Third Public Meeting

Thanks again to all who sallied forth on a rainy day to join us at the Audubon Center at Debs Park for our third public meeting.

Jennifer recapped what the el Rio team has been up to since we last met.  You can catch all updates by joining our email list.  Jenn sends out a monthly newletter that’s informative and a hoot to boot.

To recap the meeting, our esteemed board member Jennifer Patton wrote this review:

Thank you very much to our guest Lisa Duarte of Ninth Street Elementary School in Boyle Heights for sharing her experiences and, at times, her personal struggle with applying Waldorf methods to her Kindergarten class in a public school that is demographically similar to our own. You rule Lisa! Thanks so much for your input.

Last Saturday’s public meeting was a little different than the meetings that we’ve held in the past. We decided to do a workshop this time. Joan led a “Conversation Cafe” and we broke into groups of 5 and discussed our topic for the day, “Meaningful Diversity.” We got a lot out of this meeting; ways to move forward in the planning of the school that will allow us to reflect and respond to the needs of our culturally and socio-economically diverse neighborhoods in North East LA. Thank you very much to you all for sharing your experiences, advice and insight into a subject that, I think, can be a bit challenging to talk about sometimes.

Read the full recap at elriocharterschool.org.

Lisa Duarte speaks with Joan Jaeckel.

Smaller groups dig into the conversation.

Blue Hen Vietnamese Kitchen donated tasty spring rolls.

Thanks to Blue Hen Vietnamese Kitchen for the generous food donation.  And thank you to you!

Next meeting is Saturday, June 5th, at the Audubon Center at Debs Park, 2:30-3:30PM.  Doors open at 2:00PM.  Hope to see you there!

Book Review: Owly by Andy Runton

Andy Runton’s fantastic Owly series entered my family’s life when my oldest son found Owly Tiny Tales at the library. I saw him at a table flipping through it before he brought it to the front desk for checkout. Little did I realize then what a treasure he had discovered.

Owly is a comic book/graphic novel series sharing stories of a big hearted owl. Runton skillfully presents tales of friendship and the human spirit ironically through a group of close knit forest animals. And he accomplishes this without words. The story is driven by illustration alone. I’m amazed at the depth of emotion Runton evokes by his images.

Owly is a story that speaks to children and adults of all ages.

Owly series:
The Way Home & The Bittersweet Summer (v. 1)
Owly Volume 2: Just A Little Blue (v. 2)
Owly Volume 3: Flying Lessons (v. 3)
Owly Volume 4: A Time to be Brave (v. 4)
Owly Volume 5: Tiny Tales (v. 5)

Book Review: Understanding Waldorf Education

Recently, the el Rio team put together a lending library at el Rio HQ for the board to use, reference and read.  At our last board meeting, Julia S. came up with the great idea that we should share some of our book/movie/media picks on the blog.

Each Monday, a board member will write a review and share some of the books, movies and other items that might be of interest.

Today, I’ll debut the el Rio book review with Jack Petrash’s Understanding Waldorf Education: Teaching from the Inside Out.

Petrash has been a teacher for over three decades.  He taught at the Washington Waldorf School for many of those years.  In Understanding Waldorf Education, Petrash shares what a Waldorf education looks like in the classroom with examples of stories that might be told or how conflicts might be resolved.  The book is a glimpse into the world of Waldorf education for the layperson rather than a synopsis of the works of Rudolf Steiner.

If you are interested in buying a book through the Amazon link provide on this site, a portion of your purchase will go to el Rio Charter School.  Thank you for your support.  We look forward to share great finds with you.

Results of Questionnaires from 1st Charter School Meeting

In August 2009, el Rio held our first public meeting at the Audubon Center at Debs Park.  At that meeting, we asked everyone to answer a few questions.

• rote learning/memorization
• emphasis on obedience, hierarchy, authority, cognitive discipline
• little opportunity to learn to think outside the box
• poor nutrition, unhealthy foods, interest in Farm to School program
• class sizes, overcrowding
• emphasis on test prep
• lack of boundaries
• homework
• television, too much technology
• emphasis on individual competition vs. good of whole
• goal orientation
• lack of diversity
• lack of arts emphasis
• lack of preservation of innocence, growing up too fast
• standardized curriculum
• lack of freedom for teachers in classroom
• lack of individualization for different learning styles, cookie cutter approach
• homework in kindergarten
• regimented teaching at a young age, early emphasis on academic learning
• not enough play
• burnt out teachers
• concern that kids are not prepared to enter secondary school
• fear that school does not enrich lives and kids vs. just just enriching brains
• poor parent involvement
• lack of running on playground
• too many rules and “robot” socialization

Geof Syphers: from the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education Conference

Four board members packed up in mid January for a trip to Rudolf Steiner College outside of Sacramento.  The draw was the weekend conference hosted by the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education.  We joined over two hundred educators, administrators, parents and other people interested in a public, tuition free Waldorf inspired education.

