Learning to Stop, Stopping to Learn

Abstract

Contemplative pedagogy is a young and growing approach in American education. It invites new possibilities for the emergence of creativity and promotes depth of understanding and a more personal relationship with course content. The path to contemplative learning is different for each educator who travels it. Experiences that led to the development of a personal contemplative practice and its impact on the author's teaching, over time, are described. Focus is especially on the just begun contemplative methods used in teaching a 10th-grade mathematics course. In the process, the dimensions of centering, questioning, awareness, and community, central to the contemplative element of the course, are examined. To give the reader a taste of the course, poetry, stories, and quotations that the author shared with his students are included. The article concludes with a discussion of outcomes from the first year of the course, changes made in response to what has been learnt, and new questions that have arisen.