Self Awareness & Self Discipline

By Robert Rose

For most of my fifty years in education my students consistently reached grade level or above academically while I managed to successfully change their negative social behaviors. I did this by individualizing instruction, making lesson introductions short and clear, and encouraging them to work with their friends as partners or in small groups. The students were further empowered by making the classroom rules and the consequences of breaking each, and when they had been given all their rights and they admitted their behavior they selected one if the consequences the class had decided fit the infraction. We also spent every day on some form of artistic expression as singing, dancing, acting, and always had physical education. How I did this, while fighting the system to do so, is the subject of my many education books. This free book discusses the most controversial aspects of my teaching. Now, as it did years ago, the research demonstrates these activities like the arts, contribute more to brain development than most academics. Used with academics is what education should be about. You will find these activities easy to use, but are the beginning of your journey using them. My classrooms were safe and happy because they brought the human potential movement into classrooms. I started with guided imagery and meditation. I added dreamwork, sensory awakening, communications skills, and then massage. I did remove massage, even though the students and their parents found it one of the most useful aspects of my program. You have to decide what you value and what you are willing to fight for for your students. I paid a financial and emotional price, but it was worth it and I'd do it again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Rose
• Release date: Nov 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311614070

Robert Rose

I'm an 81 year old retired teacher. I have written over 26 books, done 130 You Tubes videos, and for four years have been onwww.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose. I interview CHANGE AGENTS. People who have changed themselves and are now helping others change. My UNINTERRUPTED hour interviews are appreciated by most of my guests who say it was one of or the best interview they've had. I'm proud of my education and self help books. CREATING YOUR GIANT SELF: Best Self Help Book - Ever has a forward by Dr. Robert Anton Wilson, Human Potential Guru who stated it was the best self help book - ever, which I added to the revised edition. I'm proud of my 50 years teaching as I have developed more educational innovations than any teacher I've read about.I'm proudest of my 50 years with Marie with whom we raised 7 children in our yours, mine, and ours extended family. They are all decent, very loving people with whom we share our lives.I hope you find my books and and radio show helpful and any feedback will be appreciated.

Book preview

SELF-AWARENESS and SELF-DISCIPLINE

Robert Rose, Ph.D

Published by Robert Rose at Smashwords

Copyright 2001 Robert Rose

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

THESE ARE MY GOALS AS A TEACHER.

GUIDED FANTASIES - EXPERIENCES and RESULTS

INDUCTION

QUICK INDUCTION and RETURNING

QUICKEST INDUCTION, RETURNING

CREATING YOUR OWN INDUCTIONS

GUIDED FANTASY EXAMPLES

INDIVIDUALIZED GUIDED FANTASY

RESONANCE and GUIDED FANTASY

MEDITATION and RESONANCE.

SENSORY REAWAKENING

DREAMS and DREAMWORK

SUMMARIES.

STRUCTURED EXPERIENCES in HUMAN RELATIONS

OTHER HUMANISTIC TECHNIQUES

INTRODUCTION

I am an effective teacher (and modest). One reason is that I am an effective disciplinarian. All around me I see and hear teachers and parents begging for someone to help them Control-Discipline their children. This workbook is my way of providing help. This is not how to CONTROL them, but a paradigm shift, a new attitude about the teacher's and student's roles. Instead of the teacher or parent being the most responsible for the children's behaviors, the children are. These techniques and this new attitude are ways the children can learn self-discipline.

How did I become effective? By reading voluminously in many fields besides education and then analyzing why so many things that were supposed to work, but didn't! I found that many experts were people with limited visions, men who discovered part of an answer and attractively packaged it to sell to dummies like me who only wanted quick results. They became famous, rich, or both and I got egg all over my face forcing their square peg answers into multi-dimensional holes.

Sometimes it IS the teachers' fault, but many teachers blame themselves because they can't make an ill-conceived theory or technique work. Sometimes, the technique or concept was truly effective for that expert or group, but did not work for other teachers or children. For years the teachers who tried to emulate what I did, failed, gave up, and so I could not encourage others to try. I wasn't certain WHY I was successful. Now, I know and can share it! I finally realized that there are no simple answers and possibly there are no answers to some of the question-problems. It sounds unAmerican. but maybe some problems we just have to learn to live with.

