Collaborative Teaching Quotes

Stories are masks of God. That's a story, too, of course. I made it up, in collaborations with Joseph Campbell and Scheherazade, Jesus and the Buddha and the Brother's Grimm. Stories show us how to bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceiveable. Stories provide meaning, texture, layers and layers of truth. Stories can also trivialize. Offered indelicately, taken too literally, stories become reductionist tools, rendering things neat and therefore false. Even as we must revere and cherish the masks we variously create, Campbell reminds us, we must not mistake the masks of God for God. So it seemes to me that one of the most vital things we can teach our children is how to be storytellers. How to tell stories that are rigorously, insistently, beautifully true. And how to believe them.

Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs”—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.3 More broadly, they believe, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasize general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations.

Collaboration allows teachers to capture each other's fund of collective intelligence.

In a research-poor context,isolated experience replaces professional knowledge as the dominant influence on how teachers teach.

Real education happens only by failing, changing, challenging, and adjusting. All of those gerunds apply to teachers as well as students. No person is an “educator,” because education is not something one person does to another. Education is an imprecise process, a dance, and a collaborative experience.

Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs”—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.

It may take a decade or two before the extent of Shakespeare's collaboration passes from the graduate seminar to the undergraduate lecture, and finally to popular biography, by which time it will be one of those things about Shakespeare that we thought we knew all along. Right now, though, for those who teach the plays and write about his life, it hasn't been easy abandoning old habits of mind. I know that I am not alone in struggling to come to terms with how profoundly it alters one's sense of how Shakespeare wrote, especially toward the end of his career when he coauthored half of his last ten plays. For intermixed with five that he wrote alone, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest, are Timon of Athens (written with Thomas Middleton), Pericles (written with George Wilkins), and Henry the Eighth, the lost Cardenio, and The Two Noble Kinsmen (all written with John Fletcher).

While CEO of P&G, John Pepper was once asked in an interview which skill or characteristic was most important to look for when hiring new employees. Was it leadership? Analytical ability? Problem solving? Collaboration? Strategic thinking? Or something else? His answer was integrity. He explained, “All the rest, we can teach them after they get here.

So what should we be teaching? Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching ‘the four Cs’ – critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.

So what should we be teaching? Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs”—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.3 More

So what should we be teaching? Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs”—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.3 More broadly, they believe, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasize general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations.

Studies show that one third to one half of us are introverts. This means that you have more introverted kids in your class than you think. Even at a young age, some introverts become adept at acting like extroverts, making it tough to spot them. Balance teaching methods to serve all the kids in your class. Extroverts tend to like movement, stimulation, collaborative work. Introverts prefer lectures, downtime, and independent projects. Mix it up fairly.

If pain sometimes shatters the creature's false self sufficiency, yet in supreme Trial or Sacrifice' it teaches him the self-sufficiency which really ought to be his - the 'strength which, if Heaven gave it may be called his own': for then, in the absence of all merely natural motives and supports he acts in that strength, and that alone, which God confers upon him through his subjected will. Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God's, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it. In all other acts our will is fed through nature, that is, through created things other than the self - through the desires which our physical organism and our heredity supply to us. When we act from ourselves alone, that is, from God in ourselves - we are collaborators in, or live instruments of creation: and that is why such an act undoes with 'backward mutters of deserving power' the uncreative spell which Adam laid upon his species.

instructional conversation, the kind of talk that acts like a mental blender, mixing together new material with existing knowledge in a student’s schema. Using discussion protocols like World Café, Four on a Pencil, and Give One Get One help create variety in the ways students talk to each other in the classroom, offering a chance to both work collaboratively and have their individual voices heard.

Dr. Victor Trastek, CEO of Mayo Arizona, continually reinforces the principle of “teach, don’t blame.” When something goes wrong, when a mistake occurs, it should be viewed as a teachable moment, an opportunity to get better. Does constructive teaching always supplant blaming? No. However, Dr. Trastek is relentless in articulating a principle that strengthens self-confidence and self-esteem, which paves the way for true collaboration.

On the other hand, there are those who aren’t quite convinced that the good old days were as marvelous as advertised. They’ve come to realize that might and right don’t overlap seamlessly, and that father didn’t always know best. They now recognize that the rod was an unnecessary and even counterproductive teaching tool, that thrashings were a pretty extreme way to make a point, and that there’s more to raising a kid than carrots and sticks. They believe that allowing children to have a voice in their own affairs might actually be good preparation for The Real World.

So what should we be teaching? Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs”—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.3 More broadly, they believe, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasize general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations. In order to keep up with the world of 2050, you will need not merely to invent new ideas and products but above all to reinvent yourself again and again.

As Schwartz states: “If one accepts the basic idea that people have an innate drive toward nurturing their own health, this implies that, when people have chronic problems, something gets in the way of accessing inner resources. Recognizing this, the role of therapists is to collaborate rather than to teach, confront, or fill holes in your psyche.”14 The first step in this collaboration is to assure the internal system that all parts are welcome and that all of them—even those that are suicidal or destructive—were formed in an attempt to protect the self-system, no matter how much they now seem to threaten it.

Thus it is that the statement on the Jews issued by Vatican II in 1965 was nothing more (or less) than a forceful restatement of the traditional church teachings in language appropriate for the time. Unfortunately, this particular manifestation of anti-Catholic history lives on with renewed venom in recent indictments of Pope Pius XII as Hitler’s collaborator in the Holocaust, which also is said to be quite in keeping with the pope’s support of Franco and the Spanish fascists. Ironically, this historical libel has mainly been propagated by alienated Catholics, while the most compelling support for the pope has come from Jews.

All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show is how. Without them, our lives get made up for us by other people. Human beings have always joined in groups to imagine how best to live and help one another carry out the plan. The essential function of human community is to arrive at some agreement on what we need, what life ought to be, what we want our children to learn, and then to collaborate in learning and teaching so that we and they can go on the way we think is the right way. Small communities with strong traditions are often clear about the way they want to go, and good at teaching it. But tradition may crystallize imagination to the point of fossilizing it as dogma and forbidding new ideas. Larger communities, such as cities, open up room for people to imagine alternatives, learn from people of different traditions, and invent their own ways to live. As alternatives proliferate, however, those who take the responsibility of teaching find little social and moral consensus on way they should be teaching -- what we need, what life ought to be. In our time of huge populations exposed continuously to reproduced voices, images, and words used for commercial and political profit, there are too many people who want to and can invent us, own us, shape and control us through seductive and powerful media. It's a lot to ask of a child to find a way through all that alone. Nobody can do anything very much, really, alone. What a child needs, what we all need, is to find some other people who have imagined life along lines that make sense to us and allow some freedom, and listen to them. Not hear passively, but listen.

