What is possible in a classroom when a teacher becomes the facilitator of learning and when the students learn to become their own teachers? What becomes possible in our world when we are given the tools to courageously interact with life, even when it’s painful? On our Global Awakin Call, lifelong learner Ward Mailliard shared his experiences as an educator at the Mount Madonna School, a K-12 school committed to "whole child education". Drinking in all of the wisdom from Ward’s interview will leave you in a state of awe. But if you ask him, Ward says, “Most of what I’ve learned, I’ve probably learned from students.”

Ward has taken his students to meet with and interview both Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa as well as His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama in India. Yet he describes the sequence of events and circumstances that led him to teach the Values in World Thought program at Mount Madonna as a series of “happy accidents”. Weather they were happy accidents or the natural result of Ward’s insatiable quest for learning and the curiosity with which he approaches life is an interesting question.

“My theory of learning is that I don’t know. That’s where we start. My theory of learning is about curiosity. Curiosity is always the precursor to learning.”

The way Ward offers his students the tools to interact with life is by introducing concepts.

“Values-based learning may be something of a misnomer, in that I’m not teaching values. What I’m doing is establishing a dialogue with the students through concepts that show up in our lives.”

One day, after Ward becoming captivated by Bill Moyers' Power of Myth interview with Joseph Campbell, he asked himself, “What would happen if I took the Bill Moyers’ ‘Word of Ideas’ into the classroom and made that the textbook for my English class?” Ward started noticing a shift in the way the students were thinking. Then one day he received a call from Bill Moyers himself, who said, “I heard you’re using my material in your classroom,” and then he asked to see more. Ward scrambled a bunch of stuff together and sent it over to Bill, which eventually led to Ward developing his curriculum for the Values in World Thought program.

Rooted in dialogue and the art of the question, the Values in World Thought program aims to develop capacities of self-awareness and to support an ongoing inquiry into the values that inform actions in order strengthen students' ability to engage in positive and mutually beneficial relationships with each other and with their communities.

“I noticed that my students began to contextualize themselves differently through the concepts that they began to understand from the Moyers interviews. They started coming into the classroom saying, “You know what? We’ve studied this concept and it showed up in my life in some way.” I noticed that the Values in World Thought program was an invitation to the students for a larger conversation about life.”

Ward offered one example of a concept. In the curriculum there is an interview with Martha Nussbaum. She says, “Trying to live a good life opens you to tragedy. “ Ward explains that this is a concept. The concept is that if you care about certain things, sometimes life will impinge on you in a way where those things you care about are hurt. Consequently you’re hurt. This is a conversation about vulnerability and care, and to realize that the joy of life also exposes you to being hurt when the things that you care about are being hurt. It’s a choice that we make.

“What I’m trying to do is have the students become more self-aware in terms of their choices, and understand the values on which those choices are based. Then if it’s not working, recalibrate, make different choices, examine those values, and see if they’re working for you. Because values, if they are important, are inherently self-proving.”

Failing Our Way to Success: Understanding What Motivates People to Learn
From the neurobiological perspective, Ward explained that we know when we’re in safety because the whole brain functions. But when we’re in danger, all the blood goes to the amygdala and we go into fight or flight mode, where creativity doesn’t feel safe to emerge. Therefore, if we’re using dominance or submission or hierarchy in the teaching process, then we might not be making the students smarter.

“The relationships of the teacher to the students, and the students to the students, and the type of processes you use have enormous impact on what kind of learning actually takes place. You become smarter in an atmosphere of intimacy, trust, and cooperation.”

Recently at a student conference in India, Ward asked the students what was it that educators needed to know in order to make education relevant. One boy who was very quiet throughout the entire conversation finally said at the end, “What I would really like is to be able to make mistakes and not have them be so costly.”

Ward believes that learning requires the willingness to take risks and be wrong, but for this you need a context where you’re not afraid that you’ll be judged by your peers, first, and secondly, by your teacher.

“Learning is an iterative process, and in a sense, we’re all failing our way to success. We start not knowing, and the journey is to knowing.”

The idea of the right answer can become problematic. Ward explained that we are dehumanizing the educational environment when we penalize people if they have a learning difference or are unable to grasp something in the “right” way.

“The world has moved on and the context has shifted, yet we’re still operating in an environment that was established a long time ago. We need to think about what kind of person, what kind of human being we want to produce and realize that we’re conditioning our kids without realizing it in our current educational system. Maybe we need to shift to produce a different kind of world.”

How do we create safety? If we listen with curiosity rather than criticality, the whole field between people shifts and you move into cooperation as opposed to competition in the classroom.

“Curiosity is the doorway to empathy. When we’re deeply curious, we enter an empathetic field that allows us to connect with another person and our welfare and their welfare somehow become interconnected. This creates a different environment, a different world.”

Facing the Dragon of Complexity
We are in a world where, depending on where you’re looking, we are rapidly failing. Will learning how to fall in love with failure help young people embrace the kind of clarity that is required in the face of our complex, collective challenges?

While Ward will be the first to admit that he is just as confused as his peers about the best way to educate young people, he has thought a great deal about complexity. He sees two tendencies of mind. One is to move toward simplification, which is positive at one level, but when it moves to fundamentalism, then we run into “I’m right, you’re wrong. My belief versus your belief.” So simplicity, when it becomes fundamentalism, is problematic. The other tendency of mind is to move toward relativism, which is that all values are co-equal, hence there are no values. So as long as you don’t impinge on me, believe and think what you want. It’s a valueless position, what Ward calls, “whatever”.

“Facing the dragon of complexity is the first thing that I introduce kids to. How do we stand with a set of beliefs and values and try to distill answers, which are always unitary, out of the complexity of possibility? We have to have some anchoring and awareness of our belief system. At the same time, we need to be open to new information and new ideas so we continually integrate those ideas. This becomes the core of what I do, which is to develop discernment.”

Ward explains that discernment is the ability to look at a complex situation and through a process of engagement with that, figure out what the best response is to that circumstance.

“Values are not objects, they’re dynamic principles. They operate in relationship with each other, and always within a context. While it’s important to have a set of values, it’s also important to try to see the context.”

As an example, Ward offered the idea of non-violence and truthfulness. He explained that sometimes these values are in conflict with each other. There's a discernment process that has to go on, involving self-awareness, in order to be effective. That's one piece of it. Another piece of it is the process of staying with it and applying a creative approach to the reflection that involves preparation, incubation, inspiration, and verification. This creative process is deeply connected with the intuitive process, where connections get made. Ward explains that there's a discipline to this and that you need to experience it to develop confidence in it.                            

Rather than reacting to our circumstances with judgment or a rigid set of rules, we must develop our ability to respond with curiosity and creativity, utilizing our awareness of what is important.

An Expert On Not Knowing
The best compliment Ward has received was by a man that introduced him as, “I want to introduce Ward, he’s an expert on not knowing.” Learning from his peers and with his peers, Ward always says, “Beware of experts.”

Similar to most teachers, Ward has a high resistance to being told what to do. His question to all educators is, “How do we create a learning experience where teachers will learn what they’re ready to learn?” This way, when an individual transforms, everything around him transforms.

“Every time I’ve been altered by an encounter with someone, it shifts how I’m reflecting on my aim, which is: How to love my students in a way that will give them the best possibility for the life that they want, and develop a sense of self-discipline and discernment and concern for others that will help make the world a better place.”