Sarah told us some background information about EMS and the vision and questions she had for a school that included K-8; especially, what happens in urban environments when cross-neighborhood connections are made.
Sarah also spoke about styles of communication and her hope that we would engage in open, honest, non-fearful and non-angry communication.
Site Council and the committees that support their mission to improve the function of the school were plugged again as being the last Monday of the month that school is in session and the reason they start at 3:30, which is to make it easier for teachers to be involved in the conversation.
Teaching teams for K-2, 3-5 and 6-8 meet once a week and Parent Coordinators will start meeting once a month. These groups are also involved in making the school community and curriculum more cohesive.
Parents presented some points for discussion. Sarah led discussion. Many points are under discussion in Site Council Committees or are part of already planned Forums for January.
Points for Discussion (What was discussed)
· Storyline (We are working on bringing in a district specialist to give presentations to the parents about it and instructing teachers on its use. Right now, it appears that the stories aren’t moving fast enough and there is talk of having a middle school teacher more familiar with Storyline coming down to mentor the new teachers. Storyline works with open-ended assignments.)
· Possibilities for blending K-2 classes to even out class sizes next year. (Possibilities include K-1 and 1-2 blends as well as a hopeful idea to blend part day kindergarten with the CRD kindergarten for a full immersion program. Blending classes can balance for gender, age and personality. Storyline works well with this model because it teaches to the highest level without minimizing younger students. There will be more discussion on this in January – watch the Messenger.)
· Environmental Curriculum (Focusing mostly on the site monitoring and daily walk aspects of the program, Sarah talked about how we are trying to learn the neighborhood better to build a curriculum for K-5 program. As the students progress through the program, they will engage in more interactive activities with the outdoors, from simply walking to using tools on site monitoring trips – i.e. thermometers. Also, incorporating more opportunities for imaginative play at recess is being created – i.e. sandbox, bicycles and other toys.)
· Coping with Disparate Learning Curves – esp. keeping the brightest children from getting bored with school. (Advanced math students are bumped to advanced grade. Storyline is also supposed to take care of this, see Storyline.)
· River Fair – Getting the K-5 program more developed. (This is a matter of time. As the curriculum evolves the fair will have more to show for itself in the K-5 program.)
· Sign Language for all classes and ages. (CRD has funded a teacher and the schedules are currently being worked out so that all classes will have some time with her.)
· Visions for Kindergarten next year (Next year part of the kindergarten will be full day. Full day kindergarten must be paid for because the district only pays for half days. The remaining spaces will be half day. We cannot limit enrollment for the neighborhood students and we are planning to use better figures than were provided last year to determine how many full day kindergarten spots will be created.)
· Increasing inclusion of school by bringing CRD students and mainstream students together. (Covered in part with Visions for Kindergarten.)
· More information on the Middle School Buddy program. (This was apparently better organized at Abernathy and SES will eventually achieve the same success.)
· Goals for reducing class sizes (The district has a program called ADM(average daily minimums) for determining how many teachers a school has. This is not based on the age or grade of the student. Teacher funding is provided based on this average total enrollment divided by 30. The district also will not allow schools with low enrollment to remain open. The only way to create smaller ratios is to eliminate special teachers like music, librarians, counselors and physical education.)
· What happened with the Enrollment Committee (The district has asked that we wait an additional year and see how enrollment looks next year before we change anything. Families who live in the district boundaries for this school, in some strange way, have the same rights as "neighborhood" parents at approximately 5 surrounding schools including the usual suspects and Mt. Tabor.)
· Reading Curriculum (Maybe this is included with Storyline, but it was not discussed directly.)
· Lunching (The K-2 wing will be taking surveys and exploring options for the students to eat in the cafeteria instead of their classrooms.)
· Daily K-2 Assembly (Currently weekly. Stumbling point to daily assembly is room utilization. As we better organize space, this will happen.)
· Composting (Metro came to the kindergarten to talk about recycling and a lively conversation took place about Portland area recycling. The original question involved expanding curriculum to include activities and sites already on campus.)
· Safety (This came up during the Environmental Curriculum discussion, however it deserved its own spot. It has been decided that if trips are going near open water, the safety gear taken on the trip will include the usual first aid kit and cell phone as well as a ring toss and life jackets. There is a safety committee and they are working on this.)
· Earth Day (Like Safety, this was discussed during the curriculum and I decided to give it its own bullet point. April 23 City Works will be here and will be hosting a Building Emergence Conference)
Meeting occurred:
December 14, 2004 6-8 pm in Library
Minutes prepared by Heather Lee
December 16, 2004
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Comunicate, Cubed
To our Parent Coordinators, Webmasters, Newsletter Editors, Communication Committee Members, and all those who receive this as a forward because someone thought they could help or because I just didn’t know who they were:
(If you receive this as a forward, please send me an intro email about you and what you do. One thing I am trying to do is compile an idea of who does what and where and who)
First, I want to apologize to everyone for how hurried this is. I especially want to apologize to any coordinators who heard about this the first time at a meeting or in the newsletter. It was not my intention to move forward without you, it was only my intention to get the idea in the subconscious of the school before the holidays.
