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M.P.H., University of California, Berkeley, Public Health Education and Planning, 1984
California, Berkeley, Education and Curriculum Development,1982
B.A., Hunter College, University of the City of New York, Fine Arts and Art History, 1965 From the streets of The South Bronx of New York City to the enchanting forests and mountains of western North Carolina to the awesome high country and deserts of California my work has become a way of life despite the changes in scenery and demographics and because of these factors. Along the way I have encountered raw societal challenges and struggled with breaking ground in a marginalized branch of education. Born in the United States and as a Caucasian secular Jewess living and working among recent immigrants from diverse ethnic cultures and disenfranchised African-Americans in a huge urban metropolis in the 1960s, as a woman entering the male-dominated field of wilderness education in the 1970s, and as an East Coast intellect joining a West coast community with the best of a Californian mentality, I have consciously and sensually examined, continuously reflected, and acted upon a set of values and a philosophy that have brought me recently to Prescott College in 2005, yet another privileged and lively chapter in my career for which I am humbled and grateful.
As an active practitioner, specialist, and administrator, I have enjoyed the finest rewards an educator can by presenting opportunities and guidance to adolescents and adults from many stations in our society (and internationally) that enabled them to realize insights, affirmations, and find the passion for their individual worth and interpersonal and pursuits. I have also suffered the frustrations that societal limitations and entrenched systems of self-serving thinking have thwarted. Now in my sixties I still find myself a passionate fighter for fairness and opportunities for every human in the world, particularly its children, to have a shot at being the best they can be. I regard MAP as a well spring of dynamism, courage, and commendable commitment. Drawing from a combination of intellectual studies and life experiences, I am eager to exchange and grow ideas, and prompt substantive action according to the highest standards possible based in sound philosophical and pragmatic thinking. My aim is for each venture inspired by example and integrity.
I find Prescott’s educational community ideal to continue sharing and extending my knowledge with adults who have the potential to make positive differences in the lives of others and in our global society. I seek to join and or initiate efforts that strive to infuse conventional and mainstream education with what so many of us know to be effective, healthy, sustaining, and excellent education. Characterized by fear, disparity of all kinds yet filled with promise and checkerboarded with examples of compassionate and thoughtful schools and programs, today’s world challenges adults to serve youth in purposeful ways. I believe every child in the United States. is entitled to education that rests on examined and socially just and humane values. Goals and objectives may differ for each effort-we are richly diverse-but the tenets and concepts do not. I dream of the creation of a viable national alternative policy to “No Child Left Behind” that reflects the findings of current brain research, modalities of learning intelligences, and the hope of every adult who feels responsible for the future of all.
Below are selected highlights from my life/career in chronological order:
1940s-1966: Childhood in The Bronx, New York City: Mom, Sharing, and Nature
I was raised on a street where the 43 families in our six story apartment building knew each other and we never locked doors. My mother was raised in a private house up the block and had a pet lamb that grazed on the grassy lot that became the site of that building. We knew everyone in our extended neighborhood-if not by name, at least by sight. When Jerry Lewis’s Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy was aired and my mother said I needed to take a jar and ask every neighbor to give me money because children needed help with their health. We ourselves did not have money for vacations or camp, so I spent most of my summers in projects serving others such as raising funds for United Nations Care Packages for Korea and Israel. My mother also believed in fresh air and took my sister, our friends, and me to the community park every day possible. In this green space surrounded by brick dwellings of various heights, I conducted my “nature hunts”. One day I spotted the first pine I ever saw and did not know what it was. With a broad smile my mother assured me it would not hurt me and she allowed me to grow a tree from its seeds.
From my beginnings, I was fortunate to have the tenets of sharing and my awe of nature nurtured. However, within these years this safe neighborhood rapidly deteriorated into the specter of an inner city: the white flight took place, we were the northern border of the South Bronx with statistics stating us we were first in homicides, thefts and fires in the U.S.
