Tag: education

How Do I Choose My Yoga Teacher Training Faculty?

Inviting other teachers to participate in your training can be a great way to share expertise, entice a new population of students, and off-load some of your own work. However, there are some drawbacks to consider and you need to choose your partners wisely.

Let’s look at the pro’s and con’s.

Pro’s of Collaboration

Have an expert share their personal passion
Off-load work of content creation
Off-load work of facilitation/ teaching
Offer different points of view in your training
Different faculty may appeal to different students
Different faculty offers may widen your marketing funnel to new students

Con’s of Collaboration

They may have a difficult schedule / not be available when you need
You may not own the material they present (unless they use your material)
You may not own the rights to the handouts they provide
They may cancel and leave you in a bind
They may contradict your teaching ideology in the classroom/ confuse the students/ use different language or vocabulary then you do
You are paying another person (expense)
If you’re running a retreat, it’s more expensive to bring them with you

Avenues of Collaboration

When you’re running a yoga teacher training, there are several ways that you may choose to collaborate with another trainer. Let’s look at the options.

Training Partner: you’re in it together! The training is your shared love child. You both create and own the whole thing.
Trainer: you are hiring them to teach YOUR material. You create it, they teach it.
Outside Faculty: experts in a subject. They come prepared to teach with their own material, and they own all the content.

Let’s look more deeply at each of these and the implications.

	Level of Involvement	Implications
Training Partner	A training partner is a full partner in creating the course with you understands and shares your course vision. They probably teach the course with you (or teach a significant portion) and they probably belongs to Yoga Alliance or your credentialing organization as an E-RYT (if you choose to register). You’re on the same page in terms of your teaching principles (values, how to cue, use of language, how to sequence, etc.) and you are okay spending a lot of time with them.	A training partner will own the copyright for the course with you (unless you pay them for their work and have a legal contract otherwise). You’re probably splitting the training profits with them rather than paying them an hourly fee. You both “run” the training. You’ll have to figure out how to manage administration and registration duties (the behind the scene work that goes into creating a YTT) They likely need to be involved from beginning so that the content is cohesive and makes sense. You’re stuck with them long term as business partners. You must be on same page and crystal clear in terms of how you teach and the ideology of your training so that your students aren’t confused and the training is consistent. This is a good option if you have a business partner / very like minded yogi, you want to collaborate, and you’re in it for the long-haul.
Trainer	A trainer is a skilled “gun for hire:” you pay them come in and teach your course content and use your material. They may belong to Yoga Alliance as an E-RYT (if you choose to register ~ or whatever your credentialing organization is), and you’re on the same page in terms of your teaching principles (values, how to cue, how to sequence).	They do NOT own your content. You Do. They are teaching your material for you. You’re probably paying them an hourly fee rather than splitting profits. Unless you took your teacher training with them, you may have to train them to make sure they understand your course material, values, and your course concepts. This is a good option if you already have a training and you want others to be able to teach it (for example, a studio with ambassadors), or, if you’re willing to do the legwork to create your training yourself.
Special Faculty	Specialists in a subject area are a “gun for hire,” and you pay them to teach THEIR material they bring handouts, etc for students. They may not belong to Yoga Alliance.	They own their own content likely paid by the hour great for diversifying your faculty roster and teaching their own material. They are great for “niche” subjects such as philosophy, pranayama, ayurveda that don’t impact fundamental teaching methodology subjects like cuing and sequencing.

Too Many Cooks

There’s a seductive gray area where you may think, “But Amanda is so good at sequencing…I’ll just have her come in and teach a section.”

You can have too many cooks in the kitchen.

Remember, this training is about extending YOUR BRAND and YOUR VISION. And anyone who is teaching in your training must be totally on board with your teaching methodology. To deliver a consistent and effective training experience to your students, your teacher trainers must speak the same language, teach consistent ideas, and demonstrate the same teaching techniques.

Otherwise, you’re going to start to hear, “But Amanda said that we could teach handstand right before Savasana!” Or other such things that may conflict with your ideas of teaching. It’s like parents contracting each other: it will confuse your students and undermine the training experience.

Best Practice: if you want to include additional “special faculty” in your training, outsource specialized topics that don’t impact your core teachings and training vision. Or be prepared to train your faculty to ensure that everyone is on board with the core ideas of your training methodology.

US Yoga Alliance and Faculty

If you want to register your course with YA (or another organization), then you – or a couple of your trainers – need the appropriate credentials. Before you choose faculty, it’s useful to ensure that they can meet these requirements.

Check with your organization’s requirements in advance to ensure that your trainers will meet their requirements.

Teacher Trainers: It’s More Than Just Teaching

Just because someone is a great yoga teacher, that does not necessarily mean that they are a great teacher trainer.

Let’s look at the qualities you will want in a teacher trainer:

Team Player: ability to be flexible, take direction, and work well with others ~ like your or their fellow faculty.
Emotional intelligence and positivity: ability to hold space as a leader for a group of students who may be emotional and vulnerable. They validate students’ experiences and support their learning rather than criticizing or diminishing. Ability to manage group dynamics.
Responsible and organized, good time management: ability to show up early, manage a space, deal with handouts and some administrative duties like attendance, and organize assessments. Ability to manage their time and stay on task.
Committed to continuing education: someone who is interested and passionate about learning and sharing.
Ability to put the students’ experience first (rather than needing to position themselves as experts).
Clear communication: ability to relay complex ideas clearly and simply so that students can learn.
Marketing: will this faculty help you promote your training?

Your primary faculty will need to act like den mama’s and papa’s; in addition to having a clear understanding of the content, they must be able to help to manage the emotional rollercoaster ride of a yoga teacher training. For many teacher trainee’s, teaching is scary! Your faculty should be positive and supportive forces for the trainees growth.

Final Thoughts

When you are creating your yoga teacher training, it can sometimes be easy to partner with someone early…and regret it later. Before you agree to collaborate, think practically about the future of your business. Who owns the training? What does it look like if this other person goes away? What does it look like if there is a divergence or a falling out?

There are many ways to partner with others, but you want to be savvy and bullet proof your business. Creating a teacher training is a big investment and time and money. Some patient forethought about your faculty can help ensure that you create a training that is not only an amazing experience for your students, but a lucrative long-term offering for your business.

education

How To Create A Budget for Your Yoga Teacher Training

The Financial Realities of Running a Yoga Teacher Training

One of the scariest parts of launching a teacher training is the paralyzing thought: “Will I make enough money?” Creating (or purchasing) a 200 hour teacher training is a big investment, and it’s wise to do a little legwork in advance to have a sense in advance of your return on investment. This process can give you a sense of how you might approach planning a ytt, and it will also give you sense of the minimum number of students that you need to run the training successfully.

Your Revenue

First let’s take a look at your expected revenue.

Most 200 hour yoga teacher training have a price tag of about $3,000 – $3,300 per student. (For those of you thinking, “Should I charge less for an online or hybrid program?” my firm answer is NO. When it’s well-created, an online program provides just as much quality as an in-person training.)

You will likely run some early bird sales (offer discounts for early sign ups), and you will also be charged about 3% in credit card processing fees on your transactions, so let’s take the “worst case scenario” and say that ultimately you earn $2600 per student.