I am afraid this hardly counts as an email anymore, so I am also sending it as an attachment in Word so it is more easily read. My goal is to give everyone some ideas to chew on over the holidays so that we aren’t surprising anyone after we get back. I have to say that while I am willing to help with any nagging questions this information might raise and gather excellent ideas to compile into meeting notes and agenda points, mostly I am hoping to let it rest and start the conversation in January. Any problem that need solving have not already been addressed by the school aren’t going to be handled by us over Christmas holiday anyway – so enjoy and don’t worry. I promise the conversation we are starting it isn’t as complicated or as long as it appears -but because I want to be clear and I want to be done please forgive any repetitiveness, over explanations and editing errors that may be in this document.
As you are aware many vectors for communication were set up at the beginning of the school year but given the reality that we are creating these from scratch, those vectors were not set in motion with as much planning and forethought as they might have been. To be honest, we likely didn’t have any idea how they might best fulfill the needs of our new community. Now, hopefully, we have settled in a bit and can come together and talk about how we are doing on our own, share our successes, keep each other from repeating our failures and work out how to make everyone really feel like a stakeholder.
The first and main order of business is to work more with our room/grade coordinators.
My exceedingly informal surveys have told me that most of us have some system for facilitating communication between the teacher and the parent. I would like to see us take on a slightly larger role and expand that communicate to include other decision-making bodies at the school. I think that if we can share information in more personal ways we can not only increase awareness of that information but also enhance the community building that we are all so eager to partake of.
Sarah has agreed to create some time for all of the parent coordinators to meet with her once a month. The purpose of these meetings is to discuss how the communication is working and to discuss parent concerns that do not pertain to some already formed committee. I realize these meetings are likely to happen during school hours and I would like to see us supporting each other in a way that even if we cannot attend a meeting our ideas and needs can be presented on our behalf. In that way, I would like to see us setting the example for the entire community that physical attendance is not a hindrance to effective communication.
Let me present an example of how I see us working together. I would like you to consider how closely this follows what actually happens in a more random and round about way right now and imagine the possibilities if we knew it was not only acceptable but expected that we worked in this way.
This is an actual example. The k-2 wing is facilitating a discussion about the current lunch model in that wing. A survey on satisfaction with current methods and suggestions for alternate ideas needs to be directed to those parents of k-2 children that are most affected by this change. Those parents also need someone in their class, someone they can identify in the hall preferably, to say they want to write that survey or compile that information or explore the benefits and detractions for all possible lunching options. That person ought to know there is a discussion happening about lunching. (I want to say here that I am a parent coordinator and I have heard vague conversation that people are upset about the way the lunches are going and it took me completely by surprise that so many people seem to have an opinion on it when we started discussing it at the k-2 meeting with Sarah.) Now, if parents know they can come to their coordinators with their concerns, the coordinators can ask each other if they are hearing anything about, in this case, lunching. If it does seem to be the case an interested parent can be located to coordinate the survey and options. At this point, I think a short two-sentence announcement in the newsletter asking for input on where k-2 students eat lunch and a person to contact is appropriate. Then that information can be brought to Sarah about how the parents as a whole feel about the lunching in the k-2 wing. At that point Sarah can help us make the changes that will improve the lunching situation. I think this will not only utilize her time more effectively, but it will free up time for her to deal with different needs.
This model is scalable. It will work if there is a concern pertinent only to one grade/classroom and it will work if there is a concern of interest to the entire school. This model ask only that the parents be informed that the room coordinator they already know is someone that has access to information and has a way to coordinate information to see that something actually happens. This model only asks of room parents that they speak with each other and that have access to the information of what committees exist, what they do, and who their contact person is. The most difficult thing this model asks is that room parents take the concerns of their parents sincerely and sees that those parents achieve resolution, either by directing them to the person in charge of their area of concern or helping them set up a means of exploring that concern. I understand that this model involves a measure of sensitivity, but it is in no way to replace a parents right and responsibility to approach Sarah. If someone comes to you with something that is personal or involves harm in any way, please direct them to Sarah and stay out of it. Please don’t gossip, which involves sharing information with the intent to harm. And that is the end of the ethical training today.
(The rest of this mostly consists of me throwing some ideas around that will need group consensus – but I think they are still worth reading.)
It is my hope that effectively harnessing the abilities of multiple people to direct traffic will also clear other lines of communication. One of the more abused means of getting the word out is the Messenger. I know that Stephanie and Ginny work really hard to put all that information together, and I know I work really hard to try to read and digest all of it. Understand that I know that there are some announcements of concern to the whole school and I think it is vital they have the space to be seen. It is my opinion, however, that much of what should go in the Messenger (and doesn’t always make it) are references to information that is located in another place. However, I think the larger description of many activities is better directed to the stake holding parents themselves. Let me be clear that I absolutely believe in disclosure and transparency so that everyone knows what is going on.
For example, let me draw an example from last week’s newsletter. Reminders in the newsletter that the new minutes of site council are on the website with a link provided and notice that they have been added to the site council binder or posted on the bulletin board for committees is good. Publishing the site council minutes in the newsletter (which didn’t exactly happen) would just takes up a lot of space and makes it hard to get through all the information that is out there and available. Better to leave room for really big announcements regarding site council, like the place and time for a school forum on the class distribution of the k-2 wing and announcements that they are soliciting email and written information from parents who will not be able to attend with directions on where that information should go.
