QUESTION: Who can be called a "Holistic Teacher?
With everyone talking of 'Holistic Education' there is need for 'Holistic Teachers' and we need to list the traits, attributes and qualities of such a teacher. –Prof. B. L. Handoo
k kemper- Management Consultant, writer, past TV show producer
Answer: since i invented "holistic accounting" in 1982,a holistic teacher could be one who brings all subject matter and teaching concepts to the classroom and endeavors to succinctly use those melded together to meet the needs of the students as the instructor "facilitates" the mandated material.
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Answer: A "holistic teacher" is a "facilitator of learning." The traditional role of teacher has become one of an instructor who drills or pours "info-facts" into a student's head, treating knowledge as content, i.e., finite, and this archaic model has been reinforced by the computer age of how information gets processed. Yet the caveat of "garbage in, garbage out" now applies to today's obsolete industrial-era mass education system.
Holistic education is based on a concept of knowledge as a process of reasoning and of
continuous learning, i.e., infinite.
Carl Rogers wrote about the role of the holistic teacher back in 1967 in "Person to Person: The Problem of Being Human", (Real People Press), as follows:
- concentrate on creating a classroom climate to facilitate self-initiated learning, the freedom to learn and learning to be free.
- allow the students to be free and responsible so they confront real life problems.
- the teacher must be genuine and sincere, with a confident view of humanity and a profound trust in the human organism.
- able to accept their feelings as their own, they have no need to impose them on others.
- the teacher values the feelings and opinions of students who are regarded as imperfect humans with many potentialities.
- the teacher never denies a child's feelings and has empathic awareness of the learning process and education from the student's point of view.
In 1993, John miller, the pioneer of holistic learning at OISE in Toronto, wrote a seminal book "Holistic Teacher", and very recently "The Holistic Curriculum".
Hope that helps.
M. Joyce McMenamin- "Chief-of-Quite-A-Lot"
Answer: Looking around, it appears a lot of people can self-assert a holistic title.
Some of the most famous holistic practitioner-authors have no specific training or credentials.
I have sought out credentials and found that many of the certification programs are elementary and 'wanting'.
The concept of 'holism' is 'complete' (eg., whole).
I tend to believe that holism either "is" or "isn't".
Those that teach successfully are typically holistic from a combination of experience + learning vs. formal training.
Firas Abo Assaf- CEO ♦ Finance & FMCG Professional ♦ Real Estate Brokerage ♦ All In One ♦ One For All
Answer: In holistic education, the teacher is seen less as person of authority who leads and controls but rather is seen as:
1) A friend,
2) A mentor,
3) A facilitator,
4) An experienced traveling companion
Schools should be seen as places where students and adults work toward a mutual goal. Open and honest communication is expected and differences between people are respected and appreciated. Cooperation is the norm, rather than competition. Thus, many schools incorporating holistic beliefs do not give grades or rewards. The reward of helping one another and growing together is emphasized rather than being placed above one another.
In considering curriculum using a holistic approach, one must address the question of what children need to learn. Since holistic education seeks to educate the whole person, there are some key factors that are essential to this type of education.
• First, children need to learn about themselves. This involves learning self respect and self esteem.
• Second, children need to learn about relationships. In learning about their relationships with others, there is a focus on social “literacy” (learning to see social influence) and emotional “literacy” (one’s own self in relation to others).
• Third, children need to learn about resilience. This entails overcoming difficulties, facing challenges and learning how to ensure long-term success.
• Fourth, children need to learn about aesthetics – This encourages the student to see the beauty of what is around them and learn to have awe in life.
Wallace Jackson ; Multimedia Producer and i3D Programmer for Acrobat 3D PDF, JavaFX, Mobile & Virtual Worlds
Answer: A Mentor. An Example. A Leader. A Visionary. One Who Inspires. The Dalai Lama
Adam Maclennan; Lead Tutor at Tutorpedia
Answer: In my opinion very few (if any) people could be called a "Holistic Teachers." Though I would say that some people take a holistic approach to education and that is very good.
