Articles

Originally posted in our August 2021 Top of Mind Newsletter. When we think about giving students autonomy, many different things come to mind. One influential model that educators at Stanford have been using seems to spark some of the most creative opportunities you could imagine in the classroom. Tina Seelig, Ph.D., offers her students $5 and two hours to make as much money as the team can. With as much time to plan as they needed,…

Originally posted in our August 2021 Top of Mind Newsletter. Using more learning from Stanford educators, we turn to a fantastic resource for facilitators. This document outlines how to create effective learning environments regardless of the subject that both create the psychological safety necessary for students to engage fully while also providing the space for robust and diverse discussion. As opposed to traditional lecturing, facilitation offers a more collaborative and engaging learning environment conducive to a…

Originally posted in our August 2021 Top of Mind Newsletter. When thinking about establishing a new paradigm in the classroom, the topic of individual needs invariably comes up. Many of us have heard of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and it has almost shown as a pyramid. But, the issue is, Maslow never designed this hierarchy as a pyramid. “Maslow emphasized that we are always in a state of becoming and that one’s ‘inner core’ consists…

Originally posted in our July 2021 Top of Mind Newsletter. Now that we understand that we’ll all go through a period of self-doubt in our work and understand the importance of finding meaning in that work, where do we go from there? How does this knowledge impact us in the day-to-day and our overall well-being? Research over the past few decades has taken the tie between mental and physical health into new territories. We’ve known for…

Originally posted in our July 2021 Top of Mind Newsletter. Keeping on the thread of pushing through our own self-critique, we’ll move onto a piece from the Harvard Business Review. In it, the author suggests that happiness at work will often get you the opposite. Instead, we should seek meaning. But what does that mean, and how do we accomplish it? According to the author and research she cites, there are five factors that differentiate meaning…