Art of Being Human

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• 
  
• Foreword
• Praise from students
• Dear Student

Lesson 1: Fieldwork

• Introduction
• Asking Questions, Making Connections, and Trying New Things
• Challenge One: Talking to Strangers

Lesson 2: Culture

• Introduction
• The Art Of Seeing
• Growing up Among the Nacirema
• Challenge Two: Fieldwork of the Familiar

Lesson 3: Evolution

• Introduction
• Who Are We?
• The (Un)Making Of The Modern Body:
• 
  

• Challenge Three: The 28 Day Challenge

Lesson 4: Language

• Introduction
• The Power Of Language
• Challenge Four: Word Weaving

Lesson 5: Infrastructure

• Introduction
• Tools And Their Humans
• Mediated Culture
• Challenge Five: The UnThing Experiment

Lesson 6: Social Structure

• Introduction
• Love In Four Cultures
• Becoming Our Selves
• Challenge Six: Get Uncomfortable

Lesson 7: Superstructure

• Introduction

• Big Questions about Morality
• The Dynamics Of Culture
• Religions And Wisdom Of The World
• Challenge Seven: The Other Encounter

Lesson 8: Globalization

• Introduction
• The Tragedy of Our Times
• Challenge Eight: Global Connections

Lesson 9: "The Good Life"

• Introduction
• Creating "The Good Life"
• The Power Of Storytelling
• Challenge Nine: Meaning-Making

Lesson 10: The Art of Being Human

• Introduction
• There Are No Accidents
• If Paul Farmer Is The Model...
• Challenge Ten: Your Manifesto
• 
  
• About the Author

Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-artofbeinghuman/
https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/20/

Sociocracy - The Movement

By Ted J. Rau

The sociocracy experience

I’m part of several sociocratic organizations, and we sometimes get requests from what I call “sociocracy tourists”–people who want to attend a sociocratic meeting to see what it is like. I have a standard response that might surprise you: “Come. But you will very likely be disappointed. Sociocracy is almost invisible. Because good governance is quiet. What you can witness is flow but you will have a hard time seeing where it even came from. You’ll attend just to see how invisible it is.”

If you’ve ever been part of a sociocratic meeting, if it was well-run, you might have not noticed anything. And that’s the point. After all, we come together not to practice a certain kind of governance but to get things done and to connect. We want our attention to be free to take care of both the tasks that need attention and of each other. It feels effortless, like flying.

One thing you might notice as you enter a sociocratic meeting is that people speak in rounds. People speak not at will but keeping an order, one by one. What I have experienced in using rounds is that an amazing flow emerges in mature groups accustomed to them, and members begin to surrender to group wisdom. Very often, I leave a meeting and realize: this decision was actually built in tiny pieces and I cannot even tease apart who contributed what. It was all “us.” That group experience of flow is what I love most about sociocracy and I never ever want to go back to the old ways.

Values of sociocracy

Sociocracy was developed in the 1980s and has since spread to all continents. It is now a worldwide movement with a strong presence in its home country, the Netherlands, and also in other European countries, the US, South America, India, Australia, and with new developments in Africa and Asia. This article will identify sociocratic values and principles and describe the landscape of the current sociocratic movement.

For those familiar with Holacracy: historically, Holacracy built on sociocracy. Holacracy emphasizes autonomy of individuals while sociocracy is less regulated and tends to keep more power and exploration in circles of peers. Holacracy is a more regulated version of sociocracy – holacracy gives more structure, sociocracy gives more choice.

Since all descriptions tell just as much about the author as they tell about the content, let me introduce myself in two sentences. I am operational leader and co-founder of a non-profit, Sociocracy For All, based in the US and operating worldwide. I am a linguist (syntax-semantics interface) and a German native, and I live in a wonderful intentional community with 80 neighbors in the United States.

Of the values that underlie sociocracy, two are fairly universal for self-organized organizations:

(1)  Effectiveness: we join organizations in the hope that they will be effective in achieving their aim (purpose).

(2)  Belonging: we join organizations to connect with others in being part of something bigger than ourselves.

What is special about sociocracy? It is equivalence:

(3)  Equivalence. Everyone’s voice has equal value and we collectively decide how to support needs getting met.