I realize that referencing the website is well and good, but the information has to be there first. We are coming to that. I am including the website coordinator in this communication because I want to touch base with everyone before we go on break so that come the first week of January no one is taken by surprise. Some things in the works regarding the website include getting natural note takers and potential transcribers to connect and make this information available. I am trying to gather a group of people who volunteer as transcribers. Note taking is usually happening at all meetings, but getting them typed and posted somewhere is another project entirely. I am hoping I can find some people with half an hour a month or so to help with this. I am going to need to work with Polly Birnbaum about how we can best get things like minutes from PTA and site council on the site. I know someone has also been working with her about getting a better calendaring system in place. If you know who that is, I would love for you forward this to them and get them in contact with me. If you know anyone who often attends meetings and is a compulsive writer please send them my way.
The other main stakeholders I want to include in this venture are some of the most important but they got tucked in here last because I need to listen to them more than I need to talk. They are the communications committee on the site council. I am also interested in including in less direct ways the other committees on site council, since they are concerned with how to communicate with the larger school and I would also like to include the secretaries and curriculum teams.
If any of you think of someone who really needs to be a part of this conversation, please forward this to them and send me something back about then so that they can be included. If I forget someone obvious or even someone I have mentioned in the email, please forgive me - it was not intentional.
The communications committee on the site council is working on getting mailing lists through the district to work. I applaud their effort, as I have never heard much good about peoplesoft. At this time I am not setting up a mailing list for the coordinators and other people related to communication but if we decide we need or would like a space to hold more regular and open-ended conversations it is always a possibility. I have my own server to run a list from. This is another reason to let me know who might be important in getting synaptic connections firing - so I can add them to the list.
Have a good holiday and I will find you after we get back in January.
(If you receive this as a forward, please send me an intro email about you and what you do. One thing I am trying to do is compile an idea of who does what and where and who)
First, I want to apologize to everyone for how hurried this is. I especially want to apologize to any coordinators who heard about this the first time at a meeting or in the newsletter. It was not my intention to move forward without you, it was only my intention to get the idea in the subconscious of the school before the holidays.
I am afraid this hardly counts as an email anymore, so I am also sending it as an attachment in Word so it is more easily read. My goal is to give everyone some ideas to chew on over the holidays so that we aren’t surprising anyone after we get back. I have to say that while I am willing to help with any nagging questions this information might raise and gather excellent ideas to compile into meeting notes and agenda points, mostly I am hoping to let it rest and start the conversation in January. Any problem that need solving have not already been addressed by the school aren’t going to be handled by us over Christmas holiday anyway – so enjoy and don’t worry. I promise the conversation we are starting it isn’t as complicated or as long as it appears -but because I want to be clear and I want to be done please forgive any repetitiveness, over explanations and editing errors that may be in this document.
As you are aware many vectors for communication were set up at the beginning of the school year but given the reality that we are creating these from scratch, those vectors were not set in motion with as much planning and forethought as they might have been. To be honest, we likely didn’t have any idea how they might best fulfill the needs of our new community. Now, hopefully, we have settled in a bit and can come together and talk about how we are doing on our own, share our successes, keep each other from repeating our failures and work out how to make everyone really feel like a stakeholder.
The first and main order of business is to work more with our room/grade coordinators.
My exceedingly informal surveys have told me that most of us have some system for facilitating communication between the teacher and the parent. I would like to see us take on a slightly larger role and expand that communicate to include other decision-making bodies at the school. I think that if we can share information in more personal ways we can not only increase awareness of that information but also enhance the community building that we are all so eager to partake of.
Sarah has agreed to create some time for all of the parent coordinators to meet with her once a month. The purpose of these meetings is to discuss how the communication is working and to discuss parent concerns that do not pertain to some already formed committee. I realize these meetings are likely to happen during school hours and I would like to see us supporting each other in a way that even if we cannot attend a meeting our ideas and needs can be presented on our behalf. In that way, I would like to see us setting the example for the entire community that physical attendance is not a hindrance to effective communication.
Let me present an example of how I see us working together. I would like you to consider how closely this follows what actually happens in a more random and round about way right now and imagine the possibilities if we knew it was not only acceptable but expected that we worked in this way.
This is an actual example. The k-2 wing is facilitating a discussion about the current lunch model in that wing. A survey on satisfaction with current methods and suggestions for alternate ideas needs to be directed to those parents of k-2 children that are most affected by this change. Those parents also need someone in their class, someone they can identify in the hall preferably, to say they want to write that survey or compile that information or explore the benefits and detractions for all possible lunching options. That person ought to know there is a discussion happening about lunching. (I want to say here that I am a parent coordinator and I have heard vague conversation that people are upset about the way the lunches are going and it took me completely by surprise that so many people seem to have an opinion on it when we started discussing it at the k-2 meeting with Sarah.) Now, if parents know they can come to their coordinators with their concerns, the coordinators can ask each other if they are hearing anything about, in this case, lunching. If it does seem to be the case an interested parent can be located to coordinate the survey and options. At this point, I think a short two-sentence announcement in the newsletter asking for input on where k-2 students eat lunch and a person to contact is appropriate. Then that information can be brought to Sarah about how the parents as a whole feel about the lunching in the k-2 wing. At that point Sarah can help us make the changes that will improve the lunching situation. I think this will not only utilize her time more effectively, but it will free up time for her to deal with different needs.