A beautiful example of a long-term intention was presented by A. T. Ariyaratane, a Buddhist elder, who is considered to be the Gandhi of Sri Lanka. For seventeen years there had been a terrible civil war in Sri Lanka. At one point, the Norwegians were able to broker peace, and once the peace treaty was in effect, Ariyaratane called the followers of his Sarvodaya movement together. Sarvodaya combines Buddhist principles of right livelihood, right action, right understanding, and compassion and has organized citizens in one-third of that nation’s villages to dig wells, build schools, meditate, and collaborate as a form of spiritual practice. Over 650,000 people came to the gathering to hear how he envisioned the future of Sri Lanka. At this gathering he proposed a five-hundred-year peace plan, saying, “The Buddha teaches we must understand causes and conditions. It’s taken us five hundred years to create the suffering that we are in now.” Ari described the effects of four hundred years of colonialism, of five hundred years of struggle between Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists, and of several centuries of economic disparity. He went on, “It will take us five hundred years to change these conditions.” Ariyaratane then offered solutions, proposing a plan to heal the country. The plan begins with five years of cease-fire and ten years of rebuilding roads and schools. Then it goes on for twenty-five years of programs to learn one another’s languages and cultures, and fifty years of work to right economic injustice, and to bring the islanders back together as a whole. And every hundred years there will be a grand council of elders to take stock on how the plan is going. This is a sacred intention, the long-term vision of an elder. In the same way, if we envision the fulfillment of wisdom and compassion in the United States, it becomes clear that the richest nation on earth must provide health care for its children; that the most productive nation on earth must find ways to combine trade with justice; that a creative society must find ways to grow and to protect the environment and plan sustainable development for generations ahead. A nation founded on democracy must bring enfranchisement to all citizens at home and then offer the same spirit of international cooperation and respect globally. We are all in this together.

Literacy was to be developed in a socially constructed environment so that new ideas and information learned from texts could be shared and spread among one another and those in the community. Members of all ages and experiences with reading would assemble to teach one another. Although individual literacy was valued, these societies were highly collaborative and prompted social responsibility to share knowledge gained from acts of literacy rather than keep education to one’s self. This collaboration for literacy learning built the foundation of the “chain letter of instruction” model, which embodied a shared accountability for knowledge (Fisher, 2004). If one person, for example, acquired knowledge, it was then his or her responsibility to pass it on to others to create a flame-like effect. To keep knowledge to one’s self was seen as a selfish act, and each person therefore was responsible to elevate others through education in the immediate and larger community. This ideal of collectivism is in direct conflict with schools today, as schools are largely grounded in competition and individualism. This is perhaps one major reason why students of color often do not reach their full potential in schools—because schools are in disharmony with their histories and identities.

It is possible that we are already living through the twilight of democracy; that our civilization may already be heading for anarchy or tyranny, as the ancient philosophers and America's founders once feared; that a new generation of clercs, the advocates of illiberal or authoritarian ideas, will come to power in the twenty-first century, just as they did in the twentieth; that their visions of the world, born of resentment, anger, or deep, messianic dreams, could triumph. Maybe new information technology will continue to undermine consensus, divide people further, and increase polarization until only violence can determine who rules. Maybe fear of disease will create fear of freedom. Or maybe the coronavirus will inspire a new sense of global solidarity. Maybe we will renew and modernize our institutions. Maybe international cooperation will expand after the entire world has had the same set of experiences at the same time: lockdown, quarantine, fear of infection, fear of death. Maybe scientists around the world will find new ways to collaborate, above and beyond politics. Maybe the reality of illness and death will teach people to be suspicious of hucksters, liars, and purveyors of disinformation. Maddeningly, we have to accept that both futures are possible. No political victory is ever permanent, no definition of "the nation" is guaranteed to last, and no elite of any kind, whether so-called "populist" or so-called "liberal" or so called "aristocratic," rules forever.

These include: 1.Do the Right Thing—the principle of integrity. We see in George Marshall the endless determination to tell the truth and never to curry favor by thought, word, or deed. Every one of General Marshall’s actions was grounded in the highest sense of integrity, honesty, and fair play. 2.Master the Situation—the principle of action. Here we see the classic “know your stuff and take appropriate action” principle of leadership coupled with a determination to drive events and not be driven by them. Marshall knew that given the enormous challenges of World War II followed by the turbulent postwar era, action would be the heart of his remit. And he was right. 3.Serve the Greater Good—the principle of selflessness. In George Marshall we see a leader who always asked himself, “What is the morally correct course of action that does the greatest good for the greatest number?” as opposed to the careerist leader who asks “What’s in it for me?” and shades recommendations in a way that creates self-benefit. 4.Speak Your Mind—the principle of candor. Always happiest when speaking simple truth to power, General and Secretary Marshall never sugarcoated the message to the global leaders he served so well. 5.Lay the Groundwork—the principle of preparation. As is often said at the nation’s service academies, know the six Ps: Prior Preparation Prevents Particularly Poor Performance. 6.Share Knowledge—the principle of learning and teaching. Like Larry Bird on a basketball court, George Marshall made everyone on his team look better by collaborating and sharing information. 7.Choose and Reward the Right People—the principle of fairness. Unbiased, color- and religion-blind, George Marshall simply picked the very best people. 8.Focus on the Big Picture—the principle of vision. Marshall always kept himself at the strategic level, content to delegate to subordinates when necessary. 9.Support the Troops—the principle of caring. Deeply involved in ensuring that the men and women under his command prospered, General and Secretary Marshall taught that if we are loyal down the chain of command, that loyalty will be repaid not only in kind but in operational outcomes as well.

Thomas Piketty, the economist of the moment, writes that after he obtained an economics doctorate, and spent several years teaching at M.I.T., “I was only too aware of the fact that I knew nothing about the world’s economic problems.” Piketty goes on, “To put it bluntly, the discipline of economics has to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences.” The student group agrees with Piketty. In the open letter, the students argue that an economics degree “should include interdisciplinary approaches and allow students to engage with other social sciences and the humanities.” But the students’ main beef is that, even within the subject of economics, the standard curriculum is overly restrictive, and excludes much that is valuable. The letter calls for students to be exposed to “a variety of theoretical perspectives, from the commonly taught neoclassically-based approaches to the largely excluded classical, post-Keynesian, institutional, ecological, feminist, Marxist and Austrian traditions—among others. Most economics students graduate without ever encountering

We know and believe in our hearts that children become more engaged, motivated, and successful when they have choice over what they read, what they write, and the order in which they schedule their days. Nevertheless we have found it hard to give up being in control of their literacy choices. Then we think about our own need for choice. We realize we have much in common with our children. There are days when we come to school ready to settle in and get right down to business. Other days, working alone doesn't seem as enticing, so we collaborate with our teaching partners. Our needs tend to dictate how we organize our time and activities. If a quiet morning of preparation is interrupted by a staff meeting, our minds and bodies resist. We are motivated, engaged, and productive when we are in control of our schedules. We know the expectations of our jobs and want to be trusted to choose the order of our daily schedules and the approaches we take to meeting them. Why should our children feel any differently?

