A Whole New Mind was designed as the online companion piece for "Teaching for a Whole New Mind," presented at the 2009 NJEA Teachers' Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, as well as the 2010 NELMS Conference in Providence, Rhode Island.
Through this site you'll learn to incorporate the "six senses" of the right brain into everyday critical thinking and problem solving. This will be accomplished through examining classroom-based examples of the six "senses" described in Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind including design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. You'll also find lots of great links for further exploration by both you and your students. (If you missed the workshop, grab a copy of the outline. This will give you some great ideas not shown at the site, and allow you some space to write your own).
Here you'll find dozens of helpful links along with expanded session notes. I've also offered a few hot tips for classroom lesson ideas which time didn't allow in our session together. Feel free to email me with additional questions, comments, and recommendations.
Sample entry from the site:
Sense 4: EMPATHY
Shared Emotion
"Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate but it makes the world a better place."Empathy means going beyond logic and engaging emotion and intuition. Ever been in an argument where the other person (never you, of course) just couldn't see the facts because of the emotions involved? Rather than arguing facts, we would have been better off putting ourselves in their shoes.
I once had a conference scheduled with parents who were very irate over their child's poor grades. They couldn't understand why she had done so well in her previous school and yet struggled here. I opened the conversation by sharing that I was going through the same situation with my own daughter. She had done well the previous year, but this year just didn't seem to click with the teacher. We as parents wanted to help, but weren't able to get a grasp on the situation. I stated that I hoped I would be more help in sorting this situation out than my daughter's teacher was in dealing with hers. Once the parents knew I was in a similar situation, they were more comfortable listening to my thoughts on possible remedies.
Empathy is also hard to fake, which makes good teachers, doctors, bartenders, and hairdressers worth their weight in gold!
Empathy is all about shared emotion, and according to storytelling guru Doug Stevenson, "Emotion is the fast lane to the brain."