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The Mindful Worker Instructor's Manual The Mindful Worker Instructor's Manual is available upon adoption (> 30 texts) or can be purchased for $19.95. Below is the entire Introduction (General Teacher's Notes) to the Instructor's Manual followed by a General Classroom Time Allocation Suggestion. |
This text lends itself to a very interactive, exploratory style of teaching/learning. Interactive between teacher and student, and between the students themselves. Exploratory in the sense of encouraging the students to measuring each aspect of the course against their own knowledge, experience, self-insight, and purposes. Most college (and public school) courses and texts focus predominantly on "hard facts and right answers". This one reflects more of the working world which it seeks to have students explore: ambiguous, conflicting, personally meaningful, and uncertain.
The main section of this Teacher's Guide contains specific suggestions and ideas on a page-by-page basis, to provide an initial structure for the teacher. This initial section is the most important, because it tries to suggest the type of teaching/learning dynamics which The Mindful Worker can offer to both student and teacher. The supplemental section of the Guide contains: a suggested time allocation sequence for the course; a set of readings which may increase the teacher's insights into the workplace of the 21st century (and which might be shared with the students); a bibliography of further information; and a suggested set of overhead material drawn from the text's key information.
Priorities/Intent
1. The text seeks to create a climate which promotes behavior change in the students. The vision is of helping them not "learn about" but rather "learn to become". Simply knowing something about problem-solving, leading, responsibility, teamwork, and learning is insufficient. Students need to be brought to an awareness that they can change and must change their behavior. They can grow, develop, and succeed - if they can discover that new information can change the way they interact with their world - and particularly the world of work.
2. In pursuit of this goal, classroom dynamics need to focus as much on personalization and reflection as on "content mastery". At all possible points, we need to lead, suggest, or drive students to explore what a particular point has to do with them personally. They need to bring the learning home to their own minds, habits, values, actions, and beliefs.
3. Though there are "right answers" at various points in the text, the classroom dynamics need to deal with their presence (and any resulting test items) in a certain way. It is important to know these things not for themselves but because they help us to understand ourselves, our work environment, and the interaction between the two. Knowledge, in this case, is not "for the record" but rather for personal empowerment.
Classroom Dynamics
1. It is very useful to emphasize and legitimize the experiences and knowledge which the students bring with them into the classroom. For example, you might have students list their significant "work experience" (paid or not) on 3x5 cards during the first class period, then build on them thereafter. It is very important to help students break free of their traditional conceptions of "working". Volunteer work, raising a family, church work, social leadership, and the like has much to do with such traits as problem-solving, leadership, dependability, and stress management. You need to help students de- compartmentalize their lives, by seeing all of it as contributing to their mastery of these fundamental competencies.
2. The teacher's role should not (and really cannot) be that of the omnipotent expert. You do not have to know all the answers (or even all of the good questions) if student experience and insight is really to be a legitimate part of the teaching/learning dynamics. Though you can and must stand your ground in asserting that some points and answers are correct, you need to be equally willing to relinquish that certainty when the class is exploring possibilities and personal meanings.
3. Of particular importance is the way in which you deal with the issue of "workplace realities". Some of your students may have more experience in the traditional workplace than you. You may have spent your life in the 'workplace' of the classroom. How do you deal with this? By seeing yourself in many situations as a guide and facilitator rather than as a fountain of expertise. Your role, your responsibility, and your particular expertise lie in planning, in teaching/learning dynamics, and in getting people to where they need to go. Use those talents and expertise, but at the same time "free up" the classroom dynamics. Draw on student expertise. Build on the fact that many answers are often possible. Model your own speculation, confusion, uncertainty, and exploration. Reflect on your own very-valid experiences: teaching. Invite business speakers into your classes.
4. You may choose to have the students play any of four different roles in the course, each having its own advantages and disadvantages.
a. teams - can help students understand and explain; useful when brainstorming and when you want different viewpoints; can allow students to 'drop out' and let others carry the load; can encourage more sharing than students often will do with you; needs you to insure that individuals "bring something" to the group.
b. pairs - provide for more intensive sharing and discussion; allow for more pointed 'tutoring' one to another; assure individual involvement and activity; is more individually efficient; takes much more time for debriefing; is more dependent on the caliber of individual students.
c. individuals - maximize personalization, involvement, and ownership; minimize sharing and accountability; hard to assess performance.
d. whole class - very efficient; helpful in assuring that all understand what to do; good for covering material quickly though lightly; little accountability or assurance of personalization or involvement.
