APRIL 20, 2006

MONTESSORI MOVEMENT AND PARTNERSHIP

Dear Friends,

I am writing to ask that you begin today to envision yourself and your community as full partners with me in fulfilling the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially in fulfilling the need to have 35 million new teachers trained and in action teaching by 2015.  Your talents and best practices, whether it’s inspiring others, strategizing plans, conducting research, creating Power Point presentations, maintaining web blogs, writing checks, or providing an audience (admiring or critical) are needed right now.

This new partnership might look like an alignment of purpose and intention, a sharing of knowledge and resources, or an engaging in more frequent communication with one another.  You might wish to become a Nature of Learning or Nature of Nurture course leader.  (I am at the beginning stages of establishing a more widely available course leader program via email and your participation is welcome.)

Or you might prefer to become a patron or fundraiser securing program funding; or would rather take on being a speaker.  If you are a philanthropist building an out-of-the-ordinary legacy, you could fund (and accompany me on) my journeys to UNESCO and Ministers of Education worldwide with the intention of becoming MPP’s ambassador.

In case you have not been following these newsletters, the Nature of Nurture and the Nature of Learning are fairly new courses Rebecca and I have been designing as a result of our experiences with delivering Montessori teacher education in developing countries.  The terms and concepts used in the new courses are distilled from the teacher education courses and provide a solid foundation upon which the Montessori education can be built.

There is no doubt now about the results of the Nature of Learning and the Nature of Nurture courses.  Not only are they proving their worth as invaluable pre, concurrent, or post-Montessori teacher education components (because they accelerate the “transformation of the adult” in the ability to “follow the child”), but since youth whose parents have taught them Nature of Nurture processes are causing breakthroughs at school with their teachers, with their friends, with their friends’ parents, and within their own families participants are even recommending the courses to high school students (and younger).

Our current energy and resources are being directed toward three areas: establishing Nature of Nurture and Nature of Learning in Mexico (in order to provide a working example of the influence this course has on fulfilling developmental aims regarding child welfare, education, and well-being); spreading wider the Assistants to Infancy teacher education course; and establishing Nature of Learning and Nature of Nurture as official UNESCO teacher preparation, caregiver, and orphanage worker training programs in developing countries worldwide. 

MPP is not yet a known organization in the United Nations.  Remember the fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals (one of them being 35 million new teachers) is scheduled for 2015.  That’s less than nine years!  My goal for this year is to have as many presentations with UNESCO directors as possible.  I already have airfare (thank you, again, Jeff and Catherine Szem) to Geneva, Switzerland (now require the travel expenses) and now need airfare and travel expenses for Paris and South Africa.  It is less expensive to make all visits in one travel.  If enough of you are interested in joining me, we can reduce the amount by forming a group tour.

(Foundations and grant makers are not too keen on funding ventures of this sort, so the dream really does reside with our own grassroots ability to mobilize funds.  I do not take a salary; in fact, I place most of my earnings from consulting and other odd jobs in MPP’s bank account.  Donors have been providing my room and board, MPP’s office space, equipment, and utilities, and cars since 1990.  Rebecca and I believe that MPP offers unique opportunities and if any of them are to be realized, Rebecca and I, and anyone else who chooses to work with us, must be willing – until MPP is sustainable - to contribute to costs and forego a salary.  The rewards continue to be great.  So, even though our growth until now has been restricted to whatever funds could be scraped together, we take pride in knowing we are making a real difference for children.)

I hope you have already begun to think of what it might be like to adopt MPP as your own.  Please take a moment more to commit yourself in whatever way calls to you:  become a course leader; pledge your time, talent, and energy, and if you have the capacity, pledge money.  (In order to fully release the potential of MPP, we need to bring in at least $7,000 per month and I am at a loss for how to generate this amount of cash flow.  Maybe a membership program is in order, and if so, perhaps you are the person or group to make that happen.  That said, even a $5 check makes a difference – perhaps not so much in the overall bank account as in the account of appreciation, encouragement, and friendship.) 

Whatever way you choose to participate, and even if you don’t, my wish for you is that peace, joy, and beauty prepare your every new moment and that unconditional forgiveness absorbs your every past. 

Very truly yours, Nancy

HERE’S TO AN EXQUISITE 2006!!!

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year!!!  I wish for you, your family, friends, co-workers and neighbors a healthy, miraculous, and prosperous 2006. 

2005 has been filled with the refinement and expansion of our Optimal Learning Environments family of courses:  Nature of Nurture, Nature of Learning, and Nature of Education.  We look forward to their further expansion in 2006.  All Optimum Learning Environments courses are designed to contribute significantly to the Millennium Development Goals #2 (primary education for all children by 2015) and #3 (gender equality and empowerment of women and girls) by providing the world with 30 million new learner-centered teachers by 2015. 

As many of you know, the mystique of Montessori exists in the irony of its exclusiveness.  Proof of this was seen when all but two participants at the final session of the second segment of the Mexico OLE course said they desire to become Montessori teachers.  This was a complete turnaround from the beginning of the course when only a few participants said they would want to become Montessori teachers.  This indicates that probably the lack of informed choice is the prominent obstacle in Montessori becoming the world’s default public educational system. 