This does not mean that everyone decides everything together, and it does not mean that everyone’s needs will always be met. It means that everyone’s needs will be held with care. The investors’ needs have the same value as the workers’ on the shop floor. The building custodian’s needs have the same value as the CEO’s needs. All are equal, even though they all have different roles in the overall system. No one can be ignored or overpowered.

Sociocracy is a set of design principles embodying equivalence in all areas of an organization:

• How we structure our work

Authority is distributed to the most “decentralized” level possible and held by circles (an organizational unit or team) who “own” areas of authority. There is clarity about the purpose (aim) and area of authority (domain) of each circle, which gives every circle of workers the freedom to shape their immediate work environment. Any two related circles are double-linked, i.e. two people are full members of both circles so information can flow and the parts become a whole. This maintains equivalence in multi-layered complex organizations.

• How we learn and evolve

Learning is embodied by different tools providing a feedback-rich environment and active reflection (open elections, meeting evaluations, role improvement, policy reviews.)

• How we make decisions

Policy decisions are made by consent. A decision is made when no one in the circle has an objection. Consent is the mainstay of sociocracy, an embodiment of equivalence. Whoever is part of a working circle can express their need in the policy process, either in proposals or in objections to proposals. That way, the needs of the workers can be heard and tended to locally and in a nimble manner. Roles can be defined and filled by consent, giving individuals freedom to act in a fast and self-responsible manner.

Thanks to these principles and their interaction, sociocracy has the nimbleness of a role-based organization with the sense of togetherness and belonging of an organization that has a group of peers as its starting point for everything we do. All collaboration is built on relationships, and relationships are supported by small groups that operate with continuity and trust.

The sociocratic landscape

Sociocracy in its modern form, as formulated by Gerard Endenburg in the 1980s, has been shaped by three big ideas:

• Equivalence: Endenburg had been a student in a Quaker-run school where he experienced what it is like when everyone’s needs are considered.
• Living systems: nested circles are organized like the fractal patterns in nature, of inter-dependent semi-autonomous systems.
• Cybernetics: Endenburg, as an electrical engineer, understood that feedback is essential to understanding our interaction with our environment, the impact of our actions, and the possibility of improvement.

There are several international organizations teaching sociocracy. The Sociocracy Group, (http://thesociocracygroup.com/), founded by Gerard Endenburg, is a global consulting organization with offices in Europe and North America.

Sociocracy 3.0 (sociocracy30.org) is an iteration of sociocracy that focuses on the exploration and expansion of patterns and the connection between agile and sociocracy. and has a loose collection of adherents all over the world with a concentration in Europe.

Sociocracy For All (sociocracyforall.org), is a non-profit membership organization operating globally that was founded in 2016 with the goal of making transitions to sociocracy easier by producing training and implementation materials and by interweaving the connections between sociocracy and related movements. For transparency, the author of this article is a co-founder of and on staff in Sociocracy For All.

Since sociocracy is open and accessible as a tool, it is impossible to make a realistic guess of how many organizations are using sociocracy worldwide. Sociocracy For All is aware of and connected to about 100 sociocratic organizations and we assume there are at least 3 times more organizations that have implemented sociocracy to some significant degree.

Sociocracy has spread the fastest within movements that share values with sociocracy. Natural breeding places of sociocracy exist wherever people come together as peers and have a bias for action, for instance:

• Intentional communities (like co-housing and eco-villages) where people are inspired to live together as peers, supporting self-management and evolving together as human beings.
• Agile and sociocracy naturally share some basic principles of self-organization, local decision-making, and a focus on experimentation and learning.
• Permaculture: In particular in its social dimension, permaculture and sociocracy share their affinity to patterns while creating non-extractive, sustainable practices both in the natural and the interpersonal sphere.
• Nonviolent communication (NVC): Conceptually, NVC and sociocracy are siblings, creating environments where we can be together without coercion while tending to each other’s needs. NVC does that on an interpersonal level and sociocracy on an organizational level. A natural fit, NVC is often intermeshed with sociocracy.
• Independent Schools: Since sociocracy started in a school, quite a few schools particularly in the Netherlands have been using sociocracy for years. (See org for an inspiring project.)
• The largest sociocratic organization is in India where neighbourhood parliaments (video interview) use linked circles and sociocratic elections to practice self-governance of their immediate environment. At more than tens of thousands of circles as of now, the neighborhood parliaments are growing in India and starting to be replicated in other countries, like Spain, Nigeria, and the US.

