Overview
We offer two types of tuition-based distant learning opportunities: online classes and live telephone conferences, plus a number of no-cost online educational resources.
Classes offer inspired continuing education for parents, grandparents, childcare providers, Head Start and preschool teachers. The class format - six weeks, twelve lessons - is similar to online classes used by colleges and universities. Estimated time to complete each class is five hours per week, thirty hours total, which can be applied to continuing education certification, which we offer in collaboration with the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute.
From time to time we schedule a teleconference with a rich network of specialists in child and family development. Notices are sent via our members network, most often Saturday morning. Past guests include: Joseph Chilton Pearce, Carla Hannaford, Fred Donaldson, Jean Leidloff, Stuart Brown, Peggy O’Mara, Suzanne Arms, David Chamberlain, Bruce Lipton, to name just a few.
The Art of Playful Parenting
with Michael Mendizza, based on his and Joseph Chilton Pearce’s book Magical Parent-Magical Child, the Optimum Learning Relationship. This course creates a direct relationship with Michael Mendizza. Michael will correspond with you personally as you move through each lesson, responding to questions that the material raises.
Starting Date - Open Schedule
You begin and move through the mateial at you own pace.
Please review the sample lession (link on the left). This will give you a good idea of how the class is structured.
Overview
Our goal is to apply the psychology of optimum experience, what athletes call the Zone, researchers and the business community call Flow and what children call Play to parenting and to education. The twelve lesson class will redefine the Zone, Flow and authentic Play as “transformational technologies” that optimize learning, performance and well being, at any age, in any field.
Magical Adults nurture and guide Magical Children. Magical Children challenge and mentor Magical Adults. Our goal is to explore this reciprocal dynamic. We will suggest ways to optimize the adult-child relationship, reduce conflict and boost learning and performance on both sides of the equation. We will explore “state specific” learning and performance, optimum states and what prevents them and what we call “the intelligence of play,” and why we believe that this state called original play is nature’s baseline for optimum learning and performance.
Lesson 1 - Optimum Learning Relationships
Lesson 2 - The Learning Channel We Call Bonding
Lesson 3 - Beginner's Mind & The Intelligence of Play
Lesson 4 - The Safe Place
Lesson 5 - Learning & Conditioning
Lesson 6 - More About Play Ages & Stages
Lesson 7 - Punishments & Rewards
Lesson 8 - Focusing on the Score
Lesson 9 - Following the Leader
Lesson 10 - Our Brave New Industrial Mind
Lesson 11 - Principles for Optimum Learning Relationships
Lesson 12 - Principles Continued
Instructor: Michael Mendizza
Michael is a documentary filmmaker and founder or Touch the Future, a nonprofit learning design center. In collaboration with Joseph Chilton Pearce, Michael developed a performance and learning model that optimizes the adult child relationship. Athletes call this Optimum Learning Relationship the Zone, researchers call it Flow, and children call it Play. In Optimum Learning Relationships the adult-child dynamic is approached as a spontaneous, creative act. Formulas, rewards and punishments are replaced by creative intelligence and insight. Learning and development is shared, awakening new levels of sensitivity in both children and adults. Touch the Future is developing projects that cultivate Optimum Learning Relationships between adults and children, including: Nurturing the Early Child, Family & Caregiver, a project which targets communities serving children zero to five; United We Play, which focuses on amateur athletics; and Science, Story & Creativity, a PBS project which explores development of critical and creative skills and the future workforce.
Course Requirements & Recommendations
The course material will be drawn from the book Magical Parent - Magical Child, the Optimum Learning Relationship by Michael Mendizza with Joseph Chilton Pearce. An electronic edition of this publication is included in the class. Other recommended readings include Biology of Transcendence, Evolution’s End and/or Magical Child by Pearce, Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn, Flow by Mihaly Cskszentmihalyi, Endangered Minds by Jane Healy and Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander.
How to register
You will need to log on using the name and password you created when you registered for the class. Once online, you will be able to obtain your lessons, work through the suggested assignments, participate in discussions with your fellow students, and post questions for your instructor.
Course Mechanics
All twelve lessons will be available to all class participants. We recommend that you print each lesson, review it off-line, make notes regarding each assignment, then return online to log in assignments and participate in discussions. This will reduce time spent at the screen and allow the greatest feasibility in personal scheduling. The discussion area for each lesson will contain the most interesting and provocative questions and comments from past participants along with current inquiries.
Lessons may include assignments to help make abstract concepts more concrete and practical. Assignments are designed primarily for personal enrichment and to provide source materials for group discussions. You have the sole responsibility for evaluating your performance on each assignment, which you many wish to share as part of the discussion with fellow students and the instructor. There will be no exams or grades.
Questions & Discussion
This course can be highly interactive. The level of interactivity is controlled by you. It’s up to you to ask questions when you need help. The entire experience for everyone is enhanced by the quality of questions you and your fellow classmates generate. With this in mind, all class questions will be posted in the discussion areas, corresponding to each lesson. To reach these discussion areas go to the online classroom, and click the word discussion. To preserve your privacy, please feel free to identify yourself only by first name or with a nickname when posting your questions.
Your discussion area questions will serve as a challenge for your fellow students. Someone is bound to have an answer for you. Likewise, you should be able to find questions in the discussion area that you can answer. The discussion area will be open to you and your classmates 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Please try to visit the discussion area several times each week as you move through each lesson. Please don't be afraid to participate! The instructors will be monitoring the discussion area several times each week (excluding weekends and holidays).
In order to keep this material as up-to-date and informative as possible, instructors reserve the right to make changes to the course content, description, and syllabus at any time and without warning.