Consider attitude, it is the one factor in education that is universally regarded as the critically important key to success and failure. In education, a good attitude overcomes all disadvantages, where as a bad attitude defeats all advantages. Attitude First presents three strategies for cultivating your own attitude and supporting others to improve theirs:
1. Invest your attention
2. Navigate by your values
3. Collaborate on your life story.
The goal of these strategies is to ensure that everyone - learners, teachers and everyone else - is supported in transcending mere survival in order to achieve thrival (the state of thriving). By clearly defining thrival, with reference to research in the fields of cognitive science and psychological studies, the author, Don Berg, has developed an innovative approach that redefines what it means to put the learner at the center of the educational process.
The three strategies reflect the integration of personal, group and societal levels of being. Ultimately, all you have to work with us your own life, therefore, these strategies are designed to be implemented personally, but with clear aim toward improving the whole of society in the process. A sustainable society is only possible when everyone thrives. Transforming our society for sustainability requires that individuals take responsibility for creating ways to thrive in the world as it is. Achieving thrival, by definition, will transform not only your own personal world, but will affect the world of others, as well. You can ultimately create a revolution toward sustainability through the necessary collaborations that will sustain your own thrival.
Don Berg has over 15 years experience working with children of all ages in a variety of situations, except the formal classroom. For five years, he was a practicing teacherpreneur (entrepreneurial teacher) home schooling other people's children in a community-based program using a coaching model of instruction. He has operated his own businesses for over 15 years and periodically assisted others in running theirs.
After 18 years as a student in the industrial school system, Mr. Berg was clear that he did not belong in a traditional classroom. On the other hand, he had an equally strong intuition that he should teach children. This apparent contradiction led him through most of the existing non-classroom opportunities to work with children; summer programs; child-care, both in homes and centers; before-and after-school programs; then, he created his own home schooling program.
Being an entrepreneur in a field dominated by the orthodoxy of the classroom meant that he was forced to examine the distinctions of his approach. This book began as the result of composing various ways to explain his innovative teaching approach as he simultaneously marketed his unique services.
Mr. Berg lives in Port Townsend, Washington, USA.