I would suggest that you run a yoga teacher training with a minimum of 6 students. So let’s see how the revenue would play out:

6 students x $2,600 = $15,600
7 students x $2,600 = $18,200
8 students x $2,600 = $20,800
9 students x $2,600 = $23,400
10 students x $2,600 = $26,000
11 students x $2600 = $28,600
12 students x $2,600 = $31,200

Obviously that could be a good chunk of change for your studio or business. But to really understand how much you would make, we have to look at your expenses.

Your Expenses

Expenses for your yoga teacher include the following:

Paying faculty
Space rental
Printing yoga teacher training student manuals
Marketing

Faculty

Of these, the cost of paying your faculty is the most expensive. If you are planning to bring in other teachers to instruct with you, then you want to be strategic about who you bring on board for faculty. For a variety of reasons, I would suggest paying your faculty by the hour rather than profit sharing, though you may wish to give them a bonus for students sign ups to incentive them to help market the training.

Teacher training rates vary wildly depending on a few factors:

If the trainer is providing their own material (handouts etc) or they are teaching yours
Their experience
Your geographic location and current price point for teaching pay rates

As a very rough ballpark, let’s say that a new teacher trainer may earn $40/hour while a very experienced teacher trainer may earn $100/ hour. That is quite a range, but you could generally think about paying the teacher 50% more than their class teaching rate.

For the sake of our sample budget, we’ll split the difference and assume you are paying your teacher trainer $70/hour. We will also assume that you are paying out all of these training hours. (If YOU teach the training, we’ll assume you are paying yourself $70/hour).

Faculty expenses = $14,000

Space Rental

If you own your own studio, you will not have to worry about these fees as you can schedule the yoga teacher training around your current classes. But if you are a solo teacher, you will likely need to rent a space to offer your training. Space rentals of course vary, but let’s say that – worst case scenario – you rent a space for $20/hour. As a worst case scenario, we’ll assume you are renting a studio for all 200 hours (rather than doing any of the program online).

$20 * 200 = $4,000

Printing Student Manuals

These days, you may just give your students a PDF and ask them to print out the manuals themselves. But just in case you decide to print out a 500-page black and white manual, you can estimate it will cost roughly $50/student.

6 students x $50 = $300
7 students x $50 = $350
8 students x $50 = $400
9 students x $50 = $450
10 students x $50 = $500
11 students x $50 = $550
12 students x $50 = $600

Marketing

For a yoga teacher training, the best marketing is often organic and unpaid (newsletters, website, social media posts, etc). If you do invest in paid marketing (Facebook promotions, boosting posts, etc.) I usually would suggest a more modest budget to start.

For the sake of our sample budget, let’s say you spend $500 on marketing.

Other Expenses

Other expenses that you may wish to include:

Processing fees (we calculated these and discounted them from the revenue, above)
Travel
Utilities at your studio
Admin time (registering and communicating with students)
Insurance (which you’ve probably likely paid as teacher/studio already)

The Bottom Line

So let’s take a look at where we’ve landed.

The “Worst Case Scenario”

This sample budget is looking at the “worst case” expenses. I’m assuming that you are paying a trainer (rather than teaching the training yourself), renting a space, doing the entire training in person (rather than leveraging the ability to teach some of it online), and printing out a substantial manual.

Faculty: $14,000
Space Rental: $4,000
Student Manuals (assume 6 students): $300
Marketing: $500
Total Expenses: $18,800
You pretty much break even at 7 students. For every additional student, your business will earn an additional $2550 in profit.

If you look at your revenue, you’ll see that this means that you need to have 8 students in order for the business to break even on your training. But the benefits of running the training (even at break even) are substantial: you’ve given your faculty a substantial earning opportunity, increased your brand, and connected with – and supported – your community.

The “Best Case Scenario”

Let’s look at another scenario, in which you are teaching the training yourself, do not need to rent out a studio space, and give the students a PDF of the manual rather than printing them yourself.

Faculty: $0 (rather than paying yourself an hourly, you will pay yourself whatever the profit is for the program)
Space Rental: $0
Student Manuals: $0
Marketing: $500
Total Expenses: $500
Profit starts with 1 student. In this case, if you have six students, you will earn $15,100 and increase profit $2,600 for every additional student.

Final Thoughts

Every studio is different, and it’s important to assess your own budgetary needs so that you can weigh the pro’s and con’s of offering a teacher training. Questions you may wish to ask:

Are there any unique expenses for my situation that I need to consider (for example, taking time off of work)?
Is there an appetite for teacher training in my community? (Will students sign up? Have students expressed an interest?)
Do I have the bandwidth to create (or resources to purchase) a 200 hour yoga teacher training?
Am I ready to teach a yoga teacher training?

Taking the leap to offering a yoga teacher training can at first feel daunting, but by creating a budget, you are better able to ascertain whether offering a training is a wise investment for your particular situation.

And – this probably goes without saying – I am a huge fan of yoga teacher trainings, for reasons far beyond their potential to be profitable. Offering a YTT can become a pathway to elevating yourself as a leader in the community and enriching your own understanding of the practice. They are often a calling to “step up” and take our own teaching and leadership skills to the next level. In addition, teacher trainings provide an opportunity to connect deeply with your community and students, and to create an inspirational environment for growth and change.

If you’re interested in offering a yoga teacher training, but aren’t sure where to start, feel free to connect with me for a virtual coffee 🙂

education

How To Offer An Online Yoga Teacher Training

Given the challenges of meeting in person during COVID, most yoga teacher trainings have had to move their trainings online in order to accommodate social distancing. Yoga Alliance – notoriously sticky about allowing for online course hours – is allowing schools to teach online through the end of 2020 as a way of supporting studios to keep teaching during this strange time.

However, part of the magic of a yoga teacher training is that it is in person. So how do you take a course that has been designed to be face-to face and move it into the online space?

Take a deep breath, studios and teachers! Here are five tips to help you out.

1. Livestreaming Tips

There are actually some nice benefits to livestreaming your yoga teacher training rather than teaching it in person:

You can require students to keep the video on (make this mandatory), which keeps them from hiding in the “back of class.”
You can record the session so students can have access to the material again. Yay!
You can share your screen to easily present online resources, such as presentations, images, videos and other fun links.
If you’re using Zoom, you can use the “breakout room” feature to have students do activities together as a smaller group – which can mimic in-class activities.

When you’re livestreaming, I highly suggest that (like your classroom experience) you vary your activities. Lecture a bit, then have students use break out rooms to do activities or reflect in a smaller group, lead practices, get them on their feet, have them take a poll, have them do an online quiz on the material you just covered, show them online presentations or other relevant and curated material.

As a best practice, restrict your “lectures” to small chunks. I recommend that you talk for no more than six minutes before having students engage or work with your material. Also, whenever possible, engage them students actively. Put the onus on them to do activities, come up with solutions, or even present on a topic that they have researched.

2. Practice Video Tips

The greatest challenge to taking a yoga teacher training online is that students aren’t teaching other humans in person. If you want someone to learn to teach an in person yoga class, then they need to practice teaching an in person yoga class. Teaching on Zoom is not the same, because you don’t have to “work” the room the same way, see students, use your physical body language, deliver as many verbal assists, do hands on assists or hold space.

