Center for Teaching and Learning
These are the handouts Beth Hackett and Shu-chin Wu gave to the participants of this workshop.
CTL workshop
Mindfulness and Contemplative Practice in the Classroom
March 28, 2007
Beth Hackett
Shu-chin Wu
Shu-chin on Mindfulness and Education:
Stop Be Look See
- Mindfulness Practice: Stop----------Silence
Education:
- Listen to inner speech
- Mindfulness Practice: Be----------Presence
Education:
- Cultivate attention, calmness and a sense of ease
- Integrate thought and feeling
- Develop equanimity, reduce stress and anxiety
- Acknowledge and accept who we are and what we think
- Mindfulness Practice: Look----------Openness and Awareness
Education:
- Aware of immediate, primary experience
- Aware of judgments and expectations
- Aware of more than one perspective
- Open to new information
- Mindfulness Practice: See----------Choice
Education:
- Heightened awareness of the choices that we make
- Access our inner knowledge
Examples:
- Focusing on Perception and Awareness
- Free Write
- Reflection on reflection
- Focusing on Students Engaging in Their Own Education
- Bookstore Essay
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Day One
WS 340, Fall 2006
Go over syllabus for content, seminar, grading, etc.
Exercise - flash on screen
“High theory is morally and intellectually bankrupt because inaccessible and/or irrelevant to the vast majority of people. Feminist theory is no exception.”
Give them 30 seconds to write down reaction. Collect.
Ask: what do you think the quot. is getting at? What is the author trying to communicate? Try as simply as you can to describe what the author is saying, not what you think/feel about what the author is saying?
Read out the cards. Thoughts?
Upon encountering a text (or idea, person, painting, object, etc.) in an academic setting.
I. What we tend to do
1.) Immediate Emotional/judgmental response
- often unacknowledged, not processed
2.) Quick Intellectual/judgmental Critique
- usual focus of academic work
- often unwittingly informed by 1.
II. What I’d like to try in here
1.) Quiet the mind, so can focus attention on what you choose (e.g., the reading)
2.) Emotional/judgmental response
- note well; why are you having this response? Try to bracket it as go on.
3.) Generous, careful consideration: what is the author/text trying to say?
- principle of charity
- inquiry and analysis, but not (yet) critique
- from what perspective is this plausible?
- connections to other works, things you know
4.) Time to digest/process unconsciously
- “Permit yourself … to stare out the window, to stay in bed, to have lunch, to have tea, to walk the dog, to fingerpaint, to listen to the texts you’re teaching and face the consequences. Call it research”
(Radical Presence: Teaching as Contemplative Practice, Mary Rose O”Reilley, p. 14-15).
- “aha” moments
5.) Intellectual Critique/Evaluation
- revisit your initial responses
6.) Time to digest/process
7.) Consciously Re-evaluate
Seem valuable to you? Problems?
Why do I want to try it?
Facilitates deeper understanding of text, self, & others
- how?
But difficult & counter-cultural
Why difficult? sprint vs. marathon/ sort out quickly (internet) vs. focus deeply
- time-consuming! May have to cut down on reading to do this – we’ll see
Why counter-cultural? Rare and threatening to those with power
Uppity for women to presume to do this, so perhaps particularly approp for fem theory class, but also at the core of a liberal education.
Purpose of a Liberal Education: to educate for freedom; i.e., to prepare students to live intentionally, guided by their own conscious choices, not others’ wishes or their own unconscious motivations, and to recognize that everyone has the right to live this way.
Entails that one must not only be knowledgeable, but aware & respectful of self & others.
Initially, focus in class will be step 3, building to 5 & 7.
For next time: think about this and bring questions/comments.
Do reading listed.
For Narayan -
Write out your initial reaction (emotional/intellectual)
Re-read as generously as you can.
- write out answers to study ques. 1-3
Sit with it.
Write out questions about what is unclear to you.
Will start here in class next Thursday.
Obviously can’t read it right before class!
http://www.contemplativemind.org/
 |
Agnes Scott College Center for Teaching and Learning |