Welcome families and friends of El Rio Charter School.
Our vision is to found a Kindergarten through 5th grade public charter school, opening in 2013, which brings the advantages of a Waldorf style education to Northeast Los Angeles.
We are calling for participants willing to strategize, collaborate and give skills and time to help us make it happen.
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.
Kick off the summer with us!
Join the development team and our families on Saturday, June 25th from 11am to 1pm for a play date with the parents of el Rio.
Look for Development Team member Kim Ilas under the trees.
Kim is striking and tall and mocha-skinned and has long dread locks and twin daughters.
See you there!
Our dear friend Kim sent this email out to all her Mommy connections. I was so moved I asked Kim if I could re-post here. Thank you Kim, we love you too!
Here’s what she writes:
Dear Mommy community,
I have had countless conversations with parents frustrated with the options available to them as they launch from the preschool years to the elementary years. Whether they are not happy with the local public school options, whether they got in or wait listed at one of the charters in their area, whether they can afford the $180,000 it would take to put one child thru to just the 8th grade… let alone the buckets of money needed for high school and college!!!! Those just address the “getting in” & financial part of it all… how about which school is actually the best fit for the individual child… or is there even a good fit among the options available! My head is spinning with all that I will be faced with next year!!! I am in research mode… full force!!!
I had heard about Waldorf… I was admittedly narrow minded in my thinking and readily dismissed it (still more personal growth needed.. clearly!). Then, I heard about this new school trying to get started in our area called “El Rio.” I read that it had a sister school in Culver City called “Ocean Charter.” I jumped at the opportunity to attend an Open House which afforded me the opportunity to see Waldorf in the works and it BLEW my mind. I was astounded by the teachers, their caring and passion. I was touched by the children and how they treated one another which respect and grace. I was impressed beyond belief with the deep connection between the teachers, students and the material they were learning. And there is this Waldorf thing.. that I didn’t know was a Waldorf thing.. but I identified it as a rhythm… and strangely enuf.. that’s what they call it.. there was a rhythm in the classroom that was as if the children had choreographed movements when it came time to putting their paintings away, cleaning brushes, putting supplies in cabinets, helping and working together.. it was beautiful. It seems so silly.. but I was awe struck by how they were all so in synch with one another. Classrooms were warm, with gentle lighting, there weren’t walls covered with distractions of all the materials that were to be learned during the year… just simple and beautiful. I could go on and on!!!! I had never seen anything like this before….this was exactly the environment that I wanted for my boys…. EXACTLY!!!!! Just to show you how in love with it I was… I applied for my son to go to Kindergarten (in spite of the hour plus commute)… we didn’t get in. I know we are not the only family from this area (NELA) who applied (I met a few others) and I even met a man who commuted from Ventura County to Ocean Charter daily for his Kindergarten aged daughter and he didn’t regret it — not for a second!!! This school is in HIGH demand & for good reason.
The good news… and I mean REALLY GREAT NEWS… is that El Rio Charter, which holds the same philosophy as Ocean Charter, is coming to our area and it will take this village… OUR village… to make it a reality. Now, I am “just a mom”- I have no affiliation with this school, however I believe in it wholeheartedly and I hope to the high heavens that it can become an option, most likely the best option, we might have for our family when it opens it’s doors in September 2012!
Of course.. anything that brings big change take big effort … LAUSD requires that Charter schools be fully self-funding for the first year…. so here’s where we step in as a community….
Please take a moment to look at El Rio’s website, join their mailing list, become a “friend” on Facebook. If you feel, as I do, that this school would be an asset to the children in our community…. join them for their fundraising launch party called “EAT PLAY GIVE” that will be held on June 11th at Fred Eric’s (of Fred 62) Tiara Café…. dinner, drinks, tapas, music, art auction and discussions about what this school is all about. If you can’t join in the celebration…. and you want to contribute…. please do so.
If you want more information, send an email to the address on the website, post it on Facebook and if you have any questions that I can help you with… go ahead and shoot ‘em my way! I’d be happy to share with you what I know. I have attended some volunteer meetings and I am beyond impressed with the organization, devotion and passion of this stalwart group of parents and educators. The more I learn about El Rio, the more excited I become. I hope you can take the time to learn more to see if this is something that might excite you as well… for your own children and for the children in our greater community. I hope you don’t mind me sharing this school with you … I believe strongly that all good things are to be shared… and this one is reallllyyyy good!!
