The Transformation of Education
BeLonging is an educational project for teachers and learners. It is based on the principles of Mereon, an integrated model of existence that provides a link between living and life-like systems.
BeLonging begins with Educators as LifeLongLearners, a three-day course for teachers and anyone who works in a school who wants to improve how their lives touch the future, our children. During this course, the real issues are tackled straight on, paving innovative pathways with solutions for the complex problems that face all schools today. The facilitators’ first tasks are to revision themselves, renew trust and open communication. These steps are essential if an educator is to revive their passion and commitment to teaching.
Teachers and parents are then introduced to the classroom project, Learners Learning to Lead. This aspect of BeLonging in no way impinges on the formal, academic curriculum; if anything, it enhances it. Teachers introduce the project as something akin to a game, an adventure in responsibility. Kids love it! Why? Because most kids want to know they matter, want to feel needed, and actually want to help! A scheme of 8 roles and 33 tasks are taken on by students; each week all learners are assigned a new role, and every day they attend to a different task related to that role.
Learning to cooperate and share responsibility for the social dimension of their learning environment is an ongoing lesson in leading, far more than rote learning or worse, ‘follow the leader’. As the learners have new experiences, and see themselves, their peers and their teachers from a new perspective, change happens quickly. Where teachers once spent 80-90% of the day attending to 17% of the students, they now spend that time teaching all of the students! The 10-20% is now learners experiencing how to lead by taking on different roles and tasks. First implemented in Mirano, Venice, Italy in 2004, pilots have been initiated in North America and Switzerland. The one-time cost is approximately $10-15 per student, this, the cost of a three-day teacher development program.
The benefits are immediate, and the effects are life changing, and long lasting. For educators and students alike, BeLonging:
- Fosters authenticity and dialogue, decreases bullying & easing assimilation into the classroom
- Increases attendance & improves emotional intelligence by facilitating true learning
- Generates life-changing experiences that lead to understanding why everyone matters
- Brings about positive & long-lasting change in individuals & the learning environment
- Promotes the development of healthy social interactions
- Provides the knowledge and the opportunities to make healthy decisions
- Gives everyone the experience of innovating and implementing simple solutions
- Grows naturally to extend far beyond the learning environment
- Generates benefits for one & all while eliminating burnout
- Demonstrating how unity is the consequence of rich diversity
The Mereon Education team is ready to go, and welcomes any help in seeding BeLonging around the world. To contact us, click here.
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Alvin Toffler
“BeLonging is to education what Google is to the Internet!” P. Schenker, Businessman, Switzerland (After visiting the program in Italy)