How do the values of sociocracy inform our actions in Sociocracy For All? They apply to our vision of social change: how can we create a world where everyone’s needs matter and where people are empowered to take charge of the matters that affect them?

To us, that focus has specific implications:

• Information needs to flow back from the practitioners to the teachers and between practitioners and teachers so everyone can learn. This also means that meaningful relationships of peers are at the center of our attention.
• Information is power. We want governance as equals to become the new norm, striving to make it accessible in all ways, not only financially and by using creative commons licenses, but also in practicability by making sociocracy as easy to use as possible without underestimating the culture change it implies. Open finances, open pay, and open meeting minutes have to be standard

(3)  People are creative and hard-wired to fill in gaps in patterns. In order to fill those gaps intentionally, we tend to teach with a lot of detail and examples, very specific and grounded in practicability. We seek to find the balance between experimentation and the use of the ever-emerging set of best practices.

We operate from the conviction that all humans have a capacity to cooperate and a need for contribution and connection. What we need in order to unlearn unhelpful historical patterns and to unleash that capacity are supportive systems and practices.

Here is why:

• The Performance gap between what we ideally want to do and what we can pull off consistently. We all want to be the best version of ourselves. However, this will not always be the case. We cannot run an organization on good intentions. Systems support us to have quality connection and process even when we are not at our best.

A practical example: time is a scarce resource. Even with best intentions and awareness around gender equivalence, it has been shown in experiments that group members are more likely to resort to sexist patterns when under time pressure. Understanding this is key for understanding the why of sociocracy: given that conditions will not always be ideal. systems help us be who we want to be more of the time. Processes are like a safety net so that we know what to do, even under time pressure, when we’re angry, impatient, tired or hurt.

• Practices can help us grow. Systems are not only a safety net but good systems can also widen our horizon.

A practical example: In rounds, when it is not your turn to talk, you sit back and listen. Real listening is a different mental state that I discovered for myself in sociocracy. For a while, whenever I felt the urge to cross-talk, I wrote down all ideas I had on a piece of paper. When it was my turn, I would go through my list and … it was sobering. Most of what I had wanted to blurt out had been said by others. Some of my ideas did not seem so relevant anymore. Teaching me to hold back, rounds made me a better team player.

(c)   A German proverb says “There is nothing good unless you do it”. Culture can only change with concrete and doable, consistent practices that bring equivalence to all levels and contexts of our interpersonal interactions. Live the revolution now.

To us, sociocracy is much more than a way of running an organization. It is culture change, one organization at a time. If we all learn the skills of governance as equals, if children grow up in sociocratic schools where they have a say in what and how they learn, if our volunteer organizations and our workplaces are run by equals, if neighbors feel empowered to take their destiny into their own hands, then the mind set of cooperation can supersede competition and fear, creating a more beautiful world for everyone.

Exciting news:

1. SoFA is publishing a print manual in Spring 2018 that describes sociocratic tools and its variations to an unprecedented level of detail. That manual will inspire people to immerse themselves in equivalence and effectiveness on all levels of their organizations. More information here on our website.
2. On May 1st 2018, SoFA is hosting an international online sociocracy conference. For schedule and more information see on our conference page.

Sociocracy. The organization of decision-making “no objection” as the principle of sociocracy. Gerard Endenburg. Rotterdam 1998.

Ted is co-founder of Sociocracy For All and teaches, consults, and coaches for sociocratic organizations. He co-authored the sociocracy handbook “Many Voices, One Song. Shared power with sociocracy“.

He is interested in real-life governance that improves how we relate to each other wherever we make shared decisions. Email: ted@sociocracyforall.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ted-j-rau-bb75a513b/

Waldorf Education Philosophy

Source: https://www.onecommunityglobal.org/waldorf/

The Waldorf education philosophy is just one of the many systems we have researched to create the Education for Life Program. The Waldorf method distinguishes three broad stages in child development that each last approximately seven years. The first stage focuses on hands-on learning activities and through creative play; the second focuses on artistic expression, social development, and creative and analytic thinking; the third stage encourages critical understanding and morality. This page is meant to function as an ever-expanding archive of open source, free-shared, and duplicable Waldorf education philosophy inspired ideas that we organize into the primary components of the One Community Education Program: Curriculum for Life, Teaching Strategies for Life, Learning Tools and Toys for Life, and building The Ultimate Classroom. These components are designed to be combined to create endless “Lesson Plans for Life” purposed to grow and evolve what we feel will be the most comprehensive, effective, and diversely applicable free-education program and resource archive in the world. The One Community Foundations of Teaching, Leadership, and Communicating, combined with a collaborative Evaluation and Evolution Component (Portfolio Creation and Maintenance), help us to further grow and adapt both the program and as individuals.

