The Earthville Worldblog

Now That I Know You, What Is Your Name?

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:11:10 -0700

Smiles all around at the close of our second annual silent meditation retreat with SanghaSeva at the Dharmalaya Institute in the Indian Himalayas.

It's always fascinating to spend a week with people without hearing their voices, and then finally get to 'meet' them, while having a sense of already knowing them in a way.

Now we're preparing to welcome new arrivals for an eleven-day service-learning retreat in sustainable building. Good times!

A Matter of Degrees

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 10:47:00 -0700

"A Matter of Degrees" is the first in a series of reports detailing thirteen promising practices that US community colleges can use to increase student engagement and completion rates. Produced by the Center for Community College Student Engagement (CCCSE) at the University of Texas at Austin, the report draws on the largest-ever body of research on the various factors that contribute to student success in community colleges, and what effective community colleges are doing to improve student engagement and retention.

"With around eight million students enrolled nationwide right now — and it’s a student population that defies generalization — as well as historically lean budgets, they’re being faced with some very tough decisions about whom to serve and how best to do that," said Dr. Kay McClenney, Director of CCCSE.

Though the report focuses specifically on US community colleges, many of the lessons learned from the research can be applied in other educational contexts.

For the whole story, see this featured article on the UT website. You can also download the original report in PDF format here.

Sustainable Living in the Himalayas

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 14:00:00 -0700

What: Informal volunteer and service-learning programme

Topic: Sustainable living in the Himalayas, including green building, organic gardening, and permaculture landscaping

When: April 7 to May 31, 2012 (Participants may arrive and depart anytime in this period.)

Languages: English & Hindi

Facilitators: Mark Moore, Naresh Sharma, et al

Description: Informal programme at the Dharmalaya Institute open to both residential and non-residential participants. We will be doing fun, physical work, including green building, organic gardening, tree planting, and more. There will be plenty of opportunities for learning, application, questions, and relaxation (we’re also doing an optional meditation programme for those who are interested). Feel free to come and go anytime between April 7 and May 31. (And, if you don’t mind getting very wet, you might even stay on longer during the monsoon tree-planting season if you like.)

For more information and registration, see this page.

The Importance of Human Connections in Creating Change

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:36:00 -0700

Editor's note: Visionary educator Arnold Langberg served as Principal of Jefferson County Open High School (in Evergreen, CO), originally and more commonly known as "Mountain Open" (and later merged into the Jefferson County Open School) until 1986, when he joined Denver Public School District as their Administrator of Alternative Education and then proceeded to found High School Redirection, another groundbreaking public alternative school.

In this article, Arnie shares stories from both schools that illustrate the critical roles that human connections play in creating effective learning communities.

Stories from Mountain Open High School

Early in our second semester at Mountain Open High School (MOHS), a school that was radically different from the conventional high schools, I received a call from an assistant superintendent inviting me to a meeting to discuss an evaluation scheme that they were planning to implement. The model that they wanted to use was similar to that used by the North Central Association, the organization that was the official accrediting agency for the district, and for schools in nineteen states. As it was only our first year, we would be doing an informal version of this process.

Our job was to do a self-study, responding to questions and guidelines that the district borrowed from the formal process, and then a team of three, whom they would choose, would visit our school and compare the actual functioning of our program with our stated mission and description.

The three men who had been chosen for the visiting team included two members of the central administration, the director of research and the director of staff development, and one education professor from Colorado State University. I suggested that, because our school was so different from any other high school that they had evaluated in this manner, it might be a good idea to expand the committee. Because we were a district-wide school located in a particular community with its own high school, we had some political issues that were unique. I wanted to include someone from Evergreen who was not connected with our school but who was an influential person in the community. I was also aware that a number of school-within-a-school alternatives existed in some of the conventional high schools, and I asked if a teacher and a student from one of those programs could also be included on the team.

The assistant superintendent said that he would have to discuss this with the cabinet because there was no precedent for it, but that he would recommend it to them. He asked me if I had any suggestions for particular people, and though I had no recommendations for the teacher or student, I did know of a woman in Evergreen, Luanne Hazelrigg, who had chaired the district’s committee on students’ rights and responsibilities, and I wondered if he thought she would be a good choice. He said that he would mention her as a possibility when he met with the cabinet.

One week later he called to tell me that the expansion had been approved, that he would contact Luanne Hazelrigg, and that he would find the teacher and student as well. With this, we had created an alternative means of evaluating our alternative program.

While it was true that I had never met Luanne, I knew that she was a neighbor of one of our students and that student and her family had been among the group that hired me. When I checked with the team after the first day of their three-day visit, Luanne said to me that the only thing she came away with was a headache, and that she would come back the next day dressed in jeans and she would just get down and dirty right with the students. Observing an open school is a very different experience from observing a conventional school.

At the end of the second day it was obvious that the team was enjoying the experience and that they had developed personal relationships with students, teacher and parents. The team spent that evening at Luanne’s house discussing the visit and writing a draft of their report, which they delivered to the entire school the next day. It was a very positive and supportive evaluation of our program.

It was in the days following the visit that some interesting stories emerged. Luanne told me that one of her daughters had wanted to go to MOHS but the principal of Evergreen High School had dissuaded her, telling her that she wouldn’t want to go to school with "those animals!" In a similar vein, when Luanne had been at the central district office to be prepped for the visit, one of the central administrators had also made a disparaging remark about our school. Luanne later became a member of the board of education and, eventually, president of that board.

The Director of Research for the district, who had also been on the team, arranged to meet with me to share his own personal experience. He told me that when the lower school had been created five or six years before, many district employees had been enthusiastic supporters and sent their children there, and he had been on the first evaluation team for that school. He summed up that visit by saying that it was total chaos. The people who had started it had good intentions but little-to-no teaching experience, and the district folks took their kids out at the semester or the end of the first year. So when he was asked to be on our visiting team he wanted to decline rather than find himself in another fiasco. He happily told me that, rather than a fiasco, he felt that our school was a model for the reform of secondary education.