A Hard Left For High-School History The College Board version of our national story BY STANLEY KURTZ | 1215 words AT the height of the “culture wars” of the late 1980s and early 1990s, conservatives were alive to the dangers of a leftist takeover of American higher education. Today, with the coup all but complete, conservatives take the loss of the academy for granted and largely ignore it. Meanwhile, America’s college-educated Millennial generation drifts ever farther leftward. Now, however, an ambitious attempt to force a leftist tilt onto high-school U.S.-history courses has the potential to shake conservatives out of their lethargy, pulling them back into the education wars, perhaps to retake some lost ground. The College Board, the private company that develops the SAT and Advanced Placement (AP) exams, recently ignited a firestorm by releasing, with little public notice, a lengthy, highly directive, and radically revisionist “framework” for teaching AP U.S. history. The new framework replaces brief guidelines that once allowed states, school districts, and teachers to present U.S. history as they saw fit. The College Board has promised to generate detailed guidelines for the entire range of AP courses (including government and politics, world history, and European history), and in doing so it has effectively set itself up as a national school board. Dictating curricula for its AP courses allows the College Board to circumvent state standards, virtually nationalizing America’s high schools, in violation of cherished principles of local control. Unchecked, this will result in a high-school curriculum every bit as biased and politicized as the curriculum now dominant in America’s colleges. Not coincidentally, David Coleman, the new head of the College Board, is also the architect of the Common Core, another effort to effectively nationalize American K–12 education, focusing on English and math skills. As president of the College Board, Coleman has found a way to take control of history, social studies, and civics as well, pushing them far to the left without exposing himself to direct public accountability. Although the College Board has steadfastly denied that its new AP U.S. history (APUSH) guidelines are politically biased, the intellectual background of the effort indicates otherwise. The early stages of the APUSH redesign overlapped with a collaborative venture between the College Board and the Organization of American Historians to rework U.S.-history survey courses along “internationalist” lines. The goal was to undercut anything that smacked of American exceptionalism, the notion that, as a nation uniquely constituted around principles of liberty and equality, America stands as a model of self-government for the world. Accordingly, the College Board’s new framework for AP U.S. history eliminates the traditional emphasis on Puritan leader John Winthrop’s “City upon a Hill” sermon and its echoes in American history. The Founding itself is demoted and dissolved within a broader focus on transcontinental developments, chiefly the birth of an exploitative international capitalism grounded in the slave trade. The Founders’ commitment to republican principles is dismissed as evidence of a benighted belief in European cultural superiority. Thomas Bender, the NYU historian who leads the Organization of American Historians’ effort to globalize and denationalize American history, collaborated with the high-school and college teachers who eventually came to lead the College Board’s APUSH redesign effort. Bender frames his movement as a counterpoint to the exceptionalist perspective that dominated American foreign policy during the George W. Bush ad ministration. Bender also openly hopes that students exposed to his approach will sympathize with Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s willingness to use foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution rather than with Justice Antonin Scalia�

There is no way to overestimate the critical importance of adult teamwork and communication when we have challenging students like Toni. In isolation, teachers can feel like the last soldier on the battlefield, defending modern civilization against the potential chaos of a world filled with unruly teenagers. Toni was seen as one of those chaos-threatening students. She would often display her bad behavior in front of a lone teacher, provoking all of the consequences the adult had available. As a teacher once admitted to me when reflecting on his own emotional buildup and fear of losing control, which had propelled him to become more harshly punitive than he even expected he could be: "Not on my watch were we going to lose the battle!" When teachers have time to collaborate with each other and administrators, the metaphor of war can be put aside, and we can return to the boundless terrain of education.

At its core, RTI is about creating a collective response when students need additional support, rather than leaving this response up to each individual teacher. This process is predicated on the staff having the time necessary to work together. When collaborative time is not embedded in the contract day, teachers are too often forced to make a choice between meeting the needs of their students at school and their children at home, or between making teaching their career and making it their entire life.

Collaboration by invitation rarely works. Considering that the professional learning communities process is endorsed by virtually every national teacher professional association, it is difficult to understand why a teaching professional would desire or expect the right to work in isolation. More importantly, if a teacher is allowed to opt out of team collaboration, then that teacher’s students will not benefit from the collective skills and expertise of the entire team. If the purpose of collective responsibility is to ensure that all students learn at high levels, then allowing any teacher to work in isolation would be unacceptable.

A school will get much better results if it spends less time searching for the Holy Grail and more time working in collaborative teacher teams to find the most effective teaching practices for its students.

If Facebook, Twitter and the like are blocked from student access, the foray into this astonishing universe of digital collaboration cannot begin.

When social software becomes a component of formal education, students and teachers interact with one another in more meaningful ways, creating a variety of positive results. Ted Panitz (1997) details over 67 benefits from engaging in collective learning, arguing that collaborating reduces anxiety, builds self-esteem, enhances student satisfaction, and fosters positive relationships between students and faculty.

teaching is not an individual affair—or at least it shouldn't be. Teachers are better when they work collaboratively, but even more than that, teachers teach better and students learn more when the school has a vision that actually means something and a plan to make that vision a reality.

