The Art Of Noticing Deeply

The theme of deeply noticing the world of teaching and learning around us unifies the collected commentaries celebrated in this book. The contributing storytellers, teachers, researchers, poets, photographers, writers, mentors, and guides are integral to sustaining ‘the art of noticing deeply’ to foster wide-awakeness (as Maxine Greene termed it years ago), and engagement in teaching and learning settings and beyond. Such settings might be a forest, a global village, a virtual place, or a classroom. They may be places where skills of collaboration, social justice, problem-solving, critical thinking, ethical practice and lifelong learning are highlighted and celebrated. Together, the authors here explore the spaces where we teach and learn, spaces where we explore and interact, and the spaces where we pause and wonder. This book offers insight into ways in which the arts intersect teachers’ creative beings, and nudges the reader to think about refreshing and renewing what they ‘thought they knew’ about teaching and learning.

Notice more, and notice more joy in the everyday. Distracted? Overwhelmed? Feel like your attention is constantly being pulled in different directions? Learn how to steal it back. Accessible and inspiring, this book features 131 surprising and innovative exercises to help you tune out white noise, get unstuck from your screen and manage daily distractions. Make small yet impactful changes and bring focus to the things and people that are most important to you.

An imaginative, thought-provoking gift book to awaken your senses and attune them to the things that matter in your life. Welcome to the era of white noise. Our lives are in constant tether to phones, to email, and to social media. In this age of distraction, the ability to experience and be present is often lost: to think and to see and to listen. Enter Rob Walker's The Art of Noticing. This gorgeously illustrated volume will spark your creativity--and most importantly, help you see the world anew. Through a series of simple and playful exercises--131 of them--Walker maps ways for you to become a clearer thinker, a better listener, a more creative workplace colleague and finally, to rediscover your sense of passion and to notice what really matters to you.

"With its gentle affirmations, inspirational quotes, fill-in-the-blank lists and tasks — write yourself a thank-you letter, describe yourself at 80, for example — The Artist’s Way proposes an egalitarian view of creativity: Everyone’s got it."—The New York Times "Morning Pages have become a household name, a shorthand for unlocking your creative potential"—Vogue Over four million copies sold! Since its first publication, The Artist's Way phenomena has inspired the genius of Elizabeth Gilbert and millions of readers to embark on a creative journey and find a deeper connection to process and purpose. Julia Cameron's novel approach guides readers in uncovering problems areas and pressure points that may be restricting their creative flow and offers techniques to free up any areas where they might be stuck, opening up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. The program begins with Cameron’s most vital tools for creative recovery – The Morning Pages, a daily writing ritual of three pages of stream-of-conscious, and The Artist Date, a dedicated block of time to nurture your inner artist. From there, she shares hundreds of exercises, activities, and prompts to help readers thoroughly explore each chapter. She also offers guidance on starting a “Creative Cluster” of fellow artists who will support you in your creative endeavors. A revolutionary program for personal renewal, The Artist's Way will help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the steps you need to change your life.

In productive classrooms, teachers don't just teach students math and reading skills; they build emotionally and relationally healthy learning communities. Teachers create intellectual environments that produce not only technically competent students, but also caring, secure, actively literate human beings. Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning shows how teachers can accomplish this by using their most powerful teaching tool: language.Throughout this book, author Peter Johnston provides examples of seemingly ordinary words, phrases, and uses of language that are pivotal in the orchestration of the classroom. Grounded in a study by accomplished literacy teachers, the book demonstrates how and what we say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for what children learn and for who they become as literate people. Students learn how to become strategic thinkers, not merely learning the literacy strategies, but adapting them to their lives outside of the classroom.In addition, Johnston examines the complex learning that teachers produce in classrooms that is hard to name and thus is not recognized by tests, by policy-makers, by the general public, and often by teachers themselves, yet is vitally important. This book will be enlightening for any teacher who wishes to be more conscious of the many ways their language helps children acquire literacy skills and view the world, their peers, and themselves in new ways.

This book invites readers to explore how fourteen different experts in their respective fields create deeper meaning in their profession and work with students through thinking, in multiple ways, about the self who teaches, the self who learns, and the ways in which these selves interact within the academy. Essays in this book explore the “inside” of academia through three themes: Pursuing Authenticity, Creating Creative Community, and Humanizing Education. Contributors reflect on their own lived experiences in the academy and on pedagogies that they have created for their students. Embodied education, the theoretical framework of this book, draws on ideas of educators Parker Palmer from the West and Dr. Chinmay Pandya from the East, emerging through contributors’ collaborative work. In embodied education, teachers and learners share experiences that lead to self-understanding and together find ways to humanize spaces in academia.

