An Educator’s Guide to Using Your 3 Eyes: How to Apply Intellect, Insight and Intuition to Promote Personal and School-Wide Transformation

By Megan R. Sweet Ed. D.

Applying intellect, insight, and intuition to promote school-wide transformation for educators through interpersonal reflection and hands-on tools.

This is no one-size-fits-all approach to education that provides a formula or a practical how-to guide. The truths found in this book are about applying research-based best practices to the processes that lie outside of academia. Readers will find themselves getting out their pens and highlighters to write in the margins and apply personal reflection to the teachings.

The three Is—intellect, insight, and intuition—are tools for educators to find personal growth and development inside the structure of the school system so that they can promote school-wide transformation. When educators stop fighting the system and instead look inward for the answers, they will begin to see the improved student achievement and involvement they crave.

Readers will walk away with:

— greater self-awareness that will improve the classroom and educational landscape around them,
— improved self-appreciation that will fuel empathy in the classroom and workplace,
— clarity about the origin and influence of their beliefs that will help them combat negative beliefs and take advantage of positive beliefs, and
— better decision-making skills developed through a contemplative approach.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Nov 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781982215255

Megan R. Sweet Ed. D.

Megan Sweet is a systems-thinker who has been in education for more than twenty years. She’s been a teacher, school administrator and school district leader. She has a Doctoral degree in Educational Leadership and her academic and professional interests rest mainly with how to create effective change in educational systems. Megan Sweet lives in Alameda, California with her son and two dogs.

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Copyright © 2018 Megan R. Sweet, ED.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-1527-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1526-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1525-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018912935

Balboa Press rev. date: 11/14/2018

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Let’s Do This!

• Goal for This Book

• What This Book is and What it Isn’t

• Organization of the Book

• How to Use this Book

Part 1: What’s Self-Love Got to Do with It?

• Looking Forward

• The 3 Eyes-: Intellect, Intuition, and Insight

• A Quick Look Under the Hood

o We are of Two Minds

o Two Minds Really Are Better Than One

• Where the Rubber Meets the Road

o What is Implicit Bias?

o Implicit Bias in the Classroom

• This is What Self-Love Has to Do with It

o Self-Work and School-Work-: The Cycle that Keeps on Giving

o The Warrior’s Path

Part 2: Intellect

• Benefits of Using Intellect

• Looking Back

• Looking Forward

• You’ve Gotta Have a Plan, Stan!

o Forethought-: Avoiding the Could-Have’s and Should-Have’s

o Coordination is for More than Just Dancing

o Put One Foot in Front of the Other

• Put It Into Action, Jackson

o Value Individuals

o Build Trust

o Lean into Love

o Learn, Grow, and Grapple

• Implications

o Self-Work:

o School-Work:

• Intellect-: Friend and Foe

o Going Three for Three

Part 3: Insight

• Benefits of Using Insight

• Looking Back

• Looking Forward

• Why Insight?

• Another Peak Under the Hood

o What Are Beliefs Anyway?

o Where Do Beliefs Come from?

o Culture and Beliefs

• Why Does Understanding Beliefs Matter?

• Applying Intention to our Insights

o Making Curious Self-Reflection a Part of Life

o Make Intentional Choices About What You Believe

■ Don’t Gotta Catch ‘em All

■ Listen to Your Body

o Create Safe Spaces for Communication

• Implications

o Self-Work:

o School-Work:

• Discovering My Lenses

o Taking a Glimpse Behind the Veil

o Now What?!

Part 4: Intuition

• Benefits of Using Intuition

• Looking Back

• Looking Forward

• Intuition, Really??