Your greatest challenge in delivering an online yoga teacher training is addressing these limitations. Here are some ideas:

If possible, meet in person for practice teaching while social distancing. You can put a mat 6′ from someone else. You can meet in smaller groups. Though the student can’t walk around the room in the same way, the trainer can assess the student’s body language and vocal projection.
Have students practice teach in environments that mimic a real classroom. Have them teach family members, or put down mats or objects to represent students in a classroom. The more “real life” their practice teaching can be, the better equipped they will be to teach when they leave your training.
Use video. Have students record and submit assessments to the trainer, as well as practice teach live to your online group. When they record themselves, they will invariably wind up practicing a few times before they submit their recording – bonus!
Provide clear rubrics that detail what skills students need to demonstrate in order to achieve success. Not only can you use these rubrics to assess their practice teaching, they can use them to record themselves and self-assess, or assess their peers.

Need help with your livestreaming? Check this out.

3. Use Pre-Made Resources

Let’s be honest: livestreaming an entire 200-hour yoga teacher training can be tiring. Are there already built resources that you can use to support the student experience outside of livestream hours? YouTube videos, recorded classes from your studio, articles from reputable magazines, assigned reading in your manual?

Now, there is a HUGE caveat to this: all resources must directly support the learning objectives of your teacher training. If you choose to let students use outside resources – or you use them during class time – you must be very clear that they serve your learning intention, the training’s vision, and are very clear. Putting together a bunch of disparate resources because they’re interesting won’t work; carefully curating resources that directly support your training objectives does.

4. Plan For Interaction

This may seem obvious – and it’s actually less relevant to livestreamed yoga teacher trainings than to asynchronous trainings – but it’s important to deliberately create opportunities for student-student interaction and faculty-student interaction.

For student-student interaction, consider putting students in buddies, small study groups, assigning group projects/ activities, having peer-peer practice teaching assessments, or integrating discussion forums.

For faculty-student interaction, consider personal check ins, small group mentorship, email availability for questions or “office hours,” or Q&A forums (for example, create a Google Site). Also, be very clear upfront how students can get in touch with faculty for questions and what the response time should be.

5. Assess

Assess, assess, assess. Remember, the training isn’t about what you tell your students, it’s about what they can do. Regularly provide opportunities to assess their skills and give them personalized feedback. Covering less material and incorporating practice/ feedback is far better than covering a ton of different material. By assessing your students regularly – and giving them real tasks – you will set them up for success, online and off.

Bonus: here are some tips from the Yoga Alliance site on offering online yoga teacher trainings. Also, check out the “student-side” article that I’ve written. It includes a list of questions that all online teacher training programs will want to be able to answer.

education

How To Be A Great Yoga Teacher Trainer: Assign Real Tasks

I know it’s tempting. You want to assign your yoga trainees to do something fun, like write an essay on how the chakra system developed in India or describe their personal relationship to their dosha. But as diligent yoga teacher trainers we have to ask: do these assignments get them closer to their training goal?

Prioritizing What To Teach

When we first start creating a teacher training, 200 hours sounds like a long time. But once we start factoring in asana labs, practices, practice teaching, cueing techniques and sequencing exercises…suddenly 200 hours is really very little time.

When you design – or refine – your yoga teacher training, consider: What am I asking students to do at the end of the training to demonstrate that they have learned the necessary skills to teach? What is the primary task that they must perform for me to say, “Ah-ha! by Jove they’ve got it!”

For many yoga teacher trainings, the primary task is teaching part of an asana class. We rarely ask students to lecture on Ayurveda or describe key events from yoga history. So our focus as yoga teacher trainers must first prioritize the learnings, tasks, and activities that will help students to teach asana effectively.

Incorporating the Fun Stuff

This doesn’t mean that we can’t include more theoretical subjects. After all, students come to teacher training to deepen their relationship with themselves and investigate the yoga tradition, not simply learn how to cue asana. Most of us would probably agree that having a healthy respect for the yoga tradition and its many facets fosters essential knowledge, respect and humility in our teachers in their relationship to the practice.

However, if you want your students to have a working and applicable knowledge of these aspects of the tradition, then you can support their learning by making this information immediately relevant to their teaching. We can do this by assigning real tasks.

Real Tasks

A real task is one that practically supports the student’s work as a teacher. By ensuring that we are assigning real tasks in our training, we help our students transfer theoretical knowledge into real-world skills. For example:

Rather than assigning students to write an essay on the chakras, task them to create a class themed around manipura chakra.
Rather than ask a student to describe their relationship to their own dosha, task them to create a sequence for someone who has an excess of vata.
Rather than test students on their yoga history knowledge, ask students to teach a meditation practice described by Patanjali, an asana practice rooted in the concept of the Bhagavad Gita’s definition of yoga, “yoga is skill in action,” and a pranayama practice as described in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. \

And if you feel that the more theoretical aspects of the yoga practice are essential the style of yoga that you wish your students to teach, then include these elements in their primary task and final assessment. By tweaking your tasks to be “real,” you will help students refine their skills more quickly. Also, students will recognize the practical value of the assignment, which will motivate them to do it well. 🙂

Livestreaming? Get tips on how to do this in the online format.

education

Yoga Teachers! Three Things To Consider If You Want To Create An Online Course

So you want to create an online course, but aren’t sure where to start?

Okay! First of all, take a deep breath! Creating an online course is an exciting way to expand your reach by connecting to people who are geographically distant or unable to meet you in the real world. Here are the first three things you need to think about.

1. What do you want to share?

Be specific. Be real. Be you.

How can you use this course to help improve the lives of your students? What sweet, juicy kernel of information do you want to share? Start small. You do no need to create a twelve-course opus when you start out! How about a mentorship course? A favorite technique for practice? Make your first course something short and sweet so that you can get your feet wet with a smaller offering. You can always build from there!

My advice:

Choose something specific and targeted
Be simple
Get very clear on what you want your students to be able to DO as a result of your teaching. (More on why that’s important here.)

2. How Can You Share It

Teaching in person is not the same thing as teaching online. When you’re sharing online you need to get very clear about the structure of your course and how you are going to lead your students from point A to point B (another reason to start with something simple!). Then, consider the tools that you can use to share your information one step at at time. And with every step, consider, “what do I want my students to be able to do as a result of this information?”

Most people immediately default to video and pdf. While these are good tools, also think outside the box! How do you want your course to feel? Think of other tools could help students learn:

audio recordings
online classes
journal entries
worksheets
online articles
personal practice
etc.

Remember, your guiding star as you create your course is not, “what can I tell my students,” but rather, “how can I move my students from point A to point B?”

3. Platform

Your platform is how you host your course. If you’re tech savvy (or have tech savvy friends), you may host it on your own site. Frankly, I do not recommend this. More likely, you’ll want to use an online platform that already has some of the bugs worked out and makes it easy on you. I use Thinkific for my courses and like them so much that I’ve become an affiliate for them. They have a great platform that’s easy to use, they’re super responsive, and they put learners at the center. Other top contenders you can research: Teachable, Kajabi, or Udemy. You can play on many of them for free, then see what you like the most.

Here are some things to think about as you get started!

Want more help? Book a free consult with me. Creating great education is my jam, and my mission is to elevate yoga education in the world!