April 4 Too many things get swept under the carpet called the Sovereignty of God. IN A FALSE understanding of sovereignty, God gets blamed for whatever happens in life. People often assume everything that happens must be His will because He is God. This perspective does not consider the exchange that took place in Eden, nor does it bring to mind Jesus’ own words to the devil during His temptation. There is an enemy with an agenda of his own. He is not all-powerful, but he is certainly cunning. He is ever looking for an inroad of agreement. He talks and talks until we actually buy in to his deception. Much of what we mistakenly brand as the sovereignty of God is actually the world operating under demonic influence. From disease to disaster, we must reconsider how we approach everything that steals, kills, and destroys. The problem is when we identify these things as God’s sovereign will. That simply isn’t true. God is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Is anyone perishing? Yes. Is it God’s will? No. Because of that, I tend to emphasize the role that we play in the outcome of things. From the outset, God formed man to collaborate with. This tells me that we play a vital role in the unfolding of Heaven’s agenda on earth. God is not powerless, waiting for man to dictate His next move. This is the other side of imbalance. By sovereign decision, God Almighty has set up a system where man, indwelt by His Presence, has been restored to a position of authority on the earth. It is time for us to step into this identity even more to bring about God’s restorative solutions into a world marred by the consequences of sin. DAILY SCRIPTURE READING 2 PETER 3:8-9 PRAYER Lord, teach me what things I can actually change for the better by praying or declaring or by taking action. As I step out to play a part in bringing Heaven to earth, thank You for encouraging me through testimonies and answered prayers. These continue to strengthen my faith and cause me to keep taking risks.

Here are some advice for teachers handling introvert children: Think of introverts as different and not someone who needs to be cured. They simply have a different learning style. In helping with social skills, opt to teach them outside class. Accept them for who they are. Studies reveal that almost half of the population are introverts. This means a class has an almost even number of extroverts and introverts. So balance teaching methods to benefit both types. Introverts often have deep interests that are uncommon among their peers. Encourage them to pursue this and help them find like-minded friends. Introverts also benefit from collaborative work as long as it is in small groups. And it helps if they know their particular role. Teach all children to work independently to encourage Deliberate Practice. Do not seat introverts in “high interaction” areas because they have a tendency to feel more threatened. Do not force them to participate in class because it can be harmful to their self-esteem. Introvert children perform differently in a playgroup setting from a more relaxed and comfortable one. Consider this when rating a child’s performance.

The quality of students wasn’t an issue; Tsinghua and nearby Peking University attracted the highest-scoring students from each year’s national examinations. But the SEM’s curriculum and teaching methods were dated, and new faculty members were needed. To be a world-class school required world-class professors, but many instructors, holdovers from a bygone era, knew little about markets or modern business practices. The school’s teaching was largely confined to economic theory, which wasn’t very practical. China needed corporate leaders, not Marxist theoreticians, and Tsinghua’s curriculum placed too little emphasis on such critical areas as finance, marketing, strategy, and organization. The way I see it, a business education should be as much vocational as academic. Teaching business is like teaching medicine: theory is important, but hands-on practice is essential. Medical students learn from cadavers and hospital rounds; business students learn from case studies—a method pioneered more than a century ago by Harvard Business School that engages students in analyzing complex real-life dilemmas faced by actual companies and executives. Tsinghua’s method of instruction, like too much of China’s educational system, relied on rote learning—lectures, memorization, and written tests—and did not foster innovative, interactive approaches to problem solving. Students needed to know how to work as part of a team—a critical lesson in China, where getting people to work collaboratively can be difficult. At Harvard Business School we weren’t told the “right” or “wrong” answers but were encouraged to think for ourselves and defend our ideas before our peers and our at-times-intimidating professors. This helped hone my analytical skills and confidence, and I believed a similar approach would help Chinese students.

Would you buy a used car from your occupier? For the first six months of the intifada, Ehud Gol was the official Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman. Every day he had to go before the world’s press and defend Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. But in the spring of 1988, Gol was made the Israeli Consul General in Rio de Janeiro and he had to sell his car before he left the country. Practically the first place he went was to a Palestinian car dealer in the West Bank town of Ramallah. “Intifada or no intifada, this was business,” Gol explained to me. “The car dealer even came down to the Foreign Ministry and we went over all the papers in my office. There I was, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, and this guy, whose son was probably out throwing stones, was ready to buy from me—and it was a used car!” A Palestinian teacher I knew was driving from Ramallah to Jerusalem one afternoon when he saw a colleague of his from Bir Zeit University and offered to give him a lift. “This fellow came from a small village near Ramallah,” said my teacher friend. “The whole way into Jersualem he was talking to me about the intifada and how it had changed his village, how everyone was involved, and how the local committees of the uprising were running the village and they were getting rid of all the collaborators. He was really enthusiastic, and I was really impressed. As we got close to Jerusalem, I asked him where he wanted to be dropped off and he said, ‘The Hebrew University.’ I was really surprised, so I said, ‘What are you going there for?’ and he said, ‘I teach an Arabic class there.’ It simply didn’t occur to him that there was any contradiction between enthusiasm for the intifada and where he was going.

You can take a team of average performers, and if you teach them to interact in the right way, they’ll do things no superstar could ever accomplish.

If teachers and students work collaboratively with fun for every innovative project, schooling will be more intriguing for everyone.

We should never separate our values from the ways in which we encourage our children to become effective family members, friends, collaborators, and citizens.

All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. Without them, our lives get made up for us by other people. Human beings have always joined in groups to imagine how best to live and help one another carry out the plan. The essential function of human community is to arrive at some agreement on what we need, what life ought to be, what we want our children to learn, and then to collaborate in learning and teaching so that we and they can go on the way we think is the right way. Small communities with strong traditions are often clear about the way they want to go, and good at teaching it. But tradition may crystallize imagination to the point of fossilizing it as dogma and forbidding new ideas. Larger communities, such as cities, open up room for people to imagine alternatives, learn from people of different traditions, and invent their own ways to live. As alternatives proliferate, however, those who take the responsibility of teaching find little social and moral consensus on what they should be teaching -- what we need, what life ought to be. In our time of huge populations exposed continuously to reproduced voices, images, and words used for commercial and political profit, there are too many people who want to and can invent us, own us, shape and control us through seductive and powerful media. It's a lot to ask of a child to find a way through all that alone. Nobody can do anything very much, really, alone. What a child needs, what we all need, is to find some other people who have imagined life along lines that make sense to us and allow some freedom, and listen to them. Not hear passively, but listen.

The teacher begins by establishing her presence in the design of a learning experience through taking into account the actual learners who will be in the course, and builds into the structure of the course plenty of opportunities to engage with those learners through direct instruction and feedback. But a well-designed course will also provide opportunities (and incentives) for learners to interact with one another, both to help each other learn and to build that sense of community. When these two forms of presence have been established, the learners in the course are more likely to engage in the kinds of active, collaborative processes that help them construct new knowledge through their cognitive presence.