• Just What Is Intuition?

o Intuition as Subconscious Thoughts

o Intuition as Higher Self and Source

o Common Threads

• Mindfulness Matters!

o Body Scan:

o Decluttering

o Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)

o Gratitude

o Grounding or Earthing

o Intentions

o Journaling

o Meditation

o Mirror Work

o Movement

o Prayer

o Visualization

o Wrapping it Up

• The Power of the 3 Eyes

o The Law of Attraction

o There’s a Neural Pathway for That…

• Implications

o Self-Work:

o School-Work:

• And so the Warrior’s Path Begins…

o Being the Believing Eyes

o Beliefs in Action

o Seeing is Believing

Part 5: Putting It All Together

• Looking Back

• Looking Forward

• Bring the Two Minds into Alignment

• Cycle of Inquiry

o Get Curious

o Notice

o Change the Story

o Act

o Celebrate Results

• A Few Final Thoughts

• And the Path Continues…

Appendix

Definition of Terms

Brain Primer

Works Cited

Acknowledgments

For my son Malcolm.

Preface

Curiosity Invites Connection

I vow to be curious.

to start conversations.

to listen with intention.

to stay open.

to inquire.

to be willing to be

surprised by what I don’t

yet know about another.

to let this be my practice. (Boelman, 2017)

Curiosity is open, reflective, and expansive. It doesn’t have fixed answers. It wants to know more; it wants to grow and improve. Curiosity also lacks judgment or blame. Curiosity allows us to explore what isn’t working without being harsh on the people and circumstances that created it. Curiosity is born of love.

This is my invitation as you read the book. To be curious. To be curious about yourself, including your thoughts and beliefs. To be curious about your students, who they are, how they learn, and how you respond to them. To be curious about your peers, what’s important to them, what makes them tick.

Curiosity is essential for the journey ahead because this book offers a new way of seeing yourself and of approaching our education system. I invite your curiosity to consider what is included here, to allow it to push your thinking or confirm your deepest beliefs. I encourage you to suspend any reflexive doubt that can come as we contemplate new ideas. Instead, I invite you to lean into the expansiveness of possibility.

We will use three lenses (the 3 Eyes) to support this new way of seeing: Intellect, Insight, and Intuition. Each lens provides us with a unique way to understand and interpret the world. Used together, they facilitate a depth of perception that makes our challenges and their solutions easier to see. Curiosity expands our ability to see in this new way.

What do you get for being curious? An opportunity to develop a deeper and more heart-centered relationship with yourself. To learn to love and appreciate yourself more while you simultaneously work on the persistent beliefs and patterns that undermine your potential. To develop a new and more balanced way of experiencing your life that comes with a new and more empowered way to move through it. In the book, this is called doing self-work.

You will also learn new ways to approach our education system. As we strive to prepare all students for college, career, and community, the stakes are high, and the stressors can seem never-ending. It can feel like we are swimming upstream; buffeted by budget constraints, systemic inequities, and insufficient professional support. Rather than continuing to struggle against the currents of a system that isn’t working, I believe that is it time that we change course. I ask that you lean into your curiosity to consider the premise that the best way to transform our education system is from the inside-out by using its greatest assets—the people.

At its roots, education is a social enterprise; it must be done in community rather than in isolation. As such, the solution to improving our education system comes from building on the strengths of that community. This book explores the potential transformation that could happen to the whole system if we put more time and attention into developing our educators. It asserts that if we provide our teachers and leaders with strategies to understand themselves better through self-work, they will be better able to create supportive places for all students to learn and grow through school-work. This school-work leverages the power of the whole to support the self-actualization of the parts. To create the educational system of the 21st century, we must support educators to do self-work alongside school-work.

Throughout this book, we will explore just why self-work and school-work form a powerful combination. We will learn why coming to love and accept oneself is the first step towards creating an educational system that serves all students. Through the 3 Eyes, we will learn how to see ourselves, our peers, and our students with more clarity. Through practices grounded in love and compassion, we will learn to use the information gleaned from the 3 Eyes to lead to personal and school-wide transformation.

Much of the content here encourages you to approach life with just a bit more trust. You’ll be asked to try some new practices, to augment some of your tried and true ways of being, and to let go of what no longer serves you. Curiosity, born of love for self and other, is all that you need to take this journey. So, please join me in developing this more in-depth way of approaching your life and our education system. Be ready to end the journey more grounded, in appreciation of yourself, and more hopeful for the way forward to educate our youth.

