Contemplative practices are in my opinion, one of the most useful practices you can do in order to get a deeper understanding of any idea or school of thought type of rhetoric that you are learning. In my own version of contemporary practicing, I end up trying to connect the dots and attempt to visualize any model in my mind… Read more »
As someone that does Lear in a different style than most everyone else I feel that the contemplative practice is a welcome change for the usual way teaching is done. Some may see this as strange and awkward but they need but trust in something new and try to use the new method of learning to explore new ideas and… Read more »
I’ll admit that I was slightly taken aback and heartily amused when Professor Liftin proposed such a meditative approach to consuming a raisin. It was perfect; the lights were dim, the mood was set, and after having just watched the contrasting videos on raisin production before and after industrialization, I was ready to eat that raisin. Granted, I’m a raisin fan…. Read more »
Rarely in college classes do students get to sit down for a few minutes and absorb the materials that they learn in lecture. We sit through an hour or two of lecture and immediately leave when the bell rings without thinking about the impacts that the learning materials have on us as individuals. In a class that explores the environmental,… Read more »
A delineation must be made between contemplative practice and contemplation of life. To think that we don’t spend much of our lives contemplating our immediate situations is misguided. Humans today are incessantly focused on themselves, their friends, money, careers, looks and trends. We contemplate how others see us, what grades we will need to achieve which goals, our lives are… Read more »
Contemplative practices, as trivial as they may seem to others, have the power to inform in an interactive manner as well as generate thoughts about one’s role within regard to the rest of the food system. I personally have found our contemplative practices thus far to be very engaging and necessary. With an act as simple as being told to… Read more »
Interactive learning is without a doubt integral to the ability of a student to be pro-active, not only in their own learning, but in relating it to their life more broadly. It is easy to see that this is the goal of the contemplative practices undertaken in class. Especially in a course that focuses on the human impact on, both… Read more »
Blog Post 2: Contemplative Practice Contemplative practices have been integral part of the learning experience for Political Ecology of the World Food System. Making students engage in these practices has proven to be a unique teaching style, and in a course that is so ecologically integrative, these techniques have allowed the cohort to both understand the system better, and to… Read more »
I have taken two classes so far at the University of Washington in which the professor has implemented the use of contemplative practices as a part of their curriculum. Although I find the concept of them interesting, I personally do not feel that I am able to gain as much as desired from them. The biggest issue that I find… Read more »
In the first contemplative practice, the first thing I thought about was how healthy this raisin was for me. As a health-conscious individual, I knew that this processed raisin had some nutritional value. And then it dawned on me: as much as we like to associate industrialized food systems with words such as “processed” and “unhealthy”, we can also associate… Read more »