Discipline, Integration, and Basic Education are each extremely complex problems. How can I say that l've solved them all? I haven't! I have been very successful in dealing with them and know that these TRANSPERSONAL TECHNIQUES will help many teachers and children. Some teachers will be unable to use all or even part of these concepts, which will not mean that they are poor teachers. It means that each of us is different, has different, needs, abilities, and beliefs.

What can I offer you? I can offer the distillation of a lifetime of experiences in education and psychology. I have read and tried most of the educational innovations of the past fifty years. I have struggled with and tried to analyze the daily minor and major problems that you face daily in your classroom. Our world is not the same as it was ten or thirty years ago. The solutions that were effective (or thought to be) no longer work, yet some educators keep trying to force the old ways on new technology and new attitudes children. I have learned to say,No! to many of the practices and beliefs that kill children's love of learning and turns them into cannibals feeding on each other's failures. Failures that are induced by teachers following experts ideas that are psychologically and educationally unsound.

I have studied scientific paradigms, testing, and statistics. I agree that they are useful in certain situations. I know about controlled experiments and how educational researchers have been deeply hurt by the utter contempt many physical scientists view their research - some of which deserve it. I have attempted educational research and discovered how difficult it is to be certain you have found anything significant and then proving it is even more complex.

However, to attack complicated problems like DISCIPLINE can be limiting if you are determined it has to be proven by only the scientific paradigm. To be scientific I must control my experiment, gather my data, step back and observe my subjects' reactions. However, we know now that the observer is unable to totally separate himself from the objects or persons being observed! Heisenberg has demonstrated that you can either know the speed of an object or where it is, but not both at the same time. Other scientists have proven that the observer in the hard sciences can sometimes affect that which he is observing. If this occurs with inanimate objects, how can anyone believe that teachers and others who deal with the children are not affecting them during their observations?

Children FEEL, they are not OBJECTS, they are flesh and blood FEELING INDIVIDUALS. I refuse to treat them as THINGS so I can say that I 'm a scientist that I am objective. This does not mean I discount all the things that have been discovered using the scientific model. That would be reverse prejudice. No, I examine what scientists find and then I decide if it is true for me and my class. I try it. Sometimes it fails because I don't understand it and other times it is because it is not true for me. Many times it is very helpful and I incorporate it into my program.

With children I balance AFFECTION with logical consequences, sometimes called, FEAR! That is why I'm effective and can discipline them. I could dehumanize them into robots. It is done by repetition, pettiness, and boredom. It is also easy to be pessimistic about children and schools. I prefer to be optimistic. I learn from my failures and I let the children learn from theirs. That is how this book evolved - from my failures and from watching the anguish of my colleagues. I found that many could not establish nor maintain a consistent and effective learning climate. Their classrooms were crisis centers and they suffered from many psychological and physiological problems. These in turn continued a vicious cycle in which they attacked and degraded the children and then they were attacked by them.

Without some means to control the children, to discipline them, teachers could not (cannot) teach. Apparently it still remains a problem of national concern if I am to believe what I read happening throughout the country.

What I offer, what I have developed is a program that walks a tightrope. I try to BALANCE my belief in and encouragement of each child's UNIQUENESS and WORTH with an AWARENESS of their RESPONSIBILITY to the many GROUPS in which they live.

To get them to achieve this balance I have a highly STRUCTURED ACADEMIC program to teach the BASICS, which are mainly left-brain operations with many EXTRAS such as dramatics, physical education, art, music, and dancing, which are predominantly right-brained. These give the children many opportunities to succeed (or fail) and this builds up their beliefs in their own uniqueness.

Furthermore, many of the Transpersonal Techniques in this workbook, such as dreamwork and meditation, also enhance their uniqueness. (I wrote this passage almost thirty years ago - 1986. Now this simplistic right and left brain concept has proven to be much more complicated as the LIMBIC - emotional - portion of the brain is proving to have a major impact in ALL learning!)

