Comments (1)

By Kathy McGuire, December 30, 2007 4:52 pm

For background, read previous blogs on Creative Edge Education, especially for ADHD, or visit Interest Area: Education at Creative Edge Focusing (TM)’s website.

Here are ten suggested first steps for bringing a Creative Edge Focusing approach into school systems:

1. If you are not a teacher or school administrator, brainstorm with any you know about Creative Edge Focusing as “human literacy” and how to interact effectively with school systems to propose a Creative Edge Focusing curriculum
2. Collaborate with others at Creative Edge Focusing™ to create a Creative Edge Focusing™ curriculum for each level of education, from pre-school through graduate school.
3. Offer a power point presentation on Creative Edge Focusing™, with PRISMS/S and The Creative Edge Pyramid of skills and methods to a Parent Teacher Organization meeting. Interface the core skills with Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence work.
4. Offer to follow up with a ten-week Focusing Group/Team training with interested staff and parents ( or separate groups for parents and school personnel, if this is more comfortable for those concerned), to learn the core Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening skills  and Interpersonal Focusing and Collaborative Decision Making skills and to problem solve on how to bring Creative Edge Focusing™ into their school or school system. Make a plan and help carry it out.
5. Offer a similar presentation at higher levels in the school system hierarchy, for instance, district-wide teacher inservice days, Education Collaboratives funded to offer training to teachers, education conferences, teacher training programs in Universities, followed up with a Focusing Group ten-week training.
6. Offer Focusing Groups as a burn-out prevention method for teachers and as a first step in their learning Listening/Focusing skills to turn around and teach to students.
7. Offer to start a peer counseling training program at a school or school system, training selected students in Listening, Focusing, Interpersonal Focusing and Collaborative Decision Making who can then serve as peer counselors to other students and to mediate interpersonal conflicts and facilitate group decision making when needed (as in a Student Court, for instance). Peer counseling is an established practice in some schools that can be built on. Google it and network with others using this approach in schools, try to get a grant….
8. Find ten foundations which sponsor innovations in education (such as George Lucas’ foundation and Gardner’s Project Zero. Approach each with a proposal for integrating “human literacy” training through Creative Edge Focusing™ into some chosen schools (e.g., Head Start, Career Academies, Waldorf, or other innovative kinds of schools)
9. Approach Business Schools with an “emotional intelligence/human literacy” Creative Edge Focusing™ curriculum of PRISMS/S and The Creative Edge Pyramid. This would  prepare business students for Focused Listening to clients, Intuitive Focusing for creative problem solving, Interpersonal Focusing for conflict resolution, and Collaborative Edge Decision Making for productive team/group meetings.
10. Find ten foundations which sponsor education-based interventions in impoverished areas, such as the Peace Corps and Vista. Propose that they incorporate “human literacy” through Creative Edge Focusing™ into their programs.

Just ideas! As a psychologist/consultant and parent of two children with special learning needs, I have lots of experience interacting with school systems, but I’m not a teacher or administrator. I would like to see ideas from inside of these systems for integrating “human literacy” into curriculum. Please join our e-discussion/support group for continued collaboration on Creative Edge Focusing and Education. 

Download Dr. McGuire’s article, “Don’t Fight ‘Em, Join ‘Em: Community-Wide Intervention for ADHD, School Failure, and Juvenile Delinquency” .

Spend some fun time taking some of the Personality Tests and discovering your “differing gifts,” your Temperaments, your varying Multiple Intelligences, your Shadow Side in the Enneagram.

–Learn more about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening and Experiential Focusing Therapy at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, filled with free downloads on creativity, spirituality, collaborative thinking, parenting, innovation in business, and many other aspects of application of Focusing and Listening skills at home, at work, in your community, and globally.

Download our Instant “Ahah!”s Mini-Manual (”Ajas” Instantaneos en espanol) for ten exercises bringing Listening and Focusing into your everyday life starting today.

Download our complete Intuitive Focusing Instructions to start practicing Relaxation, Getting a Felt Sense, and Intuitive Focusing today!

See actual demonstrations of Listening/Focusing in our Self-Help package, a manual in English or Spanish, four CDs of Focusing Instructions, and a DVD with four demonstrations of actual listening/focusing sessions — everything you need to start your own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Support Group or to incorporate these basic self-help skills into existing support groups.

In the side bar at Creative Edge Focusing, subscribe to our free e-newsletter for weekly reminders to practice Relaxation and Focusing exercises and join our free yahoo group, Creative Edge Practice, for ongoing demonstrations, practice, and support.

Find classes/workshops/phone coaching in our Listings section or Coaching/Classes/Consulting with Dr. McGuire

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way

Comments (3)

By Kathy McGuire, December 29, 2007 2:58 pm

Creative Edge Education pays special attention to the needs of students with ADHD and other non-traditional learning styles. It  joins with Juvenile Justice in prevention of school dropout and juvenile delinquency.

The Creative Edge/ Differing Gifts model  can apply to all education, but the education of those children labeled as  having “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or “Attention Deficit Disorder” and other learning differences  is an urgent area needing response.

  “Attention Deficit Disorder” simply defines children in terms of their “deficit” in the ability to participate in and benefit from traditional, passive, obedience-based education. These children receive a positive definition for their “unique abilities” in the Myers-Briggs and Keirsey definitions of differing temperaments and learning styles. The child with an SP, hands-on learning style, called The Artisan by Keirsey, can excel in an active, independence-based, hands-on learning environment, steered toward careers which maximize the use of these special skills.