Because dominant racial narratives encourage whites to approach antiracism in heroic rather than everyday terms, white antiracist teachers need to work at not thinking of ourselves as heroes and not wanting others to view us as exceptional. We must create a context for collective, collegial responses to racism, rather than setting ourselves up as judges who stand apart from other whites. The systematic work of inviting guest speakers, setting up workshops or study groups, attending conferences, arranging to collaborate on racial issues with a sister institution, hiring new faculty, working with parents and leaders in communities of color, and enlisting the support of administrators all helps create such a context. So does talking with colleagues outside of faculty meetings, learning about one another’s teaching, and engaging in the extended conversations that are not possible in faculty meetings.

Through the nonprofit Zinn Education Project (ZEP)—a collaborative effort with Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change—Zinn’s book and dozens of spin-off books, documentaries, role-playing activities, and lessons about Reconstruction, the 1921 Tulsa race riot, taking down “racist” statues, the “FBI’s War on the Black Freedom Movement,” the “Civil Rights Movement” (synonymous with the Black Panthers), the Black Panther Ten Point Program, “environmental racism,” and other events that provide evidence of a corrupt U.S. regime are distributed in schools across the country. According to a September 2018 ZEP website post, “Close to 84,000 teachers have signed up to access” ZEP’s history lessons and “at least 25 more sign up every day.” Alison Kysia, a writer for ZEP who specializes in “A People’s History of Muslims in the United States” and who taught at Northern Virginia Community College, used Zinn’s book in her classes and defended it for its “consciousness-raising power.”64 ZEP sends organizers to give workshops to librarians and teachers on such topics as the labor movement, the environment and climate change, “Islamophobia,” and “General Approaches to Teaching People’s History” (with full or partial costs borne by the schools!). In 2017, workshops were given in six states, Washington, D.C., and Vancouver, Canada.

the best corporate learning environments have some common elements. Bringing in outsiders to teach and inspire; encouraging insiders to teach each other; putting employees’ work on the walls to share ideas, especially on work in progress—all invite questioning and feedback from others and encourage greater collaboration

Caring for dogs teaches kids observation skills, empathy and a sense of responsibility. Taking part in sport helps children cultivate physical strength, mental and physical resilience, self-esteem, delayed gratification, patience, courage, independence, leadership skills, good judgement and decision making, collaboration skills and a passion for teamwork. I have long held the belief that sport is worthwhile, and something that is often underestimated in the individual and team values it fosters. Who ever said that sporty types - girls included - do not like a fairy tale? Sport can be the beginning of a journey where children discover that they - and their team - whether dogs or humans, can create and fulfil their passions and their dreams

Restorative justice takes situations that otherwise might result in a student being removed from class, and instead presents ways to teach the student how to repair the harm that was done, and continue forward. This method creates an atmosphere of communication and collaboration around student issues.

The American presidential election is a drawn-out, byzantine process that involves precinct meetings, regional caucuses, state primaries and national conventions, all to give citizens the impression that their participation matters, for in the end, the lying buffoon who gets to stride into the White House has long been vetted and preselected by the banks, death merchants and brainwashing media that run our infernally corrupt and murderous country. It's foolish to expect a system to allow anyone who threatens it to the least degree to rise to the very top, for all those who benefit from this system will do all they can to snuff out such a pest each step of the way. He'd be lucky to get a job teaching freshmen English at the community college, and is as out of place in this bloody scheme as an Iowa beaver trapper at a Hamptons pool party. As for dissidents who get print space or airtime, they are but harmless, distracting foils or court jesters. Since voting cannot change the system but legitimizes it, voters become collaborators in all of the system's crimes, as well as their own destruction, for the system works against nearly all of them.

There’s a country that does something a little like this. Its young people, including its very best educational prospects from all different backgrounds, spend two or three years training and solving problems in a nonhierarchical environment and get together every year. Many then collaborate to start companies. This country leads the world in venture capital investments per capita (over $170, versus $75 in the United States in 2010).1 It has more companies on the NASDAQ than any non-US country except for China, despite having a population of less than eight million.2 Its quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate was above 5 percent in 2011 and it’s in the top thirty globally in per capita GDP, above Spain and Saudi Arabia, among others.3 This country is Israel, where eighteen-year-olds complete two- or three-year tours in the military, getting to know each other in highly selective military units. They operate at a high level of autonomy and responsibility and then travel the world for months before heading to college and/or grad school. In Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s book Start-up Nation, this network and training ground is credited as helping give rise to a culture of risk taking and entrepreneurship. By the time Israelis graduate from college, they’re in their midtwenties and mature; in many cases, they’ve already been in operating environments and borne life-and-death responsibilities. This cocktail of experience gives rise to a mixture of both courage and impatience. As one entrepreneur put it, “When an Israeli entrepreneur has a business idea, he will start it that week. The notion that one should accumulate credentials before launching a venture simply does not exist. . . . Too much time can only teach you what can go wrong, not what could be transformative.”4 Another observer commented, “Israelis . . .  don’t care about the social price of failure and they develop their projects regardless of the economic . . . situation.”5

In my discipline, we affectionately refer to this sort of box (culture) as a zeitgeist, which literally translates to 'time ghost.' Unfortunately for any of you expecting spooky surprises, a zeitgeist doesn't refer to a literal ghost but is better understood as the 'spirit of the age,' although even this doesn't quite pin down its meaning. Think of any stereotype of any decade in the last century-from the Roaring Twenties, Flower Power of the sixties-any of these could certainly be said to illustrate the zeitgeist of that era. But zeitgeists can also be more specific than this, and its the SSDC that ends up developing a decent portion our zeitgeists, the sorts of zeitgeists that can be doubly hard to see outside of because they define more than just lifestyle practices. They define everything we think we know about our collective identities and our collective realities. Of relevance here is the zeitgeist of 'I know best about my body.' It's a lesson we teach people from almost before they can talk: 'You know your body,' 'Listen to your body,' and so forth. And while these are great truisms to teach our children about consent and empowerment as they grow older, they do come with blinders as they become our culture's zeitgeist. How can we really expect people to do a 180 on this logic all of a sudden in 2021?...It would be more productive of us to ask the broad cultural reasons that people resist such mandates, rather than scolding individuals for not conforming. Only then, I think, can we slowly begin to change our collective zeitgeists to those that encourage ownership and empowerment of our own bodies and also add in a healthy dose of 'Sometimes the body is silent' or 'Trust one's own body in collaboration with trusted experts' or something of the like. Ironically enough, the very denial of any shared realities that I mentioned in Lesson 20 is its own zeitgeist that has been gaining momentum for the last five years or so. I worry that this only allows the virus-or any other pathogen in our future-a foothold. Our divisions are their smorgasbord. How can we plan and strategize if we can't agree that we need to plan or strategize to begin with? This is one of the biggest hurdles we'll need to overcome to ensure humanity's long-term survival. It's possibly one of the most terrifying threats to humanity that I've seen in my lifetime-for if our only shared belief is that there is not shared beliefs, where do we go from there?

