About this item
Teachers can't add more minutes to a school day, but with mindfulness they can add depth to the moments they do have with students in their classroom. Compassionate Critical Thinking demonstrates how to use mindfulness with instructional effectiveness to increase student participation and decrease classroom stress, and it turns the act of teaching into a transformational practice. Many books teach mindfulness, but few provide a model for teaching critical thinking and integrating it across the curriculum. The purpose of this book is to show teachers how to create a classroom culture of compassionate critical thinking. When students feel a lack of meaning and purpose in their school lives, they resist learning. Using a Socratic style of inquiry, Rabois changes the classroom dynamic to encourage self-reflection, insight, and empathy.
About the Author
Ira Rabois recently retired from the Lehman Alternative Community School, a public secondary school in Ithaca, NY, where he taught English, Philosophy, History, Drama, Karate and Psychology for 27 years. He earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan, a M.A.T. from SUNY-Binghamton and served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone. He has studied Zen and Japanese martial arts for 41 years with Hidy Ochiai. He took classes in meditation and Buddhist practice and psychology at Namgyal Institute for Tibetan Studies and the Omega Institute with David Loy, Robert Thurman, and others. He also studied healing meditation with the Consciousness Research and Training Project, and Proprioceptive Writing with Linda Trichter Metcalf and Tobin Simon. He lives with his wife, Linda, in an old apple orchard. His blog on education and mindfulness can be found at irarabois.com.
