Winter 2003

Renew Your Vision

By Rebecca Gwynne

As the new year enters most of us can't help but look back on the past year in evaluation: Was it a "good" year or a "bad" year? Many may have looked at why and what might be done to improve our lives. Some formalize those aspirations into resolutions. Evaluation gives us new insight and new vision for our dreams and goals. We can also bring that inspiration to the classroom.

Perhaps it s time to look at your classes with new eyes, particularly if you have been teaching for a long time or have been working with one dominant paradigm. Have you ever looked for something and couldn't find it because the shape or color or size wasn t the same picture you had in your mind? It s easy to do. For example, on a test you might be looking for the answer, "toward the heart" but it isn't there. Yet, if you studied from various points of view, you would recognize "from caudal to cephalic" on the test. It happens in every area of our lives -- we recognize the familiar much more easily, than the underlying concepts.

New vision from evaluation invigorates and inspires the teacher bringing new aspects of the information to light. When the material is presented in a fresh way, it s more accessible to the students and more fun for all. Experiment with putting the lecture to music or rhyming the notes and handouts. If you usually teach from specific ideas to general, reverse the structure of the material from general to specific. Find an appropriate class to do the lab first, to create the "ah-ha!" experience for the students. Just doing things differently can inspire you to look at and to present the material in a fresh manner.

If you haven't made a New Year's Resolution, it isn't too late to renew your commitment to yourself and to your students. This year is a year for transformation. It's time to bring new vision and new life to the classroom. May you continuously find inspiration in your dreams and may those dreams bring you to your goals, remembering that each day begins a new year.

Actions teachers can take to renew their vision:

Take a workshop -- any workshop
Observe various classroom teaching styles
Do the clearing and planning exercises in Business Mastery
Brainstorm ideas with peers
Meet with a mentor
Ask a peer to review your class
Read for both professional development and fun
Travel
Meditate
Ask students what would make the classroom experience more enjoyable
Re-arrange the furniture in the classroom
Incorporate different learning modalities, particularly styles you don't normally use.

Classroom Capers

TOPIC: Wheel of Life

Objective: Evaluate where you are in the various areas of life and decide where to focus your growth.

Procedure: Ask students to put dots representing where they are now on the "spokes" of their wheel of life. The innermost point is the least desirable state and the outside edge is the most desirable. Proceed through the wheel for each category. Next, connect the dots. For a better visual, have the students cut out their wheels and see how they roll.

Discussion: In dyads (or groups) have the students discuss their wheels. Questions might include: How many have a balanced wheel? How many have a starburst? What areas are most out of balance? What did you learn about yourself? What surprised you the most? Is there anything that disturbs you? Empowers you? What trends do you notice? What are the areas you consider the most important to improve and why?

Variation 1: Ask the students to make a wheel that represents their ideal life situation. On a blank wheel ask the students to write activities on each spoke that will enable them to grow or maintain their position in each area of their lives. To continue the visual from above, have the students cut out the wheel on the circle.

Variation 2 by Greg Hurd of the Bancroft School of Massage Therapy, Worcester, MA:

Ask the students to mark the "spokes" with an arrow in the direction that they see that particular spoke going. For example, if someone attends school, then the education dot is an arrow pointing to the outside. This is particularly helpful with students who have most of their dots near the center (where they don t want to be), yet the arrows point out. This shows optimism in their wheel as well as growth and activity. On the other hand, arrows pointing in show a potentially negative trend in their lives. If there is no particular activity in that spoke, the students put a dot.

In dyads have the students discuss their wheel. In discussing their lives, ask them to look at how much one spoke affects another. For example, if they were in a relationship that broke up, how did it affect the other aspects of their life?

Option: Ask the students to make a wheel from a year or two ago so that they can compare the changes. You could also ask them to fill in the wheel where they want to be in a year or so. Then discuss what they want when they have reached the edge of the circle and have reached their goals. What keeps them going then?

Materials Required: Copies of The Wheel of Life found in the Appendix of Business Mastery or download the PDF from our web site at Free Forms.

Time Required: 10-30 minutes.

Free Forms

How would you like to have all of the forms from Business Mastery 3rd ed (plus more) available electronically? Now you and your students can access 40 forms under the categories of Business Management, Client Records, Financial Management, Marketing, and Miscellaneous Forms/Handouts.

You can directly print the beautifully designed forms in PDF format. We ve also created the forms in Word and WordPerfect so that you can import them into your word processor and customize them. Just go to Free Forms

We hope to make this a clearinghouse for a variety of forms. Do you have a favorite form you created that you would like to share with your colleagues? Send it to us and we ll post it on our site and put your name next to it (with an optional link to your web site or e-mail)!