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OTHER WAYS TO CONTRIBUTE TO EVOLVING THIS EDUCATION PROGRAM WITH US
WHAT IS THE WALDORF
EDUCATION PHILOSOPHY
If you have ideas stemming from Waldorf education, philosophy, and/or theory that you feel should be added to this developing resource guide, please use our Education for Life Collaborative Input Page. To create the upcoming page we have researched a diversity of the components of the Waldorf method and Waldorf schooling approach including: Waldorf education training, Waldorf education curriculum, Waldorf homeschooling, and more. Our goal is to list here what we feel are the best, simplest, and most usable tools with application and benefit for all ages?
Waldorf Foundations of Leadership, Teaching, and Communicating
● Self governing by consensus of a group of teachers: Provides creative autonomy as a foundational skeleton which enables children to learn by example
● Multiple intelligences: Children are measured as individuals (versus based upon universal criteria) to allow for multiple and differential intelligences
● Looping: Utilizing the same teacher over multiple years in order to build long-term relationships
● Greet: Shake each student’s hand, and make eye contact as each enters class. This strategy allows the teacher to check in on each student at the start of the day. Students will line up at the door, eager for a one-on-one moment with the teacher.
● Relate: Create a buddy system with students in an older grade. The cross-age pals at the John Morse Waldorf Methods School meet once a month to learn about building solid relationships with both younger and older students.
● Draw: Let students illustrate their own workbooks. Having students draw out math and reading lessons is a great way to integrate art into the curriculum. The students will take pride in their books, and learn in a new way.
● Plant: Get students outside through nature walks and gardening. Weekly nature walks in a local park or natural area will become science lessons as the teacher answers students questions about the natural world. A school garden can allow students to connect with nature and learn how plants grow.
● Play: Practice musical instruments during class transitions. Give each student a recorder, and have the whole class follow the teacher by playing a few notes at class breaks. The students will enjoy mixing short music lessons into everyday learning.
● Move: Allow kids to be active during lessons. Your whole class will enjoy getting out of their chairs to do physical activities such as stomping their feet and counting out numbers to begin learning multiplication.
● Ideas to add? Click here to make this page better!
Waldorf Curriculum Ideas
● Moral responsibility: An active practice teaching, “One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.”
● Social competence and personality development
● Eurythmy: Expressive movement art to poetry, music, plays. Learning moods combined with pitch, tone, rhythm, grammar
● Experiential Learning: Music, dance and theater, writing, literature, legends and myths are not simply subjects to be read about and tested, they are experienced
● Ideas to add? Click here to make this page better!
Waldorf Teaching Strategies
● Age 7-14: The approach emphasizes cultivating children’s emotional life and imagination. The core curriculum is introduced imaginatively through stories and creative presentations
● Age 14+: The curriculum is structured to foster pupils’ intellectual understanding, independent judgment, and ethical ideals such as social responsibility, aiming to meet the developing capacity for abstract thought and conceptual judgment. Secondary education is provided by specialist teachers for each subject. The education focuses much more strongly on academic subjects, though students normally continue to take courses in art, music, and crafts.
● Eurythmy: Expressive movement art to poetry, music, plays. Learning moods combined with pitch, tone, rhythm, grammar
● Reciting previous lesson: after each new lesson is taught, there is outdoor break, upon arrival back the previous lesson is recited and the child records findings in journal
● Each class normally remains together as a cohort throughout their years, developing as a quasi-familial social group whose members know each other quite deeply. In the elementary years, a core teacher teaches the primary academic subjects.
● Ideas to add? Click here to make this page better!
Waldorf Learning Tools and Toys
● Open Ended/Gender Neutral Toy: Squares of different colored silk
● Dress-up clothes/costumes near the mirror
● Natural objects as toys – stones, feathers, branches, earth, sand, leaves, pinecones, etc.
● Avoidance of toys and clothes with commercial fictional characters
● Recording book: Student has a ‘journal’ to record learnings after each lesson
● Waldorf Dolls are the type of doll used in Waldorf classrooms using traditional European doll-making techniques. They are usually handmade of natural fibers like cotton and wool that are comforting to hold and touch. The facial features of a Waldorf doll are left intentionally simple. Features usually consist of two eyes and a hint of a mouth. Some Waldorf dolls may have no features at all! This allows a child to use his or her imagination to imagine the doll’s expression.
● Ideas to add? Click here to make this page better!
Waldorf Classroom Design
● Natural containers and building materials – avoid plastic and other synthetics
● Natural toys without paint etc. so kids can use their imagination more
● Receives natural light
● Is designed with a quiet visual environment
● Uses warm colors on the walls and floor
● Has a large area of free space for building and diverse learning/play
● Has high-quality and purpose-designed furniture, fixtures and equipment
● Allows ease of movement
● Allows flexibility in learning varied activities
● Contains ergonomic tables and chairs
● Is modular, meaning the teacher can easily change the space configuration
● Waldorf classrooms commonly integrate the deliberate and consciously considered use of color. Although not every Waldorf school is exactly the same in its choice of colors there is often a general consistency based on a response to the stages of child development.
● Ideas to add? Click here to make this page better!
OTHER RESOURCES
OPEN SOURCE SUBJECT RESOURCES (click icons for complete pages)
OPEN SOURCE CURRICULUM OUTLINES (click image for summaries and links to complete pages)
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OPEN SOURCE TEACHING METHODOLOGY SUMMARIES
INDEX OF ALL THE ONE COMMUNITY OPEN SOURCE LESSON PLANS

