by Renee Owen | Oct 14, 2014 | Director's Blog
ISIS, Ebola, narcissistic politicians, constant change and churning. As parents, we have so much at stake: how do we protect our precious ones from the turmoil while still being aware of what is happening all around us? It isn’t hard to get swept up in a tide of despair. Or guilt — How many times have you wondered, “Why are so many people suffering, while my chief complaint is one of internal struggle? How did I get ‘lucky?'” It all seems so unjust. However, being despondent is certainly not what our children need from us. They need equanimity.
“Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.
My husband is an activist. Most of his time is spent attending meetings, events, canvassing, reporting the news, fact-checking…He has been able to turn his rage about the world into action. Others who feel they don’t have the time, become philanthropists. Some become teachers. And many of us become parents intent on raising conscientious children. We each have to do what we can, but no single one of us can do it all.
by Webmaster | Sep 21, 2014 | CEO's Kaleidoscope, Director's Blog, Home Page News
Here we are – together – at Rainbow Community School, 2014.
I would love to hear about your experience and impressions so far this year. What has intrigued your child? What have you learned? What has the staff learned? I think the most important thing I have learned (again) is to simply be myself. After all, who else would I be?
We open the 2014-15 school year with many landmarks.
Campus is twice as big as it was this time last year, and our enrollment has ballooned. There are 195 students enrolled at Rainbow Community School. That’s 50% growth since two years ago! 46 students are in preschool; and 149 are enrolled in K-8. There are 164 families, and over 60 of you are new. We met our goal to have every class full, with 16-20 students and two home-room teachers.
Life-long learning, as demonstrated by one of our founders.
Rainbow’s first Executive Director, Aostre Johnson, called me just before school started. She teaches education at St. Michaels in Vermont, and though she is well into her 60’s she just completed a Fulbright trip to Ireland last year to research contemplative/mindfulness education. She sent us a copy of her latest book, Education from the Heart. It is in the office.
We are IN!
Just in the nick of time, we finally received our temporary Certificate of Occupancy for the new Omega classroom and the auditorium.
Our hard-working contractor, Christopher Fox, probably spent 40 hours in the last few weeks meeting with people at the city offices and dealing with inspectors in order to make that happen. Max has been incredibly patient and diligent.
They definitely have a few stories to tell about the whole experience. (One of many examples: How fair is it for an inspector to say you don’t need a Van Accessible sign, and then a week later at the final inspection the same inspector tells you he won’t pass you because you don’t have a Van Accessible sign?!)
Anyway, we won’t have access to the bottom floor of the main building until the next round of construction (as planned), but the auditorium is now open. Yay! Thanks again to Jeff Dalton of RowHouse Architects. You are brilliant. Thanks to EVERYONE who made the campus expansion possible through donations, guidance, and positivity. You know who you are!!
There is an official Ribbon Cutting Ceremony on September 10, from 4:30 – 6:00 pm that the Chamber of Commerce and the West Asheville Business Association are hosting. Wicked Weed is sponsoring and serving beer, so this is an event to leave your children in after school care. Businesses from all around Asheville are attending.
Much Gratitude
You are one dedicated, loyal, and enthusiastic group of parents! Despite being less than half the size of the other schools who won awards, you voted Rainbow Community School as the BEST SCHOOL in WNC. We tied for first place.
You also gave preschool a first place award for Best Preschool, and voted Sue Ford as the best music teacher.
Rainbow’s Art Program won second place! You showed up to vote, and it made a difference. THANK YOU! (As a tangential note: I hope you also show up for this November’s North Carolina’s elections, because you folks know how to make things happen. If you are new to town, be sure to register early and HAVE YOUR ID.)
Another Rainbow Alumnus Makes a Difference
Last night, at a Chamber of Commerce event I met Rick Fornoff, whose kids went to Rainbow Mountain Children’s School in the 1980’s. I always want to know what interesting things our alumni are doing, so I was astounded when he told me that his daughter, Erin, is an award-winning spoken word poet who works for a non-profit organization called Ashoka, and her job is to find social entrepreneurs around the world. (A social entrepreneur is a term for someone who uses entrepreneurial skills to help others.)
What an amazing coincidence! I explained to him that Rainbow just became an Ashoka Changemaker School, and that recognition distinguishes us as a school that teaches kids to become social entrepreneurs – just like his daughter!
Read all about it
We were published in two national/international publications this last month.
Part 1 and Part 2 of the Innovation Generation articles I wrote were published by the Ashoka Changemaker Foundation in August, and they are publishing Parts 3 and 4 next month. This is quite an honor.