This model is scalable. It will work if there is a concern pertinent only to one grade/classroom and it will work if there is a concern of interest to the entire school. This model ask only that the parents be informed that the room coordinator they already know is someone that has access to information and has a way to coordinate information to see that something actually happens. This model only asks of room parents that they speak with each other and that have access to the information of what committees exist, what they do, and who their contact person is. The most difficult thing this model asks is that room parents take the concerns of their parents sincerely and sees that those parents achieve resolution, either by directing them to the person in charge of their area of concern or helping them set up a means of exploring that concern. I understand that this model involves a measure of sensitivity, but it is in no way to replace a parents right and responsibility to approach Sarah. If someone comes to you with something that is personal or involves harm in any way, please direct them to Sarah and stay out of it. Please don’t gossip, which involves sharing information with the intent to harm. And that is the end of the ethical training today.
(The rest of this mostly consists of me throwing some ideas around that will need group consensus – but I think they are still worth reading.)
It is my hope that effectively harnessing the abilities of multiple people to direct traffic will also clear other lines of communication. One of the more abused means of getting the word out is the Messenger. I know that Stephanie and Ginny work really hard to put all that information together, and I know I work really hard to try to read and digest all of it. Understand that I know that there are some announcements of concern to the whole school and I think it is vital they have the space to be seen. It is my opinion, however, that much of what should go in the Messenger (and doesn’t always make it) are references to information that is located in another place. However, I think the larger description of many activities is better directed to the stake holding parents themselves. Let me be clear that I absolutely believe in disclosure and transparency so that everyone knows what is going on.
For example, let me draw an example from last week’s newsletter. Reminders in the newsletter that the new minutes of site council are on the website with a link provided and notice that they have been added to the site council binder or posted on the bulletin board for committees is good. Publishing the site council minutes in the newsletter (which didn’t exactly happen) would just takes up a lot of space and makes it hard to get through all the information that is out there and available. Better to leave room for really big announcements regarding site council, like the place and time for a school forum on the class distribution of the k-2 wing and announcements that they are soliciting email and written information from parents who will not be able to attend with directions on where that information should go.
I realize that referencing the website is well and good, but the information has to be there first. We are coming to that. I am including the website coordinator in this communication because I want to touch base with everyone before we go on break so that come the first week of January no one is taken by surprise. Some things in the works regarding the website include getting natural note takers and potential transcribers to connect and make this information available. I am trying to gather a group of people who volunteer as transcribers. Note taking is usually happening at all meetings, but getting them typed and posted somewhere is another project entirely. I am hoping I can find some people with half an hour a month or so to help with this. I am going to need to work with Polly Birnbaum about how we can best get things like minutes from PTA and site council on the site. I know someone has also been working with her about getting a better calendaring system in place. If you know who that is, I would love for you forward this to them and get them in contact with me. If you know anyone who often attends meetings and is a compulsive writer please send them my way.
The other main stakeholders I want to include in this venture are some of the most important but they got tucked in here last because I need to listen to them more than I need to talk. They are the communications committee on the site council. I am also interested in including in less direct ways the other committees on site council, since they are concerned with how to communicate with the larger school and I would also like to include the secretaries and curriculum teams.
If any of you think of someone who really needs to be a part of this conversation, please forward this to them and send me something back about then so that they can be included. If I forget someone obvious or even someone I have mentioned in the email, please forgive me - it was not intentional.
The communications committee on the site council is working on getting mailing lists through the district to work. I applaud their effort, as I have never heard much good about peoplesoft. At this time I am not setting up a mailing list for the coordinators and other people related to communication but if we decide we need or would like a space to hold more regular and open-ended conversations it is always a possibility. I have my own server to run a list from. This is another reason to let me know who might be important in getting synaptic connections firing - so I can add them to the list.
Have a good holiday and I will find you after we get back in January.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Improving Communications
It has been half a school year already and we have been taking stock of how things are going. One area we can certainly improve is how we are utilizing the communication systems already in place. Look for these good changes in the New Year.
Room Parents Unite to Better Inform Community
If you have a request, question, suggestion or anything else, these will be the people to ask first. If they can’t direct you where you need to go, they can find out and let you know. Also, starting in January, these parents will have an opportunity to meet monthly with Sarah to share how this system is working. Be nice to your room parents, they are communication liaisons, not decision makers, and I hope we can view them as impartial vectors for information.
WE NEED two or three parents of middle school students to be these room parents for the middle school. Please don’t add too much to your plate. Mostly these positions require an email address to direct communications to/from, the desire if not ability to attend most of the monthly meetings with Sarah and to be occasionally available to parents on campus.
Desperately Seeking Secretaries
Second, the website is another source of underutilized communication. Look soon for committee meeting minutes and contact information as well as the school calendar on the website.
WE NEED a cadre of note takers and transcribers to help make this happen. You don’t need to join a committee; you just need to be a parent who compulsively takes notes at meetings of interest to you. We also need people who have an occasional half an hour to turn a pile of these notes into readable minutes and newsletter/website articles. This is the perfect opportunity for parents who can’t be on campus to volunteer.