Here is the website for El Rio…. www.elriocharterschool.org
If you feel this is something you want to share with others…. GO FOR IT!!
An MIT researcher bugged his entire house with video cameras and microphones to capture and study the speech development of his newborn son. Pretty cool TED talk. check it.
We have so much fun at these play dates, we’re doing it again! This time Kim is bringing a refrigerator box for the kids to play with/in.
Join the development team and our families on Saturday, March 5th from 11am to 1pm for a play date for the parents of el Rio.
Look for Development Team member Kim Ilas under the trees.
Kim is striking and tall and mocha-skinned and has long dread locks and twin daughters.
<—— There she is now!
PRESSURE TO PERFORM, SUCCEED, WIN, COMPETE, PLEASE
NO RIGHT OR WRONG WAY TO PLAY: FREE, SELF-INITIATED PLAY WITH “LOOSE PARTS”.
Imagine a kindergarten where PLAY is the main subject. Where play is the pre-requisite for acquiring proficiency in the three R’s? Where free, experimental, child-initiated play is the pre-requisite for critical & creative thinking, getting along & collaborative networking, and taking individual initiative in life?
Is there anything about the idea of non-prescriptive, self-directed, no-rules, no winners/losers play as children’s essential ‘work’ that worries you?
What are the obstacles you think stand in the way of giving L.A. children and students the play they need for a satisfying childhood and meaningful life?
How would your own life change if you adopted more of a no-right-or-wrong-way-to-play approach to your world-view, your relationships, your activities?
“Building a Better Playground” TIME [video: http://bit.ly/bYfrIs] [story: http://bit.ly/bAMpXD]
“State of Play” The New Yorker [article: http://bit.ly/aGkb95]
Monique’s Magical Waldorf Kindergarten Class 2010 San Francisco: [video http://bit.ly/cRF27q]
CHILD-INITIATED PLAY GROUND: Who would we be if this was our daily experience as children?
TODAY’S CULTURE is increasingly interested in mental fitness. Yet, despite the staggering amount of new information in the popular media about children’s healthy brain development, the data is not being applied practically in most K-12 schools’ curriculum or methods of teaching. The result, says an educational psychologist, are “escalating rates of learning and behavioral disorders”. “Crisis in the Kindergarten” tells us even the youngest have an opinion.
Yes. Dr. Jane Healy‘s research suggests to her that the pressure curriculum of today’s one-size fits all classroom “can be the cause of learning disorders”.
To effect a change of the world’s mind about how to educate children for mental health Waldorf educators are teaming up with various colleges, universities and childhood mental health organizations in the Sacramento area to put on a day-long workshop by an educational psychologist, Dr. Jane Healy, based on her new book, “Different Minds”, called “Developing Creative Minds: How Genes, Brains, Homes and Schools Interact to Help Children Succeed (or not)”.
Go the the website for the “Race to Nowhere: The Dark Side of America’s Achievement Culture”. Watch the three-minute trailer. Look for a screening near you. Heck, organize a screening. It’s a documentary film by a parent, Vicki Abeles, for parents, educators and anyone with an empathetic heart about the staggering increases in homework kids get and the resulting sleep deprivation, sedentary lifestyle and depression – even suicide – among kids who pick up on the pressure to ‘excel’, ‘succeed’, ‘achieve’ and ‘win’. This is the other side of the ‘achievement gap’. This is the ‘achievement trap’.
Imagine this. Teen mothers, in high school, have a chance to learn to become a child care provider at the same time they are learning parenting skills and while their own children are receiving Walodorf-style child care at their own high school! S-m-a-r-t right?
Having lunch today with colleague and friend Rosario Villasana-Ruiz (link to her audio tape). Rosario directs the Spanish Lifeways Program at Escuela Popular, a charter high school for 1,000 Hispanic students in San Jose. 200 children of the teen mothers attending the high school attend a childcare center on campus that is a community outreach program of the Spanish LifeWays Program and the Caldwell Early Life Center at Rudolf Steiner College.