My primary bench mark for holistic teaching would be if the teacher seeks to impart a desire to learn and show connections to the real world as well as just disseminate basic knowledge. The teacher doesn't have to be able to teach all subjects by any means but does need to show how the subject being taught relates to others and to life. What's more teacher should seek out what interests and inspires the student and relate the subject to that. Any connection could be made even if it is honestly admitting that the current subject matter is simply a "hoop to be jumped through" on the path to the students eventual life goal.
A holistic approach to education does not mean that the teacher needs to befriend the student, treat them as an intellectual equal, or equally value their opinions about the world. In fact the teacher should do not really do any of these things because they all lead to the loss of credibility. As the teacher, even the holistically minded one, you should be the guru, the master of the material and on a higher intellectual rank than the student. People in general don't tend to learn from those with equal knowledge on a subject, they debate them. I'm not suggesting that students differing in opinion from you are a bad thing; in fact that process is extremely good. However, if you are a teacher worth your salt, nine times out ten the debate should end with both you and the student understanding that you are the winner, but not that the student has lost.
However the image of a mentor or role model is not far from where a holistically minded educator should be. This image must be carefully maintained and needs to differ from student to student. In all cases students must respect the teacher a great deal in order for any holistic program to take place.
Shankar Barua; Writer, Artist, Thinker, Musician, & Oddball Innovator
Answer: A good parent should do Bhushan.
Keep well ~ Shankar
Rayaprolu Sarma; Owner, SASU Academy Pvt. Ltd
Answer: Is being a "Holistic Teacher" a possibility?
Can there be any one who is complete and can we measure the completeness? To me a holistic teacher or some one close to a holistic teacher who understands his limitations as a human and still allows the possibility of other's growth through constant search for answers. A Holistic teacher need not be a subject matter expert always. He can merely be some one who encourages learning not by teaching but by being and becoming.
Teachers most often have to fill in the shoes of unrealistic ideals and hard to survive methodologies. It is important that self realization and truth seeking become the motto of teaching or imparting learning, only then can a teacher be holistic.
From a philosophical, real life, scientific and cultural perspectives, allowing learning to sprout in turbulence along with accepting learning as an event in a journey, all these are qualities which a holistic teacher can aim to have
Siphiwe Silinda; Document Controller B&W Madagascar Sarl
Answer: A holistic Teacher is someone that educates, mentor and do coaching one on one with his or her students. When students see her or him they regard as a role model because of the drive and the skills that he or she is passing on to the students. He or she posses the following attribute
Strong Leadership, Career and Family Counseling, Planning into Detail & Motivator
Nanette de Ville; at Life Reflections
Answer: I work as a Healer and I would expect to see the following qualities in a Holistic Teacher:
They should be someone who is compassionate, understanding and can listen. To be able to give impartial guidance and coaching to child:
Guiding children:
1. to understand they are responsible for the own actions and words
2. to learn how to identify personal issues and deal with the positively
3. learn how to identify goals and the steps to achieve them
4. to identify self-limitations and imposed limitations giving guidance and coaching on how to overcome them and what positive actions they need to take.
5. Learn how to love themselves and be joyous and passionate about their lives.
This will result in children being able to see their unique talent and will bring about a responsive curriculum instead of a restrictive and conditioned curriculum.
The more a person is in control of their lives the more they understand themselves and be who they really are.
There are many successful entrepreneurs who only had limited education clearly we cannot say they are failures but the education system failed them.
Julia Shirkey; Promoting learning as a way of life
Answer: Holistic teachers appeal to cognitive, affective, spiritual, relational, and somatic aspects of learning.
DAVE MASKIN; Wire name party favors made at parties ★ Highly effective lead generation for your trade show booth ★ WireNames.com
Answer: My chiropractor, Dr. Howard Kessler, Hillsdale, New Jersey is a wonderful holistic Doctor and teacher...