Student Voices Need Expression
Third, all this work is for nothing if we do not teach our children the importance of communication. Creating our stories is something that can bring us together even faster and more profoundly than simply attending the same school. As well as hearing their voice about the experience of environmental education we can encourage cross-generational teaching.
WE NEED some parents and/or staff that can help coordinate the students in creating their own student page of the website and possible student newspaper. This should be a K-8 experience where the older students can help the younger with the writing. This should be their place at the table and they should be encouraged to work out the details themselves.
If you want to talk about any of these topics in greater detail, please contact Heather Lee. I am the coordinator for the Room Parents and for the Secretary Pool. I really wanted to work on the newspaper, but I was the worst reporter on staff for my high school newspaper. The articles are still an embarrassment to me today.
Room Parents Unite to Better Inform Community
If you have a request, question, suggestion or anything else, these will be the people to ask first. If they can’t direct you where you need to go, they can find out and let you know. Also, starting in January, these parents will have an opportunity to meet monthly with Sarah to share how this system is working. Be nice to your room parents, they are communication liaisons, not decision makers, and I hope we can view them as impartial vectors for information.
WE NEED two or three parents of middle school students to be these room parents for the middle school. Please don’t add too much to your plate. Mostly these positions require an email address to direct communications to/from, the desire if not ability to attend most of the monthly meetings with Sarah and to be occasionally available to parents on campus.
Desperately Seeking Secretaries
Second, the website is another source of underutilized communication. Look soon for committee meeting minutes and contact information as well as the school calendar on the website.
WE NEED a cadre of note takers and transcribers to help make this happen. You don’t need to join a committee; you just need to be a parent who compulsively takes notes at meetings of interest to you. We also need people who have an occasional half an hour to turn a pile of these notes into readable minutes and newsletter/website articles. This is the perfect opportunity for parents who can’t be on campus to volunteer.
Student Voices Need Expression
Third, all this work is for nothing if we do not teach our children the importance of communication. Creating our stories is something that can bring us together even faster and more profoundly than simply attending the same school. As well as hearing their voice about the experience of environmental education we can encourage cross-generational teaching.
WE NEED some parents and/or staff that can help coordinate the students in creating their own student page of the website and possible student newspaper. This should be a K-8 experience where the older students can help the younger with the writing. This should be their place at the table and they should be encouraged to work out the details themselves.
If you want to talk about any of these topics in greater detail, please contact Heather Lee. I am the coordinator for the Room Parents and for the Secretary Pool. I really wanted to work on the newspaper, but I was the worst reporter on staff for my high school newspaper. The articles are still an embarrassment to me today.
Monday, December 6, 2004
How Will they Know
“Everything your church needs to be what God wants it to be is already in your midst. Open your eyes to the people around you. Stop wishing and hoping, and do the best you can, with what you’ve got, for Jesus Christ today.” Rick Warren, in The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball.
I have been thinking about this powerful quotation for the last month while doing research for our evangelism committee. And the conclusion I have reached is somehow both remarkable and obvious. “Open your eyes to the people around you.” There are certainly a lot of people around. Our building is surprisingly full of people all the time, if we are only willing and able to see them as part of our church.
How do we really feel about having the many groups and communities using the building? Do we see them as purely a source of income? Do we even see them as potential Christians? Do we see them as members of our community, just they way they are? I keep running into the idea that early Christian communities contained both the initiated and the uninitiated. (One source of this was a quote from Bishop Itty’s address at the Convention.) How we see ourselves, especially where we draw the line demarcating ‘other’ will have a lot to do with how we present ourselves to the groups in the building and how we present ourselves to strangers who come through the door.
We need to take some time to think about our attitudes towards the people who meet in this building. They have a right and responsibility to the building and my perception is that they would love to have an invitation as well. We might want to think about opening the boundaries with regards to the building- who has permission to use it and even who has permission to be on the committees about the building. And lastly I suppose who has the responsibility to provide care and money and maintenance on the building.
Dan Kimball had something else important to show me. While teaching a class on Acts he said to his students, “The church is the people of God who gather together with a sense of mission (Acts 14:27). We can’t go to church because we are the church.” Our little group of parishioners is the church at St. David’s and no matter how much we love this building, it isn’t the church, we are. We don’t need this parish beyond its ability to provide comfort and safety for all the people who use it. We don’t need this property beyond its ability to give us space to focus and feed our mission – to witness to the love of God and to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.
We need to re-imagine ourselves in relation to this building. Semantics are powerful. Calling the groups who meet here outsiders denies them the right to be here. And it keeps them separate from the church, separate from us and ultimately, separate from God. If we see them as tenants, how will we ever imagine them as members of the body of Christ, how will they ever imagine that our God is the God of Unconditional Love. Every community that uses this building is contributing to the lifting up of the broken and hurting world. Every individual who meets here for any reason is searching for God’s love and worthy of joining our family.
I have been thinking about this powerful quotation for the last month while doing research for our evangelism committee. And the conclusion I have reached is somehow both remarkable and obvious. “Open your eyes to the people around you.” There are certainly a lot of people around. Our building is surprisingly full of people all the time, if we are only willing and able to see them as part of our church.