Click this image for the Lesson Plans for Life page with links to the rest of the lesson plans

THE WORLD'S LARGEST ONLINE FREE EDUCATION RESOURCE ARCHIVE

• The World's Largest Online Free-Education Resource Archive

RELATED CONTENT AND OTHER RELATED RESOURCES

• Wikipedia: Waldorf education 

• Association of Waldorf Schools of North America -> Home

• Article: “What is Waldorf Education?”

• Waldorf Today – Waldorf Teachers Jobs Board, Waldorf News

• Edutopia Article: “Waldorf Methods to Use in Your Classroom”

• List of Waldorf High Schools – Center for Anthroposophy

• Waldorf answers – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about Waldorf

• Waldorf-resources.org: Evaluating, Assessing, Testing and Learning

• Article: “Discover Waldorf Education: Assessing Without Testing”

• Research Paper Archive: Assessment and Evaluation within Steiner education

• PDF Article: “The Role of Evaluation and Examinations within Waldorf Education within Different Age Groups”

• Send us your ideas

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NOTE: One Community does not believe there is any one system that is the best. It is our Highest Good of All philosophy to look at all systems and all methodologies. Our goal is to learn and integrate everything we can to better inspire and create the Education for Life program as an open source and free-shared globally collaborative and accessible program available to positively contribute to the education of anyone who chooses to use it.

Here is our continually evolving list of Waldorf inspired ideas divided into the categories of the Education for Life program:

If you’d like to help us make this list better, please submit your Waldorf inspired suggestions so that we can integrate them here and into the Foundations of Teaching, Leadership, and Communicating component.

● Qualitative: Formative assessment helps teachers to monitor their students’ progress and to modify the instruction accordingly. It also helps students to monitor their own progress by incorporating feedback

If you’d like to help us make this list better, please submit your Waldorf inspired suggestions so that we can integrate them here and into the Curriculum for Life component.

● Anthroposophy to incorporate inner development in areas such as intuition, inspiration, and imagination into natural science that could eventually be evaluated on the same basis

If you’d like to help us make this list better, please submit your Waldorf inspired suggestions so that we can integrate them here and into the Teaching Strategies for Life component.

● Age 1-6/7: Learn best by being immersed in an environment where one can learn through unselfconscious imitation

If you’d like to help us make this list better, please submit your Waldorf inspired suggestions so that we can integrate them here and into the Learning Tools and Toys for Life component.

● Open Ended/Gender Neutral Toy: Push Cart, Play Stand/Trestles, (submit ideas)

If you’d like to help us make this list better, please submit your Waldorf inspired suggestions so that we can integrate them here and into the Ultimate Classroom component.

● Art station specifically for art, music, and dancing (by mirror and Montessori dress-up clothes?)

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Montessori | Waldorf | Orff | Reggio | Multi-Intelligence | Bloom's Taxonomy | Study Tech | I-WE

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