The question then becomes how to get these users to take the various actions that will make them higher value. This usually happens in the form of educating users—with content or otherwise—or simply introducing and promoting new features. In LinkedIn’s case, a new feature might be a prominent suggestion to an early user to connect with people from their own company, to help them form their initial network. Content and communications might be a series of how-to videos teaching effective use of LinkedIn’s connection features. And an incentive might look like a free subscription when the user completes certain actions. A product road map can be generated with hundreds of these ideas, large and small, and then prioritized. In Dropbox’s case, this segmentation revealed that a user who has installed the product across multiple devices—home and work computers, or on their mobile devices—is more valuable than someone who just has a single device and uses the service for backup. Better yet, high-value users often share folders and collaborate with other users, particularly for work purposes. As I described earlier, Dropbox segmented their users by value—High-Value Actives and Low-Value Actives, as opposed to LinkedIn’s frequency-oriented segmentation. To encourage users to take these high-value actions, Dropbox could improve the functionality of syncing and sharing. It could send or show educational content, showing users the fastest way to get set up on multiple devices. Or it could use incentives—free storage, for instance—to compel users to properly set up their accounts.

enthusiasm for their subject to motivate them, to bring their subject alive and make learning an exciting, vivid and enjoyable experience.    It is teachers’ passion for their subject that provides the basis for effective teaching and learning. These teachers use their subject expertise to engage students in meaningful learning experiences that embrace content, process and social climate. They create for and with their children opportunities to explore and build important areas of knowledge, and develop powerful tools for learning, within a supportive, collaborative and challenging classroom environment. (DfES, 2003a: paras 1–

Additionally, a “progressive Christian is one who draws upon a variety of rich sources (Christian teachings and tradition, science, experience, social sciences, philosophy, and teachings from other wisdom traditions) to better understand society’s problems so that we can work in collaboration with others to help our society, our world, and the church to move toward God’s vision of a new earth.” (Peters, p. xiv)

First, the digital revolution has given rise to the network era of near zero-marginal-cost collaboration, as we saw in the dynamic rise of the collaborative commons in Chapter 2. It is essentially unleashing a revolution in distributed capital ownership. Anyone with an Internet connection can entertain, inform, learn and teach worldwide.

The need for a fundamental sense of compassion has never been more visible than in our current higher educational context, where institutional resources and morale decline as the diversity and needs of our student population increase. To reverse what’s become decades’ worth of starvation budgets and an increasingly hostile political-cultural environment for higher education, we need to build a future radically different from our present. The work we do with and among our students— teaching and learning, creating and collaborating, building knowledge and burnishing confidence— is also the work of building that future. But that future can only come to pass if we involve as many students as possible in its creation. A future that’s shaped by processes that push significant numbers of students to the margins is one that will end up depressingly similar to our present. To militate against this outcome, we ought to begin dismantling the systems that marginalize our students. That’s a practice that starts in our own classrooms, in the routine choices we make every day about how we engage with our students and their stories— about what we say to them. An approach that embraces empathy and compassion as its default orientation is foundational to a pedagogy of radical hope.

Some students—with and without special needs—may not achieve the levels we hope even after high quality standards-based instruction. But we have no way to predict which ones will not achieve high levels of learning; thus, we have to teach them ALL well.

I started the Riverdale Center to deal with the supreme challenge of transforming the human being. I wanted to provide a setting for reflection on cosmogenesis for my students at Fordham University. Over time, a remarkable group of scientists, artists, politicians, and religious leaders have joined the conversation. I don’t know how long I can keep the Riverdale Center going, but it’s functioning now and you’re here. I tell you all this to give you a sense of what is coming. You might meet some people today who will become lifelong collaborators with you in the exploration and teaching of the universe story.

First, invest in human ingenuity by teaching social entrepreneurship, problem-solving and collaboration in schools and universities worldwide: such skills will equip the next generation to innovate in open-source networks like no generation before them. Second, ensure that all publicly funded research becomes public knowledge by contractually requiring it to be licensed in the knowledge commons, rather than permitting it to be locked away under patents and copyright for private commercial gain. Third, roll back the excessive reach of corporate intellectual property claims in order to prevent spurious patent and copyright applications from encroaching on the knowledge commons.

Jasleen Patel gave her a scowl for doubting her expertise. Jazz had completed her master’s degree in marine biology two years before and was finalizing her doctoral dissertation under Phoebe’s mentorship. Jazz had been one of Phoebe’s undergrad students and eventually her teaching assistant at Caltech’s marine lab. Since then, they had been working collaboratively for more than five years. So much so that Phoebe and Jazz became known as PB&J by most of their colleagues

Gradually reducing my teaching load from full-time, I finally resigned my UCI full professorship in 1982. I loved teaching and research and felt a sense of loss upon giving up a position I expected to enjoy for a lifetime, but it turned out to be for the best. I took what I liked with me. I kept my friends and continued my research collaborations. Free to do anything I wished, my childhood dream come true, I continued to present my work at meetings, as well as publish it in the mathematical, financial, and gambling literature.

When we give up on teaching (and, therefore, on those we need to teach), we tend to manoeuvre around the objects of our despair. We tell them their work is OK, but silently redo it with other colleagues. We set up secret side groups. It’s meant to be a collaboration between twenty equals. But we go out and hire two external consultants. It sounds Machiavellian – but it’s merely the outcome of a very nervous personality with low faith in others and in the chances of working through problems. In their personal lives, such types might be married but seek a lover: for they have areas of disappointment and anger they have never found ways of discussing – and it seemed better to steer around the conflict and take a lover to soak up some of the disappointment.

beyond them. The Six Diseases If we want to look at how we practice all forms of rivalry, there are six diseases my father wrote about, all of which stem from the desire we have to win at all costs. These diseases rely on being in competition, which is typically where we go in a relationship the moment any discord pops up. When we relate to others in these ways, we are disconnecting from them and disconnecting from our true selves in order to access some form of outside validation. In other words, there is no relationship, no collaboration, no cocreation. There is only the victor and the loser. The Six Diseases are: The desire for victory I have to be the winner. If I don’t win, I’m a loser. If I win, everyone else is a loser. The desire to resort to technical cunning I rely on the power of my wits to show you how great I am. Who cares about people or their feelings as long as everyone can see how clever I am? The desire to display all that has been learned Check me out. I know lots of things. I can speak at length about anything. It doesn’t matter what anyone else has to say (especially if it’s dumb). The desire to awe the enemy I am a force to be reckoned with. Look out! I will wow you to get your approval even if I have to do something shocking and wild to get your attention. The desire to play the passive role I am so easy to get along with. Who wouldn’t like me? I am so unobtrusive and sweet. I will put anything that’s important to me aside to make sure that you see how likeable and wonderful I am. How could you not like me when I sacrifice everything just for you? The desire to rid oneself of whatever disease one is affected by I am not okay as I am. I will perform constant self-work and read as many books as I can and take so many classes to make myself good that you will see that I am always trying to be a good person even if I continue to do lots of shitty things. I know I’m not okay as I am. And I know you know that I know I’m not okay as I am, which makes it okay not to get truly better as long as it looks like I’m trying.