We invited the professor who had been on the team to speak at our first graduation ceremony, and he reiterated the above statement: "MOHS is a model for the reform of secondary education!"

Many of the best moments in my memory of MOHS happened in relation to accreditation visits. In anticipation of our first formal evaluation, I presented our self-study to the head of the Colorado chapter of the North Central Association and she convened her assistants to share her enthusiasm as she read through the document. She said, "This school really puts the responsibility for the students’ education on the students, just where it belongs."

The chairman of that visiting team, who was Colorado Coordinator for Gifted and Talented Education, while speaking at that year's graduation ceremony, said that MOHS was not an alternative school; it was the future!

My final story about outside evaluators and Open School took place in 1986, the first school year after I had left to take a job in Denver. The school district decided to do an evaluation of all their alternative programs, with Mary Ann Raywid as overall leader and Vern Smith as the chairman of the Open School team. Although I was no longer affiliated with the school, I was invited to what is called the "exit interview," an informal reporting by the visiting team before filing their official report. Vern, who is a sort of curmudgeon, began his presentation by saying, "You don't see a lot of teaching going on at Open High School." He paused for a bit and then added, "But there is a hell of a lot of learning going on!"

Parallels from High School Redirection

There are similar stories that I wish to share about High School Redirection (HSR), a school within the Denver Public Schools that was funded by a grant from the US Department of Labor with matching money from the school district. Two board of education meetings, one of which took place before the school began, will help to set the stage for the stories.

The first of these was the night that I was officially hired by DPS to become their Administrator of Alternative Education. I had been told by the man who would be my immediate supervisor that I should attend the session, but that it would just be a formality and that it would be unlikely that I would have to do more than stand and wave when my name was called.

When the superintendent announced my hiring, he told the board that I was in the audience and he asked me to come forward and take ten minutes to tell them about my Evergreen school. I said, "Ten minutes?" and it was forty-five minutes later before I had finished answering their questions!

Only six of the board members were there that evening, and Ed Garner, the president of the board, who had missed the meeting, called when he got back into town to arrange a personal meeting with me. Ed is a black man, and, after expressing excitement about the work that I had done in Evergreen, he asked me how I, a white guy whose previous schools were all in predominantly white suburbs, would deal with an urban setting in which the majority of the students were black or Latino. I told him that I wanted to be evaluated on two dimensions, each equally important. My goals were to help each of my students develop the skills to be able to swim with the current of the existing society but also the strength to choose to swim against that current when necessary.

The second meeting took place toward the end of the first year of HSR, when I was told that the board wanted a progress report on the school. My supervisor said that he would make the report but I told him that I wanted a group of my students to do so. He initially refused but I told him of my meeting with Ed Garner and that I was sure that Mr. Garner would agree with me that students were the better choice.

At a school-wide meeting, I asked if there were any students willing to make the presentation. Everyone wanted to do it, so the staff and I chose a representative sample of four because we would be having a limited time to speak.

At the board meeting, our kids did a better job than I of sitting quietly through hours of boring business before finally being called upon. Chazz Garcia, wearing a jacket, open over his undershirt, and a porkpie hat, thanked the board for inviting us. He told them that we had had a meeting, sort of like their "little" board meeting, to choose who would make the presentation, and he introduced his fellow presenters. There was Ron, a six-foot-five black male, Michelle, a white girl with a foot-high green Mohawk hairdo, and Mike, a short white male who was probably the most "normal-looking" of the group, although I knew that the school system had labeled him "emotionally disturbed."

Chazz proceeded to describe the school, emphasizing the sense of community, and he described how Ron had defended Michelle when someone had made fun of her hair. Ed Garner, who was present at this session, stood up, peered over his glasses at Michelle, and said, "Why would someone make fun of her hair?"

Two years later, Michelle decided that she was ready to graduate after completing only three years of high school. At HSR, graduation occurred when the student and her advisor determined that she was ready to present her case to a personal graduation committee. The committee had to include the student, her advisor, her parents, at least one other teacher, at least one other student, the principal (me), and someone from the community. Michelle invited the wigmaker at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, with whom she had done an internship, and I suggested that she should also invite Ed Garner, with whom she had had a memorable encounter.

Michelle presented her case and each of the committee members responded, with everyone on the committee being supportive. I agreed that all of the work that she had done was of the highest quality, but I thought that there were additional challenges she could pursue by staying with the school for another year. And Ed Garner, the president of the school board, disagreed with me. He convinced me that she had, indeed, earned her diploma!

Arnold Langberg is a visionary educator, former principle of several public alternative schools, Director of the Langberg Foundation, and a member of the Earthville Network's Board of Directors.

The Case Against Grades

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:58:13 -0700

Standardized testing isn't the only dinosaur sucking air out of the room: The system of grades/marks is another inadequate method of measuring student learning that needs to be replaced with more effective and empowering systems. The combination of self evaluation, peer evaluation, and adult evaluation is an alternative that, while less quantifiable, is more effective and empowering. Alfie Kohn makes the case against grades in this article.

Middle Schools Are the Misfits, Not the Kids

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:36:00 -0700

Identity becomes a major issue for children entering their early adolescence. It is major for the adults because one of the aspects of establishing the adolescent identity is a rejection of parental authority and, with that, of all adult authority. Adults are further stressed by the emergence of the sexual identity of adolescents. The children themselves, and they are children and adults both (which, I believe, is what the word "adolescent" means) are going through physiological changes that they often have difficulty understanding. This stage of human development has probably always been difficult for everyone, but it has become especially problematic in a society that chooses to ignore developmental needs that challenge its own norms and taboos.