In a traditional classroom, where obedience and passive learning are the watch word, the Guardian children (who make up one-third of the typical classroom) have an advantage, while the Artisan children (which, according to Keirsey, make up another one-third of every classroom!):

1. Are doing the “wrong thing” all day long, given their inability to “sit still, listen, and obey.” Their behavior is just the opposite, a need to learn by moving, and by their own hands-on, trial and error, not by passive listening. The medications like Ritalin help them to “sit still,” to conform to the traditional model.
2. Are being punished all day long for doing the “wrong thing,” ending up in time-out, in the hall, in detention. Their self-esteem and trust in themselves to make good judgments are destroyed, encouraging them to identify themselves as “losers,” “bad kids.”
3. Are pushed out of school and into school dropout, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, drugs, and other high-risk behavior.
4. Become our lower-tier of “working class poor” or jobless people.

Needed instead: Hands-on and other learning approaches which respect their different learning style and lead to careers which they can thrive in.

Of course, legislation at the national or state level specify academic content which must be learned by every student, as an attempt at holding educators responsible for delivering an equal product to all learners. This seeming conflict with a Creative Edge model, which aims at maximizing the unique, creativity-motivated learning of each child and producing creative, innovative, self-motivated and collaborative adults, must be given attention in finding compromises which work to the advantage of each child.

Join the Creative Edge Collaborators yahoo group  for further brainstorming with interested others, find “one small step” people are willing to do, create action plans for carrying out our mission, and use our power as a concerned “group” to approach legislators, foundations, whoever has the power to bring listening/focusing into education.

The goal? Having training in PRISM/S and The Creative Edge Pyramid as a cost- and time-efficient part of curriculum for teaching “emotional” and “social” intelligence as basic to “human literacy.”

Download Dr. McGuire’s article, “Don’t Fight ‘Em, Join ‘Em: Community-Wide Intervention for ADHD, School Failure, and Juvenile Delinquency” .

Spend some fun time taking some of the Personality Tests and discovering your “differing gifts,” your Temperaments, your varying Multiple Intelligences, your Shadow Side in the Enneagram.

–Learn more about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening and Experiential Focusing Therapy at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, filled with free downloads on creativity, spirituality, collaborative thinking, parenting, innovation in business, and many other aspects of application of Focusing and Listening skills at home, at work, in your community, and globally.

Download our Instant “Ahah!”s Mini-Manual (“Ajas” Instantaneos en espanol) for ten exercises bringing Listening and Focusing into your everyday life starting today.

Download our complete Intuitive Focusing Instructions to start practicing Relaxation, Getting a Felt Sense, and Intuitive Focusing today!

See actual demonstrations of Listening/Focusing in our Self-Help package, a manual in English or Spanish, four CDs of Focusing Instructions, and a DVD with four demonstrations of actual listening/focusing sessions — everything you need to start your own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Support Group or to incorporate these basic self-help skills into existing support groups.

In the side bar at Creative Edge Focusing, subscribe to our free e-newsletter for weekly reminders to practice Relaxation and Focusing exercises and join our free yahoo group, Creative Edge Practice, for ongoing demonstrations, practice, and support.

Find classes/workshops/phone coaching in our Listings section or Coaching/Classes/Consulting with Dr. McGuire

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way

Comments (5)

By Kathy McGuire, December 23, 2007 10:53 pm

In business settings, there is great appreciation for the fact that teams need a balance of people with different skills, interests, and talents. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is one personality test widely used in organizations to help co-workers come to appreciate the “differing gifts” each brings to the table and to avoid conflict by respecting these differences. The MBTI helps businesses to hire personnel, organize teams, and increase conflict-free collaboration.

The MBTI is also widely used in education, to identify students’ differing gifts and to offer guidance in terms of career choices utilizing various gifts. The MBTI, has proved highly valid in predicting future career choices and guiding students into careers which are a good fit for their particular skills, talents, and interests (Myers, Gifts Differing, 1980).

Kiersey’s Please Understand Me, Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, and Mel Levines’ All Kinds Of Minds all offer additional perspectives for appreciating the “differing gifts” of each child. See Personality Tests for thorough descriptions and sample tests from these models.

The Career Academy model for high school education, sponsored by the federal Department of Labor in the USA, allows students to become exposed to a variety of possible career choices through hands-on, real-life activities. It also helps students to specialize in an area of interest leading directly into actual jobs or next-step accreditation programs, such as community colleges and technical schools, as well as colleges and universities.

Read Dr. McGuire’s article, “Don’t Fight ‘Em, Join ‘Em: Community-Wide Intervention for ADHD, School Failure, and Juvenile Delinquency” .

Spend some fun time with holiday company, taking some of the Personality Tests and comparing your “differing gifts,” your Temperaments, your varying Multiple Intelligences, your Shadow Side in the Enneagram.

–Learn more about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening and Experiential Focusing Therapy at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, filled with free downloads on creativity, spirituality, collaborative thinking, parenting, innovation in business, and many other aspects of application of Focusing and Listening skills at home, at work, in your community, and globally.

See actual demonstrations of Listening/Focusing in our Self-Help package, a manual in English or Spanish, four CDs of Focusing Instructions, and a DVD with four demonstrations of actual listening/focusing sessions — everything you need to start your own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Support Group or to incorporate these basic self-help skills into existing support groups.

In the side bar at Creative Edge Focusing, subscribe to our free e-newsletter for weekly reminders to practice Relaxation and Focusing exercises and join our free yahoo group, Creative Edge Practice, for ongoing demonstrations, practice, and support.

Find classes/workshops/phone coaching in our Listings section or Coaching/Classes/Consulting with Dr. McGuire

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way