Join Diane in an interview with Gawinoh Parker, Grade 3 teacher at the  Skaronhyase'kó:wa. Mohawk Immersion School in the 6 Nations Territory, Canada.  Find out how this Waldorf Inspired school  teaches through total 
immersion into traditional Indigenous Wisdom. 

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The most important thing in teaching Tweenagers (12-14) is found in the play of opposites. Join Diane as she talks about teaching science through subjectivity and contrasts. You might find yourself inspired. 

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Diane takes you on a journey of the red thread that weaves through time and space in-and-out of the classroom. Through experience and story, she weaves a web which renews past learning and enlivened present learning and delves into the future of learning to deepen your teaching practice.

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What is a human being?

Understanding the human being leads to more questions, more developments, more possibilities....like a pattern or puzzle waiting to be linked together. This podcast discusses the 4 Greek Temperaments as a tool to greater insight for teachers and parents in order to develop a heightened sensitivity to children's behavior.

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We must ask ourselves if we are able to guide and gift our teenagers with the means to nourish their bodies, souls and spirits so that they walk into the world with confidence, courage and equanimity; bringing to birth true idealism as a contribution to this world.

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Most teachers are adept at seeing the big picture. Caught up in the hectic pace of modern life, we feel compelled to immediately distinguish what is important from what is not. The assessment is an easy one to make when we are mired in the daily grind of our classrooms. and school life or in our home environment if you are a homeschooling parent -- everything relating to student success seems significant and everything else seems comparatively trivial. But what is most precious in our classrooms or homeschooling environment cannot be measured in affluence or influence.

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Our human striving for connection with our earth, our communities and ourselves reunites through our individual and collective knowledge and art based creative endeavor. In reaching for the stars we inspire innovation and change, emerging into a new consciousness of ourselves and our world. Creativity and our learning is a gift to ourselves and to others.We live in the center and in the periphery when we are whole. The Curriculum Seal holds both opposites and connections. Our human collaboration inside the seal extends to endless possibilities for expression; it’s an educational ecosystem.

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I believe that we are all educators. We are all students. Whether we term ourselves mentors, learners, parents, or teachers, the world is on offer on every level of human understanding, place and time. We are living in a time of unprecedented change and if we do not want to be swept off our feet or simply led by algorithms, we need to find our stillpoint of quiet certainty in which to breathe and live and create and educate our children into an emerging future which still holds core human values at the centre of our purpose and directives.

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Human intelligence far surpasses computational intelligence. The deeper capacities of genuine human intelligence are based in the light of insightful dialogue, creative approaches as a community of people with diverse interests and capabilities. It is to be found when we engage and collaborate with others on any level, at any and every age and brings the light of imagination to the fruit of our conversations and engagements.

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The teacher actively practices the art of weaving potential teaching moments between themselves as teachers, and the students they teach. By doing so they have learned to improvise and be present; to love the times we live in. Students to become active creators with imagination, student voice or preferred experiences with engaged learning through theatre speaks to us of a hunger for the lifeblood of imaginative pictures, or layering of images. Improvisational subject teaching as a successful engagement strategy in a classroom as a theatre of becoming.

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I believe we are not finite human beings, though our culture portrays us this way. Teachers who abandon being a ‘presenter’ and turn towards their students as the true subjects of a lesson, generate a true meeting place of souls, like the crossing point of a lemniscate. Then there is a possibility to begin to relate to a living dynamic that is germinating within the hidden and ‘as yet unknowable’ content of the lesson at hand.

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The principle of unknowing is at work, Steiner suggests, acting as a force, through ideas. Unknowing takes on the guise of a patient teacher actively listening to the “as yet unknown” teachable moment.

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“Living thinking” are warmth and light processes in the mind and heart of the teacher. Light and warmth when actively practiced while engaging students is at the core of educational practices which have come alive. A true teacher possesses a capacity for connectedness through the very heart and spirit of the teaching profession.

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Steiner stated that active participation in the classroom calls for the dynamic interplay between the active and the passive mind. In Waldorf education, he highlights both an active and passive state of learning like a process of breathing. “When the world is passive, we become active. When the world is active, we become passive,” stated Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Biographia Literaria. Steiner develops this idea by stating that teachers overcome the illusion that they are limited human beings, inviting them to imagine themselves as a process in the cosmos: ‘ . . a breath drawn by the universe.’

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I began to explore the balance between teacher presentation and student participation in subject material in order to leave room for what I call the unfinished lesson. My lenses were Steiner’s educational philosophy, contemporary educators, theorists and futurists. My experience as a teacher showed me the longings of both teachers and students for a meaningful learning experience.

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How do we educate for the development of students as human beings where the emphasis is based on laughter, joy, heart based interest, and active participation as a key to unlocking all learning?

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In this introductory epsiode, host Diane Walters will go over integral teaching practices while discovering balance in the hybrid classroom. Her depth of experience brings inspiration to teachers as well as homeschooling parents.

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