Tag: retrieval practice

3 Leadership Books for Teachers

Teachers are the leaders of their classrooms. Now, this may seem obvious (who else would be in charge?), so let me explain. Teachers are responsible for the execution of classroom objectives and the development of their students. In a healthy school, they are given the freedom and responsibility, within a broader structure of administrative oversight, to make key decisions pertaining to how they will empower their students to learn and grow. For example, a teacher responsible for teaching The Great Gatsby must consider how the book will be taught, what she will focus on, and how she intends for students

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Finding Flow through Effort: Intensity as the Key to Academic Success

At the intersection of challenge and skill, the state of flow emerges: a state of total immersion and enjoyment. Jason Barney’s book on flow, entitled The Joy of Learning: Finding Flow through Classical Education connects Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s study of flow with the classical Christian classroom. In this article I plan to build on Jason’s work by investigating some recent research that connects the concept of flow to grit and the growth mindset. My claim is that in order to achieve lasting flow, one must achieve an appropriate level of intensity. The first aspect of this claim to elaborate is the

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Expanding Narration’s History in the late Middle Ages: Bernard of Chartres from John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon

This is the third blog article expanding the short history of narration I laid out a year ago. In the last two I expanded my treatment of John Amos Comenius to engage in detail with the passages from The Great Didactic and the Analytical Didactic that recommend activities that Charlotte Mason would have called narration. As I have searched for teaching practices in the classical tradition, I have tried to be fairly precise in what would qualify as “narration”. In my book A Classical Guide to Narration I defined “narration” as a long-form imitative response to content that a teacher

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Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Analytical Didactic

In my last article I expanded my treatment of the history of narration through delving into a passage from John Amos Comenius’ The Great Didactic. I began reading The Great Didactic last year while writing the history of narration series and determined that there was more to say about the rebirth of narration during the Renaissance and Reformation eras. In fact, Comenius says so much that is pertinent to the teaching tool of narration, that it is tempting to attribute to him the invention of it as a core teaching practice. While we know that Aelius Theon used written narration

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Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Great Didactic

If you’ve been following Educational Renaissance for some time, you might remember my history of narration series from last year. During the third article of the series I had a short section on narration in John Amos Comenius’ work, relying primarily on Karen Glass’s brief quotations in Know and Tell. At the time I was only beginning to read Comenius’ The Great Didactic in full, and I had not yet procured his Analytical Didactic. Now I have read and digested both, coming away with more narration gems to add to the history. Even then I wrote that “more remains to

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Why the History of Narration Matters, Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective

In this series I have contended that the history of narration should bring Charlotte Mason educators and classical Christian educators together. That is because narration’s use as a pedagogical practice in the classical tradition illustrates vividly the connection between the two. When we know this history and turn to Charlotte Mason’s advocacy for the practice of narration as a central learning strategy, we see her not as a scientific modernist, intent on casting aside the liberal arts tradition of education, but as a renaissance-style educator. Mason was seeking to revive the best of ancient wisdom about education, even as she

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Renaissance

Why the History of Narration Matters, Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

In my previous two articles I framed my discussion of the history of narration with the controversy between Charlotte Mason and classical Christian education advocates. I suggested that narration’s history may be a fact that puts to rest the false dichotomies of either side. While Charlotte Mason did claim discovery of certain principles related to the nature of mind, narration itself is one of the many things she owes to the tradition. As she said of her philosophy and methods, “Some of it is new, much of it is old.” (Toward a Philosophy of Education; Wilder, 2008; 29) As we

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Quintilian

Why the History of Narration Matters, Part 2: Classical Roots

In my last article I shared the first piece of why the history of narration matters: it has the potential to break down the barrier between the Charlotte Mason community and classical educators. There are some notable exceptions who have tried to cross the aisle, but for the most part these two groups have kept to their own camps — some have even had cutting critiques of the other side to share. And of course, we may be each other’s best critics in a way that would be good for both of us. But for that to happen Masonites would

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ancient Greek goddesses of memory

The Flow of Thought, Part 2: The Joy of Memory

In my last article “The Flow of Thought, Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake” I drew a connection between Aristotle’s view that happiness is the chief goal of education and the findings of modern positive psychology. In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he reports his findings that people report being most happy when in a state of flow. Flow is his term for the experience of focused effort at some worthwhile pursuit at a level of challenge commensurate with one’s skills. Whether a hobby, work or a meaningful conversation, the experience of flow is immensely rewarding,

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