Inquiry also takes on a different tone from childhood to early adolescence. Where younger children enjoy asking questions, sometimes being more interested in their questions than the answers, and their interests roam widely and change frequently, adolescents tend to focus their attention on one thing that interests them, and they will hold onto that doggedly. A misdiagnosis of ADD is often made at this age because students seem to be unable to pay attention to all that they are being asked to do by adults. In many cases, it is their need to do something well, to get their teeth into something about which they are passionate, that prevents them from "moving on" to the next topic that is required of them. They actually have no deficit in attention for what really matters to them!

Interaction is a strong need of adolescents. A sense of belonging to a peer group seems to replace the former desire for approval from the adults in their lives. This, again, causes problems for the adults. For parents, it is the concern that leads them to say things like, "You always do what your friends do. If they jumped off the roof, would you do that too?" For teachers, it is an increase in discipline problems and cheating. For the larger society, it is gangs. Interaction at this stage soon includes attention to romantic and sexual exploration, which the culture of school seems incapable of addressing in a healthy and honest manner.

All three of these areas are ignored or even thwarted by the organization of the conventional middle school or junior high school. The "one-size-fits-all" curriculum is guaranteed to misfit most of them. And then we call them the misfits!

What Can Be Done?

First we must recognize the inappropriateness of the standard curriculum-centered approach as a means for dealing with the actual developmental needs of this age group. They are demonstrating very clearly what their "curriculum" is. They need the personal attention necessary to help them identify the areas which grab their interest and utilize their talents. They need the time to pursue these areas in depth. They need multiple pathways to success. They need the time to be with their fellow students without intrusive adult supervision. They need adults they trust to help them deal with the changes that are taking place in their lives; physical, mental and emotional.

Arnold Langberg is a visionary educator, former principle of several public alternative schools, Director of the Langberg Foundation, and a member of the Earthville Network's Board of Directors.

Living in Balance: Service-Learning Retreat with SanghaSeva

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 14:36:42 -0700

What: Service-Learning Retreat with SanghaSeva
Topic: Living in Balance: Contemplation, Compassion, and Sustainability
Where: Dharmalaya Institute in Bir, HP, India
When: 22 March - 3 April, 2012
Language: English
Facilitators: Zohar Lavie, Nathan Glyde, Mark Moore, et al

Description: Residential program at the Dharmalaya Institute. Possible workshops and groups sessions include the following:

Hands-on education in traditional earthen architecture of the Himalayas
Meditation and yoga
Organic gardening and permaculture landscaping
A mixture of silent practice and group connection and activity

For further details, or to register, please visit the SanghaSeva website. (SORRY, REGISTRATION FULL)

Growing Skyward

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:07:00 -0800

LET'S SEE, WHERE WERE WE...?

When we left you with the season finale cliffhanger last June, we had just bundled up our baby building with prayers that she'd survive the monsoon rains without a roof. That was asking a lot from a big mud sandcastle, and we put her fate in the hands of a few well-fastened tarps, some slate shingles sheltering the tops of the walls, and a whole lotta flax husk mixed into the mud plaster in which we dressed her up for the occasion. Well, the monsoon was merciless: It was the longest and heaviest in recent memory at nearly four months of battering downpours. But it turns out flax is up to the task!

When i returned in early November and made my way up the hill to the site, i was delighted to find the building in almost exactly the same condition as when we had left in June. One internal wall had been damaged by a leak in the tarp, but that was repaired with one day's work. Everything else, amazingly, was in great shape. Score one big one for linseed husk! And thanks also to Raju, our site manager, for regular visits in the pouring rain to check up on things and fix what needed fixing.

The other big question over the monsoon was how would our "vertical orchard" fare? One of the big projects we took on last year was reshaping and replanting the giant landslide that threatened to erode even more of our hillside if it should have to face another monsoon unchecked. But check it we did: with our spirited group of volunteers from last March's service retreat with SanghaSeva, we landscaped the entire landslide area with microterraces, transplanted patches of turf onto them, and then planted over a hundred trees, bamboo stands, and roses, all of which sent their roots into the loose soil to help give it a firmer footing. Well, upon return, i was overjoyed to see that not only was the hillside intact, with no further erosion, but also all but one of our trees were alive and thriving. A few had grown over a meter during the monsoon. It was a joy to see that we had succeeded in transforming a small disaster into a big asset. Three or four years from now, the vertical orchard should be bearing sweet fruit for the eyes and the belly.

First up on the autumn agenda: more mud bricks. We rounded up the crew and got to work making thousands of these rectangular mud pies, destined to become the upstairs walls. Our skilled carpenters from Sidhbari, who had spent some of the monsoon making our window and door frames at home, also resumed work on site, preparing beams for the long-awaited roof.

Then, come the new moon of December, it was time to harvest bamboo like there's no tomorrow. After having been caught short of the titan of the grasses last spring, we weren't about to learn that lesson a second time. We dispatched a legion of able-bodied bamboo whisperers, who returned with several hundred poles of strong, thick specimens, which we promptly set to smoking in our kiln to make them less appealing to termites and more appealing to the gods of structural integrity. We're told we have more than enough now, but we'll be harvesting more during the new moon of January, just to be sure we have plenty for the huts and whatever else we may be inspired to build with this beautiful, versatile, and rapidly renewable building material. We like bamboo!

Now, with all the pieces in place, we resume the delightful work of assembling the puzzle. The wooden beams and bamboo joists are laid across the tops of the ground floor walls to give the masons a place to stand (and a long enough lever, naturally) while building the upstairs walls.

Simultaneously, the walls continue to climb.

And, gradually, the picture starts to come together...

The bamboo joists that support the ground floor ceiling are covered with split and flattened bamboo, creating both an attractive ceiling for the ground floor and a strong base for the floor above.

With the upstairs walls in place, at last we are able to place the trusses to support the roof.

And, at this stage, the emerging shape of the building gives tantalizing glimpses of what’s to come.

Now it's all about fashioning all that storied bamboo into the framework that will support our lovely slate roof, which we're racing to complete in time for our two March retreats with SanghaSeva (which this year will include a one-week silent retreat with revered meditation teacher Ajay Pal Singh of Lucknow, followed by a ten-day service learning retreat on sustainable living, akin to last year's program).

