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The Buddha compared the mind to the strings of a lute (a guitar-like instrument): the lute can not be played if the strings are too tight or too loose. Similarly when attention is either too tight or too loose, you can't properly meditate. When attention is too loose, the mind wanders and you get lost in thought. Try narrowing your focus in different ways (e.g. just inhales instead of the whole breath, focus on a smaller area around your nose). Some people do a few minutes of yoga or loving kindness (metta) practice at the start of their meditation period to focus the mind, before switching to breath awareness meditation. Some people find focusing on sounds easier than focusing on breathing.

The goal is not to try to change anything, but to be aware of the desire to change it and then see if we can just relax and be ok with it even if it doesn't change. Are we trying to quiet the storm, or are we trying to find peace within the storm?

they are too locked into the rigid, sequential, single classroom/teacher/subject model, both in their mindset and their physical buildings.

The levels of engagement were much better in the first year under the block schedule, while in the second year the ratings were the same as under the traditional schedule.

Students reported “thinking hard about ideas” and “having indepth discussion” significantly more often under block schedules.

his may also be supported by Bexell (1998) who found teachers on block schedules using teaching strategies requiring more interaction than teachers on a traditional schedule

It would seem that the small amount of change in the way teachers teach after switching to a block schedule would be disappointing to block scheduling advocates

Important questions hover over these findings. What is an effective amount of teacher lecture? Or group work? Or individual work?

One thing that is missing from the observation instrument used in this study is any judgment about the quality of a lecture, quality and depth of a discussion, or the complexity of group or individual work

Fluid intelligence

Crystallized intelligence

Daniel and Jakobsen argue that the information dense textbooks characteristic of natural and social science subjects are not a good fit for current e-textbooks, but there are exceptions for subjects like chemistry and math that include doing formulas and other activities. The liability, Daniel emphasizes, comes when math and chemistry teachers hope their students will learn the explanations, not just the formulas, “Students tend to skip the text and go straight to the formulas, especially if they are graded.”