Triple Pundit published an article about our cutting edge organizational system, called Dynamic Governance. The article titled, “What Can a School Teach Us About Organizational Agility?” can be accessed here.
Did you know…
…Rainbow’s webpage receives over 4,000 unique hits a month? That means that far more people than our parents or even prospective parents must be accessing our webpage to read the content.
Family to Family
The holistic clinic, Family to Family, which was founded by Rainbow parents, is going to be one of Rainbow’s partners this year. Dr. Susan will be offering an advice column for parents and will be onsite a couple times this year offering classes for parents. Thanks, Family to Family!
Partnering with the Police
We are fortunate to have a good relationship with our local police officers, who keep a special protective eye on our campus. After school started, I called Officer Jones, who is our assigned community resource officer, and let him know school was open and that we were concerned about cars not stopping for pedestrians in the crosswalk in front of the school. He said they would spend a few mornings parked there and give out warnings or tickets to help send the message that pedestrian safety in front of our school is essential.
Rise Up to the Summit! Climb the Peak! Be There, or Be Square!
I hope it is an indelible event in your calendar by now: The Parent Summit is September 29 from 5:30 – 8:30. It is a required event, meaning at least one parent from every family is requested to attend. Why it is so important? Why is it so long? At the last summit (three years ago) everyone was asked “What are we called to do?” Almost every answer that came out of that summit has since come to fruition, including expanding our campus. You are an inspiration.
“I believe that education is the fundamental method for social progress and reform.” ~John Dewey.
Education is a powerful tool, so please attend the summit to help guide us in the right direction.
Have you thanked a teacher today?
I bet you have.
Our teachers are blessed to be in a community that understands and appreciates how hard they work and how special they are.
The outpouring of love you have showed your teachers already this year is overwhelming and appreciated. Love is a circle: It comes right back to your child.
Thank you for making it go ‘round.
by Renee Owen | Sep 12, 2014 | Director's Blog
How Can a School Promote a Culture of Innovation?
As I enter the “Omega” (7th and 8th grade) classroom at Rainbow Community School, a large Buckminster Fuller-designed dymaxion world map is on the floor, the basis for a game where students are moving around chips that represent various world resources.
Incorporating Systems Thinking
Two students with laptops are meeting with Jason Cannoncro, one of the lead teachers, about a grant proposal they are writing to create a local non-profit organization that will give homeless people work on the many organic farms in Asheville. Several students are puzzling over models they are creating of sustainable energy systems. One girl is playing a radio powered by a tiny solar panel system she designed herself.
How Can We Design Systems to Ensure All Humans Have Their Needs Met?
The curriculum at Rainbow Community School has been carefully designed and refined to prepare students for the culminating middle school unit described above.The essential problem that students ask and begin to solve in that unit is,
“How can we design our systems and our culture to ensure that all humans on Earth have their needs met, without depleting planetary resources?”
The Native Americans thought of sustainability in terms of seven generations. They might have asked the essential question for the unit in this format: “How can we provide dignity for each human and all living beings for the next seven generations?”In this unit students are asked to think about human equity and fulfillment, and how to get there. They are required to develop designs and prototypes for inventions that help sustain the natural world, while providing for a high quality of living. Students who are successful within this multi-faceted, complex unit are the next generation of innovators. How does Rainbow Community School prepare its students for this culminating unit?
You can find out how RCS prepares its students and more on part IV here.
RCS Director, Renee Owen has a series of Educating the Innovation Generation articles.
Click below to see the other parts:
Educating the Innovation Generation – Part I
Educating the Innovation Generation – Part II
Educating the Innovation Generation – Part III
by Webmaster | Aug 6, 2014 | Alumni News & Accolades, Director's Blog, Home Page News, News
August 6, 2014
Dear Rainbow Parents,
This is my favorite communication of the year – the letter welcoming you to the upcoming school year! As an educator, I can tell you that the beginning of the school year is as full of excitement and anticipation for the staff as it is for the students. Every year brings so much promise.
Ashoka Changemaker School
Last year’s welcome letter predicted that Rainbow Community School was entering a new era. Indeed, it was a banner year. We earned multiple local, state, and national awards, the most notable at the state level being the first Green School of Excellence in North Carolina, and at the national level becoming an Ashoka Changemaker School.
As a result of our Changemaker status, we are being asked to present at national conferences and to write for important educational blogs, such as Edutopia. Rainbow is being recognized as the cutting-edge leader in education that we are. Of course, the biggest, most dramatic change over the last year was doubling the size of our campus!
In one year we shifted from being a small school with unpredictable enrollment, to being near capacity for enrollment and having the ability to powerfully affect the future for our children, our community, and for education on a broader scale. It truly is the beginning of a new era.
