Corrales Institute for New Education / Instituto Corrales para una Nueva Educación
March 2021 ~ NEW ED NEWS ~ No. 5 ~ neweducation.org
Saludos Everyone,
MARCH GENERAL MEETING
We invite you all to our March General Meeting on Zoom, Saturday, March 27 from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon USA Mountain Daylight Time. The Zoom invitation will be sent to you on Monday, March 22. If you know people who may be interested in participating, please send, or ask them to send their email address to Michelle
For this meeting we will try something new. The first hour will begin with viewing a 26-minute video of the congressional testimony of Seymour Papert and Alan Kay as one historical precedent for a new education. The viewing will be followed by a half-hour conversation among all of us about the ideas in their testimony.
The second hour will begin with a brief update of recent activities followed by a conversation with Jennifer Hurley about her four essays that can be found on the Readings page of our website and about her hopes and ideas for a more thoughtful and loving educational system. Everyone is invited to join in this conversation.
PROJECT MANAGER
In January, Michelle Jewett became our new Project Manager. Michelle has been an educator for over twenty years, having taught middle school, high school, and college in a variety of disciplines. She is excited to be a part of the Corrales Institute for New Education and to participate in moving the Learning Park vision forward. In addition to being our project manager, Michelle teaches in the Education department at Central New Mexico Community College and recently received a Fulbright that will take her to Norway in August.
SOCIAL MEDIA
We are now on Facebook and LinkedIn. Please be sure to Like, Follow, and share our page with others who might be interested. As we continue raise public awareness about our innovative project, we would appreciate your help spreading the word.
SITE REVIEWS
Since our last board meeting in September, the Site Search Committee has continued to research and review U.S. communities that might be suited for a Learning Park. Communities reviewed so far include Bozeman, MT, Cleveland, OH, Tulsa, OK, Denver, CO, Farmington, NM, Logan, UT, Madison, WI, Prescott, AZ, Richmond, CA, Santa Fe, NM, Viroqua, WI and Bennington, VT. As detailed in previous newsletters, the review process takes a variety of elements into consideration, including the size and demographics of a community, space, and resources available, as well as state and local policies open to educational experimentation. To view examples of three early site reviews, check out Newsletter #4 in our Archive.
Our goal is to review at least one hundred communities over the course of the next year. Some U.S communities on our list or currently under review include Detroit, MI, Fort Collins, CO, Isleta Pueblo, NM, Baltimore, MD, Twin Falls, ID, and Salinas, CA. Additionally, we are searching globally for communities in Spain, Denmark, Costa Rica, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. If you have some place you think might be suited for a Learning Park and you think we should review, please email your recommendations to Michelle.
READING GROUP
Members of the board have started a monthly reading group to support CINE’s growth. These online discussions of articles or books relevant to our project have recently explored place-based education and the role of place and culture in learning. For our forthcoming March 19th meeting, we will be reading a chapter from John Dewey’s Experience and Education. Feel free to email Michelle, if you are interested in joining us.
LEARNING AT HOME
On the CINE website, we provide “Learning at Home” resources for parents, children, and families. Specifically, there are two documents with detailed outdoor learning activities: “What Time Is It and Where Am I?” and “Backyard Science Investigation.” With the shift to remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been told these projects have been invaluable for home learning over the past year. Furthermore, these documents are currently being translated into Spanish to expand access and reach. We hope to be able to add more of these home learning activities for families in the coming year.
CONFERENCE
Corrales Institute for New Education has been invited to present our Learning Park at the upcoming BIOOK Festival. BIOOK is a non-profit association that promotes social innovation, creating ecosystems for citizens to participate and enjoy scientific-cultural production, eliminating borders between biology and other disciplines. BIOOK is located in Spain and based on the Do-It-Yourself Biology (DIYbio) movement and Citizen Science. For more: biook.org
SUPPORT THE CORRALES INSTITUTE FOR NEW EDUCATION
CINE requests your financial support to take its next steps toward imagining a new education in a new place of learning. CINE is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. All contributions are tax-exempt and will be welcome. We will return a letter that you may use for tax purposes. You may donate via PayPal from our website. You may request wiring instructions to CINE's bank account, or address checks to: Corrales Institute for New Education, P.O. Box 1148, Corrales, NM 87048.
“The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish. The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it—at no matter what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change.” A Talk To Teachers, James Baldwin