Jane Eyre Sisterhood

Friday night's "Supper on the Green" launches Palladio International's very first multi-level initiative to enlighten our future young women of the world ... our Tweens!  Charlotte Bronte's extraordinary tale of personal awakening, societal navigation, and discerning authentic love... that quality meriting life-generating marriage (vs. stagnation, suffocation, or simply subsisting) ... will be experienced for this entire summer upcoming!

How many women today -struggling through poorly pieced-together marriages (or worse consigned for life, or restabilizing senses from the bleaklands of divorce) could possibly suspect that a young woman author from a cultural period more than one hundred and fifty years ago, could educate us fully today.  Through Jand Eyre's character and consciousness (of internal and external experience) multiplied across her profound capacity for explicit articulation,  Charlotte lays out the territory for every woman alive today.

For the casualties of non-true love, these questions crossed the threshold of your young inexperienced mind: "Is this true love?" Does he really love me, or am I simply useful to him?" "If I settle for less than, what are the costs to me and my children afterwards?"


Ladies, these questions cross all female minds. Many of us, in this planetary culture right here and now, have internalized the demands of our cultural training thus we do not value our innocence and altrusim  sufficiently to  make the time and space and gain freedom from fear of naught to find real true answers to these typical questions of the female heart and soul.

Our younger readiest-to-learn sisters,  our tweens,  at the latest (unfortunately research notes that children are gender-acculturated by age five through cultural osmosis!) still have time to re-educate, re-inform, revise their concepts of who they are, what talents inform them, what they want for themselves and their children to come (if they choose to devote body, mind, and emotions to cultivating offspring.)

"Still have time" - that is, if we support them through our messages and "metal" at home, in school, with media and in marketplace! And at Palladio International we do.  This is why our high school girls are "sistering" our middle school girls.  AND OUR GLOBAL PARENTS MENTOR OUR HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS (and their Guardians), and our Community Consortiums and Councils guide our global parents (and all Guardians),  and our research teams are deconstructing longitudinal results and feeding our networks and developing retreat workshops!

Calling All Upper (AKA Middle) School Students...opportunity for a Contribution of Great Merit project!

Dear Stakeholders!

Our school community is accepting applications now for membership on the R&D Council.  Mail applications to sb2822@columbia.edu.  Parameters for the MICROLAB follow in a letter to Friends: 

Friends,

I commend your leadership team for writing a clear and specific set of recommendations that seem well-linked to the data (I did not read the original report, nor of course seen the actual data, nor been privy to how the data was gathered). What I recommend to you is a most effective model that fosters collaborative on-going research and clinical practice by all stakeholders (faculty, administration, parents, and students):

1. request a team assembled of all stakeholders (students, parents, teachers, administrators: only those intimately engaged with classroom learning and instruction)
2. this team sets up a Clinic Classroom (CC) designed to model positive/cooperative practices by each population of the stakeholders
3. the content of the classroom might be a course in study skills (pertinent to any content course)
4. any teacher or administrator can use CC to model pedagogy (preceded by a brief written proposal/interview with team's "OK") 
5. any student can offer to participate in the planning, design, learning experience (preceded by a brief written proposal/interview with team's "OK")
6. any parent, community adult, student, or teacher can observe CC practices (preceded by a brief written proposal/interview with team's "OK")
7. CC would also provide any stakeholder an opportunity to gather students, design curriculum, and select pedagogy to experimentation/revision/instructional learning on an on-going basis.
8. CC can begin small and grow organically as needed (i.e. take place during he lunch period times to allow for the greatest number of teachers and students to participate/create the CC climate and content 
9. CC becomes then a kind of MICROLAB for collaborative study of all stakeholders by all the stakeholders ...thus fostering unity, on-going research, and the truth about education:a collaborative process among all the stakeholders, rather than a "hierarchy" public education must acknowledge the essential interdependence among each stakeholder population, and that any human endeavor improves only overtime with concerted efforts that design-deliver-disassemble-design to deliver again!  
10. Education is all about learning and updating.  The human climate must welcome risk-taking, respect for each, on-going dialogue and development of all stakeholders. It must be free of bureaucratic controls.

Cooperatives @ UpperArmory start a 12Power program for Delacorte Campus

Through his Developmental Guardian Network, Rudy Bancroft had his stage one Listening Dinner. In advance,  he had developed his idea for middle school graduation requirement, the  Contribution of Great Merit!  His adult network called out all interested Upper Armory Cooperatives, network adults, and upper class representatives.

Rudy's sister is a member of the TwelvePowerGirls.  She wants her younger cousins -at Delacorte- to begin learning about the twelve powers sooner than she began.  She and Rudy (a Childhood Education Intern at Delacorte) began to explore how to begin the learning process sooner.

Rudy and Kaleena spent hours over the weekend scouring the 2Sisters LiteracyNow website -to get a clear sense of the speaking, reading, and writing levels for materials and pedagogy required to really reach a range of learners in the intermediate grades at Delacorte.

