. Mindfulness always appears in a context of wisdom, and the consequences of one’s actions. Compassion is not just a word, not just thinking of others; it’s dropping your boundaries so that other people in the world are as important and as valuable as you are: a type of honesty with the world.” –Ira Rabois
Very interesting show. Thank you Sasha Lilley. I’m a private tutor not a classroom instructor but I enjoy having these concepts to think about.