Happy creating!

education online

Please Stop Dumping Your Brain On Me: How Not To Teach

Have you ever been subjected to a lecture-vomit?

In the “sage on a stage” model, the learned expert shares their knowledge through a presentation while the students act as passive recipients. Though used in many classrooms, the lecture-vomit can fall woefully short where learning is concerned.

And the problem? Well, sometimes yoga trainers act like sages on stages. In subjects such as anatomy and philosophy, it’s fairly typical to have the ol’ “let me tell you what I know” expert come in and hold court.

“It’s a point of discipline,” said one (well-respected) teacher than I know, regarding her habit of lecturing students for a couple of hours. “Can they have studentship? Can they maintain focus and receive knowledge?”

It’s true that there is a historical precedent for the “student as vessel” model of learning. In the Upanishads, yoga students have had to prove their merit, often undergoing great tasks to show their teacher that they were ready to learn. However, while a student’s willingness to sit and listen may show discipline, it does not correlate that learning will result.

The sage on the stage model of teaching is an example of what I call “The Great Mistake,” where the emphasis is mistakenly put on the teacher’s performance rather than the student’s learning.

David Merrill, a well-known educational researcher, proposes several “First Principles of Instruction.” One of these principles is called the “application principle” and states that “learning is promoted when learners engage in the application of their newly acquired knowledge or skill [and] application is effective only when learners receive intrinsic or corrective feedback” (Merrill, Prescriptive Principles for Instructional Design). In other words, students don’t learn when they’re bystanders. Students learn by doing. Then getting feedback. And then doing again. Without the application of knowledge, sitting through a lecture is like watching TV. Sure it could be entertaining, but that doesn’t mean anyone is learning.

Fortunately, the solution is easy!

Application.

If you’ve got a lecture or Powerpoint in your hot little paws, consider what you need the students to be able to do as a result of your lecture. What task can you create that have them demonstrate their new knowledge, attitude or skill? Can you incorporate this demonstration of new learning into your lesson plan, and include the necessary time to give the learners feedback?

Presto: the one way lecture street has become a learning superhighway!

If you find yourself with a lecture or Powerpoint on your hot little hands, think to yourself, “How will the students demonstrate their learning to me? And how will I give them feedback?” By focusing on your student’s performance, you will ensure that your educational objectives are hitting their mark.

education learning objectives

Three Tips for Creating A Good Teacher Training Schedule

So you’re creating a teacher training. You’ve got an idea of what your content is, but you’re not sure how to fit it all together. It’s like looking at a blank page. Where to start? What should come first?

Whether you’re creating a continuing education, immersion, or certification program, all that white space can look daunting at first!

Here are three tips for getting out of “blank page paralysis” and getting a toehold into creating your course schedule.

1. Create your bookends

Every training needs bookends. What do I mean? Bookends at the beginning and end of the day, bookends at the beginning and end of the training. Even bookends at the beginning and end of a lesson plan. At the beginning of the day, you need a little buffer time to transition into the room, set the tone for the day, and set an intention. At the end of a section, it’s good to review, do a little Q&A, and get the students to reflect and integrate their experience. Don’t skip this part! Start by plan your bookends into your calendar or planner, and you’ll have a solid framework for filling the rest of your content in. Add a 10-15 minute about every 2 hours as well.

2. Order your lessons

This may seem obvious, but put your lesson plans (the topics of chunks of content that you’re teaching) into their appropriate order. Some stuff needs to be taught before other stuff. Put it in its optimal list, then voila! You have a roadmap for how your training should be laid out.

3. Keep it agile

No one likes to do the same thing for eight hours straight. Where you can, mix up your topics so that students are engaged in different kinds of learning and topics throughout your day. We are lucky with yoga trainings, because we can mix up the academic stuff with physical activity: what a bonus! Keep your students engaged and energetic by switching it up.

A common sense tip: your day shouldn’t be longer than about eight classroom hours unless you’re on retreat. Students will simply implode. An ideal length of day usually pulls in at five-six classroom hour. And it’s more civilized for you, too.

Check out my online courses for more detailed intel on creating your course format and planning your daily schedule.

education

Three Things You Should Know Before You Ask People To Teach In Your Teacher Training

Let’s say that you’re running a teacher training.

And Marla, your friend who is also a yoga teacher, is killer at teaching the chakras. They are her jam. So you think, well, maybe Marla should come into my nifty new teacher training and take on some of the time? After all, the students get to hear from a passionate teacher, Marla gets some training time, doesn’t everyone win?

Maybe.

But before you invite a lot of people to come on board, there are some logistical considerations that you need to think about.

Copyright

If you create the lesson, you own it. If Marla creates it, she owns it. If Marla goes to Bali all of a sudden, you can’t use that material (unless Marla gives you the rights, or you’ve paid her for the usage). While this may not be a deal breaker for specialized subjects, keep it in mind if you’re thinking of having someone teach more than a few hours of your program.

Material

While it can be nice for someone to add their voice to specialized material, you need to beware if you’re thinking of having a teacher teach more of the core material (cuing, sequencing, teaching skills). Even if you love Marla, she may have a different teaching ideology from you. You need to protect your students from confusion by making sure that all your faculty have the same language and rules around key concepts.

Yoga Alliance, or your local supervising organization

If you have joined YA, or another registration organization, they will have requirements around your faculty and you will likely need to register your faculty with the organization to maintain your credentials. (Now, whether or not the organization has the manpower to actually follow up and enforce their mandate…well that’s another question. But if you want to be “above board,” in your training, your faculty will have to be eligible to teach. Check out their rules and restrictions regarding adding faculty so you can feel about adhering to the spirit of their standards.

Adding faculty is an excellent way to add a little diversity to your training, take the teaching burden off of your lead trainer, and make the most of an expert’s passion. Just do your due diligence first to make sure there are no surprises.

For a more in-depth look at adding faculty, take Course 1 of “Create Your Training” for free: everything you need to know.

education

Five things you must consider when choosing your yoga teacher training space

If you have decided to create and host a teacher training, where you host the training is vitally important. Not only will you have to take into account logistical considerations (ie: do they have bathrooms? do they have enough props?), but it’s also important to ensure that the feeling of the space aligns with your greater vision for your course.

Here are five things that you need to keep in mind:

1.The Feel

What does the space feel like? How do you want your training to feel?

Every training has a different flavor, and your training space should align with yours. Think about the adjectives that you’d like students to use when describing your training. For example, is the mood of your training “clear, compassionate, and calm,” or “challenging, engaging, rigorous?” Does that space align with the mood and tenor of your teacher training program?

On a practical note, consider the cleanliness of the studio. Since you’re going to be practicing yoga, you will likely prefer hardwood or laminate floors that are kept swept. Ask about the studio cleaning schedule. There’s nothing worse than being in a sweaty, hairball infested yoga training room!

2. The Supplies

In a nutshell, does the space have what you need to run your training.

You can think about:

how many students will fit in the space comfortably
how many props/supplies are available
storage space
wifi
Chairs or sitbacks for sitting
projectors, projector screens, whiteboards, poster sheets – or do you bring your own?

3. Location

Location, location, location. Is the training central to where your students will be coming from?

