fads

The First Step Is Failure

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Joanne Jacobs, edu­ca­tor, blog­ger and author of Our School: The Inspir­ing Sto­ry of Two Teach­ers, One Big Idea and the Char­ter School That Beat the Odds, par­tic­i­pates today in our Author Speaks Series with an excel­lent arti­cle on how “Schools won’t improve until admin­is­tra­tors and teach­ers can admit the prob­lems, ana­lyze what’s going wrong and try new strate­gies. Stu­dents won’t improve if they think they’re “special” just the way they are.” Enjoy, and feel free to add your com­ment to engage in a stim­u­lat­ing conversation.Our School: Joanne Jacobs

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The First Step Is Failure
By Joanne Jacobs

When self-esteem became an edu­ca­tion watch­word in 1986, I thought it was a harm­less fad. I was wrong: It wasn’t harm­less. Many teach­ers were per­suad­ed that stu­dents should be pumped up with praise, regard­less of their per­for­mance. Schools low­ered expec­ta­tions so stu­dents couldn’t fail. Every­one got an “I Am Special” stick­er. Till the stan­dards and account­abil­i­ty move­ment kicked in, stu­dents often were judged by how they felt about learn­ing not by whether they’d actu­al­ly learned something.

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Brain Fitness Training for Trainers

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We are very excit­ed to announce a work­shop host­ed joint­ly by the Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tutes (OLLI) at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley and San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty and Sharp­Brains (us!). We are offer­ing a three-day work­shop for edu­ca­tors and brain fit­ness prac­ti­tion­ers seek­ing instruc­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in the Sharp­Brains course, Exer­cis­ing Our Brains.

“Sharp­Brains has intro­duced the first sci­ence-based brain fit­ness cen­ter with infor­ma­tion and pro­grams to help peo­ple of all ages exer­cise their brains. They have offered the pop­u­lar Exer­cis­ing Our Brains course at SF State’s Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (OLLI) since Octo­ber 2005.”

Are you see­ing all the arti­cles about Brain Fit­ness in the pop­u­lar press and wondering,“What is this all about?, “Can some­one help me nav­i­gate through all the pro­grams out there? “How is Brain Fit­ness rel­e­vant to me in my per­son­al life or at work?. As the lead­ing source of infor­ma­tion and edu­ca­tion on Brain Fit­ness, we have deliv­ered a series of cus­tomized train­ing ses­sions to com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions that com­bine mod­ules ‑includ­ing sci­en­tif­ic overview, the indus­try trends and key play­ers, fun team-build­ing exer­cis­es- that can be tai­lored to your orga­ni­za­tion’s spe­cif­ic needs. Ses­sions last from 1 to 6 hours, depend­ing on your group’s com­po­si­tion and agen­da and are deliv­ered either in per­son or via web con­fer­ence. If you want more infor­ma­tion on Sharp­Brains work­shops for your insti­tu­tion click on Work­shops.

Who should attend:

Edu­ca­tors and prac­ti­tion­ers who are seek­ing to teach the course Exer­cis­ing Our Brains. Ide­al can­di­dates are: edu­ca­tors who are work­ing in the area of psy­chol­o­gy, health, and well­ness, and who are ide­al­ly already affil­i­at­ed with learn­ing cen­ters eager to offer a brain fit­ness class.


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