Teaching Philosophy

Many people hear the word "Buddhism", and they think it is a religion. However, a person of any religion can bring Buddhist principles into their life without giving up their religious beliefs. Buddhism is a simple and practical philosophy, practiced by more than 300 million people worldwide, that can make your life better and help you find inner peace and happiness.

Critical thinking is the essential tool for ensuring that students fulfill their promise. But, in reality, critical thinking is still a luxury good, and students with the greatest potential are too often challenged the least. Colin Seale, a teacher-turned-attorney-turned-education-innovator and founder of thinkLaw, uses his unique experience to introduce a wide variety of concrete instructional strategies and examples that teachers can use in all grade levels and subject areas.

The Upanishads are among the oldest of the Indian wisdom texts, the records of teaching sessions of illumined sages and their students, who were asking the fundamental questions of life. Easwaran's translation of these classic texts has been highly acclaimed, and in these informal talks to close students he draws out the main themes of eleven Upanishads.

A science exists that allows children to learn as individuals even though at school they are educated in groups. One that avoids senseless labels that sentence children to lifetimes of failure and mediocrity. Dr. Kimberly Berens and a team of scientists have spent the last 20 years perfecting a powerful system of instruction based on the learning, behavioral, and cognitive sciences that they call Fit Learning.

In Small Teaching K-8, a team of veteran educators bridges the gap between cognitive theory and the K-8 classroom environment, applying the same foundational research found in author James Lang's bestselling Small Teaching to the elementary and middle school setting. The book demonstrates how to integrate simple interventions into pre-existing pedagogical techniques to dramatically improve student outcomes.

In Teaching White Supremacy, Donald Yacovone shows us the clear and damning evidence of white supremacy’s deep-seated roots in our nation’s education system in a fascinating, in-depth examination of America’s wide assortment of texts, from primary readers to college textbooks and other higher-ed course materials. Sifting through a wealth of materials, from the colonial era to today, Yacovone reveals the systematic ways in which white supremacist ideology has infiltrated American culture and how it has been at the heart of our collective national identity.

The Learning Rainforest is renowned educator Tom Sherrington's attempt to capture various different elements of our understanding and experience of teaching. It is a celebration of great teaching - the joy of it and the intellectual and personal rewards that teaching brings.

This is a call to a revolution of heart. In Tibetan Buddhism, it is taught that one of the most essential qualities of enlightenment is tsewa, a form of warm energy and openness of heart. It is the warmth we express and receive through empathy with others, especially those closest to us. In this compact gem of an audiobook, Dzigar Kongtrul opens the door to this life-changing energy and shows us how to transform our attitude toward ourselves and those around us through its practice. And through its practice, we can actually heal our fractured world.

With Radiant Mind, Peter Fenner - an expert in Eastern psychologies and longtime student of many Tibetan masters - offers you an effective, practical approach for Western students seeking to directly experience and cultivate the healing power of nondual awakening.

Critical thinking is regularly cited as an essential 21st century skill, the key to success in school and work. Given our propensity to believe fake news, draw incorrect conclusions, and make decisions based on emotion rather than reason, it might even be said that critical thinking is vital to the survival of a democratic society. But what, exactly, is critical thinking? Haber describes the term's origins in such disciplines as philosophy, psychology, and science.

Ron Ritchhart's new book, Cultures of Thinking in Action, takes the next step in helping listeners not only understand how a culture of thinking looks and feels, but also how to create it for themselves and their learners. Arguing that no set of practices or techniques alone is sufficient to create a culture of thinking in and of itself, Ritchhart explores the underlying beliefs that motivate the creation of cultures of thinking, presenting key mindsets every educator and leader needs to embrace.

In Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids' Brains and What Schools Can Do About It, veteran educator and brain expert Eric Jensen takes an unflinching look at how poverty hurts children, families, and communities across the United States and demonstrates how schools can improve the academic achievement and life readiness of economically disadvantaged students.

This wonderfully practical book is a manifestation of Lama Zopa Rinpoche's peerless wisdom realizing emptiness and illuminates the personal experience of this rare and precious teacher. Rinpoche offers an incredible amount of information in this concise title by emphasizing the importance of compassion and universal responsibility, showing how we can make this life meaningful, giving a brief explanation of the nature of the enlightened mind and how we can attain it, offering an amazing and extensive explanation of emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality, by analyzing the way various phenomena exist and finally teaching us how we can successfully meditate on emptiness.

Marcus Aurelius' writings, intended only for himself, reveal a mind of great humanity, humility, and insight. For over 2,000 years, these writings have inspired men and women to engage in the philosophical life, which involves two goals: to "know yourself" and then to ask, "What is the right way to live?"

Anger plagues all of us on many levels and can be a formidable emotion to overcome. Yet, we see people, such as the Dalai Lama, who have faced circumstances far worse than many of us have faced—including exile, persecution, and the loss of many loved ones—but do not burn with rage or seek revenge. Using the teachings and advice presented by beloved Buddhist teacher Thubten Chodron, anyone can learn to calm their emotions, sit with and understand their anger, and peacefully move toward resolution and peace.

The teachings of Shunryu Suzuki have served for innumerable people as the gateway to Zen practice and meditation. In Zen Is Right Now, devoted student and biographer David Chadwick sheds new light on Suzuki’s presence and teachings through selected quotes from his lectures and a variety of stories told by his students.

Mogel’s sage advice on parenting young children has struck a chord with thousands of readers and made her one of today’s most trusted parenting authorities. Now, in a longawaited followup, Mogel addresses the question she hears most frequently: what to do when those children become teenagers, their sense of independence and entitlement grows, the pressure to compete and succeed skyrockets, and communication becomes fraught with obstacles.

Black education was a subversive act from its inception. African Americans pursued education through clandestine means, often in defiance of law and custom, even under threat of violence. They developed what Jarvis Givens calls a tradition of "fugitive pedagogy"—a theory and practice of Black education in America. The enslaved learned to read in spite of widespread prohibitions; newly emancipated people braved the dangers of integrating all-White schools and the hardships of building Black schools.

Among primers on meditation, this audiobook is exceptional in how it guides listeners who treasure inner growth and are looking for reliable direction on how to achieve it in an authentic and sustainable way. The author, a student of the Indian yogi Paramahansa Yogananda, distills the teachings of many other spiritual traditions and religions, including Christianity, into an interfaith perspective that will appeal to all seekers of the divine.

Dr. Peikoff makes a compelling case for a rational system of education by contrasting three approaches to philosophy and the different educational alternatives they propose to replace our present system. He translates the usual abstract discussions in this field into material easily comprehensible to the listener. In the process, he defines a proper methodology and curriculum that will produce thinking high school graduates confident of their ability to achieve their goals.