Harish Nair; Founder, Ragnar & Rearden Consultants
Answer: As an ardent student of systems thinking, i believe, being holistic is the ability to understand something from all possible perspectives, understand the invisible and visible assumptions behind those perspectives; understand that something in its context and outside of that context and the implications thereof.
Being able to also understand as well as detach oneself from one's own beliefs and prejudices to aid objectivity is a key to being holistic.
Anyone who has these capabilities can be considered as someone who is able to view things holistically. Being able to teach is another talent altogether. One who can combine the above along with the basic necessities of being a good teacher in my view can be termed a holistic teacher.
I also believe, being able to get this across to others would be a key to being a holistic teacher. One who has a holistic approach will enable others to do the same as he understands fully the limitations of not being holistic and how much is richness is lost in not being holistic.
Trust that helpful
Cheers
Harish Nair
Gurinder Ahluwalia; Marketing Consultant to SMEs, Professor in Marketing & Director
Answer: First and foremost a teacher must know the subject s/he teaches. Secondly s/he should be able to understand the students' personality and learning abilities. Thirdly a teacher must remain dispassionate in all situations. Lastly a teacher should respect divergent opinion and be open to all viewpoints.
Ida Durling: Management/Executive
Answer: Holistic teachers have clear and simple rules:
1.Respect - for the teacher, for classmates, and for materials
2.Raise Your Hand if you want to speak
3.Always try your best (as a person and on your work)
4.Take responsibility for our classroom (pick up after yourself)
These are just some of the classroom guidelines a holistic teacher will implement:
1.Respond to Adults
2.Make eye contact
3.Congratulate a classmate
4.Respect other students' comments, opinions and ideas
5.If you win, do not brag; if you lose, do not show anger
6.Cover your mouth with the crook in your arm when you sneeze
7.Do not show disrespect with gestures
8.Always say thank you when given something and do not insult the gift or giver
9.Surprise others by performing random acts of kindness
10.Follow along when we read together in class
11.Answer all written questions with a complete sentence
12.You must complete your homework every day
13.Subject transitions will be swift, quiet, and orderly
14.Be organized as possible
15.When a substitute teacher is present, all class rules still apply
16.Follow the specific classroom rules
17.You may bring a bottle of water to class, you may not get up for a drink of water during instruction.
18. Greet visitors and make them feel welcome
19.Do not save seats at lunch or in line
20.Do not stare at a student who is being reprimanded
Monday, January 4, 2010
ACCREDITATION OF SCHOOLS!
Question asked by Prof. (Dr.) B. L. Handoo
Q: How is Accreditation of Schools going to improve education?
The HRD Minister and the CBSE Chairman have proposed Accreditation of Schools as an initiative to improve Quality in Education. The Schools are wary. The parents want to know the benefits. The students and teachers think exploitation will cease. The managements fear exposure. Good Schools are hopeful of benchmarking their best practices. Some see Business prospectus and the general fear is dilution of standards in the name of Quality, since unscrupulous elements are vying for a piece of the pie.
(Location specific: India)
Answers from Friends from various walks of life
Virendra Pratap Mishra: Professor at Institute of Productivity & Management, Ghaziabad
Accreditation shall surely help. The process need to be set right.
Maximum weight age- 75% and above- should be given to the views and performance of passing out students in last few years. Say pass outs of last one to five years. Accreditations should be derived based on ratios of fees charged by institutes and salaries earned by pass outs in next five years. Minus weight age should be given for un-employment periods beyond six months of just passing out students.
Accreditation ranking should be published and institute be asked to display it prominently at every point of soliciting students.
Admissions to institutes be based on one single all India or state entrance score and no technical or other university should try to fill seats in affiliated colleges. Let all institutes fill their own seats based on their rankings, fees, common entrance scores and candidate preferences.
