Making Connections...allow (and be open to finding the good within each learning opportunity)

The Scientist in the Crib...what early learning tells us about the mind (1999, by Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl) reminds us as teachers, parents, and grandparents that the brain's pattern of growing and wiring is far from random and far from predetermined.  How we interact with our babies and children (anyone for that matter) stimulates, shapes, and supports learning (making connections among sensory and cognitive data/experiences).

Similarly, lack of interaction leaves the brain to it's own devices.  The authors alert us to this, "wiring depends on activity.  The basic trunk lines are laid down, but the specific connections from one house to another require something more." (p. 186)

Brain cells spontaneously send out electrical signals. Babies reach for anything that catches their eye., turn their heads toward sound, recoil from something harsh to the senses. Cells that fire simultaneously get connected.  The more frequently this happens, the firmer the connection.  Babies make the sound "Ma.  Mama smiles and claps and moves close to baby, smiling and encouraging.  The connection is made.  As adults encourage and reinforce such connections, babies learn the repertoire of communication skills  that source their individuation as resourceful social beings in the world at-large.

Babies without such responsive environmental bonds, grow fewer brain cells, weaker connections, under enriched  communication skills and sense of self.  Their cognitive, emotional, and physical robustness is jeopardized "on hold" until they enter an enriched environment such as school, and the mindful observation of a professionally developed educator.  But even children in school, returning each day to an under observant and under responsive adult, experiences the continual effects on their skill sets acquired in school.


Why? Because, "wiring depends on activity.  The basic trunk lines are laid down, but the specific connections from one house to another require something more." (p. 186).  Mastery of any new learning requires repetition (accurately) and reinforcement.  Nothing good grows from neglect...except weeds, e.g.self absorption, sluggishness (lack of appropriate stimulation), hunger, boredom (a thirst for sense of connection), irritability, sense of victimization.

Whatever the sensory or environmental stimuli available is what the brain has to work with.  The human face, voice, and communications are the most enriching stimuli we can offer the children in our lives.  Babies and children DO NOT NEED expensive toys or supplies.  Connection is what they need...sensitive observation and responsiveness to their needs and "growing edges" stimulates brain, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual growth.  Kids receiving abiding interest, supervision, and mindful attention from their significant adults simply generate multiple blossoms like plants exposed to sufficient nutrients and sunlight.

...And CONNECTION!


Just as in the formation and development of personal relationships between and among human beings, it is so in the world of cells as well.   "As cells signal to one another, they lay down these more permanent connections...Making these permanent connections is what brain cells  live for. As a cell matures, it sends out multiple branches trying to make contact with other cells." (p.185)

The authors remind us that the favorite phrase of neuroscientists is Cells that fire together wire together.  Please  expand your applications of this truth in your relationship lives this week...initiate at least ten different conversations that will help you think through crucial implications in order to more resolutely expand, then transfer vauable new thinking and behaviors into connections with our lover, colleagues, brothers, daughters, golf buddies!  "Evidently, even cells want to be in touch with others who respond to them." (p. 184)

Lynn Ashe previews her soon-to-be published book with a luncheon & workshop: MIT in Every Home ... The MicroLab Approach

The witty and wise Lynn Ashe previews her soon-to-be published book on Saturday, January 28th at the Swedish Theatre.  Participants will enjoy a winter Gallant Garden  Luncheon following  Lynn's Workshop: MIT in Every Home ... A MicroLab Approach.

For those with space in their schedules on Thursday and/or Friday (January 26-27th) know that Lynn will arrive on Thursday.  That evening she joins middle school parents for an  8 p.m. tea with Professor BonTempo and his group of  Global Parents who have sponsored the Gallant Garden this year.  (Our Gallant Garden took root ...pun intended...last spring when parents of  Upper Armory students decided that out adult social events also deserve healthy home-grown foods.  Gallant Garden was launched (at lunch!) with kids  in green aprons serving the adults in their lives.

Lynn Ashe will meet with Professor Bon Tempo's Gallant Garden kids on Friday morning to review luncheon recipes matching the produce available from the Delacorte and Upper Armory greenhouses.  Nurse Kittle will calculate the nutritional values of each menu selection for those of you participating in Dr. Oz's Weight Watchers  contest.


Lynn's Fiancee, Kent Higginsville -video-recorder by trade- will shoot "candid camera" shots,  as well as footage for Lynn's documentary of the thousands of Moms-In-Training she has helped through her decade-long blog.  Lynn promises that learning how to design a MicroLab for yourself and other moms in your neighborhood will change your family life and blow the lid off your self-esteem! 


Lynn's preliminary results nationwide show that not only does this "designer" MIT MicroLab open wide the doors to hope, it offers a solid path upon which you can walk your talk.  At Saturday's workshop and luncheon you will learn how to continually become more fully the parent your child needs...on-the-job!


Register on Lynn's blog now.  The Swedish Theatre has seating for one hundred participants.  Gallant Garden place settings are ready for this very fortunate hundred! 
(And be prepared for a brief but blessed special appearance by our venerable Reverend Palladio who will jet in from Utica to say the luncheon blessing!)