How do we really feel about having the many groups and communities using the building? Do we see them as purely a source of income? Do we even see them as potential Christians? Do we see them as members of our community, just they way they are? I keep running into the idea that early Christian communities contained both the initiated and the uninitiated. (One source of this was a quote from Bishop Itty’s address at the Convention.) How we see ourselves, especially where we draw the line demarcating ‘other’ will have a lot to do with how we present ourselves to the groups in the building and how we present ourselves to strangers who come through the door.
We need to take some time to think about our attitudes towards the people who meet in this building. They have a right and responsibility to the building and my perception is that they would love to have an invitation as well. We might want to think about opening the boundaries with regards to the building- who has permission to use it and even who has permission to be on the committees about the building. And lastly I suppose who has the responsibility to provide care and money and maintenance on the building.
Dan Kimball had something else important to show me. While teaching a class on Acts he said to his students, “The church is the people of God who gather together with a sense of mission (Acts 14:27). We can’t go to church because we are the church.” Our little group of parishioners is the church at St. David’s and no matter how much we love this building, it isn’t the church, we are. We don’t need this parish beyond its ability to provide comfort and safety for all the people who use it. We don’t need this property beyond its ability to give us space to focus and feed our mission – to witness to the love of God and to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.
We need to re-imagine ourselves in relation to this building. Semantics are powerful. Calling the groups who meet here outsiders denies them the right to be here. And it keeps them separate from the church, separate from us and ultimately, separate from God. If we see them as tenants, how will we ever imagine them as members of the body of Christ, how will they ever imagine that our God is the God of Unconditional Love. Every community that uses this building is contributing to the lifting up of the broken and hurting world. Every individual who meets here for any reason is searching for God’s love and worthy of joining our family.
SES
Mission Statement
· Incorporate members of the greater Portland area into our community via the Sunnyside Environmental School.
· Insure that the community commitment to environmentalism is passed on to our youngest community members.
· Environmentalism involves more than planting trees and recycling. It involves social justice and community integrity. With these things, the dignity of all the earth shall be provided for.
Articles of Achievement (Goals)
· Generate curriculum for K-5 entails a high level of academic achievement in the ‘three R’s.’ People who are well spoken, well read, and able to research using all available methods are more likely to be effective leaders and community members.
· Maintain and Support the proven 6-8 curricula.
· Use the vehicle of service learning to ensure that high standards of civic responsibility to environmental causes are passed to the next generation.
· Support the ethical education provided by parents in ways that enable all students to participate fully in the community. This includes maintaining the highest examples of dignity, respect and inclusiveness for all members of the community.
Demographic Target
· This list is for parents who live in the district boundaries for Sunnyside School. It is also and more importantly for people who are committed to the kind of environmentalism and community involvement that we have been creating and sustaining in this area of Portland since before I moved here 10 years ago. That said it is important to state here that part of our beliefs about environmentalism and community are that the neighborhood parents are extremely important to our cause of e&c (environmentalism and community) because they are the interface of the school with the community at large.
· Important Note: We need to co-opt the word community. We are no longer neighborhood parents; we are community parents. Practice this in the mirror because it is the most important thing we can do to ensure that the community, which involves parents and children as well as businesses and home owners will have a stake in building a school that reflects who we are. Words have more power than you can realize.
Order of Business
· We need to identify committees in existence already that need our support. We need to commit one person from this list to each of these committees. That person will be responsible to generate summaries of the proceedings for the list to enable all of us to keep informed.
· We are going to need to generate recommendations and documentation on curricula for K-5 that conforms to our long-term goals. We will need to find teachers and possible district employees to support our work on this.
· Incorporate members of the greater Portland area into our community via the Sunnyside Environmental School.
· Insure that the community commitment to environmentalism is passed on to our youngest community members.
· Environmentalism involves more than planting trees and recycling. It involves social justice and community integrity. With these things, the dignity of all the earth shall be provided for.
Articles of Achievement (Goals)
· Generate curriculum for K-5 entails a high level of academic achievement in the ‘three R’s.’ People who are well spoken, well read, and able to research using all available methods are more likely to be effective leaders and community members.
· Maintain and Support the proven 6-8 curricula.
· Use the vehicle of service learning to ensure that high standards of civic responsibility to environmental causes are passed to the next generation.
· Support the ethical education provided by parents in ways that enable all students to participate fully in the community. This includes maintaining the highest examples of dignity, respect and inclusiveness for all members of the community.
Demographic Target
· This list is for parents who live in the district boundaries for Sunnyside School. It is also and more importantly for people who are committed to the kind of environmentalism and community involvement that we have been creating and sustaining in this area of Portland since before I moved here 10 years ago. That said it is important to state here that part of our beliefs about environmentalism and community are that the neighborhood parents are extremely important to our cause of e&c (environmentalism and community) because they are the interface of the school with the community at large.
· Important Note: We need to co-opt the word community. We are no longer neighborhood parents; we are community parents. Practice this in the mirror because it is the most important thing we can do to ensure that the community, which involves parents and children as well as businesses and home owners will have a stake in building a school that reflects who we are. Words have more power than you can realize.