Mission Statement

Teacher's Aide is a cooperative venture among all of us who teach business: a support system to make our job easier, more effective and fun. This newsletter is a forum for exchanging creative techniques on teaching business as well as a resource for exercises, handouts, quotes and tools for use in class. We welcome contributions, so please send them today.

Teacher's Manual Online

You can obtain a copy of our updated Teacher's Manual from our website! (Registration required.) The document is in Acrobat PDF format. The 36- and 70-hour syllabi and test question bank are in both Word and WordPerfect formats so that you can easily adapt them to your needs. The 16-hour syllabus will be posted soon.

We make teaching business easy and fun with our Teacher's Manual provided to you free when requiring and ordering Business Mastery! Customize your business curriculum to meet your students needs and time requirements. Simply click on Teacher's Library to fill out your library card request for Business Mastery teaching resources.

Teachers find our manual indispensable: informative with its goals, objectives, competencies and test questions; creative which appeals to the natural instincts of those who enter the complementary health care fields; and filled with lots of activities that inspire teaching and make learning the material fun.

The manual contains a section on Adult Learning Principles filled with specific techniques to improve teaching effectiveness.

The chapter Lesson Plan Builders include:

goals
objectives
COMTA competencies
classroom activities
audio-visual recommendations
homework assignments
and test questions

Maximize student learning through classroom activities designed specifically using multiple intelligences. The manual also includes the following sections: Assorted Capers (extra activities such as ice-breakers and team-building exercises); Handout and Overhead Masters; and a reproducible Student Workbook.

COMTA

When you use Business Mastery as a text, you can rest assured that it exceeds the COMTA standards. This updated Teacher's Manual and syllabi include the COMTA competencies and clearly designate required content and activities. Reduce your paperwork! We ve made it easy to relate each specific competency to an objective, activity, class and evaluation.

Kudos to the ABMP!

We are thrilled to share with you a forthcoming action that demonstrates the Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals (ABMP) commitment to the industry.

ABMP feels strongly enough about the importance of sound ethical conduct that they are providing a copy of The Ethics of Touch to each massage training institution in the United States and to each of their most senior Certified level members.

Bob Benson, President of the ABMP states,

I salute every thoughtful, caring word written to advance practitioner understanding about what constitutes ethical and appropriate interaction between healthcare providers and clients. The publication of The Ethics of Touch is a signal event in providing tools for students and practitioners to sort through these issues. It will complement other teaching materials already available to students and also will serve as a useful reference source as challenging situations arise for practitioners. I recommend the book to every massage, bodywork and somatic professional.

The Ethics of Touch
Table of Contents

The Ethics of Touch, written by Cherie Sohnen-Moe and Ben Benjamin, Ph.D. is going to press as you read this newsletter! This book has been five years in the making. It is a collaborative endeavor of many knowledgeable, caring and articulate professionals.

Ethical Principles
Boundaries
Dynamics of Effective Communication
Dual Relationships
Sex, Touch and Intimacy
Ethical Practice Management
Business Ethics
Special Considerations In Cases of Trauma
Supervision
Appendix A: Forms
Appendix B: Specialized Protocols

We hope you find it useful and enjoyable!

Tips for Closing a Class

Recap a class lesson: At the end of a class, have students put away their notes. Each student shares one thing they learned that day or found interesting (it must be different from what anyone else related). Hold a short discussion on each point
Make class notes on flipchart paper. When finished with a page, fold it in half and put it aside. At the end of the class/section shuffle the sheets, divide the students into groups (2-4 in each group) and hand out the sheets. Each group prepares a presentation based on the contents of the pages. Variations: groups prepare questions for an exam based on the contents of the pages; students create 60-second commercials based on the contents.
End each day s lesson with a question and answer period to help encourage better understanding of material covered during class.

At the end of a class/section divide the class into groups of 3-5 students each. Instruct each group to review their notes and choose 5 key words that they write on a note card. The groups then exchange cards. Each group writes and performs a jingle that incorporates the 5 key words.
At the end of a class/section ask students to take 5 minutes to write down the clearest and vaguest concepts. Collect the sheets and use the information to correct common themes in misunderstandings and pursue certain topics in the next class. At the end of the next class have students review their sheets and check off the vague concepts that have been clarified. Then repeat the whole process.
Students write test questions.
Do a white board review with class participation.