Education

Training for Educational Institutions

While on the faculty of Lesley University’s M.A. Program, Annika Hurwitt Schahn, Ph.D., Director of The Center for Optimal Living, spent ten years teaching teachers how to integrate the arts and experiential learning into education.  She draws on this experience in creating in-service training for teachers and workshops for students, provided by herself and other trained facilitators from the Optimal Living Institute.

I believe that students learn best in environments where learning occurs from the inside out, where students stay in touch with their natural tendencies toward creativity, innovativeness, spontaneity and fresh thinking.  While there is a place for gathering data and remembering facts, when students become too focused in that direction they can lose track of where ideas become integrated and meaning occurs.

In our trainings we teach both students and teachers about the nature of thought, so that they can navigate the normal ups and downs that occur in everyone’s thinking.  With this awareness it becomes natural for people to both draw on the mind’s capacity for memory and look toward a fresh, spontaneous level of thought that keeps creativity flowing in a way that is naturally balanced and harmonious.  People draw naturally on the mind’s resources for synthesizing data in a meaningful way.  We find that the more students become grounded in this philosophy, the more they achieve two results which will have significance for them for the rest of their lives:

Teachers report that they suffer less from stress and burnout and are better able to think on their feet, and be creatively responsive to the ever-changing needs of students.  Consequently they enjoy teaching more and feel more successful in the classroom.

Other benefits for both students and teachers include living in a more relaxed frame of mind, which engenders the ability to:

We provide one to three day-long in-service trainings for teachers and workshops for students.  Please contact the Center for more information.