April 5, 2011 I just spent two weeks with a community activist who organizes self-help groups for women in rural India, two courageous Pakistani women educators, an American cell biologist who leads improv workshops for scientists, two youth workers from Serbia, and two university-based teacher educators also from Serbia. The Institute’...
March 3, 2010 Please help me publicize a unique program—The International Class. I began this seven years ago and had no idea how much it would help me and all its participants grow, or how powerful the impact would be on community organizers and talented educators and peformers, or what a...
February 14, 2011 In the early 1990s I edited a journal, Practice: The Magazine of Psychology and Political Economy (culture, sociology and economics were also covered and many issues included poetry and photos). No computer files exist and so any article has to be scanned if it's to be available to...
January 30, 2011 “Here is an idea for solving the education crisis in America. What if all the kids currently failing in school pretended to be good learners? What if all the adults – teachers, principals, administrators, parents – played along and pretended that the kids were school achievers, heading for...
January 26, 2011 A young friend of mine, Francelli Chapman, keeps a very active blog that I’m learning a lot from. An example: This great quote from Maya Angelou’s book, Letter to My Daughter—“Never whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.” Francelli calls her blog, “The...
January 23, 2011 As a practitioner of and theoretician on how play and performance are essential for development across the life span, I see people developing and transforming through their ensemble activities all the time—in the spaces and places where they’re invited and encouraged to actively create their performances of themselves....
January 20, 2011 Here’s another blog I recommend: Jim’s Tech Class. The Online Home of Collaboration 3.0. Jim is Jaime (Jim) Martinez, PhD in Urban Education, former corporate computer techie and computer public school teacher, an innovator who understands how kids learn. I like his blog for his commentary on educational...
January 18, 2011 If you need a pick-me-up today, something to inspire you, maybe this will do the trick: Ishita Sanyal is founder of the Calcutta-based grassroots mental health group, Turning Point, and an avid promoter and proselytizer on behalf of a social therapeutic approach to mental health. On a subcontinent where...
January 12, 2011 “We have a play to perform. We are accountable to one another. In programs that culminate with performances for prison audiences, and (especially) public audiences, there is an opportunity for prisoners to display and celebrate the culmination of their weeks or months of hard work. They can show...
January 5, 2011 In December I was in Serbia for the annual meeting of Zdravo da Ste, a community of a hundred or so Vygotskian-influenced educators, psychologists, social workers and artists who bring the joy of pointless performance to children and adults through workshops and ongoing programs. We spent the weekend...
