by Webmaster | Sep 18, 2014 | Alumni News & Accolades, Events, Home Page News
Soulspeak at Rainbow
We are beyond excited! SATURDAY September 27th @ 7pm, Soulspeak Asheville will be helping us dedicate our new community center auditorium space with a youth poetry slam!
WE ARE ALL POETS will feature 12 youth ages 12-21 from the WNC community sharing their poetry.
There will also be an open mic.
Mel Kelley and Liam Kelley Black (Rainbow alumni) from Soulspeak will be bringing poetry to our Omega students the next two Thursdays as well as offering support to any student who wants to slam or open mic on the 27th.
Matt Foley
Award winning poet, author and teacher, Matthew Foley, from Charleston, SC will feature at the slam.
Free Wordshop
Soulspeak is offering a FREE WORDSHOP with Matthew for youth poets earlier that day from 3-5pm @ Kairos, 742 Haywood Rd.
If You Want to Go…
All Omega students are welcome!
ALL PROCEEDS from the slam go towards providing the free Saturday wordshops and open mics that SOULSPEAK offers our youth poets each month.
Rainbow families will receive a $2 discount per ticket. Adults just $10, students $5! Tickets will be for sale on the decks from Thursday on.
PLEASE JOIN US!
by Webmaster | Sep 16, 2014 | Alumni News & Accolades
Allijah Motika – Creative multi-instrumentalist
Alumni News!
We are so proud of all of our alumni.
We have news from Allijah Motika who just graduated from Catawba College in May.
He studied music, with a concentration in Popular Music and achieved summa cum laude. He received many honors while there, including getting a Presidential Scholarship, and was on the Dean’s List and Presidential Honor Roll. He was a member of Alpha Chi Honors Society, a Junior Marshal, and was named Who’s Who Among Students.
As a student, he participated in an Artist Development Program, learning everything from being a live sound engineer to helping oversee performance spaces on campus. He also tutored other students in various subjects. This has helped prepare him for life after college – running a band and fulfilling his dream of being a musician!
Allijah is part of a band that formed in 2012 called Life Size. He also is the acting manager, promoter and booking agent. In addition, he’s a co-songwriter, co-producer, and plays multiple instruments for shows and performances.
Already, he has several notable performances:
- Vernaculars All-Stars at the NC Governor’s Inaugural Ball in 2013 – with Parmalee and The Avett Brothers
- God’s Appointed People Choir at the Democratic National Convention in 2012 – with Jessica Sanchez
- Catawba Singers – European Tour 2011 and Chicago Performance – with Eric Whitacre
- Governor’s School West Chorus – 2009
Great job to Allijah – we are proud of you and so thrilled that you’re part of the Rainbow family!
Here’s a recent quote from Sarah Hall – Salisbury Post
“Their songs, all original compositions, demonstrated that they have become accomplished songwriters.”
by Webmaster | Sep 4, 2014 | News
Professional, Spiritual and Personal Development
One of the most special things about Rainbow is how students and staff alike have opportunities to grow. Each person grows personally, professionally and spiritually.
Before school starts in August each year, all staff come back together after summer break – many of whom will have engaged in professional development on their own – for a week of training.
As part of that training, the staff goes on a required retreat.
It’s not just any kind of retreat.
The time the staff spends together is designed to help teachers understand the practice of teaching on a higher level, understand how to work with each other better, build relationships, and engage in relevant, innovative training so that ultimately, this translates to working in the classroom with Rainbow Community School’s students.
Mountain Light Sanctuary
This year for the August retreat, teachers went to Mountain Light Sanctuary.
For two days they engaged in activities that nourished their spirits, and allowed them to participate in workshops that they could immediately use in the classroom.
Temperaments
Pictured below is one such workshop.
The school’s Director, Renee Owen, led a Temperaments training.
This was designed so that staff could understand more about their own temperament, but also how to identify the temperaments of their students.
This allows for better communication and understanding between students, teachers, and the greater Community.
Photo credit: Michael Lightweaver, Mountain Light Sanctuary
At the end of the training, after many discussions, de-briefings and having learned a lot of beneficial information for the classroom, the staff gathered for one final photo.
They held one last Centering and blessing before they dispersed.
End of staff retreat
Photo credit: Michael Lightweaver, Mountain Light Sanctuary
by Webmaster | Aug 27, 2014 | Home Page News, Student News & Accolades
We are thrilled to have our K-8 families back on campus!
Tomorrow, our Pre-K families return to campus.
What a glorious first day it has been!
Making Friends
Returning and new students were glad to see each other. Some had met only days before at their class pot luck, and others have known each other for years. We know one thing is for sure: all our students and families have become part of the Rainbow family.
The First Day…
Students in all grades showed how much they remembered in classroom activities in every grade. Some completed forms that were about what they did over the summer.
Others created artwork, joined a Centering Circle, and others engaged in Imaginative Play.
Some classes took tours of the campus to familiarize themselves with some of the new changes – such as our expanded campus.
We had lots of wonderful photo ops for the first day, coffee for parents. The energy on campus was just glorious.
Take a look at our 2014 First Day photo gallery – you can click on each image to see a bigger version.
Photo credit: C. Calhoun
by Webmaster | Aug 22, 2014 | Global Citizenship, Home Page News
Hanf’s game with a photo of some Omega students trying out the game
Mark Hanf Featured in Asheville’s Newspaper
Mark Hanf, one of our new Omega teachers, has been featured in the “Living Section” of the Asheville Citizen Times.
He has spent time hiking the Appalachian Trail.
It’s impacted his life so much that now he wants to hike the entire length of it some day with his daughter.
In the meantime, they both can “prep” for the hike because she’s only five. The best way to do that? With a board game!
Mark Hanf Creates AT Board Game
Mark and a team of developers worked to create a game that would help people learn best practices and skills in preparation for hiking the Appalachian Trail.
The idea came to him after stopping at a shelter along the trail that had been left littered and otherwise pretty trashed. His first reaction was anger. But then he thought that perhaps others just haven’t had the training he’s had to know trail and hiking etiquette. He had been a Boy Scout.
He cleaned up the shelter and took his idea to create a board game to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy where he received a small grant. From there, the game was born.
He’s also started a Kickstarter Campaign to expand and spread awareness about the game. Fundraising for the cause exceeded the goal, totaling 1,093 backers and $57,361 raised. Success!
Read More of Mark’s Article Here
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