Also consider:

Is there nearby parking (for all-day)?
Nearby transit
Nearby food, parks, cafes

4. Amenities

We don’t always think about the amenities, but they will become very important if you’re doing a full day training.

proximity of bathrooms
showers
kitchen
air conditioning

5. Schedule

Finally, many rental spaces already have obligations. If it’s a working yoga studio, you may have to schedule yourself around their classes or events. Get the details on availability so you’re not caught by surprise.

education

What you need to think about before you create a teacher training

So you’ve been teaching awhile, and you love yoga. You’d love to share the deeper aspects of the practice with your students. And maybe you’ve even been asked by your students when you’re going to be offering a teacher training.

Should you?

Here’s what you need to think about before you create a training.

Does education align with your personal mission?

Not everyone needs to offer a teacher training. There are many ways to contribute to your community, and you may be more passionate about offering retreats, classes, privates, or immersions. Step back and consider your big picture.

Does your community need a teacher training?

If you live in a community without a reputable, local training, then there may be a high calling to create an offering. But if there is already a lot of competition (and they are good programs), then perhaps there is a different yoga offering that could meet your student’s desires. An immersion, philosophy intensive, or asana progressive may be a better match.

Do you have the skills to be an educator?

Teaching people to teach requires a different set of skills than teaching a public class. As an educator, you need to be focused on structure, learning objectives, time management and meaningful assessment. You must become very clear about the “how” of good teaching, not just the “what” – this is, if you want to create a training that is effective rather than just a nice experience for your participants. There are resources you can use to develop these skills (my Create Your Training course, for example), but you’ll have to be willing to put on your left-brained hat for a good period of time.

Holding space

Running a teacher training isn’t just about teaching skills; it’s about holding space for people to move through a personal transformation. The teacher training room can become intense and emotional. As a trainer, you have to be willing to create a safe and compassionate space for your yoga trainees to be heard, held, and supported.

Time

Creating a 200 hour training takes a boatload of time and project management. Are you they kind of person who can set measurable and tangible goals? Do you have time now to set aside 5-10 hours a week to commit to this endeavour? Again, you can work step by step and complete your program at your own pace, but you’ll need to be a self-started and stay motivated to stay on track.

If you love education and are committed, then dive on in! Creating a teacher training is an extraordinary learning experience to clarify your teaching style and become very clear about the skills required in teaching.

For help determining if teaching a training is right for you, check out my free course: What to Consider Before You Create A Teacher Training.

education

The Biggest Mistake Teacher Trainers Make – and How You Can Avoid It

I call it the Great Mistake.

And I’ve made it. A lot.

Here it it:

As a teacher trainer and educator, it’s natural to want to give your students a lot of information. After all, we are content experts and we have a lot of great stuff to share. So when we’re creating trainings, we usually start by making a list of all the content we want to cover. What do we know, and how can we talk about it. As if the point of the training is to transfer what is in our heads into our students’.

This is the great mistake.

The great mistake is thinking that training is about what we teach.

It’s not.

Training is about what the student can do.

The great mistake is thinking that training is about what we teach.

It’s not.

Training is about what the student can do.

When you are creating your training, start with the end in mind. Rather than think about what you want to teach, sit back, have a latte, and really think about what you want the student to be able to do as a result of your time with them.

What new tasks can they perform, or perform better?
How will you know if they “get it?”

Even in a knowledge-centred training (where you want them to “know” or “understand” stuff), there is a way to evaluate your student’s performance by seeing something that they do.

When you switch your teaching focus from what you know to what your student can do, you may suddenly find that your in-class time needs to look radically different. You may not need to teach everything that’s in your head. In fact, you may teach a lot less content in some ways. And perhaps all of sudden you realize that, wow, you actually need to teach something entirely different than you originally thought to get the performance result from the student that you really want.

Ask: what do you want your student to be able to do as a result of the training?

By asking yourself this simple question, you are setting yourself miles ahead.

Put the student’s performance first, and create your training from there.

education teacher training

Three Tips for Effective Learning

Learning is one of the most important activities in life. We don’t just learn when we cram before the exams, but each day we should aim to gather new knowledge that will deepen our understanding of the world around us. Many students feel that they spend days and days just mindlessly fulfilling their to-do lists, without being enriched by those activities – even if they include studying. I find this quite understandable for today’s modern times, where our to-do lists often include more tasks than one can healthily handle – we exhaust our body and mind to the point where they cannot function beyond the mechanical. Have you recognized yourself in this description? You are not alone.

Below, I written a list of the three most important factors for effective learning. Still, I’d like to mention that this is a long journey. Healthy living is not like a shot of caffeine, it won’t make you more alert in matter of minutes. It will take weeks before you can feel a difference, probably longer before the improvement in your performance becomes noticeable. But it is honestly worth it – and much, much longer lasting than that cup of Red Bull. So, without further ado: the top three tips for effective learning!

Exercise

It can be running in the fresh air, it can be lifting in the gym, or a yoga class – whatever physical activity you enjoy the most. Exercise affects your body in more ways than you can imagine. It is far more reaching than just your body weight and strength. Physical activity is a very important factor in studying: it was shown to increase the number of neurons in the brain and make the connections between neurons much more complex. In an experiment by Justin S. Rhodes from the University of Illinois, the results strongly suggested the importance physical activity has in learning. The research found out that mice who had regular exercise performed significantly better on cognitive tasks such as completing the maze. Interestingly, it did not matter how enriched mice’s environment was. Mice who did not have any extra toys in their cages but had a running wheel allowing them regular exercise out performed mice living in an enriched environment. These findings perfectly illustrate how in today’s world, where we our lives are full of tasks and toys – the so-called enriched environment – our brains seem to function less and less due to increasing inactivity. It is good to keep this research in mind: no matter how many hours you spend studying/working a day, if you are constantly inactive, your brain will not intake the information up to its full potential. A little bit of physical activity on a daily basis could help you with memory retention and concentration, and allow you to obtain more information with less time invested.

Finally, exercise is a mood booster, meaning that it can help you approach your work as happier and more energetic self. This can be a life-saver when you really, really need to do that all-nighter.

Eat well

Eating heathy is another well-known tip, but unfortunately people rarely follow through with it. Many manage to pay attention for a week or two, but then life happens and they opt for ordering pizza instead of cooking a soup rich in vegetables. Of course, I won’t argue against the fact that ordering pizza is easier. But food is crucial for human being to function, never forget that. The primary reason for consuming it is to provide us with nutrients and energy, which highly processed junk food does very poorly. Studies have shown again and again that the latter, especially foods high in trans and saturated fats, negatively affects students’ performance and attendance. And while an egg for breakfast can certainly help a little bit with your exam, keeping a healthy nutrition only on special days really won’t revert all the negative impacts of your regular sugar-fuelled diet. It would actually work much better if after an exam you treat yourself to a cake, breaking your otherwise super healthy streak.

Healthy eating does have to mean extreme eating: only raw foods, exclusively vegan or very low on carbs – nor my favourite: colour coded eating. Healthy can simply mean that you eat mostly vegetables and lean meat and fish, fruits and complex carbs, while leaving out added simple sugars and heavy red meat. With these, you can make many dishes that are simple to carry: salads, pasta with a healthy sauce, and meat with veggies and grains on the side fit easily into a Tupperware. If you are very sure of your Tupperware, you can even carry some wholesome soup to uni. To help you save time, you can cook more food in one go and have it for a couple of days, halving the weekly time spent in the kitchen. This can be a life saver if your university life is as hectic as mine. Here are some healthy student-friendly recipes!