Accreditation should essentially be done by a private organization and 100% objective based on preset criteria scores. Accreditation agency should not have a subjective decision criterion
Michael Lyubomirskiy: consultant, project manager, inventor, programmer at Lyubomirskiy Consulting, lyubomirskiy@gmail
Government accreditation is not good because it easily gets corrupted and subverted to serve the goals and ideologies of the government. By contrast, private accreditation by private bodies/associations - that's not bad. E.g. if I think that Association 1 is a gang of morons and Association 2 is a gang of thieves, maybe I will go to Association 3 which is not reputed. Or maybe I will start my own Association... Naturally, these various organizations would quickly develop their reputations, and you, as a parent or government official, would have some notion of what their accreditation means.
Incidentally, MIT is, imagine that, not accredited by anybody. Their engineering programs are accredited (otherwise graduates could not have called themselves engineers) but the university itself has no accreditation. Believe it or not, they do fine :-)
Oops, no, I was incorrect. "MIT is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc., through its Commission on Institutions of Higher Education."
I distinctly recall reading 12 years ago about how MIT lacked some common accreditation and didn't care about it, but I cannot track down this tidbit anymore.
Rajesh Venkatesan: architect @HCL
I think the intention of an accreditation is good...but as everything else in India, implementation is a whole different nightmare...
I see this as no different from engineering colleges going like mad after getting deemed university status. The schools eventually will work out a strategy to get the accreditation whether they have the right infrastructure/staff/methodology or NOT.
My opinion is that even now some schools are flooded with applications for admission because they are good at what they should do - Education. I don’t see really Good Schools even caring about accreditation as they will get it de facto. It MIGHT serve as motivation for the other schools to better their state of affairs. That might be the only crucial point for me to favor accreditation. I think even if 20% of schools improve, I will support it.
Craig Eyermann: Instructor at University of Phoenix
Accreditation is not well correlated with the ability to achieve meaningful goals in education. For example, most of India's public school teachers are accredited, yet fail to adequately perform their jobs (see second link.)
The current move to accredit schools should be viewed as an attempt to suppress competition from private schools, where the instructors are incented to show up and teach (unlike India's public sector teachers). It's little more than a political power grab intended to take the pressure to perform off the public sector teachers by making it more difficult for private schools to be established to compete with them.
Wallace Jackson: Multimedia Producer and i3D Programmer for Acrobat 3D PDF, JavaFX, Mobile & Virtual Worlds
Any system is prone to corruption under the wrong sequence of events. Time will tell.
Al Macintyre: Computer Professional in IBM Midrange
Depending on what organization sets the standards, and manages the process, there is a potential to let parents know what schools are meeting what standards, so they can select best education for the students.
Ramesh Kumar: CTO & one of the Top 10 All time experts at Linkedin
Accreditation helps the schools which do not have a proper system in place. There are thousands of schools that are affiliated with some board or other and no one knows if the norms are properly implemented.
There are some schools which are more than 100 year old and have best practices in place. They know the importance of infrastructure and teaching practices.
Accreditation brings in some uniformity and the schools will be required to follow certain norms. And these will be reviewed at regular intervals.
Personally, I feel it is good as the accreditation requires minimum requirements for the school. The students, teachers and parents will be happy. However, managements may have to shell down more money for creating the infra required for accreditation. However, the problem is that the managements may try to recover the additional costs from students in one way or other!!
Ramesh
The Human Search Engine
Rayaprolu Sarma: Owner, SASU Academy Pvt. Ltd
First of all Accreditation of Schools will stop the commercialization of education. Following up the accreditation with tough criterion for setting up schools will allow quality and education to prosper rather than mere literacy.
Like many say India's problem is not unemployment, it is un-employability. The problem is not demand, the problem is supply. Accreditation will help in streamlining standards which will enable the best practices to reach out to the deserving people.
Accreditation will also allow the Govt. or Corporate sectors to involve in Global Citizenship and design methodologies of handling socio-economic insecurities which prevail not just in the students but also in the teaching population of the country.
Accreditation should allow the banning of schools which do not match the standards set, there by ensuring only quality to exist. A road map should be sought and enforced in to place by the Govt. to enable the good schools to become better and the better ones the best.
Accreditation if followed by stringent close down measures, will also bring to the fore, innovative low cost high quality interventions which will allow a better reach to the deserving candidates of the rural areas.