TREES!

Our other big winter project is trees, trees, and more trees! In this climate, winter is the time to plant non-citrus fruit trees, and a fresh blanket of snow is now melting into the soil to moisten it, welcoming new arrivals. In the next few weeks, we'll be planting hundreds of saplings. You can join us, too, by sponsoring tree plantings at $2 per tree, which helps offset your carbon footprint while providing green jobs through the winter for our local villagers. See the Earthville Orchards page for details on this win-win project.

The exciting news for the Earthville Orchards is that the Libra Foundation, who generously supported our tree-plantings last year, has awarded us a matching grant for 2012. We need to raise $5100 by February 21, and every donation we receive will be matched by the Libra Foundation. More bark for the buck! See the Earthville Orchards page for details on this win-win-win program.

2012 PROGRAMS

Far be it from us to wait for construction to be finished before starting our educational programs: the creation of the Institute is half the fun and a great opportunity for learning. And, of course, you're all invited to join in the fun or support from afar.

CARE TO GET INVOLVED?

Here are a few ways you can participate:

VOLUNTEER: Come to Bir (in northern India) to volunteer. details »
DONATE: Make a charitable donation to support our eco-construction and the green jobs it creates (tax-deductible in the US and India). details »
SPONSOR TREES: Offset your carbon emissions for the year, while creating more green jobs, by sponsoring tree plantings in the Earthville Orchards at just $2 US per tree (also tax-deductible). details »
SPREAD THE WORD: Forward this story to your friends, post it on your blog, share this story on Facebook and "like" the Earthville and Dharmalaya FB pages, send forth a mighty tweet, or, you know, talk to people. :-)

For more information about the Dharmalaya Institute and how you can get involved, see the Dharmalaya website.

Sulha Tribal Fire: A Gathering for Peace in the Middle East

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:36:42 -0800

What: Sulha Tribal Fire: A Gathering for Peace in the Middle East

Where: EcoMe, at the Almog Junction (near Jericho)

When: January 15, 2012, from 5:00pm to 10:00pm

Language: Arabic, English, and Hebrew

Facilitators: The Sulha team

For more information, click here.

Byers: A School of Joyful Engagement

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:34:49 -0800

Editor's preface: Arnold Langberg is a visionary educator and a member of the Earthville Network's Board of Directors. In the autumn of 1986, having just graduated from his position as principal of the Jefferson County Open High School (in Evergreen, CO), Arnie joined Denver Public School District as their Administrator of Alternative Education. One of his first missions was to "fix" four struggling alternative educational programs that had been established as satellites within a group of conventional schools in Denver. Three of these alternative satellite programs were referred to collectively as the Metropolitan Youth Education Centers ("Metro" for short), which Arnie discussed in his previous article here. The fourth was Byers, which Arnie discusses in this story.

Byers is a beautiful old building in Denver, and when I became the Administrator of Alternative Education in the Denver Public Schools, my job included serving as the principal of a sixth to twelfth grade "alternative" school housed in that building. When I walked into the building to survey my domain, I was surprised to find six adults and no students. Other schools in the district were already in session, so why the terrific student/teacher ratio?

I was told that, each year, students who had been at Byers were returned to their "home" school, and could only attend when they were referred, usually by the assistant principal for discipline in the home school. I asked a silly question. "Is the school any good?" If so, why can't they stay? If not, why keep it open? Do the kids have to steal a hubcap to get in?

At least five years before my visit, when I had begun considering transferring to Denver Public Schools, from Jefferson County, a nearby suburb, I had asked to meet with a Denver school board member to see if he thought it would be a good fit for them and for me. Omar Blair was the only African American on the board of a school district under court order to desegregate its schools, and he told me that his fellow board members were about to create a program that would relieve the conventional schools of their major problem students. Omar was convinced that this would mean primarily students of color, and he was going to amend the policy to make it as difficult as possible for schools to use this as a tool of resegregation.

The headline in the Rocky Mountain News two days later was DENVER STARTS SCHOOL FOR "MEAN" KIDS. An administrator with a reputation for being tough was assigned to what he termed "boot camp," and this became Byers Alternative Learning Center. And five years later, I became its principal!

I was told, informally, that if I wanted to close the school, no one would object. Of course, that was not the opinion of those six adults who were assigned there. One of them, an assistant principal who had recently been transferred to Byers, invited me to lunch at the nearby air force base, to show me what he did during the summer. I observed him interviewing young people who were offered work on the base as an alternative to incarceration, and he did it very well.

As we drove back to school I told him that, if this was his vision for Byers, one in which students would be involved in community service, I would be in full support. I created a proposal to present to the school board that included the service component with three other radical departures from previous arrangements. We wanted to have up to 10% of the students attend by choice rather than by referral for infractions. As additional staff would be hired, they should be chosen by the existing staff. Most importantly, if these were the most difficult students in the system, we asked for a twelve-to-one student/teacher ratio. The proposal was accepted.

Within a month our enrollment soared, mostly through referrals, but including seven who chose to join us and who became the school leaders and role models. Tony had been enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program, had come down with pneumonia, missed two weeks of school, and was told that he would never catch up. So he came to us, helped to create the school, and was one of our first graduates. He received a full scholarship to Colorado College and played varsity basketball as a freshman.

Two stories best describe the wonderful turnaround that happened at Byers. We shared our building with special educators from around the district, and occasionally similar educators from other districts would come there for meetings and conferences. One woman from another district wrote me about how she had previously been apprehensive about entering the building because the kids had made her uncomfortable. She described how different the climate had become, with a student opening the door for her, introducing himself and welcoming her to "our" school.

Even more powerful was an event that happened early in the second semester. I was told that an assistant principal from one of the district schools had brought one of his "problem kids" to be enrolled, and upon seeing the atmosphere of joyful engagement, figured that he was in the wrong school!

