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Viewing posts from May, 2012

What Learning Is

Posted by: Ross Laird in education 1 year ago

Now, more than ever, educators need guiding principles to move purposefully through the turbulence of modern educational transformation. We’re losing our cherished traditions and hallowed practices. We’re adrift from our reliance on the sturdy structures that have carried us for two hundred years. Everything is in flux, and most of the old paths will soon be lost and overgrown. That sits fine with me; we’re long overdue for renewal in education. We haven’t yet been required to reinvent ourselves, while all around us the world has changed in fundamental ways. In what profession other than education have things gone essentially unchanged since before the First World War? Sure, we’ve had some incremental growth in areas such as assessment and engagement; but the basic model of an instructor at the front, with passive students gathered in rows of seats, would be familiar to a time traveler from the nineteenth century.

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Integrative Practices for Mentorship

Posted by: Ross Laird in development fitness mentorship 1 year ago

The essential goal of adolescent mentorship is twofold: to assist youth in completing the incomplete or fragmented nervous system imprinting from childhood, and to assist youth in expanding their range of choice of action through recognizing and broadening nervous system habits. The activities and practices listed below are designed to accomplish both of those aims. The task of the mentor is to discover which blend of activities is most required, and to participate with youth in the completion of those activities. We learn not just by thinking and talking but also by doing, by using the body as an instrument of our development and healing.

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Technology Addictions and Adolescent Development

Posted by: Ross Laird in addictions development 1 year ago

Technology addictions obey the same principles as substance addictions; that is to say, the addiction involves uncompleted impulses and fractured imprinting typically derived from childhood experience (this is not universally the case, but is almost universally the case). The nature of the addiction involves the way in which the addiction completes, temporarily, the unfinished imprinting. The more childhood difficulty an individual experiences, the more likely the individual is to seek multiple substances in adolescence.

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