Rumi‘s words remind me, as a teacher, that my teaching is more than just providing information for students to learn in a rote way for recall on a test. If what children and adults learn does not have meaning to them, it becomes “yellow or stagnates.”
On the last day I taught, my students gave me a card and gift, but it was the words they offered that meant the most. They told me it was not learning from an official curriculum, but the “other things” that would mean the most to them in later years.
Curriculum comes from the Latin currere and means “running a course” and relates to living one’s life. In running the course and living one’s life, the other tablet comes to life. It is who and what that are close to our hearts that mean the most. As we live life, we discover what that means in sometimes surprising ways.
It is what we reflect upon and are mindful of, reflecting who we are, that brings the greatest joy to our running and recounting the course of our lives.
There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
Your students were fortunate to have learned of this fountainhead early in life, Ivon.
Thank you Jet.
Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
Thank you.
I think students should decide what they want to learn and we need to incorporate teaching into what’s important to them. It’s amazing the difference it makes. Kids are hungry to learn…just not hungry for what they are forced to have thrown at them…things that are meaningless to their lives. Teaching would be so different if it mattered to the people who were learning.
In my research, I discovered that, when a teacher is in a place where they are comfortable, they teach much differently Differences matter and they can attend to those differences.
The basics must still be taught, but with the inspiration to look beyond and feel free to attempt the unknown. When children are taught with love, they blossom.
They do. You are right the basics are needed as they can help children find their path.
This second knowing is a fountainhead from within you, moving out.
I think the a Buddhist calls this our True Self others our soul
I believe you
Have charged many
Young
Minds to search for wisdom in their lives
Marty, the second knowing, regardless of belief system, is universal. We should each be charged to search for it in our lives.
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford and commented:
ONLY TWO? COGNITIVE AND NONCOGNITIVE?
There might be more.
OH YEAH…depends on one’s world view—scientists have their own schemes! 🙂
Even souls and the conscience need proper training! 🙂
They do. Without wisdom, knowledge is empty.
True. and wisdom without experience and the concept of love…is nearly useless in the real world! 🙂
You sound like Aristotle who proposed that experience was a teacher of wisdom.
Knowledge is overrated because it has little to do with character. We pass on character through our actions and our lifestyle. Scientific know how runs the world but character makes it a better place to live in.
Character and ethics are essential to living in the world.