The notion of "joy," however, leads me to remember an incident that I should have realized was an indication of how limited the life of this experiment was to be. I was meeting with a member of the central school administration, a woman whom I knew was particularly sensitive to the needs of kids of color, and when I described our school climate, her response was "Those kids don’t deserve to enjoy school."

She was horrified as she heard these words come out of her mouth, and we both understood how pervasive the conventional school culture had become. This was brought home to me again at a public meeting where my colleagues in the other high schools expressed anger that they couldn’t get their kids into my schools because we weren’t losing them as fast as they were sending them. They actually asked whether the alternative schools were there to serve them or were they there to serve us!

The system had become more important than the students — those whom the system was supposedly designed to serve.

A Lesson from Metro: The Problem Was the Solution

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:34:49 -0700

Editor's preface: Arnold Langberg is a visionary educator and a member of the Earthville Network's Board of Directors. In the autumn of 1986, having just graduated from his position as principal of the Jefferson County Open High School (in Evergreen, CO), Arnie joined Denver Public School District as their Administrator of Alternative Education. One of his first missions was to "fix" several struggling alternative educational programs that had been established as satellites within a group of conventional schools in Denver. Three of these alternative satellite programs were referred to collectively as the Metropolitan Youth Education Centers ("Metro" for short). This is an article Arnie wrote recently, recalling his experiences as he began his work at Metro.

"We at Metro will provide a supportive environment, a personalized curriculum, and the access to resources necessary to enable each student to become self-sufficient, self-supporting and a productive member of society."

Don't you get a thrill when you try to imagine such a school? If the statement alone doesn't do it for you, perhaps understanding the source might help.

My first meeting with the thirty-five teachers who, at a later date, coauthored the statement, occurred one day before the new school year began when I was introduced to them as their new principal. I had read an evaluation of Denver Metro that had been done at the end of the previous year, and the three most dramatic conclusions had been: this is not an alternative school, it is a dumping ground; the teachers are victims as much as the students; and the program lacks leadership.

After introducing myself to the teachers, telling them of my background in alternative education and letting them know that I had read the evaluation report, I told them that I had no intention of interfering in their work. I would be dropping by to visit each of them, but we wouldn't meet again as an entire group for six weeks.

My single goal for the program, I said, was that within one year it would become a school to which they would want to send their own children.

I also posed three questions that I wanted each of them to consider over the next six weeks, and that sharing their answers to these questions would be the agenda for our next group meeting.

Who am I? Personally and professionally, just how do you see yourself at this time in your life?

Who are they? What are your thoughts about the students with whom you work on a daily basis?

Why are we here? What is the purpose of our enterprise here at Metro?

Students were dismissed after lunch on the day of the follow-up meeting, enabling the teachers to have an afternoon for extended conversation with their colleagues. (I was told that this had never happened before!)

We divided into three smaller groups, beginning with a discussion of their responses to the question about the students. The spirit generated by the realization that the positive feelings they had for "their" students was shared by all their colleagues enabled them to reach a consensus on a statement of purpose for the program within an hour!

We reconvened in a room that had a nice assortment of refreshments, and each group posted its purpose statement. The three were so similar that it was a simple task for three representatives to combine them into the single statement which appears at the head of this article!

Victims? Then, and today? Each knew of the reputation Metro had within the district, that these were the worst kids so these must also be the worst teachers. Each had found a way to protect himself or herself, so they assumed the others were the bad ones! They also knew that they were working in a district that was under court order to desegregate, yet the three metro centers were one black, one white, and one brown! The district avoided a lawsuit by claiming, that, since metro did not offer a diploma (it was "repair and return"), they were within the law.

What I learned was teachers were not the problem, they were the solution!

Being Peace Retreat in Israel & Palestine

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 18:36:42 -0700

Earthville partner SanghaSeva is running its fifth Being Peace work retreat in Israel and Palestine this month. The retreat focuses on bringing the energy of compassion, openness and understanding cultivated in meditation to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, mainly through harvesting olives with Palestinian farmers who are otherwise prevented from accessing their lands. There will be time for meeting peace activists and human rights leaders, for meditation, and for processing the experience within the group.

For more information, click here.

Monsoon Update

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 07:07:00 -0700

The biggest news on the construction of the Dharmalaya Institute is in regard to our race against time to get the roof on our baby building before the onslaught of the monsoon rains this month... and the update is that, well, we couldn't win, so we've done our best to change the game.

To understand the snag, one must first have an idea of the way traditional roofs are built here in the Kangra Valley. Local roofs are gable roofs made of slate shingles fastened to a truss of wooden struts supported by bamboo rafters. The strength of the roof relies primarily upon the bamboo, and the strength of the bamboo, in turn, depends upon not only size and age of the bamboo but also the time of year when it is harvested.

For maximum durability, the bamboo must be cut during the new moon of late December or early January. If that sounds like hocus pocus, then consider that this is the time of year when the plant is most dormant and thus its sugar content is lowest. If bamboo is cut at other times of year, the more plentiful sugars harden as starches, a delicacy for termites and other critters. When feasted upon, such bamboo loses much of its strength and no longer can be counted upon to do its job holding the building up (and so must be replaced, generally within 10-15 years). When bamboo is cut at its most dormant moment, however, it contains very little that is appetizing to insects and thus the structural integrity and strength of the bamboo remains intact for decades (and, in some cases, such as when it is thoroughly smoked, it can last for centuries).

Bamboo kiln

Bamboozled

Accordingly, during the new moons of December and January, we organized a couple of big bamboo harvesting expeditions.

Turns out they weren't big enough, though: we wound up with less than half of the bamboo required to complete the building. If you're thinking, "oops," then you got the picture.