PE Scholar provides outstanding resources, courses and insight to bridge the gap between research and practice and consequently help physical education thrive. We are a digital platform for physical educators around the world. We aim to ensure all young people get the very best PE, school sport and physical activity experience to ignite a passion for movement in life. We help teachers make this happen by closing the research practice gap via insight posts, teaching resources and expertly led professional development. We build supportive communities of practices where you can connect with, collaborate, and learn from others including the very best in our sector via online and face to face training and consultancy. Our team of practitioners, researchers and teacher educators are here to ensure that PE stands for positive experiences and are committed to helping our subjects thrive.

If we do not understand the precious plan that God has for the gentiles, and that difference in no way implies inferiority, we will never be able to enjoy a healthy and fruitful relationship with the Jews. As Gentiles, it is our duty to love them, collaborate with them, and fight alongside them against anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism—Christian or of any other kind. Ours is also the blessing of participating with them in the rich heritage that has come to us through Yeshua.

Bring harmony in your mind, your body, and your spirit, and bring balance among these three. Create a new deal among the three of them. In a moment of meditation, address each one and propose to it that life would be a lot more joyful and easy if the three were to collaborate and support one another rather than compete for your attention through body aches or ego tantrums.

An adage that has helped guide The Second City through the years is “Dare to offend.” We teach our performers to be unafraid to speak to power, to challenge conventions, and to question the rules.

Planning can be done in many ways, but the most powerful is when teachers work together to develop plans, develop common understandings of what is worth teaching, collaborate on understanding their beliefs of challenge and progress, and work together to evaluate the impact of their planning on student outcomes.

Effective Peer Coaches emphasize inquiry over advocacy. Too much advocacy can produce learned helplessness. Inquiry builds capacity to improve teaching and learning by helping teachers to be more effective at designing and implementing learning activities that meet the needs of their students.

And it is unstructured play that provides the greatest opportunities for kids to be curious, creative, spontaneous, and collaborative.

The traditional lecture format of the twentieth century (which is still largely used in business schools) was quite adapted to the bygone industrial era. In that format, one enlightened person talks (the teacher as knowledge giver) while the students (a-lumni, “those who do not see the light”) listen passively. Such traditional setting worked well in a world in which knowledge access was limited, environmental changes were slower and hierarchical organizations relied on passive workers mostly to relay information and obey orders. In our digital, post-industrial age, organizations that thrive are those that have flexible structures, adaptable strategies and a culture of constant learning and collaboration among so-called “knowledge workers”. Modern companies expect students to become autonomous information seekers and problem solvers. Students expect to be given tools, methods and concepts that will make them better at thinking critically and creatively (Lima, 2003). But that is not always what they find in passive learning environments.

Dialogue teaches you to listen through your emotions, not to become distracted or distanced from the truth because of them.

Collaborative professionalism is about how teachers and other educators transform teaching and learning together to work with all students to develop fulfilling lives of meaning, purpose, and success.

In collaborative professionalism, we want deeper collaboration in stronger relationships of trust, support, and solidarity. We also want more professionalism involving good data and good judgment, more candid and respectful professional dialogue, more thoughtful feedback, more collective responsibility for each other’s results, and more courageous engagement with bolder visions of education that will help young people become change makers in their own and other people’s lives.

It is known that people who let go of negativity, calm themselves, listen carefully, and pay attention to their emotional, physical and spiritual health are more likely to have flashes of inspiration.

Learners are changing in their approaches to education—they use digital technologies, they multi-task, they collaborate and they are becoming less patient with teacher-centric styles of education.

Cultural competence is the ability to understand, appreciate, and interact with people from cultures or belief systems different from one's own; it is the ability to navigate cross-cultural differences in order to do something—be that teach students, collaborate with colleagues, or socialize with friends.

Students, the district recognizes, must first be well themselves in order to achieve well.

Collective efficacy is about the belief that, together, we can make a difference to the students we teach, no matter what.2 Self

means seeing how changes such as these fit into the big picture, too. Are all staff members and, indeed, students engaged in developing the vision and mission of the school? Do leaders constantly explain how specific changes or team tasks fit into this larger vision? Can teachers and students articulate that connection as well? When asked what kind of school they are involved with, will you get the same sort of answer from teachers, students, bus drivers, janitors, parents, and administrative assistants, as well as the principal?

The more confident teachers are in their own authority, the more able they will be to let go of it a little so others can have autonomy and authority as well. In

countries that are implementing technology most rapidly are showing the least gains in student achievement.10 But this does not repudiate the benefits of technology per se. It is more a commentary on the indecent haste and spread of implementation that is often fueled by the massive financial investments made by technology companies in climates of austerity, where other funding for public education is otherwise in short supply.

Context-Based Learning: Why Mentorship Is More Effective than Formal Education The military and several missionary programs use a learning and teaching method known as “context-based learning” to radically accelerate the learning process. Context-based learning occurs in a social situation where knowledge is acquired and processed through collaboration and practical use, not merely the dissemination of information from a teacher. In order for this knowledge to be acquired, a learner engages in a real-life task, not a theoretical task. The skills the learner develops clearly match and naturally translate into real-world settings.

Bordt, Rebecca L. & Carceral, K.C. "A Teaching Collaboration with a Prison Writer." Radical Teacher, vol. 94, 2012, pp. 24-33.