Time now for All Campus Feedback on our ideas so far:

• Design the Medicine Wheel in a circular "table top" graphic-type board game.  The size might even be like a large tablecloth.  The game will unfold like "seasons,"starting with Spring. This way, players can go at their own pace.  Spring may be the only season played in the first session; others may go onto Summer, Fall, Winter in the first session.
• SPRING:  We want the graphic's words and icons to be large enough that kids can sit around the table, and "play" with a spinner while reciting the following words (rhyme)...
• "Round the circle, I will go.  Where I stop goodness knows.  Love and insight follow me ... To the Power that I need."
• The spinner will land on one of the twelve powers.  That is the power the child will investigate, experience, and become familiar with during the week.  A large number of kids can play at once AND THEN BE PAIRED TO SUPPORT EACH OTHER DURING THE NEXT ACTIVITY.
• Once all players have written down their practice power, they join a group of other players practicing the same power.  A large poster hovers above the group with the power listed and defined, along with a visual interpretation of the power (art poster contest among Middle and High Road art students can enter applications/drafts now on Rudy's website).  
• PAIRS HELP EACH OTHER USE THE MAKE SENSE STRATEGY.  THEY EACH MAKE SENSE OF THE POWER THEY SELECTED VIA THE SPINNER.  Each child's MAKE SENSE will go home to remind and reinforce their daily deepening of the power.
• SUMMER:  Kids review the guidelines for DIALOGUE, followed by each pair receiving the focus questions that help everyone to make personal connections to ways to how the power already shows up in their lives, through them and others at home, school, neighborhood, and in the world. 
• FALL: A dream journal will be started to record each players key learnings and goals. Each player will write three questions about the power and engage a virtual dreaming session for five to ten minutes (Guided Meditation).   Shared discussion will be lead in small groups, then larger groups noting how the questions helped each to pay attention to the power as it revealed itself in virtua dreaming.  This activity will be the model for actual dream journalling over the next few weeks. 
• WINTER:  Ideas and strategies that meet stylistic references and Multiple Intelligences will be identified and further discussed.  Project from these can be created and network communication systems using all levels of helpful technlogy will support the practice and deepening of the power selected. 
• When an individual has cycled through the four seasons with one power, some record of achievement will be secured and stored for goal setting in the future. 
• Next month the game begins again with a new power.
• All dialogues will be recorded, of course, so we can review, revisit, and recylce our thoughts and feelings into the future. Also plenty of support staff will circulate to help each pair in their efforts to understand, clarify, actively listen to each other, and summarize each key point made by either.  

Cooperative Learning Product: Twelve Powers Girls!!!

Around I travel the Medicine Wheel...
My powers have seasons 
This Fall,  I found ZEAL!
It followed ORDER.
In Winter, there's LIFE.
Spring's "LOVE" is HARMONY
Dissolving all strife.
Jump into summer...
IMAGINE the good
from UNDERSTANDING
--- and WILL understood.

© Nadja, Kim, Frederic ( Cooperative Learning organizers @ UpperSchoolArmory, 1/11/11)
BTW: we want to thank Auntie M's Goat Farm for the delicious assortment of chevre spreads ...and for including the high fiber GG Scandanavian Crackers Dr. OZ introduced when we all were in the audience for her goat milking demo!  Bravo, Auntie M ... glad you feed goat Mandy all that alfalfa
...creamy and light chevre!


Focus: Twelve Power Curriculum for Practical Self-Design 


Leaders and participants will use the month's focus below around the seasons of the Medicine Wheel.  

• Stage One: we examine and discuss the degfinition of the months power.  
• Stage Two: we read and reflect on demonstrations of this power in our text's heroine (i.e., Laura). 
• Stage Three: cooperative groups reflect upon our previous year, looking at home, school, and neighborhood to find evidence of the month's power.  Even in its seedling stage, the power can be activated and nurtured.
• Stage Four:  We use our meditative and creative thinking strategies to set forth practical ways to nurture our seedling powers into fruition across important areas of our everyday lives.  We select a starting point project and join a cooperative support group to activate, sustain, and record our commitment. 

Remember: to gain insight into the actual working definition, see www.unity.org

January ... FAITH 

Febraury ... STRENGTH

March ... WISDOM

April ...  LOVE (The harmonizing agent...if what you feel isn't actually bringing about harmony, it's not the power gift we are talking about.  Your group will explore finding more specific words to describe counter examples.)

May ... POWER (Re the power of words, specifically.  Ours and others bring about reality... how are you using your words/ Do you really mean what you say?)

June ... IMAGINATION

July ... UNDERSTANDING

August ... WILL

September ... ORDER

October ... ZEAL

Novemeber ... ELIMINATION

December ... LIFE

Resource: WWW.UNTY.ORG/12POWERS

Booklet: 12 SPIRITUAL ABILITIES TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE ©www.unity.org

(ADAPTED FROM DISCOVER YOUR GOD-GIVEN POTENTIAL

12 SPIRITUAL ABILITIES TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE 

by REV. WINIFRED WILKINSON HAUSMANN)

Cooperative Learning