Some superfood for studying:

Blueberries – good for memory, learning capacity and motor skills
Eggs – good for memory and brain functioning
Pumpkin seeds – good for memory, thinking skills and mood
Sage – good for memory and concentration
Oily fish – important for proper brain functioning
Whole grains – good for concentration

Dedicate a couple of hours, but fully concentrated

If you take care of your diet and exercise regularly, your concentration should improve noticeably. With better concentration, we can learn more in a shorter period of time. However, even before the healthy habits kick in, try to reorganise your studying so that you do a bit each day, rather than cramming a week before the exam. Studies have shown that we retain information better if we divide studying over some time. For example, if you schedule a class with your online tutor, it would be best to do the lecture with them one day and then revise the next, instead of revising immediately afterwards. If you really have to spend the whole day studying, it is much better to do different subjects during that day rather than focusing on only one for hours on end. Still, you should honestly stay away from cramming because being all alone for a week without a break can make students tired and moody, which in turn impairs their academic performance, and if done too often can have serious consequences on their mental health. It might seem like a waste of time, but going out with friends for an hour can have an amazing impact on study session, and if you manage to incorporate that in your daily life, it can help your overall academic performance. We are social beings and we need interaction with friends and family to be healthy and do our best.

Hopefully, this list did not disappoint you, even though it gives advice you’ve probably been given many times over. The reason why these tips keep reoccurring is because they are truly useful and in your best interest. In order to strive, we have to take care of our physical and mental health. Don’t forget that.

education

Space. And Intimacy.

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise…” – James Kirk

Yogis, we’re going on a fantastic voyage. A voyage that reveals the importance of inner space…

A famous study entitled “From Jerusalem to Jericho” was conducted in the 1970’s to analyze the good Samaritan story from the Bible. Researchers sought to determine what factors impacted a desire to act like a good neighbor towards someone else: did someone’s current thoughts affect kindness? Did feeling rushed?

To test their hypotheses, they gathered a group of seminary students and tasked half of them to give a talk on the Good Samaritan story (ostensibly to generating thoughts about helping someone else) and the other half to give a talk about religion and the work place. They then had the students walk from one building to another. The students were further divided so that one group was given a “high hurry” motivation (ie: you’re late!), another group a “medium hurry motivation” (they’re waiting), and a final group a “low hurry” motivation (you’ve got some time to get there). En route, the students encountered a person (an actor) pretending to be in distress. Then researchers tallied up who see if they could discern any patterns in who stopped to help.

Turns out that degree of religious thoughts had no bearing on whether or not people stopped. (People given the good samaritan story stopped no more frequently than the others.) However, those who felt leisurely stopped far more than those who felt rushed by a ration of 6:1.*

The moral of our story? Compassion requires space.

Daily living is compressive. How often do we feel rushed? We hunch over our desks, rush to get the kids to school, fight against the traffic, and armour up to not get hurt. We are beset by obligations from peers, family, bosses, even friends. Our lives move at cyber-speed, and we frantically race to catch up with emails, texts, and skypes.

It’s time to slow the clocks.

When we go to yoga, or walk in nature, or write in our journals, our soul spreads its folded wings and stretches to full breadth. Without self-nurturing space, we default to our survival impulses. Caught in flight or flight, we react impulsively and can even become blind to what’s right in front of us (some students actually had to literally step over the stricken victim in the scenario). But when we create space in our lives, we then have the room to act ethically, considerately, and gracefully.

How can you create space for yourself? Through the yoga practice? Through breath? Through journalling?

Create space this week just for you.

Because when we create space for ourselves – even when it’s just starts with an extra breath – the world receives a better version of who we are. And that’s worth an extra breath.

*Ironically, the errand that students were tasked with was to go to the next building in order to deliver an impromptu speech on the passage of the Good Samaritan. The full study is entitled, “From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behaviour.”

education love

Gay marriage. The subway. And a 7-year old.

Or, education happens in the darnedest places.

A seven year old sidles up next to me on the N train to Astoria. I’ve got my laptop flipped open, working on an article for EME 6414, my Web 2.0 course. He sits quietly for awhile and watches.

“You type fast,” he observes.

I look over at him. He’s got freckles everywhere, and big, earnest blue eyes.

“I took a course,” I say. “I learned how to do it.” That’s me, always one to beat the drum of education into young minds.

“Oh,” he says. “So.” He looks at my article again. “You disagree with your dad?”

He’s been reading over my shoulder.

I pause. I wonder briefly if his guardian is going to mind this conversation. “Yes.”

He considers this. “You fight with your dad?”

I think for a moment. “Well, my dad and I think different things politically,” I say slowly. “It’s not really fighting, we just have different opinions.”

“Your Dad doesn’t like gay marriage?”

“No.” I smile, “He doesn’t.”

“But you do?”

“Yes. I do.”

He sighs and tilts his head. “…Do you think it’s okay to be gay?”

I glance over towards his guardian, who turns out to be a matronly looking woman sitting three seats down from me. She is listening to us, but doesn’t seem to mind where the conversation is going.

“Yes,” I say, “I think it’s okay to be gay.”

“Even girl and girl?” He sounds pensive.

“Yes.”

“I hear that there’s girl and girl, but I’ve only seen boy and boy stuff.”

“Yes, there’s girl and girl, too. There’s a whole world out there.”

“But you think it’s okay.”

“Yes, I do.” I feel I should explain a bit more, “I have lots of friends who are gay.”

He frowns. He needs specifics, “Girl and girl, or boy and boy.”

“Both,” I say.

He looks impressed by this. “But your Dad doesn’t like gay people?”

“Well,” I consider this, “my dad doesn’t believe in gay marriage. But he likes gay people. We even have gay family members. But he doesn’t think that gay marriage should be legal.”

“It’s not legal?”

“Being gay is legal,” I clarify, “but until recently, being married wasn’t. Until recently, gay people could only get married some states, but not in others. But now the supreme court decided it was okay for everyone to get married, in all states. Which gives gay people legal rights that they didn’t have before.”

“Like what?”

“Like taking care of someone in the hospital, or taking care of their kids.”

“Oh, right!” He says. “Kids. So,” his nose wrinkles in consternation, “Can you have two dads?”

“Yep. Two dads.”

He looks out into the train car. “I’d like to have two moms,” he says decisively. “But, wait!” he suddenly looks puzzled again, “How can two boys have a kid?”

I wonder again about that guardian. “Wellllll,” I say, “then you might need to get some help.”

“Oh,” he brightens, “like adopting.”

“Yes,” I say with a tinge of relief, “like adopting.” I didn’t want to get into a conversation about surrogacy and sperm donation. I glance up at his guardian. She has a small smile and shakes her head slightly as if to say, ‘Kids? what can you do.’

I decide that I love this seven year old.

“So,” I say to him, “What do you think?”

He looks up at me and considers. “I think it’s okay,” he says finally. And nods definitively.