My take on the whole topic is that accreditation clubbed with action on low quality schools will be helpful. Lack of follow up action will render the accreditation useless.
Steve Taylor: Instructor at SAU Tech, Manager of Alien Productions, Freelance Video Producer
Obviously, in the US accreditation has failed. Anything that is controlled at the federal level will eventually fall prey to corruption and ultimately failure. Let the free market decide. If a school has graduates who are getting jobs upon graduation, that school will see an increase in students. If a school has graduates who are not getting jobs upon graduation, that school should see a decrease in students. All schools are not created equal. All instructors are not created equal. No mandate from the government (accreditation) will ever make them of equal value to society.
Christoph Knoess: Founder and President, Engaged Minds Inc.
I think the best analogy to accreditation is the government mandated annual inspection of motor vehicles. It sets some minimum standards, but says little about the best schools (or cars). As governments get deeper and deeper into financing education, it is inevitable (and good stewardship) that it will insist on minimum standards for all schools and institutions that receive government funding.
Schools and institutions of course see accreditation as an imposition and a constraint to their academic freedom and pursuit of their educational mission. However, the purpose of accreditation is to protect students and tax payers, not to serve educational institutions.
Q: How is Accreditation of Schools going to improve education?
The HRD Minister and the CBSE Chairman have proposed Accreditation of Schools as an initiative to improve Quality in Education. The Schools are wary. The parents want to know the benefits. The students and teachers think exploitation will cease. The managements fear exposure. Good Schools are hopeful of benchmarking their best practices. Some see Business prospectus and the general fear is dilution of standards in the name of Quality, since unscrupulous elements are vying for a piece of the pie.
(Location specific: India)
Answers from Friends from various walks of life
Virendra Pratap Mishra: Professor at Institute of Productivity & Management, Ghaziabad
Accreditation shall surely help. The process need to be set right.
Maximum weight age- 75% and above- should be given to the views and performance of passing out students in last few years. Say pass outs of last one to five years. Accreditations should be derived based on ratios of fees charged by institutes and salaries earned by pass outs in next five years. Minus weight age should be given for un-employment periods beyond six months of just passing out students.
Accreditation ranking should be published and institute be asked to display it prominently at every point of soliciting students.
Admissions to institutes be based on one single all India or state entrance score and no technical or other university should try to fill seats in affiliated colleges. Let all institutes fill their own seats based on their rankings, fees, common entrance scores and candidate preferences.
Accreditation should essentially be done by a private organization and 100% objective based on preset criteria scores. Accreditation agency should not have a subjective decision criterion
Michael Lyubomirskiy: consultant, project manager, inventor, programmer at Lyubomirskiy Consulting, lyubomirskiy@gmail
Government accreditation is not good because it easily gets corrupted and subverted to serve the goals and ideologies of the government. By contrast, private accreditation by private bodies/associations - that's not bad. E.g. if I think that Association 1 is a gang of morons and Association 2 is a gang of thieves, maybe I will go to Association 3 which is not reputed. Or maybe I will start my own Association... Naturally, these various organizations would quickly develop their reputations, and you, as a parent or government official, would have some notion of what their accreditation means.
Incidentally, MIT is, imagine that, not accredited by anybody. Their engineering programs are accredited (otherwise graduates could not have called themselves engineers) but the university itself has no accreditation. Believe it or not, they do fine :-)
Oops, no, I was incorrect. "MIT is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc., through its Commission on Institutions of Higher Education."
I distinctly recall reading 12 years ago about how MIT lacked some common accreditation and didn't care about it, but I cannot track down this tidbit anymore.
Rajesh Venkatesan: architect @HCL
I think the intention of an accreditation is good...but as everything else in India, implementation is a whole different nightmare...
I see this as no different from engineering colleges going like mad after getting deemed university status. The schools eventually will work out a strategy to get the accreditation whether they have the right infrastructure/staff/methodology or NOT.