This International Handbook brings together leading writers on Arts in Education to provide a much-needed, authoritative guide to the main debates in the field and an informed account of contemporary developments in policy and practice. Providing a detailed overview of key concepts and practical challenges, the book combines theoretical insight with specific examples of innovative projects drawing on theoretical, historical and empirical research perspectives to inform understanding. The range of content highlights the breadth of the field, addressing such issues as the importance of community arts and partnership as well as school education, and providing insight into developments in multiple and connecting arts as well as traditional art forms. Topics such as assessment, creativity, cultural diversity, special needs, the arts in early childhood, adult education, arts based research, are all addressed by recognised authorities in each area. The collection of chapters also serves to define the field of arts education, recognising its diversity but highlighting the common elements that provide its identity. The collection addresses generic issues common to all the arts while acknowledging differences and recognising the dangers of over-generalisation. It also includes specific chapters on each of the art forms (visual art, dance, drama, literature, music, media arts) providing a cutting-edge analysis of key contemporary issues in each subject. Bringing together specially commissioned pieces by a range of international authors, this Handbook will make an important contribution to the field of Arts Education.

How can we support our college students cultivating wide-awakeness, or a way of paying attention and being fully present to oneself and the world? How might we use mindfulness practices to help ourselves and our students become more wide awake, realize our interconnectedness, see what is possible, and transform our lives and the world around us? Educational philosopher Maxine Greene called for the need to intentionally promote wide-awakeness, which includes deepening our awareness, asking critical questions, recognizing that alternatives exist, and finding the agency to make changes personally and collectively. Mindfulness & Wide-Awakeness in Higher Education draws upon Greene’s work to explore the voices and experiences of college students who engaged in mindfulness practices during every class session in a cohort over an academic year and others who participated in a mindfulness group that met weekly for a year. The book explores how students used mindfulness to support their academic success, create a culture of connectedness, promote increased empathy, and fuel their sense of agency regarding social interactions and teaching the practices to others. In particular, the voices of students of color who chose to participate in the weekly mindfulness group are elevated and honored. A culminating chapter provides numerous examples of the mindfulness practices taught throughout the two-year study, serving as an accessible guide for higher education professionals interested in doing this work who would like ideas for where to begin or how to further develop their teaching and student support services. Overall, the book provides rich insights and practical approaches for how higher education faculty and staff can work together with students so we can all become more wide-awake to what is possible in our hearts, in our classrooms, on our campuses, and beyond. ENDORSEMENTS: "Mindfulness & Wide-Awakeness in Higher Education came into my life at the right time. The privileging of the voices of students of color and the collection of accessible mindfulness practices makes this a great tool for teacher educators across the country. If you are looking for a way to support your students’ mental health, academics, empathy, and agency, you will find all that and more in this book." — Denisha Jones, Sarah Lawrence College "This book contributes to mindfulness and contemplative practices in higher education with transformative learning and democratic education frameworks. It is an invitation to bring our whole authentic selves as faculty and students into the classrooms to be “wide awake” and see each other as human beings, not merely as our roles." — Bengü Ergüner-Tekinalp, Drake University "If you care deeply about the tangible outcomes of higher education for students and the degree to which those experiences awaken their curiosity about people, place, and planet, Mindfulness and Wide-Awakeness in Higher Education should be a must on your reading list. Sarah Montgomery provides an excellent framework to illustrate the power of teaching mindfulness and what is possible when we make time and space for woke teaching and learning." — Paulette Patterson Dilworth, The University of Alabama at Birmingham

This collection brings together approaches to the teacher education and preparation curriculum that may be described as holistic. It also discusses teacher education curricula that are reconstructionist and reconceptualist in nature, seeking to shift the trajectory of society through teacher education. The book serves as an introductory text for the field of holistic curriculum studies, and will open it up to a wider audience.

Teacher leadership remains at the forefront of conversations in teacher education, with discussions on recruitment, retention, and effectiveness. Teachers are at the core of schooling, and the roles they assume and types of leadership they engage in are multi-dimensional. Teacher leadership comes in many shapes and definitions. In this sense, both opportunities and challenges exist in teacher leadership. While national competencies continue to define dispositional and knowledge base for teacher leaders, there is still work to be done to define and add to the body of scholarship on this topic. Teacher leadership opportunities provide development for teachers as a key retention strategy; however, role ambiguity presents challenges in how to empower teachers for formal and informal roles of leadership while maintaining the teacher identity. Empowering Formal and Informal Leadership While Maintaining Teacher Identity provides a comprehensive look at the opportunities and challenges of teacher leadership, drawing on research and practice that add to the body of knowledge for teacher leadership, which is a niche in education that differs from educational administration. Highlighted topics within this book include models for teacher leadership, teacher education, types of leadership roles, the development and retention of teacher leaders, and leadership across different types of school districts. This book is ideally designed for inservice and preservice teachers, administrators, teacher educators, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in teacher leadership roles and the way in which teacher identity is maintained in relation to these other leadership positions.