And then I have to get off the train. It’s my stop.

education

Thriving as a networked individual

“People and institutions exist now in information and communication ecologies that are strikingly different from the ones that existed just a generation ago…It is not an either-in person OR online dichotomy; it is an in-person AND the internet AND mobile contact comprehensiveness.” – Lee Rainie & Barry Wellman, “Networked.”

Thank God.

Reading this book is like a breath of fresh air. Of relief. You mean all this time stuck in my PDA or online doesn’t mean that I’m a misanthrope? Despite some outcries to the contrary (“it’s all ego,” “everyone’s detached these days!”), it is with a profound sense of relief that I place myself squarely in the Networked camp.

Social networking and creating relationships are not just for the in-person meet anymore. Staying face to face means missing out on the richness of interchange this is humming and thriving right past your keyboard. Social networking means tapping into Facebook, to Twitter, to blogs. And it also means calling your friend and arranging for an in-person meet.

Nine years ago I moved from New York City to Vancouver, Canada, leaving my entire world behind. Thank god we had cellphones. Now with Skype, I can easily video chat my family and friends. With my cheap North American calling plan, I can call my American peeps from the car when I’m commuting. Grabbing a five minute conversation on the go rather than having to wait for a landline at home and paying through the nose. I could also simply Skype the for free, if I weren’t so distracted by video when driving. In the interim, I can read my friends’ blogs, send them articles, like their Facebook postings, and stay tuned into their lives even through I’m far away. Then when I get on a plane and see them face to face, it’s as if we never really had a break.

I embrace my Networked identity. We reach out more, and we also become more autonomous, relying on 1-1 connections rather than more traditional in-person group identities. Each network a snowflake. No two networks alike.

And how three-dimensional will our wonderful webs become? Are we in store for the “Metaverse” (a “convergence of 1. virtually enhanced physical reality and 2. physically persistent virtual space”) or where part of our brain consists of an external hard drive that connects wirelessly to our organic matter (oh wait, that’s our smartphone, we’ve already got that). My grandmother was born without running water. Now she has an Ipad. What changes have been wrought in this life time! What changes are yet to come!

References

Rainie, L. & Wellman, B. Networked (2012).

Photo credit.

Photo cropped from original.

education

Identity reflections

As my social media course winds to its conclusion, I am reflecting back on the first decision I made in the course: how much of myself do I reveal?

At the beginning of the course, I made the decision to post the educational blogs as myself, interwoven into the fabric of my current website. Deciding the my identity was not to be fractured, but yet would be revealed as a whole expression. Although the facets may not make sense (educator? yogi? romantic love guru? sugar free paleo experimenter?), altogether they are a shadowy expression of my own unique digital identity. Just a each thumbprint is unique, each person creates their own unique digital imprint in the world. Each personal learning network is unique – indeed, we are the hub of our own experience and learning – so why would I minimize or flatten this experience in order to placate my readers that I am easily one-dimensional? Knowing that we are all lovers, haters, humble monks, as well as arrogant sons of bitches, can we not expand our own minds to hold the beautiful contradiction and complexity of another human being?

Perhaps our editorializing of ourselves is safety. We fear to reveal our idiosyncrasies because we are afraid that our lack of neat edges speaks to loose ends and irresponsibility. Or that we are protecting our image from those who may be confused by our speaks to our complexity or our humanity (“no, Mom, at the age of forty, I’ve never been drunk, I swear”). Or maybe we are revealed in our silly humanity, taking selfies and proclaiming our ill acts to the world when perhaps we should just let the moment live without a digital archive (are we afraid if we don’t record it that it will be gone forever?).

At any rate, I am well-pleased with my results. Rather than attempt to box my expression into narrow corridors of branding, I am satisfied by the new aspects of self that have been uncovered through this process. A sugar free nut. A budding educator. Why not? Is not the world wide web a glorious tool for self-expression and exploration?

When I was an actor, my teacher used to berate us when we made our characters logical. “Don’t dull the extremes,” she snapped, “it’s boring. We love the contradictions!” Linear organization and simplicity may be aesthetically pleasing, but there is an equal beauty in the complicated weave and dance of fractals.

Photo credit.

education social media

Boundaries, social media, and ethics, oh my!

Yoga students friend me on Facebook all the time.

See, as a yoga teacher, I work in an industry where personal connection is valued. I have the pleasure of working with some of my yoga students up to four times a week. I know their names, their injuries, their sense of humour. Before and after class, we share stories and connect about life happenings. Sometimes, these online connections lead to real-time meetings (coffee, sometimes evolving to friendships). In fact, one of my yoga mentors advised, “Treat your students like friends. No more. No less.” Also, my teaching personality is familiar and candid; though I never feel that they are exposing, my in-class anecdotes are frequently personal in nature and I often story tell about relationships and personal experiences.

Creating clear boundaries can be tricky when working in an industry that seems is so focused on “building community.” Also, social networking is the currency of private contractors; that is, the number of “friends” that I have on Facebook dictates my sphere of influence. If I have a workshop or training coming up, I want to have a robust community in order to create a successful event. So yoga teachers are caught in an interesting bind: we want extensive communities that capitalize on our personal connections, yet at the same time, we need to have boundaries that respect our student’s privacy.

As an original attempt at separation, I had set up a professional Page and a personal profile. However, students searching for me frequently find my personal page first and initiate friendships. Given the warmth of the nature of our relationship, it feels rude to not be “friends.” So both my page and my profile are now public fodder. And even if I did have complete separation, posting anything personal to Facebook at all is risky since one’s posts can be seen on others’ timelines. As a result, I don’t post anything that I consider overly personal on Facebook at all.

Perhaps the publicity of Facebook will lead to an elevation in communication. In other words, there is no such thing as “speaking behind someone’s back” because someone can turn around at any second. Even private messages could be screenshot and emailed. Anything written can – and could be – used against you in a court of public opinion, if not of law.

In this light, perhaps we can view the dissolution of privacy as an opportunity to step up, rather than scurry underground. If all our behaviour can be exposed, maybe we’ll just behave better. Rather than lament the lack of privacy, let’s embrace behaving in a way that is always fit for public consumption. Let’s act and speak in ways that won’t later make us cringe. And perhaps in this light, we can be more tolerant and compassionate about behaviour that’s outed that may not be ideal.

Because that virtual stone that gets cast on Facebook may just come back around and bite our bums on Twitter.

References

Burner, K. & Dennen, V. (2013). Boundaries, privacy and social media use in higher education: What do students think, want, and do? Selected Papers of Internet Research 14.

Burner, K. & Dennen, V. Friending and Footprints: Privacy and ethical issues of Facebook use in higher education.

Photo credit.

education social media

Then end of 9 to 5

A Facebook private message happens at 8:57 pm, “out of working hours” (Casey et al., 2014), which leads to a work call and work discussion in the late evening. With the advent of social media as a resource for professional communication, the boundary between work and play is fuzzier than ever. Friends on Facebook are also colleagues. Professional communities of practice lead to personal affiliations. While we’ve always had conflation of professional and personal space, the prevalent use of social media is merging our relationships further. Attempts to “list” people (Twitter and Facebook) or “circle” people (google plus) are a nod to attempted boundaries, but culling lists can become time consuming and even political.