My opinion is that even now some schools are flooded with applications for admission because they are good at what they should do - Education. I don’t see really Good Schools even caring about accreditation as they will get it de facto. It MIGHT serve as motivation for the other schools to better their state of affairs. That might be the only crucial point for me to favor accreditation. I think even if 20% of schools improve, I will support it.
Craig Eyermann: Instructor at University of Phoenix
Accreditation is not well correlated with the ability to achieve meaningful goals in education. For example, most of India's public school teachers are accredited, yet fail to adequately perform their jobs (see second link.)
The current move to accredit schools should be viewed as an attempt to suppress competition from private schools, where the instructors are incented to show up and teach (unlike India's public sector teachers). It's little more than a political power grab intended to take the pressure to perform off the public sector teachers by making it more difficult for private schools to be established to compete with them.
Wallace Jackson: Multimedia Producer and i3D Programmer for Acrobat 3D PDF, JavaFX, Mobile & Virtual Worlds
Any system is prone to corruption under the wrong sequence of events. Time will tell.
Al Macintyre: Computer Professional in IBM Midrange
Depending on what organization sets the standards, and manages the process, there is a potential to let parents know what schools are meeting what standards, so they can select best education for the students.
Ramesh Kumar: CTO & one of the Top 10 All time experts at Linkedin
Accreditation helps the schools which do not have a proper system in place. There are thousands of schools that are affiliated with some board or other and no one knows if the norms are properly implemented.
There are some schools which are more than 100 year old and have best practices in place. They know the importance of infrastructure and teaching practices.
Accreditation brings in some uniformity and the schools will be required to follow certain norms. And these will be reviewed at regular intervals.
Personally, I feel it is good as the accreditation requires minimum requirements for the school. The students, teachers and parents will be happy. However, managements may have to shell down more money for creating the infra required for accreditation. However, the problem is that the managements may try to recover the additional costs from students in one way or other!!
Ramesh
The Human Search Engine
Rayaprolu Sarma: Owner, SASU Academy Pvt. Ltd
First of all Accreditation of Schools will stop the commercialization of education. Following up the accreditation with tough criterion for setting up schools will allow quality and education to prosper rather than mere literacy.
Like many say India's problem is not unemployment, it is un-employability. The problem is not demand, the problem is supply. Accreditation will help in streamlining standards which will enable the best practices to reach out to the deserving people.
Accreditation will also allow the Govt. or Corporate sectors to involve in Global Citizenship and design methodologies of handling socio-economic insecurities which prevail not just in the students but also in the teaching population of the country.
Accreditation should allow the banning of schools which do not match the standards set, there by ensuring only quality to exist. A road map should be sought and enforced in to place by the Govt. to enable the good schools to become better and the better ones the best.
Accreditation if followed by stringent close down measures, will also bring to the fore, innovative low cost high quality interventions which will allow a better reach to the deserving candidates of the rural areas.
My take on the whole topic is that accreditation clubbed with action on low quality schools will be helpful. Lack of follow up action will render the accreditation useless.
Steve Taylor: Instructor at SAU Tech, Manager of Alien Productions, Freelance Video Producer
Obviously, in the US accreditation has failed. Anything that is controlled at the federal level will eventually fall prey to corruption and ultimately failure. Let the free market decide. If a school has graduates who are getting jobs upon graduation, that school will see an increase in students. If a school has graduates who are not getting jobs upon graduation, that school should see a decrease in students. All schools are not created equal. All instructors are not created equal. No mandate from the government (accreditation) will ever make them of equal value to society.
Christoph Knoess: Founder and President, Engaged Minds Inc.
I think the best analogy to accreditation is the government mandated annual inspection of motor vehicles. It sets some minimum standards, but says little about the best schools (or cars). As governments get deeper and deeper into financing education, it is inevitable (and good stewardship) that it will insist on minimum standards for all schools and institutions that receive government funding.
Schools and institutions of course see accreditation as an imposition and a constraint to their academic freedom and pursuit of their educational mission. However, the purpose of accreditation is to protect students and tax payers, not to serve educational institutions.
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