How could such a miscalculation happen? Well, turns out there are different ways to count bamboo around here: some people count one pole as one pole, while others count one pole as two or three poles (depending on the sizes into which it will be cut). Our local crew who did the cutting were not familiar with the counting method used by the people who told us how many to cut, so a request for 180 was taken as 180 cut poles, when what was actually intended was 180 uncut poles (which would translate into as many as 360 or even 540 cut poles, depending on the lengths of the cuttings). By the time any of us caught the error, it was May — far too late to harvest any additional bamboo — and suddenly we realized that there was simply no way that we would be able to build the roof this year.

What to do? We had just completed the construction of the walls of the ground floor level, but had not yet begun raising the upstairs walls. Better to leave it that way, all agreed, for the simple reason that a shorter wall is easier to protect from the elements than a taller one. So, knowing now that our construction would be halted till autumn, our attention turned completely to the pressing puzzle at hand: how could we protect our half-finished mud-brick building from the assault of the impending monsoon rains without a proper roof — and fast?

Rain damage

Shelter Seeks Same

Studying the rain and wind patterns during the pre-monsoon showers of May, and the way they affected our vulnerable adobe walls, we saw that the north face of the building was hardest hit and thus most in need of protection, while other areas had different needs and the various shapes and sizes of spaces begged for different solutions. So, our eco-architect, mentor, and friend, Didi Contractor, walked us through the creation of a patchwork plan to give each part of the building what it needed while ensuring that drainage from each section would be channeled in such as a way as not to create trouble in a neighboring section.

First, we prepped what little useable, smoked bamboo we had at the ready to build a ceiling over the office and adjacent hallway, topped with a thin layer of ferrocrete that will serve as the base of the floor for the room upstairs — and, meanwhile, will help keep the water out, allowing us to use the office and hallway for storage of our stockpile of unused mud bricks through the monsoon.

Ferrocrete ceiling

Next, we built a temporary framework of (unseasonal) bamboo to support an ad-hoc roof of plastic tarps over the bedrooms. Then, a system of drainage ditches encircling the building to channel the torrents away from the walls and safely distribute the water across the hillside.

Bamboo truss

Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

One of the most important protective measures we took was to render the walls of the building with a plaster made of mud mixed with the husk and chaff of flax (yes, flax — the same plant that produces the seeds that are added to some supposedly salubrious cereals for marketing purposes but actually don't do a bit of good for the health when the seeds are eaten whole because they're too small to be broken up by the teeth so they pass right through the body and come out looking just the way they did in the cereal box). It's well known in the green building world that flax seed oil (a.k.a. linseed oil), in addition to being (genuinely) beneficial for the body, is also an effective water repellant and sealant for walls and floors, but we learned that the chaff (the husk of the flax seeds and the straw of the surrounding plant) is also useful as a waterproofing agent when generously mixed into the mud plaster.

Mud and flax render

As soon as we completed an initial render on the critical north wall, Mama Nature gave us a chance to test-drive the flax plaster, in the form of a couple of thunderstorms that rocked the valley and pelted the newly flaxed-up walls of our building. The results were strikingly impressive: while areas of wall lacking the flax chaff were visibly eroded by just a few hours of strong rain, the walls with the mud-and-flax render were almost completely unchanged. Eureka!

Seeing what a difference the flax chaff makes, we went on to render all the exterior and interior walls of the building for good measure. Practitioner's note: applying a fine mud plaster by hand is an epicurean joy, but can trigger cravings if one can't escape the associations with chocolate frosting. ;-)

Wrapping It Up

For double protection, we strung a collection of tarps across the bamboo frameworks and draped a few more over the vulnerable northern walls, and then carefully laid slate tiles all along the tops of the walls to serve as a first defense against the most direct path of the rain.

A raincoat of tarpaulins

Altogether, it seems we now have the best possible solution, given the circumstances. We'll have a skeleton crew working through the monsoon season (mostly planting trees), so of course they'll be monitoring the building as well as the landslide and the new drainage systems. And, as our local friends say, "rest is stars."

All wrapped up

We plan to resume construction work in sunny November. We're planning at least two or three intensive service-learning retreats for autumn 2011 and spring 2012. And, of course, you're all welcome to join in the fun or support from afar.

Wanna get involved?

Here are a few ways you can participate:

VOLUNTEER: Come to Bir (in northern India) in late 2011 or spring 2012 to volunteer. details »
DONATE: Make a charitable donation to support our eco-construction and the green jobs it creates (tax-deductible in the US and India). details »
SPONSOR TREES: Offset your carbon emissions for the year, while creating more green jobs, by sponsoring tree plantings in the Earthville Orchards at just $2 US per tree (also tax-deductible). details »
SPREAD THE WORD: Forward this story to your friends, post it on your blog, share this story on Facebook and "like" the Earthville and Dharmalaya FB pages, send forth a mighty tweet, or, you know, talk to people. :-)

For more information about the Dharmalaya Institute and how you can get involved, see the Institute's page on the Dharmalaya website.

Planting a Vertical Orchard

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

This week, during our first service retreat program (see news article) on the Dharmalaya Institute's new Himalayan eco-campus, we had a precious opportunity: our friends at SanghaSeva brought sixteen wonderful, hard-working volunteers from all over the globe to work with us, so we figured this was the time to take on a couple of major projects that could only be done with that kind of person power.

The March 2011 retreat family

The first endeavor was digging and planting the first organic herb and veggie beds at the site of the Institute, which was a lot of fun. Everyone got to contribute their ideas and inspirations, and the final result was a great blend of all the various elements drawn from each of the participants' unique experiences and creative ingenuity.

Sowing the first herb and veggie seeds

But the next project was a monster challenge: As some of you who have been following the Dharmalaya news page may recall, we were dealt a surprise from Mama Nature during the summer 2010 monsoon rains, in the form of a landslide that knocked out two large sections of the access road to our construction site and left a steep, jagged slope of loose scree, barren of life, that threatened to tumble even further in the next rains. We'd had to make quick repairs to the road in order to resume construction, but it was clear that if we didn't find a way to landscape the landslide and repopulate it with plants with strong root systems to prevent further erosion, we would surely lose a lot more of the hillside (and, with it, our road, again) in the next monsoon rains. It was a daunting prospect, and one of our hardy volunteers later confessed, with good humor, that when i first mentioned the plan to landscape this rockslide to create an orchard (as a part of our new Earthville Orchards project), he thought i was "completely mad." If so, the results we've achieved so far would seem to argue in favor of a touch of madness now and then. ;-)

The first step was to venture out onto the loose scree of the slope to dig a network of footholds and eventually paths so that we could traverse the whole landslide area and stand securely enough to dig deeper holes for planting. These were developed into a series of microterraces covered with bits of turf transplanted from nearby.