1965-1972: John Dwyer Junior High School 133, The Bronx, New York City: Teacher of Fine Arts
The school, now defunct, was located ten minutes from where I grew up, in the heart of the South Bronx with a student population of 2200 of which 65% were Puerto Rican and 35% were African-American. I taught fine arts, physical education, and home economics. By what I call a “default factor” I could develop innovative curricula and offer activities both inside and outside the classroom for my students. Because the principal, six assistant principals, one hundred-sixty teachers, and our one full time cop did not concern themselves beyond fights and fires in classrooms, I was able expand my students’ sense of worth and their awareness through exposure to lifestyles beyond their depressed neighborhoods. With two other teachers we voluntarily took our kids hiking and technical rock climbing in the Adirondack, Catskill, and Shawanagunk Mountains. I secured a regular swimming program arranged with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and every Friday morning I accompanied fifty students, and I would frequently take them to cultural events throughout the City on weekends.
Firsthand during these years of the civil rights movement, I witnessed the intelligence, energy, and many talents of youth being wasted for lack of healthy direction, adult mentoring, and racial prejudice, hence, political and social inequities. Having been a student at the Minnesota Outward Bound School in 1970 at the age of 26, I gained confidence in the convictions I held about each person’s right to seek self worth and how important is was to have a consciously examined set of values from which to act.
1971-1978: North Carolina Outward Bound School, Morganton, North Carolina: Program Specialist and Program Director
Under the directorships of Dan Meyer and John Huie I participated during the school’s formative years offering wilderness adventure courses as a vehicle for participants to discover their potential and affirm their strengths in area of personal growth, social interaction, and to learn skills to anticipate and process future life challenges. My responsibilities included training, supervising, and evaluation of instructional staff, designing itineraries, writing policies and overseeing the risk management and well-being of participants and staff, coordinating the logistics of support services and supervising technical rock climbing sites. As part of our ethic I served as a firefighting and search and rescue volunteer in the regional area, and co-instructed seminars teaching high angle rescue and evacuation techniques to volunteer rescue squads in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. There were many “firsts” in these years: I was part of creating the new base camp at Green Cove, North Carolina and developing the new course area in the Everglades, Florida; I was the primary author of The Instructor’s Handbook, 1973 (which received international recognition in the Outward Bound network); author of The Trail Foods Planner, 1974; and primary complier and editor of The Book of Readings, 1978; I served on a three-member team conducting the first National Safety Peer Review Committee for the U.S. Outward Bound Schools in Colorado, 1972; and established the groundwork with the Foxfire Program in Georgia for appropriate cultural exchanges between Outward Bound participants and the Southern Highlanders.
These years gave me profound understanding for the effectiveness and the ability to articulate the tenets and concepts of experience-based education. Whether our students were boys and girls 14-16 years of age, young adults, women over 30, corporate managers, adjudicated youth, adults in the helping professions, the applicability of this educational process promised amazing impact when employed appropriately and sensitively for each individual student. What I am most proud of is when Dan Meyer, my personal friend, mentor, and hero, said he believes it was my contribution that prompted the then president of Outward Bound in the United States, Hank Taft, to write, “There is an unobtrusive, human-scale caring at your school which represents the best aspects of Outward Bound”. I am also proud of the substantially expanded and assured implementation of the service component in standard courses by placing emphasis on people-oriented exchanges in addition to preserving the environmentally-oriented projects. Students visiting the local geriatric hospital; hosting people with hearing impairments, mental disabilities, and prisoners at our base camp; and constructing ropes courses for local Head Start programs are some examples.