The theme of the conference was “Sheparding Stewardship:  Teaching about Nature and Sustainability in Schools Inspired by Waldorf Education.”  To be honest, when I first heard the title, I was curious how it would play out in a conference setting.  Would we sit outside in a circle admiring twigs or watching worms wriggle out of the ground? (The answer to that is, yes, if you wanted to.)

But the conference was much more.  The Alliance for Public Waldorf Education brought together some amazing people like Andrew Kimbrell, a lawyer who argued successfully before the Supreme Court to halt the company Monsanto from releasing genetically modified grains on the U.S. market.

The last morning of the conference, board members Jennifer, Anna Sarah and I set off for a pre-lecture walk  to the Sacramento Waldorf School.  We were joined by early riser Geof Syphers.  Syphers was at the conference as a presenter to share his ideas on sustainability developed through his work as an architect and developer.  When we pressed him for more detail on our walk, he smiled and said he’d talk more about it in his speech.  My inner skeptic wondered what does his experience have to do with a public Waldorf education.  The answer in short is everything.

Our mild mannered hiking partner was an incredibly dynamic speaker.  When he took the stage, instead of sharing pictures of his projects or how his work will save the planet by reducing impact on resources, he talked about the day he lost his future.  He spoke about the day he realized what he did as an architect building ultra-energy efficient LEED platinum homes and buildings was not enough to build a sustainable planet.

If every person on the planet lived like a North American (right now, at this very moment), we would need five and a half planets to sustain our lifestyle.  Even if all buildings on the planet were modified or built to LEED platinum specifications, the impact would be marginal at best.

So what can we do to deal with the actual limitations of our resources–living on this one planet with a growing population?

Syphers asked us to look into the future…2100…ninety years from now…about two generations.  What will it look like?  What will work look like?  How will people live?  What does transportation look like?

Then he opened up the discussion for feedback with the question, “What are the good things about the future you envision?”

The responses emphasized localization, localized food and greater use of public transit to name a few.  Then Syphers challenged us as an audience to move beyond the idea and create the context for the idea to mature into action.  For these changes are going to take a few generations.  What can we do right now to prepare the soil for those changes to take root for future generations?

This idea of nurturing individuals, young students…children, to discover who they are and be who their are in relation to their communities and their world…what it is now,  what it can be and what it will be in the future…is what a Waldorf inspired education does.  Educating a child is about nurturing a person to define, shape and answer questions of the future.

Geof Syphers shared the story of working in his small San Francisco garden one afternoon.  His work was interrupted by the thundering pipes of a badass tattooed biker who stopped before him and silenced his engine.  He asked Syphers about his garden, then left.  Later the biker returned with slats and slats of tomato starts.  The biker unloaded his gifts with detailed stories about how each plant grows.

Then Syphers challenged us to be like that biker.  Break out of your world and reach out.  Create what Syphers calls “contact experiences” where you reach outside of your community to someone else who knows nothing about you and may not share your values.

Envision the positive aspects of the future.  Talk about it.  Dare to make the story, be wrong, then change your mind.  Make your vision specific.  Then live a piece of that vision right now.

The Edible Schoolyard

From www.edibleschoolyard.org:

“The Edible Schoolyard (ESY), established in 1995, is a one-acre garden and kitchen classroom at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California. It is a program of the Chez Panisse Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by chef and author Alice Waters.”

The Edible Schoolyard is much more than a garden project on campus.  The program brings students into the garden and kitchen and teaches the value of good food and nutrition through hands on learning.

NY Times article: Can the Right Kind of Play Teach Self Control

In the 9/27/09 NY Times Sunday Magazine journalist Paul Tough takes a look at a new early education program called Tools of the Mind in his article Can the Right Kind of Play Teach Self Control.

“If you want to succeed in school and in life, they say, you first need to do what Abigail and Jocelyn and Henry have done every school day for the past two years: spend hour after hour dressing up in firefighter hats and wedding gowns, cooking make-believe hamburgers and pouring nonexistent tea, doing the hard, serious work of playing pretend.”

According to Tough’s article, Tools of the Mind program also incorporates techniques to nurture a child’s “executive function”, his/her ability to self-regulate behavior to work collaboratively and function socially.

Although researchers say they see some promising trends for kids learning, they also say they don’t know what aspect of Tools of the Mind is working. It could be any of the components (i.e. serious play which is a major component of Waldorf and Waldorf-inspired education) or any combination of the components. Regardless, the article offers a view from the Zeitgeist on early education.

Working With Your Hands

Alec Soth for the New York Times

Motorcycle mechanic and writer Matthew B. Crawford makes The Case for Working With Your Hands in a thoughtful New York Times essay.

Newly christened with a masters degree, Crawford entered the white collar economy in the early 1990s with a cubicle of his own and the task to write academic journal abstracts. After eventually earning a Ph.D. in political philosophy, he opened his own motorcycle repair shop. Through his work repairing vintage motorcycles, he finds fulfilling work which combines the intellectual rigors of problem solving with tangible results. Crawford’s essay is based on his newly published book Shop Class as Soulcraft.