Technical Aspects
1. How to deal with the right answer orientation of students. Mention the relative scarcity of right answers (and, often, their relative unimportance) frequently during the first few exercises, early chapter summaries, and first test. Then start backing off of emphasis on this, assuming that it is becoming a course "given".
2. Many activities in the exercises stop rather abruptly. This is deliberate. It maximizes your opportunity to tailor the course, by choosing if and how to emphasize and/or follow up on an exercise. If you want to expand on a topic, this gives you an opportunity to introduce your own materials, ideas, and exercises. If you want to move on, you're free to do so. Once you legitimize the idea of simply "dropping something and moving on", the students will pick up on that and it won't bother them.
3. It is useful to use homework assignments to get reading "out of the way" in order to set the stage for active classroom learning. Be sure to instruct students whether or not they should also "do" the activities in a segment, or simply read it and plan to do the activities in class.
4. This course provides an excellent opportunity to invite outside speakers: members of the business faculty, local people, and so forth. In such cases you might give them a list of the success competencies and have then discuss their relevance: either any of them as they choose or the particular one(s) you are focusing on at that time.
5. Be sure to do the chapter maps, which are a springboard for later learning and relevance. They reinforce the notion that the purpose of this text is now 'book learning' but rather personal growth.
6. Grading is a complex part of this text and related course. There are many elements that need to be considered since the emphasis is as much on personal growth as on content mastery. One possible way to assign credit for various components is as follows:
7. The Chapter Summaries are also important, and should not be skimped. These do two things:
a. they provide a way for you to assess what the students have learned; and
b. they provide the students with an opportunity to re-visit and thus reinforce what they have gotten from the chapter.
8. Note also the Review Questions at the end of each chapter. It is useful and legitimate to tell the students that all or most of their test questions will be drawn from these questions. This, again, will focus them on probing and growing from the key behavioral aspects of this text and course.
9. Within such a scheme as the above, how do you clarify points assigned for the key grading element of "class participation/homework"? One possible distribution (which, if used, should be clearly communicated to the students) would be as follows in terms of points earned.
19-20 - Excellent attendance; volunteers to share thoughts and experiences; leads class and team activities; asks relevant questions; does not monopolize; stimulates class discussion; does all in-class work; regularly volunteers answers; helps other students.
17-18 - Good attendance; participates enthusiastically in team/class activities; asks relevant questions; frequently volunteers answers; listens to instructions; sometimes leads and helps others.
15-16 - Good attendance; usually cooperates with team/class activities; occasionally asks relevant questions; seldom volunteers answers; sometimes does not listen to instructions; sometimes distracts others.
0-14 - Attendance or tardiness problem; seldom or never volunteers answers; response reluctantly or not at all to questions; participates little or not at all in team/class activities; distracts other students; does not complete in-class assignments; does not regularly bring book to class; seldom listens to directions or instructions.
10. Finally, the last page of the text provides a free means for you and your students to comment on and make suggestions about this text. We take such suggestions very seriously, will try to incorporate them in the next edition (with credit to those making the suggestions), and hope that they will make this text even more effective with future groups of students and teachers.
General Classroom Time Allocation Suggestion
How should time be allocated across the eight chapters in the text? That depends greatly upon your preferences. Emphasizing everything stated or implied in the text would take twice as long as the 45 or so instructional hours found in a quarter or semester course. Therefore you can choose one of two courses of action: underemphasize everything to equal degrees, or emphasize some topics over others. Since there is no way to predict how you would implement the latter approach, following is a suggested sequence that you might use the first time you teach the course if you choose to emphasize everything equally. After the first time, you will naturally begin to shift your timing to fit your own instincts and priorities. The first time around, however, you might wish to borrow from others' experiences, as follow. This pattern also builds in three tests, plus a final.
Chapter Emphasizes
Class Time +
Test Time =
Total Time
1. Key Competencies for Success 4.5 hours
4.5 hours
2. Problem-Solving 4.5 hours
1.0 hours
5.5 hours
3. Systems 6.0 hours
6.0 hours
4. Who's In Charge? 6.0 hours
1.0 hours
7.0 hours
5. Dealing With Others 6.0 hours
6.0 hours
6. Personal Traits 7.5 hours
1.5 hours
8.5 hours
7. Learning 4.5 hours
4.5 hours
8. Action Plan 1.5 hours
1.5 hours
------------------------ ------------------------
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40.5 hours
3.0 hours
43.5 hours
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