A beautiful example of a long-term intention was presented by A. T. Ariyaratane, a Buddhist elder, who is considered to be the Gandhi of Sri Lanka. For seventeen years there had been a terrible civil war in Sri Lanka. At one point, the Norwegians were able to broker peace, and once the peace treaty was in effect, Ariyaratane called the followers of his Sarvodaya movement together. Sarvodaya combines Buddhist principles of right livelihood, right action, right understanding, and compassion and has organized citizens in one-third of that nation’s villages to dig wells, build schools, meditate, and collaborate as a form of spiritual practice. Over 650,000 people came to the gathering to hear how he envisioned the future of Sri Lanka. At this gathering he proposed a five-hundred-year peace plan, saying, “The Buddha teaches we must understand causes and conditions. It’s taken us five hundred years to create the suffering that we are in now.” Ari described the effects of four hundred years of colonialism, of five hundred years of struggle between Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists, and of several centuries of economic disparity. He went on, “It will take us five hundred years to change these conditions.” Ariyaratane then offered solutions, proposing a plan to heal the country. The plan begins with five years of cease-fire and ten years of rebuilding roads and schools. Then it goes on for twenty-five years of programs to learn one another’s languages and cultures, and fifty years of work to right economic injustice, and to bring the islanders back together as a whole. And every hundred years there will be a grand council of elders to take stock on how the plan is going. This is a sacred intention, the long-term vision of an elder.

Books are a great way to teach children empathy, resilience, grit, collaboration, and resourcefulness.

Whether gathered from assessments, feedback, practice sessions, or collaboration with parents, data is a key driver in shaping the rapid learning environment.

In the context of rapid learning, data becomes a dynamic tool with multifaceted applications. From assessments and diagnosis to feedback and collaboration with parents, data serves as a valuable resource for tailoring instruction, enhancing individualized learning experiences, and ensuring a responsive educational environment.

Data collected at various stages of the rapid learning session, including assessments, diagnosis, feedback, practice, and collaboration with parents, plays a pivotal role in shaping the learning experience. This information is instrumental in tailoring instruction to individual needs and creating a supportive and responsive learning environment.

Data is the cornerstone of adaptability in rapid learning. Collected from assessments, feedback mechanisms, practice sessions, and collaboration with parents, it is the catalyst for tailoring instruction, fostering a supportive learning environment, and ensuring that the rapid learning experience is optimized for each student.

Aimshala's Vision for Education: Empowering Educators, Enriching Lives In the heart of every learner's journey, there exists a light of inspiration, a guide through the moving seas of knowledge and discovery. This guide, often hidden and ignored, is the educator. At Aimshala, we understand the transformative power of educators not just in imparting knowledge, but in enriching lives and empowering minds. Our vision for education is deeply rooted in the belief that by empowering educators, we can create ripples of change that extend beyond classroom walls, enriching the lives of countless individuals and, by extension, society itself. The Unknown Heroes of Our Society Educators are the unknown heroes of our society, the architects of the future, shaping minds and inspiring hearts. They do more than teach; they awaken curiosity, instill resilience, and foster a lifelong love for learning. The impact of a passionate educator extends far beyond academic achievements; it touches on the very essence of who we become. At Aimshala, we recognize the challenges educators face daily juggling administrative tasks, adapting to new technologies, and meeting each student's unique needs. Yet, despite these hurdles, their commitment never wavers. They continue to light the path for their students, often with little recognition for their monumental impact. It's for these unsung heroes that Aimshala dedicates its mission: to empower educators and acknowledge their invaluable contribution to shaping our future. A Journey of Empowerment Empowerment is at the core of Aimshala's vision for education. But what does it truly mean to empower educators? It means providing them with the tools, resources, and support they need to thrive in their roles. It means creating an environment where their voices are heard, their challenges are addressed, and their achievements are celebrated. We believe in a holistic approach to empowerment. From continuous professional development opportunities to innovative teaching tools, Aimshala is committed to ensuring educators have what they need to succeed. But empowerment goes beyond material resources; it's about fostering a community of educators who can share experiences, challenges, and successes. A community where collaboration and support are the norms, not the exceptions. Enriching Lives Through Education Education has the power to transform lives. It opens doors to new opportunities, develops horizons, and builds bridges across cultures. Aimshala's vision extends to every student touched by our educators. By enriching the lives of educators, we indirectly enrich the lives of countless students. An enriched life is one of purpose, understanding, and continual growth. Through our support for educators, Aimshala aims to cultivate learning environments where students feel valued, respected, and inspired to reach their full potential. These environments encourage critical thinking, creativity, and the courage to question. They nurture not just academic skills but life skills—empathy, resilience, and the ability to adapt to change. Building a Future Together The future of education is a collaborative vision, one that requires the efforts of educators, students, families, and communities. Aimshala stands at the forefront of this collaborative effort, bridging gaps and fostering partnerships that enhance the educational experience for all. Technology plays a pivotal role in shaping this future. Aimshala embraces innovative educational technologies that make learning more accessible, engaging, and effective. However, we also recognize that technology is but a tool in the hands of our capable educators. It is their wisdom, passion, and dedication that truly transform education. At Aimshala, our vision for education is clear: to empower educators and enrich lives. We understand the challenges and celebrate the triumphs. We believe in the power of education to transform society.

We emphasize and cannot emphasize enough one point about this very, very prominent theme in Mark. His story of failed discipleship is his warning gift to all who ever hear or read his narrative. We must think of Lent today as a penitential season because we know that, like those first disciples, we would like to avoid the implications of this journey with Jesus. We would like its Holy Week conclusion to be about the interior rather than the exterior life, about heaven rather than earth, about the future rather than the present, and, above all else, about religion safely and securely quarantined from politics. Confronting violent political power and unjust religious collaboration is dangerous in most times and most places, first century and twenty-first century alike.

Constructivist learning experiences may vary in effectiveness, as some learners may require more guidance and support than others, potentially leading to disparities in learning outcomes.

While implementing constructivist approaches demands tailored learning experiences and skilled facilitation, its resource-intensive nature may pose challenges for educators striving to create dynamic, student-centered classrooms.

Utilizing collaborative learning strategies creates an inclusive and dynamic classroom environment where students actively engage with course material, exchange ideas, and learn from one another, enhancing both academic achievement and interpersonal skills.

In literature analysis, the constructivist approach transforms passive reading into active exploration, where students collaboratively construct meaning, fostering deeper comprehension and personal connection with the text.

Engaging students in collaborative learning opportunities not only promotes a sense of relatedness but also helps students feel valued and connected, enhancing their motivation and commitment to learning.

In math problem-solving, the constructivist approach shifts from rote memorization to active exploration, where students engage in collaborative sense-making, developing problem-solving skills and mathematical reasoning.

Through artistic expression, the constructivist theory empowers students to explore creativity freely, encouraging experimentation and self-expression as they construct their unique artistic visions.

Embracing active learning methodologies such as Problem-Based Learning (PBL) empowers students to tackle real-world challenges head-on, fostering critical thinking, collaboration, and practical problem-solving skills.