by Webmaster | May 30, 2014 | Global Citizenship, Home Page News, News
Imagine students who are leaders.
Students with high social-emotional intelligence.
Students who express deep levels of empathy.
That’s exactly what we’re fostering at Rainbow and we are now part of the Ashoka Changemaker Network. Rainbow is one of 44 schools across the country to have this honor, because of our innovation and desire to exact social change.
Ashoka Changemaker Schools
www.startempathy.org
We became an Ashoka Changemaker school because we are committed to addressing the needs of our community through developing empathy, teamwork, problem-solving and leadership skills in our students.
As Bill Drayton, founder and CEO of Ashoka, says:
Once a young person has had a dream, built a team and changed his or her world, he or she has the power to express love and respect in action. He or she will become a changemaker for life – a real contributor in a world where value no longer comes from efficiency in repetition, as it has for millennia.
Ashoka works to identify social entrepreneurs around the world. The world needs people who have the mindset for problem-solving capabilities. The Changemaker initiative looks for schools in the U.S. and abroad who exemplify these ideals. In conjunction with schools and leaders around the world, people can become changemakers.
The goal is “Everyone a Changemaker” – a world where people can quickly identify social issues and effectively address them – because they have the knowledge, freedom, and a support network to bring about needed change.
by Renee Owen | Mar 25, 2014 | Blogs, Director's Blog
Heart of the Matter – Innovation Generation Part II
In this issue, Executive Director Renee’s article is titled “Educating the Innovation Generation Part II: What Encourages Innovation?”
Most people assume that creativity and innovation are qualities that a person is born with – that there are an extremely small percentage of people, perhaps, 1 in 1,000,000 who are creative geniuses.
These creative individuals are the inventors and visionaries, but only if they are also given the proper circumstances and have the courage to buck a system that may do everything it can to squash creativity. The rest of us move throughout our mediocre lives which are interrupted occasionally by an invention or new paradigm that radically changes the way we function or think.
Download the rest of Part II here
Innovation Generation Part III
by Renee Owen | Feb 2, 2014 | Director's Blog, News
I attended a lecture by Buckminster Fuller last night. Of course, Bucky passed on many years ago, so it was an actor giving the lecture, but it was very real. Enlightening and enlivening.
We traveled through notions of time and space, which amounted to infinite cycles and angles. We engaged in a scientific theory that innovation, combined with compassion, can build a world where everyone has their needs met, making war obsolete.
As an educator, the most powerful “ah ha” concept of the whole evening was actually a validation: Learning is a metaphysical activity. You may ask what makes learning a metaphysical activity? Bucky would retort, “Can you see it?”
Why do I call this a “validation?” Because I work at a school that was founded by sufis, by mystics. Rainbow was founded with the belief that there is much more to life than what we can see and prove in the material realm. Learning is far more than a fact that can be quantifiably recorded with testing data. Material data can barely scrape the surface of what goes on internally. When I say we can’t actually see learning, understand that we can see artifacts of learning — student work on walls, presentations, and of course test score data, but the actual act of learning is invisible. Thus, metaphysical. There is something magical about learning.
At Rainbow, learning has always been recognized as a sacred activity. It stirs our soul because we can’t actually see it — yet we can we can feel it, we can enhance it, and best of all — we can share it. It provides fellowship and brings together our whole community. Learning provides passion and purpose in our lives. Many wise people have claimed that the whole purpose of life is to learn.
If life is infinite, then learning if infinite. The very concept of Pi could be seen as simple proof that infinity exists — it has no end, which is precisely why it is round and goes on forever. If we try to concretely quantify Pi — if we cut off Pi at 3.14– it is no longer truly round or infinite. If learning really is infinite, neither a school, nor a teacher, nor a politician, should ever box it up, or limit it: The act of quantifying learning can certainly be useful and necessary, but it quickly runs into diminishing returns. Bucky’s legacy motto is: “Do more with less.” So rather than spending more time and more precious resources on testing, let’s DO MORE.
~Thank you to Black Mountain College Museum for hosting the inspiring play R. Buckminister Fuller: The History and Mystery of the Universe, by D.W. Jacobs, and brilliantly acted by David Novak.
“Every child has an enormous drive to demonstrate competence. If humans are not required to earn a living to be provided survival needs, many are going to want very much to be productive, but not at those tasks they did not choose to do but were forced to accept in order to earn money. Instead, humans will spontaneously take upon themselves those tasks that world society really needs to have done.” ~R. Buckminster Fuller.
For more great Fuller quotes, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller
by Webmaster | Sep 13, 2013 | News
The Future of Education and The Future of Rainbow
By artist Caryn Hanna
Before school starts each year, educators at Rainbow attend a series of trainings to enhance their teaching careers and to help them prepare for a new academic year.
In one of those sessions, teachers brainstormed about the future of education in general and about the future of Rainbow Community School. Artist Caryn Hanna visually interpreted and recorded their ideas onto a beautiful banner.
Teachers noted that seeing their thoughts “visualized” effectively helped them to form a solid vision for the future.
Before meeting, the staff at Rainbow read Renee’s article about Educating the Innovation Generation.
In Renee’s words,
The mission statement at Rainbow Community School ends saying that we are developing students who will be “leaders in building a more compassionate and environmentally sustainable world.”
Anyone enrolling their child at this unique school must resonate with the urgency of this goal.
One would have to have blinders on to ignore the stream of evidence and quotes from leading scientists, sociologists and experts in almost every field who declare that sustainability is the most important vision for human survival.
From Tony Wagner, “The solution to our economic and social challenges is the same: creating a viable and sustainable economy that creates good jobs without polluting the planet. And there is general agreement as to what that new economy must be based on. One word: innovation.”
Indeed, the mission and vision of Rainbow embraces our new generation of young people to propel them into a world where they are prepared to not only think out of the box, but to dare to reinvent the concept of the box itself. We understand that giving students the tools to be creative thinkers and problem solvers today will help them become leaders who will create a sustainable tomorrow.
