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.