Ben Slavic

Mais Bleating

Those present at the training (Gp. 9, Session 6) on Saturday saw some pretty high quality “mais” bleating from Danielle, whose talents as an artist were shown to be paired with a marked alacrity for bleating.  Then, ironically, her son had a first date that evening and her name is “Mae”. I wonder if Danielle […]

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Zone of Proximal Development

When we teach robotically, we get robot-like responses. But when we teach from our hearts, using body and heart-centered activities that reach the oft-closed hearts of our students, we get responses from their hearts.  Language instruction REQUIRES the involvement of the heart. When it is all caught up in the head, no language is being

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Drawing of the Year

Most people doing the Star are familiar with the basics of how the artist’s job functions, but there is so much more. So if you really want to go deep with the artists’ role in your classroom (recommended), you may want to revisit those pages (p. 59 in the UCI Book 1). Here is a

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Dealing with Cell Phones

Group member Kyle Kolacek’s coaching session last week (link below) is a good watch for people trying to learn the Star. It’s because we keep things basic. My belief is that in order to gain real command of all five phases of the Star you need to first be fully conversant and comfortable with how

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Updates

Our website here is going through some positive changes for patrons and I wanted to update everyone about them: 1. I am now offering – to benslavic.com patrons only – free access to all future trainings. Each six-week training is a $189.95 value, so it’s a good deal. The books and other materials are free

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Sun Salutation

There is a series of asanas (poses) in yoga called the Sun Salutation. Not just a single asana, it consists of many poses, with one flowing seamlessly into the next. This is what a well-taught StarChart™ class feels like. We flow seamlessly from Phase 1 (Creation of the image) into Phase 2 (Review) and on

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The Grammar Rabbit Hole – 1

Grammar is like a rabbit hole that you go down into in order to avoid actual eye contact and back-and-forth, reciprocal sharing of ideas with your students that is NECESSARY for acquisition.  Let’s repeat that idea: Sharing ideas and communicating using words (the Standard) involves human contact and is not robotic in nature. The rabbit

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