Call-out for Application to join the Research & Develoment Council (R&D)

Dear Stakeholders,

Our steadily growing Central Park community is accepting applications now for membership on the Delacorte Campus R & D Council.  R & D Council Members lead local teams in effective use of the MicroLab model to design our Success Studios. Scan support documents to sb2822@columbia.edu. Attn: Professor Sorella Bono, Venice Campus (Italy). 


Guidelines for our MicroLab model follow, in the historic letter below.  This document to "Friends" addressed our original global parent community more than forty years ago on the Summit Campus (MO).  The longevity factor apparent here becomes a powerful reminder that the secrets of success are discovered by those who go the distance ... who relentlessly practice the crucial factors that follow: 

1. Clarify goals definitively ...with specific thoughts and actions matching the results we envision
2. Concentrate on what we can give, support; encourage our thoughts and actions in the desired direction
3. Increasingly accord our own personal qualties of service to others willing to go the extra mile, get back on track after falling off (being human), work a personal plan refining their attitudes and behaviors toward the desired outcome. 
4. Contribute to desired outcomes without hestitation and with dedication
5. Contribute with enthusiasm and resolve to continually learn new something relevant ...and "actualize" it 
6. Make your written plan abiding by the Law of Return, Law of Compensation, and Law of Service. Brian Tracy reminds us that all great achievers write their plan, revise & rewrite it regularly, fully vision refined outcomes. 
7. Every step backs this vision with corresponding thoughts and actions. Identify the obstacles we will have to overcome...and the knowledge we will need to competantly move beyond obstacles.  
8. Never, ever, give up.  Quitting reduces life goals to regrets, resentment and our lives regress to results of wishful thinking.  Napoleon Hill, turn of the century success researcher and writer) told Andrew Carnegie: The quality of perisitence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.

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.

Colorado schools are beginning to write off cursive handwriting - The Denver Post

Colorado schools are beginning to write off cursive handwriting - The Denver Post

Just because we are cramming the curriculum with more and more details doesn't mean we through out the baby with the bathwater...as districts tend to do when new leadership replaces former...and the new ego "knows better what we need."

Handwriting develops hand-eye coordination, ensures kids will be able to read both print and cursive (it's font folks...and there's a variety of fonts to recognize), and reinforces READING FROM LEFT TO RIGHT.

Daily handwriting practice, not only reinforces letter-work mastery, but reinforces mastery of something in general. It results in the neural connection among expending effort, focus, aiming increasingly for accuracy and satisfaction in seeing the progress one can make when we concentrate and aim high. It reinforces that progress is made OVERTIME...and we experience a sense of time needed at each new level of accuracy. As supervisors of children's development of self-efficacy, we become better observers and provideers of the quantity and wuality of support each child needs in order to operate at his/her independent level.

NOTE: home practice lend itself to the the individual child's INDEPENDENT LEVEL OF PERFORMNCE (Goggle: LEV VYGOTSKY). Home practice should operate on the independent level unless the ClassTeacher has made a special agreement with parent at home who is comfortable/trained to provide appropriate (necessary and sufficient) support.

We know support is appropriate when the child demonstrates beneft from the instruction without evidence of undue frustration. Frustration that brings about anger/tears or forms of withdrawal is never useful, nor helpful to progress...and in fact is debilitative and counter-productive in a vast variety of ways...none of which are good.

NEURO-SPEAKING...handwriting practice smooths out virtual kinks in the brain through repetition of synapses (bathing brain representations of each juncture from one letter to the next with deliciously smooth brain chemicals). Perhaps this is why kids truly enjoy handwriting when given the time and proper supports as needed.

So at Delacorte Spirit Campus...and in our Global Parent Homes...we make space and time to honor our children's important handwriting practice daily.

21st century pedagogy

Parents Can Find Helpful Ways by Visiting ... The 2 Sisters Cafe

The Sisters are an amazing combination of "Professor" Master Teachers and School Psychologists-Social Workers.  They have access to the clinician-based research - what we know to be true, what we know works best from authentic practice (not just guesses from a hypothesis and accumulated data).


The sisters offer parents explicit and pertinent  knowledge and know-how so that they can serve their children's needs at home -where practice is necessary to advance the wide array of skills acquired during school life.  Their site is essential for non-professional policy makers and members of the general public who want to understand the vast field of children's learning, i.e. the ongoing development of life skills, social, emotional, and academic knowledge (and perhaps more importantly: know-how).


It's Thanksgiving Weekend - professional parents and educators from our entire Palladio International Campus give thanks for the persistent efforts over decades to The 2 Sisters. Tap in whenever you are in need:

http://www.thedailycafe.com/public/913.cfm

Preschool Color-Nutrition Project

Professor BonTempo  announced a literacy-nutrition project proposed by high school members of his Hydronponic Greenhouse Team.  The gardens will be planted by color group so that our  Global Parent preschool playgroups can take field trips before BabyLunchBunch, served by Foodworld Apprentices. Team leader, Nadja, invited author Annabel Karmel to address the Novemeber Assembly of staff from BabyLunchBunch, FoodWorld Apprenticeships, and the Hydroponic Greenhouse Team.

Her latest book, Rainbow...a fun look at healthy fruits and vegetables, was published in 2009 by DK Publishing on Hudson Street in NYC.  In her Note to Parents, Annabel reports that different colored edibles offer us different combinations of nutrients.