The Virtues are Coming! The Virtues are Coming!

It’s the Intellectual Virtues Academy of Long Beach (IVA): a multi-year development process for Loyola Marymount Professor of Philosophy Jason Baehr culminates in a visionary school opening in Long Beach: it’s a new public middle school using an educational approach, as described in their charter petition, with aims and values similar to the aims and values of El Rio Schools. It’s the Intellectual Virtues Academy of Long Beach (IVA).

In his book, The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues & Virtue Epistemology, Dr. Baehr proposes that there are intellectual virtues (i.e. curiosity, humility, courage) as well as ethical virtues (i.e. empathy, kindness).  This is what we mean when we say we want to teach “critical thinking” and this is how we do it.

“Deep Education” (a.k.a. Quest for Humanity)

If you want to build a new world for children in school, this is a joyous find. Managing to be both scholarly and lighthearted, the essay “Deep Education” by Francois Victor Tochon describes the intent behind El Rio Schools and all forms of holistic, transformational education in positive terms.  Not a complaint piece.  Three top likes:

• “Current shallow teaching and learning practices need to be interrupted. The time is ripe to introduce an new approach to education. The new educational concept is … depth.”
• “Deep education involves a sense of one’s deep identity … the world of meaningful acts.”
• “Applying deep principles aims at … cultural consciousness [serving others] as well as spiritual consciousness [serving the whole] act[ing] in favor of a society that is more just, peaceful, and mature.”

Two Must-Read Articles

Spoiled Rotten by Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker takes a harsh look at modern day, well-intentioned American parenting.  Hmmm. . . .when did that become a verb, anyway?

Another blog in the New York Times, The Busy Trap reflects on the nature of our busy busy lives.

Two good reads, thanks Jeanette Neville for sending them.

Come to El Rio’s June Public Meeting

Saturday, June 30, 2012 10:30 am. • doors open at 10am Audubon Center at Debs Park

RHYTHM at HOME. Learn about using the rhythms of the day to de-stress your family

Molly Cleator, owner of A Place to Create art studio and adjunct faculty at Pasadena City College discusses the benefits of planning rhythm in the home

Join us! Learn with us!

Play with us after the meeting in beautiful Debs Park!

El Rio Playdate This Saturday – Let’s Play!

Join the El Rio community at Sycamore Grove Park (4702 N. Figueroa St. Los Angeles CA, 90042) 10am -12pm this Saturday, February 25th for a fun filled morning of playing, building, and painting for children of all ages. See you there.

Kim John Payne Lecture. Go.

Kim John Payne speaks Monday, January 22 at 7pm at the Westside Waldorf School.  

Heard him lecture last year and he is a fantastic speaker, witty and wise. He argued passionately that there is an undeclared assault on childhood (too much scheduling, too many activities, too many electronic gadgets, too much information) and that is our job as parents to protect our children’s innocence and care-free time because society will infringe upon it.

Get a sitter.  He’s worth it.  It’s open to the public at Westside Waldorf’s Pacific Palisades campus.

Finland Not the Cure-All for American Education Woes

A really interesting NY Times piece about why Finland, “an object of fascination among American educators and policy makers” cannot be easily translated to the U.S.

Critics say that Finland is an irrelevant laboratory for the United States. It has a tiny economy, a low poverty rate, a homogenous population — 5 percent are foreign-born — and socialist underpinnings (speeding tickets are calculated according to income).

And yet how attractive is their approach:

“The first six years of education are not about academic success,” he said. “We don’t measure children at all. It’s about being ready to learn and finding your passion.”

I love the NY Times education coverage.

Want to learn how to be REALLY empathetic? RIE conference at Skirball coming up

http://www.rie.org/conference-2

Ongoing Art Classes and a Lecture (Tonight)

A Friend of El Rio, Jennifer Pitt recommends tonight’s lecture, Turning Education on its Head: What Modern Brain Research Says About How Children and Young Adults Learn, presented by Douglas Gerwin. Tickets $10 purchase at www.pasadenawaldorf.org. (Sorry for the late notice)

Also art classes taught by a former Waldorf teacher in Atwater:   www.aplacetocreate.net

Play Date This Saturday!

This Saturday, October 1st, 2011 we’ll be hosting a playdate at Tierra de la Culebra Art Park.

240 S. Ave. 57
Los Angeles, CA 90042

11am – 1pm.

We’ll be there with the kids.
Come join the fun!
xo,
El Rio