This intersection of personal and professional is leading to new quandaries and rules around interactions. For example, on Facebook, do I like their personal page or their professional page? Both? Which is appropriate? Is it rude if I don’t friend someone? What if they only have a personal page?

Complicating matters, choices of boundaries are individually driven: some individuals may have strong divisions in their networks, while others are comfortable with a degree of murkiness. And while some may opt out of the social media quandary entirely, they then may be missing valuable extra-work opportunities for connection and support.

As we move increasingly into a world of asynchronous, geographically open communication, our traditional boundaries are shifting dramatically and heralding a call for increased worker autonomy (Harvard Business Review Article). When a professional can easily do their work from home, calling them to be at their desk at prescribed times seems mistrustful. Social media can fill the void created by physical absence by providing an extra-work space for communication.

Perhaps personal and professional boundaries will rest less with social media technology or innovations, but simply remain a personal choice in how an individual engages in their networks and uses their tools. Individuals with boundaries will have move overlap in their social media use, while those with firm boundaries will make clear divisions in their networks between work and play spaces. Social media exposes the greater question: how much of a boundary do we need between our work/ play selves?

Will the intention behind our work/ play boundaries – exemplified by the traditional 9-5 workday – serve us in this multi-layered world of identity and interaction?

References

Casey, A., Goodyear, V. & Kirk, D. (2014): Tweet me, message me, like me: Using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice. Sport, Education and Society, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/13573322.2013.858624

Photo credit, used courtesy of Creative Commons. Revision: photo added to grey background.

education social media

Who owns my “A”?

With social learning on the rise, group learning and collaboration is becoming increasingly common in the classroom. Students can use google docs, wikis, and powerpoints to create their group projects, and connect across distance to produce their work. Researchers are watching the trend, wondering if this “collective intelligence” will result in increased “creativity, innovation, and invention” (Gray et al., 2013).

While “there is strong evidence that social media can facilitate the creation of Personal Learning Networks that help learners aggregate and share the results of learning achievement, participate in collective knowledge generation, and manage their own meaning making” (Dabbagh, 2012), implementing these tools effectively into the traditional classroom environment is proving tricky. While social media tools work quite well for informal, personal connections, scholastic use has generated an array of challenges around issues such as identity, motivation, and assessment.

America was built upon the ideals of individualism: work hard enough and you can make something of yourself. We pride ourselves on self-reliance, entrepreneurship, and tell tales of dedicated underdogs achieving the American Dream. Not surprisingly, our culture fosters a spirit of competition where individual achievement is valued and prized over the gains of the community. In this context, collaborative learning seems to contradict our fundamental values. How, for example, does one feel invested in a group project when participants don’t contribute uniformly? How do we reward students appropriately for their work? Who “owns” the A?

These scholastic issues are representative of the tensions around privacy and ownership that pervade the greater online community. While Creative Commons has stepped in the bridge the significant grey area between copyright and public domain, ownership is still fuzzy. If I take a screenshot, is it mine? If I tweet without acknowledging the source, is that ethical?

To step back and take a larger view: collaboration, information sharing, and interdependence are essential for progress. When people work together, our communities become stronger and smarter. But as more tools for information sharing are created, we need to cultivate the ethical wherewithal to give credit where it’s due. Taking information for free is still too easy: illegal downloading, plagiarism, and copyright infringement are rife. Our technology has outpaced our ethics and our policing. So until we have the protocols worked out, we need to take personal responsibility for the information that we appropriate and curate. We can start by questioning our use of information as well as attributing credit diligently.

Collective learning is providing us with an opportunity to question our culture’s dogged adherence to individualism. Acknowledging the power of collaboration liberates us from the idea that we need to “do it all” ourselves. Freeing ourselves from our usual short-sighted competitiveness permits us to attribute generously without being afraid that we’ll somehow undercut our own personal worth.

And when we trust others to honour our contributions, then we won’t cling to our own work out of fear that it will be inappropriately stolen or copied.

Who owns the “A?”

Maybe, eventually, we all do.

References

Clerehan, T., Hamilton, M., Gray, K., Richardson, J., Sheard, J., Thompson, C. & Waycott, J. (2012). Worth it? Findings from a study of how academics assess students’ Web 2.0 activities. Research in Learning Technology (20). 1-15. doi: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0/16153

Dabbagh, N. & Kitsantas, A. (2012). Personal Learning Environments, social media and self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning. Internet and Higher Education (15). 3-8. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2011.06.002

Gray, K., Kim, H. & Thompson, C. (2014). How social are social media technologies (SMTs)? A linguistic analysis of university students’ experiences of using SMTs for learning. Internet and Higher Education (21), 31-40. doi: 10.1016/j.iheduc.2013.12.001

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons.

education

Media, meditation, and monkeys, oh my!

People, my mind has gone full jumping monkey.
As I’ve plunged more fully into social media (with a vengeance, tally ho!) during my Web 2.0 course, my mind has become hyperactive, jumpy, and just a wee bit obsessive. The instantaneous and fractal nature of working online is seductive; I’ve followed so many rabbits down so many holes that I’ve created an underground bunny kingdom.

The virtual world is addictive; it fires up our reward centres and keeping us clicking along. I may check the clock at 9 pm, think vaguely that I should stop blogging/ tweeting/ networking/ surfing – and when I look up again it’s 10:30. My brain then stays jacked on for at least another 90 minutes, too giddy to unwind from all that stimulation.

I usually sleep like a rock. The last month? Insomniac.*

“Networking,” “plugging-in,” and “multi-tasking” titillate the monkey that is waiting to swing in our mind trees. As we all engage in the virtual worlds of our choosing (twitter, Facebook, surfing, second life, video games, etc.), we need meditation and embodiment practices more than ever before. While it the virtual world is just as “real” a forum for social interaction as face-to-face, participating in these worlds removes us from the sensations and experiences of our physical body and immediate environment. Virtual worlds are an increasingly common, culturally sanctioned out-of-body experience that occurs from the dubious comfort of sitting in a chair in front of a computer.

Full health requires embodiment. We need to retain our capacity to sense, to taste, to touch, to hear. The more we are in our heads, the more we need to come back to our bodies.

“You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes every day. Unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.” – Zen adage

For every hour that we spend surfing, can we spend just five deliberate minutes mindfully feeling, stretching, walking? Being with kids is a wonderful way to get back into reality (they won’t let us be otherwise – um, unless they’re on your IPad). And let’s not just tend to our bodies, but let’s calm down that crazy monkey in our heads as well. Sitting in meditation for even just five minutes will help us find a little space for our thoughts. Otherwise the minds can become infatuated by its own agenda, forgetting that it rests in the greater space of our being-ness.

I am loving every moment of my Web 2.0 course. Participating more fully in social media is dynamic, fun, collaborative, and exciting. But this work has also exposed some of the consequences that come with playing online. Now that almost everyone in our culture is hooked in, more and more of our educational and recreational activities are become virtual. And in this tidal shift, it is becoming far too easy to leave our bodies, senses, and feelings behind. You know, like Neo in the Matrix.

It’s an exciting new frontier. And by all means, let us all go “to there,” as Liz Lemon might say.

But let’s make sure we’ve got some happy bodies and spacious minds waiting for us when we get back home.

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons.

*(Another reason paleo friends are becoming close to my heart; they emphasize our need for sleep.)

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