Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are the students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives.
Episode #13. Personality: Do you think that people are born with their personality? Are they meant to be a certain way? Is your personality created by your experiences? How much can people change their personality, change who they are?
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Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are the students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives.
Episode #12. The Risk of Privilege: Having access to good education, good nutrition, good contacts, health care, security, all of these things are considered privilege. These are some of the advantages of privilege, but what are some of the risks of privilege? Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are the students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives.
Episode #11. Honesty: Does the value of honesty ever outweigh the value of fault? Why should people focus on your honesty and forget your faults (forgive you)? Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are the students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives.
Episode #10. Failure & Giving Up: Why do people fail and give up? Is failing the same thing as giving up? Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are the students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives.
Episode #9. Independence: Today we Bring you to the Topic of Independence in the broadest sense. Independence as Young people’s goals to becoming independent. Or Independence as dependent on substances, or other people…How do people reach independence? What does it mean? Is it even possible to be independent? Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are the students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives.
Episode #8. Pride: The question we discussed today is about pride. The importance of pride, the usefulness of Pride but also de dangers of pride. How Pride can turn into arrogance, or people can use Pride in negative ways. What is the down Side of Pride and and what is the up Side of pride? How do you gain pride? Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are the students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives
Episode #7. Character Flaws: Today we asked ourselves what character flaw or character flaws hinder people from success or leading a fulfilling life. Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are the students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives.
Episode #6. Fitting In: Today we asked ourselves whether fitting in is healthy or unhealthy and how people balance their individuality with fitting in. Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives.
Episode #5. Motivation: What is the issue with motivation? Motivation being a super important thing in people's lives. How do people around you maintain motivation, how do you get motivation if you don't have it? How do you personally interact with motivation in your life? by Dr. Danny Recio, PhD
The other day I was talking with a student who claims to have not participated much in the completion of his own college applications last year. This is more common than one would think. A high school student feels overwhelmed with the pressures of completing senior year as well as completing the college applications, which both feel like defining factors of young people’s future success. Parents just want to help, and slowly involve themselves and other people more and more to get through the process, so their son or daughter don’t miss out on the opportunity. Parents tend to believe that the lack of proactivity and anxiety might just be momentary, and it’s better to just push through. When this particular student was explaining the college application process, he basically said that he just took a backseat. I thought the term he used was brilliant, and made me think how often we intend for people to learn new skills but only give them a passive role in the process. If we take this backseat comment, and actually use learning to drive a car as the actual (yet metaphorical) intended skill to acquire, this becomes even clearer. It’s practically impossible for anyone to learn how to drive a car by riding in the back seat. One reason why I think we are ok with people taking a backseat in a learning process, is because we confuse process with outcome. If the destination we are seeking is the neighboring town (in the metaphor of driving the car) or applying to college (in the actual example), it doesn’t really matter who’s driving, if what matters is the outcome. If the process is what matters, this completely changes. It is true that the person in the back seat actually got to the neighboring town, but he probably doesn’t know how he got there, how to get back home, or how to get there again on his own. This is very obvious in the case of driving, but in education, psychology and parenting, we tend to be satisfied with getting people to the destination, whether they learned something along the way or not. We eagerly offer insight, solutions and information when the learner could have benefitted from finding such insight, solutions and information himself. An effective learning process requires the learner to get in the driver’s seat, and the teacher to sit beside her in the passenger's seat. Very little will be learned in the back seat, and not much in the passenger's seat. In the driver’s seat, the learner can feel the responsibility of the process, and every single action and adjustment that works and doesn’t work. Yes, reaching the outcome might be slightly delayed, as the new driver doesn’t have as much experience, and will probably need to drive slower and change course along the way. But once the outcome is reached, it is likely to be more satisfying, internalized and sustainable. For this to occur,the teacher in the passenger's seat guides the new driver through gradual and successive challenges, from simple to more difficult ones. The teacher initially directs a lot, explaining what actions to take and where to go, then gradually directs less, and eventually lets the driver drive alone. Thus, next time we encounter a situation like this, we can ask ourselves: Is the outcome my goal or is the learning process my goal? And if the learning process is your goal… who is in the driver’s seat? Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives.
Episode #4. Masculinity: Today the question is; what effect does the title of masculinity have in our society? The Bridge students went into a discussion about what it means to be male in this world and the different perspectives on masculinity, both positive and negative. Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives.
Episode # 3. Consumerism: This week, The Bridge Gap Community students shared their thoughts and feelings about consumerism through various perspectives of culture, generation, social class. We invite you to listen and keep the conversation going with comments below. Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives.
Episode#2. Growing up Nowadays: For this episode we wanted to evaluate the popular presumption that youth today are struggling to grow up more than previous generations, and if there is truth to this, how are they struggling and why are they struggling more? Welcome to The Seed Pod: The Bridge Gap Community Podcast. The symbol of The Bridge program is a tree to represent the students as they grow; the seeds are the gifts that they give back to the world as they progress. This podcast is a small representation of that. Every week at The Bridge we have conversations about interesting topics and through The Seed Pod we want to share those with you and make you a part of the conversations. What you will hear are students perspectives on fascinating and controversial issues related on personal growth as they relate to their own lives.
Episode # 1: Mental Illness. Today we asked ourselves, is mental illness a thing? How much of it is socially made up? How much of it is rooted in actual facts? In other words: Is mental illness real?
by Dr. Danny Recio, PhD, Program Director of The Bridge
Cultural immersions have been historically perceived and studied as a negative, kind of shocking experience (aka “culture shock”), but research now tells us quite the opposite: that these experiences can help us grow beyond what we ever imagined! Intercultural encounters can help us shift and restructure our mental structures, allowing us to make significant growth and life changes.
In our brain, learning happens through the creation of mental structures called schemas. These structures are very useful because they allow us to be more efficient in processing and making meaning of the world around us, which in turn allows us to respond more efficiently to life’s challenges. On the other hand, schemas create blindspots. As we use existing schemas to assess new situations, our brains may ignore or overlook important incoming information and misjudge it, thus behaving in ways that ignore or overlook more beneficial alternatives.
We reinforce schemas through a process called “assimilation”, but can morph or add new schemas through a process called “accommodation”.Accommodative learning contributes more to personal development, as it allows us to change our cognitive structures to adapt to new life conditions and keep on growing. If you want to learn more about schemas, assimilation and accommodation, watch this short video by ByPass Publishing:
As people make more and more accommodative leaps, their schemas grow, and the connection between these structures does too, leading to the development of a highly useful cognitive skill called integrative complexity. Those who possess this skill can take in many perspectives on a situation, collect information from all those perspectives, and come up with efficient and effective solutions to life problems. Research has recently revealed that cross-cultural immersions can lead to the development of higher levels of integrative complexity, because when you interact with people with different schemas, traditions, lifestyles, and worldview, these challenge you to expand and adjust your own. Watch our students reflecting on their cultural immersions, and how they have changed their worldview:
With regards to psychological and emotional growth, the skill of integrative complexity can be very useful, as when people are struggling in these areas, they are often stuck repeating unhealthy patterns, are failing to see or act on other alternatives and thus their solutions to life problems end up being inefficient. However,when they are deliberately exposed to other cultures through a person-centered therapeutic experiential learning approach such as our supportive immersion model, they discover new ways of being that break through old schemas, and build new and more efficient ones.
Through our experience with our students in conjunction with the literature available, we have found four main benefits that come from cross-cultural supportive immersions:
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