Carving footholds & microterraces

On the 3rd day, the new saplings arrived: about 12 varieties, including pomegranate, guava, lemon, and grapefruit. A few dozen rosebushes, too.

Hmm... which of these babies wants to go where? The pomegranates like drier, sandier soil, but otherwise let's mix it up...

It took a day and a half of resourceful teamwork to dig the holes, fill them with a mixture of dung, compost, soil, and sand, then carry the saplings out onto the slope...

And finally, the saplings began to find their homes in the ground. As we planted the trees, we filled in the surrounding areas with patches of turf transplanted from nearby.

Most of the volunteers had never planted trees before, and they took great care to give each sapling a happy home.

A nearly-vertical orchard, beginning to take shape...

We're off to a great start, thanks to the generous hard work of our volunteers and our local crew, but there's a lot of work left to be done. Many more trees, flowers, grass patches, and bamboo shoots must be planted before the monsoon rains begin in June.

Would you like to help? Here are a few ways you can participate:

VOLUNTEER: Come to Bir (in northern India) this spring (or next fall, or spring 2012) to volunteer. details »
DONATE: Make a charitable donation to support our eco-construction and the green jobs it creates (tax-deductible in the US and India). details »
SPONSOR TREES: Offset your carbon emissions for the year, while creating more green jobs, by sponsoring tree plantings in the Earthville Orchards at just $2 US per tree (also tax-deductible). details »
SPREAD THE WORD: Forward this story to your friends, post it on your blog, share this story on Facebook and "like" the Earthville and Dharmalaya FB pages, send forth a mighty tweet, or, you know, talk to people. :-)

For more information about the Dharmalaya Institute and how you can get involved, see the Institute's page on the Dharmalaya website.

A Picture of Progress

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 17:40:00 -0700

We'll be posting a detailed update on the construction of the Dharmalaya Institute soon. For now, here's a little picture of progress... :-)

Fueled by Kindness

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:49:00 -0800

So much in life can't happen without the kindness of others, and this is especially true here in the Himalayas.

In a "subsistence-plus" economy such as we have here in Himachal Pradesh, most villagers have enough land to feed their families, more or less, so they don't necessarily need to work for anyone but themselves in order to survive. Like their fellow humans across the globe, though, modern Himalayan villagers seek more than mere survival. They want some comfort and convenience, and they want a better life for their children.

The costs of staple foods, fuel, and energy are rising continually and, these days, a lot of the locals also want an addition to their home and an upgrade from bicycle to scooter to motorcycle to car — maybe even an iPhone. Even in the enchanted forests of the Himalayas, these things don't grow on trees. If you want anything more than you can grow on your own land, you'll need to find paid work. For all of these reasons, most of the villagers here must look for outside jobs.

Even so, they don't show up for work just because you pay them. If these dignified Himalayan villagers leave their own land to work for someone else, it's not only because the wages are compelling, but also because they think the work itself is worth doing and they have a reasonable degree of respect for the people with whom and for whom they're working. Otherwise, most self-respecting Himachalis would sooner stay home (and, truth be told, they often do, as anyone who has tried to build or repair something here will attest).

So, in such a climate, what happens when the work to be done is even more difficult than usual, the location remote, and the conditions somewhat unreasonable? And what if the one who needs the work done is a nonprofit organization with a sandal-strap budget and a mountain to scale?

Well, it all comes down to kindness.

Take our recent avalanche, for example. This past August, exceptionally heavy monsoon rains triggered a massive landslide that knocked out over 300 feet (nearly 100 meters) of our access road — the road we’d spent most of last spring building so that we'd be able to bring in large stones, bamboo, and other building materials that aren't available at the building site of the Dharmalaya Institute. Without the road, we couldn't resume construction and, judging by the extent of the damage, it appeared we might fall weeks or even months further behind schedule. Such a delay simply was not an option, since Mama Nature imposes an inflexible deadline for mud-based construction in South Asia: Get the roof on your building before the start of the monsoon rains in June or everything you've built melts back into the earth like a sand castle at high tide. Our budget was already overstretched, and there was no way we could afford to rebuild the road with enough cash left to finish the building, and yet we couldn’t even take the next step without the road, so we needed a small miracle.

"No problem," said Chohan Singh Diman, a local builder. Now, these are words one learns to take with a generous pinch of Himalayan rock salt in this neck of the woods, but Chohan took things seriously, with attention to detail, in a way that engendered confidence. We surveyed the landslide for over an hour and Chohan formulated a plan for the gradual rehabilitation of the road, starting with first aid to restore the road to a minimally serviceable state that would allow a tractor to carry the urgently needed materials to the top ASAP, with further reinforcement and improvements to come later. To accommodate both our limited budget and the urgency of the need, Chohan kindly offered a discounted bid and simply asked that we give him more work in the future so he could gradually earn back the difference. He quickly assembled a team of half a dozen local laborers and made short work of clearing the landslide debris and building stone retaining walls across the landslide area to support a new road. Just over a week later, to our great relief (and some astonishment), the tractor was able to haul the cut stones for our plinth all the way up the hill to the construction site.

