by Renee Owen | Mar 11, 2013 | Blogs, Director's Blog
What are we looking for in a new teacher? Since we believe in developing the whole child, then our teachers have to be accomplished in all seven domains: spiritual, mental, creative, emotional, social, natural, and physical.
As a result of our growth at Rainbow, we need to hire a new sixth grade teacher for next school year. We have fabulous applicants: experienced, energetic teachers with Masters and even PHD work in schools such as Columbia, Penn State, and Brown. But in addition to experience and education, the teacher who is destined to teach at Rainbow will be a truly whole person who is on a life-long quest to grow in all domains.
by Renee Owen | Mar 8, 2013 | Director's Blog, Heart of the Matter, News
Without equivocation, Rainbow Mountain Children’s School is a unique learning environment. Everyone knows it the minute they step onto campus. Although Americans would find Rainbow’s education very different compared to American prep schools, it is not at all unusual compared to Scandinavian schools. Read More
by Renee Owen | Mar 7, 2013 | Director's Blog
That is the raging argument among my teenagers right now. Ha ha ha. I guess this is why I have been obsessed with providing my children with the best possible education: So they have passionate arguments about consciousness, existentialism, and reality rather than material crap. Suddenly, they have shifted to talking about rhetoric, atoms, and Truth. SHOUTING about the meaning of love —roses and thorns. Ahhhh…..
Finally, they agreed that some people believe everything is nothing, and some believe nothing is everything; and those people have to tacitly agree to get along.
by Renee Owen | Mar 5, 2013 | Director's Blog
This is the question we, as educators and parents, have to ask ourselves over and over, “What qualities will our children need in order to be prepared for the future?” Gary Hamel, author of What Matters Now, How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation,” lists five issues that are paramount in today’s business world: values, innovation, adaptability, passion, and ideology.
by Renee Owen | Feb 24, 2013 | Director's Blog
“The old ways of learning are unable to keep up with our rapidly changing world,”is one of the premises of A New Culture of Learning, by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown. We know that when children are young they learn by playing — imagining things, experimenting, and so on. In our world of constant change, adaptability and innovation are highly valued. Interestingly, in a world of flux the ability to play at all ages becomes more necessary. Why? Because an attitude of play is an attitude of inquiry — as Thomas and Brown describe it, “A child playing with a new toy and an adult logging onto the Internet, for example, both wonder, ‘what do I do now?’…play becomes a strategy for embracing change.”
Thanks to John Johnson for recommending A New Culture of Learning. It gave me another look at systems thinking in education. A new way of living has ushered in a new way of learning. Unfortunately, the public school system is such an excruciatingly slow moving bureaucracy it can never facilitate the adaptability today’s children need to learn to be prepared for tomorrow’s future.
by Renee Owen | Feb 20, 2013 | Director's Blog, News
Did you know Rainbow Mountain has an Odyssey of the Mind team? Odyssey of the Mind has been described as “Olympics for Geeks” (Geek being an affectionate term these days.) Kids form teams and spend weeks solving massive, multi-page problems, and then present their solutions in the form of a performance, a contraption, or whatever is necessary. “OM” is where wildy creative meets rigid logic. Our team will be competing at the high school level at regionals this Saturday. You can see their innovative performance at 2pm at Erwin High School. We have a feeling they are going to advance to the state level.