Order of Business
· We need to identify committees in existence already that need our support. We need to commit one person from this list to each of these committees. That person will be responsible to generate summaries of the proceedings for the list to enable all of us to keep informed.
· We are going to need to generate recommendations and documentation on curricula for K-5 that conforms to our long-term goals. We will need to find teachers and possible district employees to support our work on this.
Thursday, November 4, 2004
Why do you come to church?
As we find ourselves approaching the start of the church year again, it is time for us to think about the answer to this simple question. Why do you come to church? Is it habit? Is it to see old friends? Or is it to recharge your batteries? Is it to engage in the mysteries?
There are a lot of good and comfortable reasons to come to church but are they what Christ left us to do? The formation of the early church was not so that Christians could congregate with Christians without the interference of non-Christians. It wasn’t to form a social club for the enlightened. It wasn’t even to form an organization to coordinate charities.
Jesus left us with two commandments and one commission. Love God. Love your neighbor. Spread the Good News. That’s it. And figuring out what that means and how to execute it is the work of the church. That is what we need to do. Every day. This should be the standard of our actions, as individuals and as a church. Our parish is conveniently assigned a little chunk of real estate in the world to figure out how to do these things for the people who live here.
So who does live here? We can study demographic data. We can look for the local standard of beauty and spread it around our building. We can read books and we can put up flyers. As long as we are focused on who and what we are missing the point. Before we wonder what to do and even who to do it to, we need to know why we do the thing we do.
The Holy Spirit brings people through the uninviting architecture of our front doors with surprising regularity. We need to be cognizant to why they are coming. People no longer come to church to find a social club or a charitable organization to contribute to. These things are available to an information age at the click of a button. People come to church because they are looking for God. And people come to church despite the fact that Christians have a bad reputation for being exclusive and narrow-minded.
It is not our numbers that will wow them; it is our faith. I know that we have a very faithful community and we need to be less afraid to speak of it. We love God. We love each other. With joy and with passion we must not be afraid to spread the Good News.
There are a lot of good and comfortable reasons to come to church but are they what Christ left us to do? The formation of the early church was not so that Christians could congregate with Christians without the interference of non-Christians. It wasn’t to form a social club for the enlightened. It wasn’t even to form an organization to coordinate charities.
Jesus left us with two commandments and one commission. Love God. Love your neighbor. Spread the Good News. That’s it. And figuring out what that means and how to execute it is the work of the church. That is what we need to do. Every day. This should be the standard of our actions, as individuals and as a church. Our parish is conveniently assigned a little chunk of real estate in the world to figure out how to do these things for the people who live here.
So who does live here? We can study demographic data. We can look for the local standard of beauty and spread it around our building. We can read books and we can put up flyers. As long as we are focused on who and what we are missing the point. Before we wonder what to do and even who to do it to, we need to know why we do the thing we do.
The Holy Spirit brings people through the uninviting architecture of our front doors with surprising regularity. We need to be cognizant to why they are coming. People no longer come to church to find a social club or a charitable organization to contribute to. These things are available to an information age at the click of a button. People come to church because they are looking for God. And people come to church despite the fact that Christians have a bad reputation for being exclusive and narrow-minded.
It is not our numbers that will wow them; it is our faith. I know that we have a very faithful community and we need to be less afraid to speak of it. We love God. We love each other. With joy and with passion we must not be afraid to spread the Good News.
Friday, January 23, 2004
So it really does take a village
I found out something really interesting yesterday about behavioral genetics. Apparently, 40-50% of our behavioral traits come from our DNA, graciously speaking, maybe 10%(more like 0) come from our parents interaction with us, and the other 50% come from our environment(read peer group). This makes for some very interesting conclusions about parenting...
Note to Reader: I just finished reading Stephen Pinker's book, The Blank Slate, and while I picked it up because I have a degree in philosophy and I actually know what the Blank Slate is, I actually got more interested in the parts about behavioral genetics. Principally, the part about children. If you want to check my sources, i.e. Pinker, don't embarass yourself by only reading the chapter on children because the first two-thirds of the book are an analysis of the metaphysical underpinings of our gut reactions and social beliefs about how the world works. Or more specifically, how science cannot be made to support them and that they are wrong. And if you want something readable about the aforementioned three laws, The Nurturing Assimption by Judith Rich Harris apparently lays them out nicely(I don't know, I haven't read the book yet). Therefore...
The first thing these three laws tell us is that half of everything right or wrong about our own children, we have no control over. I mean, if you really thought you were genetically unsuited to have children, you wouldn't have, and even if you did, we are all so genetically similar that the variance between me and you is negligible anyway. Just remember, the difference between a business man and a criminal is just your interpretation. Both are smooth talking, cut throat and morally ambiguous about ownership. The difference is one has been suckered into paying taxes and the other isn't allowed.
So what does make the difference? Your peer group. Who you grew up with, what role you played in that group and the vagaries of chance that put you in that place at that time.