Simultaneously, they are exposed to communication training, guided fantasies, group discussions, singing, and team sports in which they must allow their selfish motives to be subordinated to group needs. It is not a perfect system and I am constantly modifying the program to fit the needs of the moment while always trying to keep my goals in mind. (In January 2002 with seven boys in my SATELLIGHTS pilot program I changed the schedule and program content three times in the first five days.) It is not an easy system, but it does address itself to and successfully does cope with the problems of DISCIPLINE, INTEGRATION, and the BASICS.

You may disagree with my philosophy or practices, but they are the result of careful study of hundreds of children and thousands of critical incidents. (They were also used for ten years in highly successful at-risk program I ran for middle schoolers.) This totality of NATURALISTIC classroom OBSERVATIONS, plus my readings, has helped me become a successful teacher. (TEACHER UNDER A MICROSCOPE is about a sixth grade class I integrated and my methods were observed and documented in a U.S. Department of Education research study. www.xlibris.com.)

There is a continuity between my ideals, goals, and practices. They are me. The chapter on RESONANCE gives you a practical metaphor to connect them. The remaining chapters explain the Transpersonal Techniques to give you the how-to-do-it. There are cautions in each. Unlike many experts I know that some of the concepts and techniques I present, at some times, don't work for some people - even for me! Depend on your intuition. It is liable to errors just like science is, but the more you trust it and LEARN when it does and doesn't work, the better teacher you will be. Intuition may be your ability to be in touch with what is happening in the LIMBIC areas of your brain. These are feelings that need to be connected with the logical, rational portions of your brain. No one can teach you this! It has to be experienced. That is why I'm such a strong proponent of teacher autonomy! You need to be able to feel comfortable as you learn FROM your experiences.

To be scientific I always must be rational and logical. This is important, but logic doesn't always work in human relationships. People are EMOTIONAL. They laugh, cry, hate, love, and they need to know how to deal with all these feelings at home and at work (school). You are in the human growth business. Growth means constant change. Change is frequently difficult, even painful. It is usually uneven for each person. You deal with twenty to forty children each one who is changing in different ways. It is a ridiculously difficult job, but can be the most fun and rewarding one. It has been and still is for me.

Please, don't try to do all these techniques at once. Learn one thing at a time. Go slowly, cautiously. Listen to your own mind and feelings. Listen to what the children say in feedback sessions - and what they feel! They will help you and lead you into the promised land.

You will be able to TEACH!

THESE ARE MY GOALS AS A TEACHER.

I want each child to realize his uniqueness in as many ways as he can; to appreciate this uniqueness and take personal responsibility for its multiple growths; to understand his commonality with all mankind; to make him aware that he should encourage and nurture the uniqueness of his fellow humans; to have the courage to face and accept failures and disappointments that are inevitable in life; and to, at times, lose his sense of self, lose his ego, and become one with another, many others, and or the diverse powers that are beyond his cognitive understanding - a god, the universe, whatever.

THESE GOALS DEMONSTRATE A VALUE SYSTEM THAT ENCOMPASSES THE FOLLOWING.

Individual uniqueness as critically important: individual responsibility for his acts; awareness and acceptance of the inherent worth of other humans; acceptance of the frailties of self and others; awareness that growth is mainly dependent upon his motivations, efforts, and ability to profit from his mistakes; awareness that although he is unique, he is also part of an interlocking web of many other systems and that he has a responsibility to each whether it be a partnership, family, school, nation, or universe.

IN ORDER TO HELP HIM REACH THESE GOALS I MUST EXPECT, DEMAND, AND GET FROM EACH CHILD THE FOLLOWING BEHAVIORS.

I expect an honest effort to attempt any skill, idea, or concept that I expose him to; I expect him to listen to my directions and to follow them to the best of his ability; I demand that he refrain from physically hurting any other child or adult; I demand that he refrain from emotionally hurting any other child or adult by derogatory and damaging remarks and gestures; I expect, if he makes a behavioral mistake, that he accepts his