We have accomplished something rare for a non-profit organization by going through tremendous change, yet coming through it with more stability than ever before. Pat yourselves on the back for being a part of it and making it happen!
Contacting Alumni
With all this change, it is important now, more than ever, to be true to who we are. We will be contacting alumni families, both recent and from as far back as possible, to remind them that they are always welcome on campus and forever a part of the community.
We will strive to share our good fortune as much as possible by partnering with, and donating to, Children First/Communities in Schools, providing tutoring at Deaverview Housing Project, and by doing other valuable service work; plus we will begin providing auditorium space to the wider community at our new facility.
Speaking of the new facility, please see the update on the Rainbow Rising Capital Campaign. Thanks to your donation dollars, the donated time and expertise of Christopher Fox Builders and Rowhouse Architects, and Max Mraz’s (facility manager) coordination, the first phase of construction is 95% complete, under-budget, and ahead of schedule! (Yes, it has been a busy summer!)
We will have a certificate of occupancy before school begins for the auditorium and for the new Omega (7th/8th grade) space which will be on the new campus. What a huge transformation… and the biggest phase of construction is yet to come.
Parent Summit Night – Sept. 29
Please mark your calendar now for Monday evening, September 29. We are requesting that at least one parent from every family attend the Rainbow Parent Summit that night.
Typically, we schedule this required meeting for February, but this year we are moving it all the way up to September 29 because much of that night will be focused on creating a facilities plan for the future of Rainbow.
How Can Rainbow Fully Serve Your Family?
We will be going into the next phase of construction in January, and need your dreams, desires, and creative ideas before then – both regarding the future of our facilities, and also our program. How can Rainbow more fully serve your family? More information on this board-hosted event will be coming from board chair, Claudia Konijn.
Based on feedback from parents, the administration has grown so that we can better serve the school’s needs. Cynthia Calhoun, woman of many talents, will still be teaching Spanish 1/3 time, and for the other 2/3 she will be heading up community coordinating and communications, including social media, marketing, and running the website.
We have also been fortunate to hire Sara Stender for part-time development management for the fall fundraising campaign.
The faculty continues to grow and become even more dynamic with each year!
Biographies of new staff members can be seen on the Rainbow website. The teachers have been busy preparing their classrooms, updating curriculums, and attending summer trainings. The staff will spend the 10 days before school starts together, preparing ourselves in every domain, including spiritually.
Visible Thinking and Singapore Math
Throughout the year the staff engages in extensive training. This upcoming year, we continue to sharpen our skills in Harvard Graduate School’s Visible Thinking tools and Singapore Math.
The new staff training theme for the upcoming year is in the area of teaching kids how to have agency through engineering and systems thinking. You will receive much more information on this, but what we mean by the word agency in this context is having power and being able to make a difference.
Teachers will be learning about the maker movement and how kids can learn to engineer electronics, robotics, and to think in terms of systems and how best to affect change through innovation.
Susie’s fourth grade class will pilot this program this year. If your child isn’t in fourth grade, feel free to stop by her fourth grade classroom to see their “tinkering table” which is essentially a kid-friendly work bench and to ask Susie what “tinkering” has to do with giving kids power.
Student Support Services
Also new for the upcoming year, we have completely revamped the student support services program. Every student needing special support will be paired with an advocate who will help the student and the family with the support plan, communication, and advocating for each student’s needs.
An excellent student support program doesn’t just benefit students with special needs, but enhances the educational experience of all children by creating classrooms where all kids experience success. The student support team is now headed by Ali Banchiere. We have added a counselor to the team. Blake Smith, formerly counselor at Carolina Day School, will be working on a limited schedule to put together the initial pieces of a budding counseling program at Rainbow.
All of this and much more is carefully crafted to create an environment for your child(ren) to thrive at Rainbow in 2014/15 – a safe space where there are magical arms of a whole community enfolding them and all the resources necessary for children to take risks and try out their agency.
Of course, that looks quite different at different levels of development – from three year olds learning to zip their own coats, 3rd graders navigating their first social dramas, 6th graders experimenting with new personas, and Omegans peering into their soul and preparing themselves for high school and beyond. What will the future bring?
Thank you for joining Rainbow for this journey.
As executive director, I am honored, humbled, to be a part of such an awesome community and a vibrant future, as reflected in the eyes of your children.
Please – please – don’t assume I am too busy to have a conversation on the deck or to see you in my office. (Although we have grown so much – over 400 people including kids, parents, staff — you may need to remind me of your name!) One-on-one conversations are the best opportunities to connect and my favorite part of my job. I care, and I am here.
Let’s get ready for another great year.
Blessings on the journey,
Renee Owen
Executive Director