Does this imply that we ought to have state run child concentration camps? Hardly. The truth of the matter is that nepotism is a universal human trait, and that we are all better suited to taking care of our own children because it serves our own best interest. If anything, the state wouldn't be able to take care of a bunch of babies any better than Angelica because it would have no self interest. But states are good for making sure, hopefully, that nepotism doesn't interfere with the overall good of human societies. (Bushes not withstanding-truth justice and the american way does make for a better society than monarchy and familial promotion)
In fact, what this does imply, is that our society as a whole is responsible for the sorts of individuals it creates. I may not be 'responsible' for how my individual child turns out, but I am certainly responsible for how any child turns out, especially within the peer groups under my supervision. If, because of my complacency about how peer groups affect children, I believe that I am single handedly responsible for my own child, then I do not believe that I have the authority to insist that society and it's entities take responisbility for how they affect children.
For example...
I won't get into an argument about artisitic free speech, but I will point out an ad campaign that Pinker refers too. Everyone has seen those ads of a hip young thing talking sincerely into a camera telling her parents that she remembers their words about smoking even when they are not there. May I never grow so old I don't remember what it was like when I was a teenager. This is my parenting mantra, and that ad has always sounded like tripe to me. But Pinker points out that it is in the best interest of companies, like tobacco and alcohol, for us to believe that we are individually responsible for our own children. It is a diversionary tactic that allows them to market to children and young adults in their own peer related culture without parental interference.
Now, everyone has their own take on marketing to children, and it has recently become a sin, but given this information on how people actually grow up, my response should be to effect change in either the peer group or the companies. Since I am not adverse to marketing, my own take is that if I can teach my child(while she is still under my influence) what marketing is, then she will be armed with information that she can share with her peers, and maybe they will not all go down the road unsupervised and unaware together.
So what is the best way to parent if parenting seems to be irrelevant to the adult your child will become? First, put them in the school/situation that most closely conforms to your value system so that their peer group will be among like minded individuals. Second, don't move them around alot, because they will always be on the bottom of the pecking order. Lastly, treat them as you do members of your own peer group, so that maybe someday they will want to be part of it.
Note to Reader: I just finished reading Stephen Pinker's book, The Blank Slate, and while I picked it up because I have a degree in philosophy and I actually know what the Blank Slate is, I actually got more interested in the parts about behavioral genetics. Principally, the part about children. If you want to check my sources, i.e. Pinker, don't embarass yourself by only reading the chapter on children because the first two-thirds of the book are an analysis of the metaphysical underpinings of our gut reactions and social beliefs about how the world works. Or more specifically, how science cannot be made to support them and that they are wrong. And if you want something readable about the aforementioned three laws, The Nurturing Assimption by Judith Rich Harris apparently lays them out nicely(I don't know, I haven't read the book yet). Therefore...
The first thing these three laws tell us is that half of everything right or wrong about our own children, we have no control over. I mean, if you really thought you were genetically unsuited to have children, you wouldn't have, and even if you did, we are all so genetically similar that the variance between me and you is negligible anyway. Just remember, the difference between a business man and a criminal is just your interpretation. Both are smooth talking, cut throat and morally ambiguous about ownership. The difference is one has been suckered into paying taxes and the other isn't allowed.
So what does make the difference? Your peer group. Who you grew up with, what role you played in that group and the vagaries of chance that put you in that place at that time.
Does this imply that we ought to have state run child concentration camps? Hardly. The truth of the matter is that nepotism is a universal human trait, and that we are all better suited to taking care of our own children because it serves our own best interest. If anything, the state wouldn't be able to take care of a bunch of babies any better than Angelica because it would have no self interest. But states are good for making sure, hopefully, that nepotism doesn't interfere with the overall good of human societies. (Bushes not withstanding-truth justice and the american way does make for a better society than monarchy and familial promotion)
In fact, what this does imply, is that our society as a whole is responsible for the sorts of individuals it creates. I may not be 'responsible' for how my individual child turns out, but I am certainly responsible for how any child turns out, especially within the peer groups under my supervision. If, because of my complacency about how peer groups affect children, I believe that I am single handedly responsible for my own child, then I do not believe that I have the authority to insist that society and it's entities take responisbility for how they affect children.
For example...
I won't get into an argument about artisitic free speech, but I will point out an ad campaign that Pinker refers too. Everyone has seen those ads of a hip young thing talking sincerely into a camera telling her parents that she remembers their words about smoking even when they are not there. May I never grow so old I don't remember what it was like when I was a teenager. This is my parenting mantra, and that ad has always sounded like tripe to me. But Pinker points out that it is in the best interest of companies, like tobacco and alcohol, for us to believe that we are individually responsible for our own children. It is a diversionary tactic that allows them to market to children and young adults in their own peer related culture without parental interference.
Now, everyone has their own take on marketing to children, and it has recently become a sin, but given this information on how people actually grow up, my response should be to effect change in either the peer group or the companies. Since I am not adverse to marketing, my own take is that if I can teach my child(while she is still under my influence) what marketing is, then she will be armed with information that she can share with her peers, and maybe they will not all go down the road unsupervised and unaware together.
So what is the best way to parent if parenting seems to be irrelevant to the adult your child will become? First, put them in the school/situation that most closely conforms to your value system so that their peer group will be among like minded individuals. Second, don't move them around alot, because they will always be on the bottom of the pecking order. Lastly, treat them as you do members of your own peer group, so that maybe someday they will want to be part of it.
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