1978-August 2006: The Athenian School, Danville, California: Member of the Faculty-Director of several Co-Curricula Programs, two of which are graduate requirements: Athenian Wilderness Experience (AWE) and Community Service
This independent middle and preparatory high school with an upper school enrollment of 290 day and boarding students was inspired by Kurt Hahn, who presented the opening address at the school’s inception in 1965. Its philosophy rest on five pillars to which over 50 other international schools (Round Square Conference) subscribe: International and Multicultural Understanding, Education for Democracy, Community Service, Outdoor Adventure, and Environmental Conservation. Annually, each Round Square school offers student and faculty exchanges, international service projects, and alternates hosting conferences. I was the director of AWE from 1978-2006, a 25-26-day course set in Death Valley and the High Sierra, modeled after the traditional Outward Bound program. It differs significantly in two ways: the students know each other and it is a graduation requirement. Therefore, the expectation is that the experience will be individualized for each Athenian. My responsibilities included hiring, orienting, evaluating instructional and support staff; preparing and managing program budget;, designing program components; securing permits and arranging service projects with wilderness area management agencies; field supervision of course operations; preparing and conducting follow-up evaluations of students. Every 4-5 years AWE is reviewed for safety. Reviewers have been former Outward Bound School Directors, Safety Specialists, and the National Outdoor Leadership School Director of Risk Management (Bob Box, Drew Leemon, Victor Walsh, Joe Nold, and Ian Wade): all reviewers conclude that AWE ranks among the best programs of its kind with an exceptional safety record, risk management systems, and remarkable effectiveness in meeting its educational objectives. I speak to my students about “5Rs”: no matter the context-whether inner city, wilderness, or rural-I oblige them to focus on their relationships (not only with other persons known, but with those unmet, and with environment and tools), respect (for everyone and everything), reverence for all life, responsibilities for words spoken and actions taken, and responsibilities for words unspoken and actions not taken.
In the 1980s I was asked to make our Community Service program a graduation requirement and was its Director for three years. After expanding contact with the Oakland-Berkeley area and the social services of Contra Costa and San Francisco Counties, I initiated the school’s recycling program. Skiing and camping with visually –impaired children and war veterans, manual work with low-income housing agencies, serving in food missions, volunteering at local shelters, and securing items and funds for refugees abroad are some examples. Emphasis was placed on processing the interactions between the different populations and holding accomplishment of tasks to high standards.
I am most grateful for the opportunities to develop ideals into curricula at Athenian. Eleanor Dase, the extraordinary Head, in 2003 said, “AWE has become the heart and soul of The Athenian School”. In 2006, AWE was endowed.
Below are other selected opportunities for educational leadership which I have enjoyed:
1973-present: I have been a frequent presenter at international, national, and regional conferences for the Association for Experiential Education (and served on its Board of Directors as Representative of the Schools and Colleges Professional Group [1996-1999], steering committees, and reviewer of workshop presentations), California Association of Independent Schools [1985-1986], and the Women’s Outdoor Leadership Conferences [1996, 1998, 1999]; I have attended four Wilderness Risk Management Conferences, and
1981-1984:
I was a volunteer instructor for children at two primary public schools in Berkeley, California for the Youth Alcohol Education Program [1981]; I was part of a team that researched and analyzed data for a Vehicular Accident Prevention Program, Pittsburg, California [1983]; I designed and conducted a comparative cross program evaluation of teen clinics which was used as a basis for significant budget and program changes for the Department of Public Health of Contra Costa County, Concord and Richmond, California, called Teen Age Program (TAP) [1983-1984]; and I designed and implemented a three part outdoor adventure program for youth-at-risk seeking psychological guidance at the Horizon Center, Martinez, California [1983-1984]
1993-2000:
I presented at the German Round Square Schools: Stiftung Louisenlund [1993] and Birklehof [1993, 1999]; and consulted and co-instructed for the Scandinavian expedition above the Arctic Circle for Stiftung Louisenlund [1995]
1978-2006:
My work has been frequently recognized in the San Francisco Bay media for bringing wilderness experiences to youth that focuses on character development; most recently, it was cited in the literature of the field of innovative education, Lambert, L. (2003), Leadership for Lasting School Improvement, Alexandria, Virginia, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
The personal endeavors that have and continue to sustain my spirit involve time spent with my family; time centered on the fine arts- examining the history of art, visiting exhibits, painting, sketching, and doing calligraphy; reading-especially all the works that went “on hold” while I was in the field!; time spent technically rock climbing or ballroom dancing with friends; and time to just smile and be.
My favorite reading adapted from Bob Pieh:
Be tough, yet gentle
Humble, but bold,
Swayed always by [compassion] and beauty and truth.
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