What is FCL?: Curricular Themes

Curricular Themes: Mastery of Skills is a Matter of Heart as much as Mind

Click here for PDF of the poster.

• Full-Circle Learning schools integrate character eduation, the arts, conflict resolution and local/global service into every unit.

 

• Through professional development training, teachers learn to design lesson plan unit that help students find a meaningful impetus and purpose for their skills and that address multiple learning styles.

 

• They are trained to cultivate a supportive classroom culture that helps each student sense their responsibility to others and feel passionate about applying their learning for the benefit of the human family.

 

• Any creative, dedicated teacher can apply these principles, once learned, but in a dedicated Full-Circle Learning school, special curricula are provided to help guide and unify the teachers in their practice. Some of the themes are flexible and can address multiple age groups, but the important thing is to stick with one theme, so students experience all habits, one at a time, over a number of years. This sets the students on a trajectory toward self-mastery and community transformation, which in turn enhances the academic growth and lifelong goals of each student.

 

• Each year or semester, a class takes on a new identity based on the curriculum or module they will study. For example, the five-year olds may be the Helpers, the ten year-olds may be the Vision Seekers, the 13 year-olds may be the Change Agents, etc.During the year, they deeply absorb and apply the habits-of-heart contained in that module.

 

• The teacher uses the education standards of the country or region as the basis for planning the learning units. However, the Full-Circle Learning curricula associated with the grade-level theme (perhaps offered in a multi-subject class period and reinforced throughout the day)  provide themes and a framework for scaffolding the learning against a backdrop of service that cultivates altruistic identities as it builds critical thinking skills and honors creativity and compassion.

 

• Students become motivated to learn as they develop awareness of local and global challenges, needed problem-solving skills, and compassionate responses to academic and real conflict. Finally, their culminating service projects apply knowledge to benefit their community as they seek wisdom from and address issues with their global family members in another school.

 

• By the time a student has been schooled in the program for several years, he or she will have mastered 60 habits-of-heart and changed a life or two along the way -- particularly their own.