Let’s Do This!

I’m a work in progress. This fact will become abundantly clear as you read the book. Some of you will be able to relate to the challenges I share and find solace and in my story. Some of you will scratch your heads and wonder why I get tripped up the way that I do. The great thing is that for the first time in my life, I’m okay with my challenges. In fact, I embrace them. That’s the real story I am seeking to tell here. While the journey I will describe began with a simple desire to feel better, it has turned into a new way of approaching all aspects of my life. It also has changed how I understand the challenges in our education system.

I share the information here, then, as both a humble offering and as a call to action. I offer my experiences as an example that if a hard case like me can experience the benefits that I have from using the 3 Eyes, then I believe that anyone can. This as a call to action because through my lifetime in education, I’ve yet to see reforms that produce widespread equitable outcomes for students. I’ve got some ideas about how we can address those inequities. I am asking all of you, as colleagues, to consider these ideas within your context and then do something about it.

Before we get into where I am now and into the contents of this book, it is helpful to understand a bit more about where I’ve been. I grew up in Berkeley, California, the product of hippy parents and the middle of three girls. My childhood was in the backdrop of the famous free speech movement on the University of California (UC) at Berkeley campus in the 1960’s. The energy of that time continued through the culture of protests, community activism, and freedom of expression that permeated my town in the 70’s and 80’s. Growing up in Berkeley, kids were encouraged to form their own opinions and question authority, even that of our parents and teachers.

I grew up poor, but in a middle-class neighborhood. To make ends meet, my parents rented a part of our house to foreign exchange students who came to Berkeley to learn English. They joined us for breakfast every morning and used our one telephone when they needed to make calls (in the good old days when phones were stuck to walls, and there wasn’t an abundance of them). I spent most of my childhood learning about people from around the world, including Japan, Switzerland, France, Spain, and Brazil. I got to explore many different foods and cultures over the dining room table and became particularly immersed and interested in Japanese traditions. Many of the students became a part of our family, traveling with us and joining us for family celebrations. Many of those students are still close friends to this day.

While at home I was learning about the world, at school, I learned about social justice alongside reading and math. The Equal Rights Amendment (stating that a person’s rights could not be denied based on gender) was passed a by Congress few months before I was born in 1972. For it to be added to our Constitution, three-quarters (38) of the states needed to ratify it. By the time I was seven, we were still a few states shy of 38. Rallies across the country called for states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), including at least one I distinctly remember at my elementary school. I can still see myself standing in a large circle on our field, chanting along with my classmates and our parents that girls had rights too. By age 10, the ERA was still three states short and failed to be added to the Constitution. I remember the outrage in my community about this. We are still one state shy of 38 today.

In addition to women’s rights, we also discussed equality and racism as a part of many of my classes. One of my elementary schools was named after Malcolm X, a human rights activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement. We learned about his approach to promoting equality alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. I also learned about the plight of Native Americans, about the Japanese Internment during World War Two, the Holocaust, and so much more. We were taught to be critical thinkers and to ask questions. Through my classroom experiences, I developed a sense of justice and a commitment to equality.

I also grew up in a time before there were many standards for instruction in school. In elementary school, one of my teachers had us meditate daily while another made us sell chayote (a prickly cactus-like vegetable) for our class fundraiser. I had an excellent 8th grade English and History teacher who inspired my creativity and a 7th-grade science teacher who was downright dangerous, smashing glass beakers at students’ feet when he was angry. From my 8th grade teacher, I learned how to love history. From my 7th grade teacher, I learned that adults had limits and I would do well to know where they were.

During my teen years, I cut school with my friends more than I should have. It was equally within the realm of possibility during those moments of freedom to participate in anti-Apartheid protests or goof off and smoke clove cigarettes, both of which happened on the UC Berkeley campus.

