April 4, 2013 There’s no shortage of pithy quotations from revered wise women and men, from centuries past to this morning’s media, about how creativity, imagination, discovery and invention are essential for nations and their people to thrive. There’s also no shortage of op-eds, books, blogs and radio and TV talk...
January 29, 2013 A few days ago I wrote about the long lag time for reviews of academic books. Here’s an example very close to home. During my Internet searches this weekend I came across a new review of my book, Vygotsky at Work and Play. (You can click on it...
January 16, 2013 Best selling author Dan Pink (A Whole New Mind, Drive) has a new book, To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others. He devotes his Chapter 8 to the topic of Improvisation, and he had a really good teacher for this chapter, Cathy Salit. Cathy is...
December 19, 2012 “A lot rides on our capacity to be who we’re not.” So remarked Christine LaCerva, director of The Social Therapy Group and the East Side Institute’s clinical training. Christine was one of six who I assembled to address the topic, “The Therapeutic Power of Performance,” at a plenary session...
December 16, 2012 I was in Serbia last week. I crammed a lot into four days and it was well worth it. I’ve been going to Serbia once a year for more than a decade and each time I experience the joy of people supporting other people to develop and, at...
November 19, 2012 This morning I learned that a dear friend of mine, Volker Bunzendahl, passed away last week. Volker was an exhuberant and passionate psychologist and human being. He moved from Germany to Denmark decades ago and made a home for himself and his family in the north of the...
October 17, 2012 “Schools for growth—ones where developmental learning occurs—are much more like theatrical stages than classrooms." I wrote those words, in 1997, as the opening sentence of my book, Schools for Growth: Radical Alternatives to Current Educational Models. Fifteen years later, I believe it even more strongly. As school becomes more...
September 24, 2012 Today I’m going to do some more promotion for Performing the World 2012 (PTW 2012)—because I’m so excited about it! The opening reception on Thursday evening October 4 will be a community welcome to New York—featuring food prepared by dozens of New York City friends; greetings by myself and...
September 13, 2012 It's the last few weeks leading up to the 7th Performing the World gathering taking place October 4-7 at the All Stars Project headquarters on 42 St in NYC. Amidst all the details and fine tuning of schedules and staffing, there's the bigger picture—the historicity of the activity,...
[caption id="attachment_1329" align="aligncenter" width="224"] Poster of the Japanese Society of Developmental Psychology Workshop in Tokyo[/caption] September 10, 2012 “You said performance is an untapped human resource, but Japanese people are reclusive…how can we work with that?” Can we redesign public schools to be ZPDs?” “If little children aren’t aware they’re performing and adults are,...