So, in addition to preparing the way for more thorough understanding of the Montessori paradigm, OLE gives participants a chance to become familiar with and explore Montessori on their own terms. 

Montessori Phoenix Projects’ driving ambition in 2006 is to establish the Optimal Learning Environments courses on each continent.  It is going to take a combination of miracle, stewardship, serendipity, and your financial assistance to accomplish the following 2006 supportive objectives:

§         Meetings in Geneva (especially with UNESCO, UNIFEM, UNHCR, and UNICEF) to establish the Optimal Learning Environments courses as the primary program for teacher preparation [Thank you, Jeff and Katherine Szem, for donating a round trip air ticket to Geneva.]

§         Website development such that the site is more user-friendly, has more photos and video, is more interactive as an online teacher education option, is more informative, contains the OLE courses as online courses, and is translated into Spanish and French (with more languages being added each year from now on).

§         Printed material (brochures, membership packets, annual reports, course documents, teacher preparation packages, certificates, fundraising materials, grant proposals and reports)

§         Documenting and editing course sessions for DVD production and distribution and online course options;

§         Accrediting all MPP courses so that participants can opt to receive academic credit for OLE (Rebecca is certified as a MACTE Montessori teacher educator, so participants in the MPP Montessori teacher ed courses already have the option of being MACTE approved)

§         Staff and board development

§         Technological upgrades (digital video camera and editing software, new laptop)

§         Course production and logistics (at least one government-sponsored OLE course implemented and actively spreading throughout each continent)

§         Material-making and repair industry development (bringing “the machine” to Mexico from Mondragon, Spain to begin the production of Montessori sensorial and math materials)

§         Grant-proposal writing and distribution

§         Membership and volunteer campaign

§         Major fundraiser event

§         Speaking engagements (conferences, school campuses, service organizations, etc.)

§         Curriculum and course development

THE NATURE OF NURTURE in Mexico is providing sufficient evidence that the courses mobilize swift transformation from teacher-centered to learner-centered teaching styles.  The Rotary Club of Tijuana has been instrumental in establishing partners and support for all thirty sessions.  The Department of Social Development sponsored the first round of courses (144 hours) and the Department of Education is evaluating it for inclusion in all schools and teacher education programs.  The course is divided into three segments: Introduction, Mastery, and Course Leader Certification.  The first Course Leaders will be certified in March at the completion of this initial series.  One of the participants, a Montessori teacher, has brought the course content to a community in Chiapas where she is helping local women to create a learner-centered school, with intentions of implementing a complete Montessori teacher education program. 

The value of Optimal Learning Environments is that participants enter the course from an authority-centered background and learn how to customize their own learner-centered programs.  Coming from a variety of professions, participants include:  Montessori teachers, college professors, high school teachers, special ed teachers, birth through twelve teachers, drug-rehab program directors, parents, teenagers, or orphanage administrators.  A sample of the participants’ work will be posted on Montessori Phoenix Projects’ website in January 2006.  

Included in these courses is a section on Generative Listening, a process meant to help participants be in touch with their students’ potential.  Generative Listening involves how we label the people in our lives and how others label us.  While Generative Listening produces life-changing results for participants, society is the real beneficiary because more and more individuals are able to have their true potential nurtured, generating a stronger sense of belonging and responsibility.

Many of you have asked how we decide what content to include in the Optimal Learning Environments courses.  The short answer is this:  Since our first course in 1994, Rebecca and I have been conducting informal interpretive qualitative research, going over each day’s session, identifying things said as part of the course curriculum which are causing extreme reactions (on a scale measuring reactions from incomprehension to inspired interest).  Those reactions become the texture of our work, giving shape to all our courses.  Since we are mainly concerned with providing an excellent Montessori teacher education program, all OLE content is meant to provide a solid foundation for the MPP Montessori teacher ed courses.  To date, concepts we want our students become familiar with include: “follow the child”; control of error within the work; generative listening; from concrete to abstract; chaos as possibility; sequence and order; the prepared environment; four planes of education; and more.We are currently producing the Assistants to Infancy in Mexico and are finding that participants who have previously participated in the OLE programs are much more enthusiastic and comprehending of course content (in the AI course) than those who have no OLE background.  Thus, you can see the pathway, right?  From OLE – a relatively quick and easy course that can be spread worldwide from person to person, a course requiring no special equipment – to full blown Montessori teacher ed courses.  Thus, we have time to implement and inspire Montessori material making industries that will equip course participants’ classrooms in a timely manner.  

We are very proud to be part of Montessori Phoenix Projects.  We are blessed to be part of so many people’s lives.  Please join us in making this uniquely new paradigm in teacher education available worldwide.  Your financial partnership makes possible thirty million new learner-centered teachers by 2015, the first step to having Montessori as the default public education system worldwide.  What a fabulous way to invest your donation dollars.  Please visit our website and make a donation today on our Donate Now! page. 

Again, may your New Year be blessed with wealth, health, and joy.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Love, Nancy

P.S. I have been compiling your email addresses over the years.  If you do not want to receive MPP news, please let me know and I will remove you from my list.