I decided I wanted to be a teacher in 6th grade. That year, I had Mr. Harris, who is hands-down the best teacher I ever had. Mr. Harris made school fun and engaging, took a genuine interest in our lives, and shared his life with us. He held us accountable, cried while reading us Where the Red Fern Grows, and encouraged us to express ourselves. Being in Mr. Harris’ class felt electric. He made learning an adventure, both in the classroom and on the many field trips and activities he planned for us. For example, he took my whole class on a bike ride through Berkeley—as a former teacher, my nerves twinge just thinking about it. As a kid, it was a blast.

Regardless of my inspiration from Mr. Harris, I do remember struggling to find myself as a student, especially in classes that felt chaotic and unstructured. I am not an auditory learner, and therefore I spent a lot of my childhood struggling to connect with what was happening in classes where teacher talk dominated the lessons. My performance as a student was also heavily influenced by whom I had as a teacher and whether they could see the potential behind my smart mouth and inconsistent performance. For example, in second grade, I was in the lowest reading group, but in third grade, I was in the gifted and talented program. I won a writing award in high school, but my counselor told me that I wasn’t college material.

Through these experiences, the idea solidified in my mind that I was meant to be a teacher. I knew I could make class feel better for people like me, the kids who did not take to school easily, but who had potential when under the right care. And that’s exactly what I did. On the day after I graduated from college, I started my teacher credential program at Stanford University, just a month shy of my 22nd birthday.

I learned many valuable lessons at Stanford. Firstly, teaching is harder than it looks! I taught high school Social Studies during the day while taking classes in the evening. In my teacher preparation classes, we often discussed race and equity in the United States, particularly as they related to our roles as educators. There, I was introduced to the fact that a Culture of Power exists in this country that advantages white people, particularly those that are middle or upper class (Delpit, 1995).

This had a profound impact on me. Despite growing up in an area grounded in social justice and equality, and in a house where I was regularly exposed to people from around the world, it wasn’t until my courses at Stanford that I began to understand how being white made me an insider. I had access to power and opportunities not afforded to others in this country. It was a painful, sobering, and crucial realization to have as I entered teaching. Since that time, it has been a career-long journey to understand how privilege impacts outcomes for students and to learn to see my privilege more clearly.

All told, I taught for ten years, primarily middle school English and Social Studies. I loved connecting with the kids, the collegiality I shared with my fellow teachers, and the creative process of writing lessons. Teaching is a profession that requires your full self, every day. There were times when I wanted to quit and conversely times when I could not imagine doing anything else.

The longer I taught, the more I felt compelled to be a part of bettering our education system on a larger scale. After ten years in the classroom, I decided to go back to graduate school. I got a credential to be an administrator and my Doctoral degree in Educational Leadership. I studied the impact that a financial intervention could have on improving student achievement.

While finishing my research, I served an assistant principal (AP) at one of the lowest-performing elementary schools in my district, a school that was poised to be redesigned. When a school is redesigned, it means that the school is not successfully serving its students and changes to teaching practices, school culture, and/or general systems are required. My school needed help in all three areas.

A brilliant principal led our design team, and we had an active community of parents, district staff, and teachers who helped us to design a new school. Within a couple of years of starting the redesign, we saw significant gains in our students’ academic performance, and within five years, our school became one of the highest-performing elementary schools in the district. My time as an AP was a profound experience, perhaps most significant in demonstrating that change was possible and that it happens in the hands of the people closest to the work—students, parents, teachers, and site administrators.

Since my time as an AP, I have worked both within and outside my school district, leading school-level, district-level, and state-level changes. These changes have included redesigning more schools, implementing district-level reforms, and streamlining processes across district systems. This work has brought me to large urban districts that served tens of thousands of students as well as to small, rural districts that served a small number of students spread across a broad geographic area. Traveling across the state has helped me to appreciate how diverse California is, and how difficult it is to create a one-size-fits-all standard for excellence. Nuance matters when it comes to understanding the needs of students and families and in evaluating the success of the schools that serve them.

With now over 20 years in education under my belt, I will admit that I am concerned. Despite facilitating successful reform initiatives, I have seen that sustaining