We were back in action but now a couple of weeks behind, with nature's clock ticking audibly, so next up was the challenge of organizing an accelerated construction schedule during the busiest time of the year, when both fall harvests and an astrologically ordained six-week parade of three-day weddings keep most of the village's labor force preoccupied with fields and family. Here again, we were saved by the kindness and wisdom of our beloved friend and renowned eco-architect, Didi Contractor, and her talented (and charming) crew of green builders from Sidhbari (Naresh, Kaka, Rooplal, Bali, and Kamlesh), who repeatedly made the two-hour trek to Bir to contribute their seasoned ingenuity to solving our puzzle. Soberly assessing the circumstances and limited local resources, they helped us piece together a plan to start where we were and get where we need to be in the shortest possible time (relying heavily on a generous jump-start from our Sidhbari gurus working on-site and training our local laborers).

Central to this plan is the formidable challenge of incubating a skilled green building crew locally, where none currently exists. And, in this, we would've had no chance at all to succeed without the considerable kindness and generosity of several people who answered the call and then some. Our committed local partners (and Dharmalaya board members) Ravi, Savita, and Jaswant Paul have made critical contributions in facilitating logistics and offering guidance at every turn.

And one of the brightest rising stars on our hilly horizon is shining in the form of one Raj Kumar ("Raju"), Dharmalaya's first full-time employee, who originally joined us as a taxi driver providing occasional help with logistics and then impressed us all by rising to the challenge of stepping into the key role of foreman-in-training for our entire eco-building project. To say that Raju has gone the extra kilometer would be understating things by about a light year. We're all pleased to witness both his enthusiastic interest and his capacity to learn and take on responsibilities and manage them well. As our friends from Sidhbari observed, it is rare and precious to find a young person with such a keen interest and aptitude for learning the arts of high-quality traditional building, so we intend to make the most of this win-win gift by providing him with training from the best green builders in Himachal (namely, Didi and her team) so that, in concert with them, we can work to preserve that local wisdom and spread it near and far.

As it stands now, we're nearing completion of the plinth (the stone base of the building, above the foundations and below the floor and walls) and, after a couple of weeks, when we've laid a few more courses of stones to raise the walls to the level of the window sills, we'll begin setting up the molds for the rammed earth portion of the walls. Meanwhile, we're also midway into the construction of our first mud hut, which will serve as a dry and secure place to store our tools and materials and will finally allow some of us to stay on site rather than commuting daily from the town of Bir. So, we're catching up, and so far we've created about 18 green jobs to make it all happen, with more on the way. It's inspiring to see it all coming together. (And we're documenting everything with photos and videos and will be posting to the Earthville blog and to YouTube and Flickr.)

Without a doubt, we simply could not be doing what we're doing without the kindness of these big-hearted people, and others like them who are playing their parts to make this possible. It strikes us many times every day that this mothership runs entirely on kindness — it's the fuel and the fabric of all that's happening. We feel deeply grateful for our team, our laborers, our building gurus, our donors, and all the many forms of support that are coalescing around this effort, and we feel fortunate to be a part of this love-driven global community barn-raising adventure.

And we warmly invite you to be a part of it, too! Here are a few ways you can participate:

VOLUNTEER: Come to Bir (in northern India) this spring or autumn to volunteer for the "barn raising." details »
DONATE: Make a charitable donation to support our eco-construction and the green jobs it creates (tax-deductible in the US and India). details »
SPONSOR TREES: Offset your carbon emissions for the year, while creating more green jobs, by sponsoring tree plantings in the Earthville Orchards at just $2 US per tree (also tax-deductible). details »
SPREAD THE WORD: Forward this story to your friends, post it on your blog, share this story on Facebook and "like" the Earthville and Dharmalaya FB pages, send forth a mighty tweet, or, you know, talk to people. :-)

Special Sunday@Sunset Event at the Dharamshala Earthville Institute (DEVI)

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 08:40:00 -0800

Chatral Rinpoche is considered by many to be a living Buddha. Now 98 years old, he is a renowned Tibetan Buddhist meditation master and an outspoken advocate for animal welfare and a vegetarian diet.

On Sunday, 12 December, 2010, at 6:00pm at KhanaNirvana Community Café, hear and discuss Chatral Rinpoche's teachings with special guest Geshe Thupten Phelgye, member of Tibetan Parliament, along with Zach Larson, editor of the book Compassionate Action (2009, Shechen Publications).

KhanaNirvana is located in McLeodGanj (upper Dharamshala) on Dalai Lama Temple Road about midway between the bus stand and temple, above Western Travels. The event is free of charge. If you'd like to order dinner, please either come early or stay late, as orders won't be taken during the event.

We look forward to seeing you!

For more information about DEVI and how you can support it, click here.

A Passage through India

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 07:07:00 -0700

A familiar sea of humans, cows, and three-wheeled auto-rickshaws... with some new features: People of all stripes gathering around giant outdoor projection screens to cheer every turn of the Indian athletes in the Commonwealth Games... Brand new Delhi Metro terminals, still not-quite-finished and already falling apart, teeming with hurried passengers, mostly unfazed as twelve more press themselves into the already-packed subway car... iPhone ringtones fill the air as police, no doubt instructed to put a new face on Delhi's streets for the Games, remove beggars from their usual spots... Young women in uniform holding rifles very nearly their height peoplewatch like ghosts in the swarms of shoppers... A slice of New Delhi in 2010.

Tomorrow, the long, dusty road to Himachal Pradesh, a crumbling wagon trail of a thoroughfare with (very) slowly elongating patches of smooth black tarmac, always under construction (inconvenience regretted). It's there that i'll begin to feel strangely at home again, as the concrete monstrosities ("biggest and longest mall north of Delhi," boasts one sign) gradually give way to what remains of the rustic beauty of the villages.

The purpose of the journey? A tiny effort to preserve a speck of that beauty in the face of all this "development," and a humble aspiration to inspire and train interested villagers and visiting global citizens to do the same. Our budding sustainability project in the Himalayan foothills will take a big little step in the coming weeks: the stone foundations of our new baby, the Dharmalaya Institute, spent the last four months settling and curing in the monsoon rains, and soon we'll start raising her lovely mud walls.

It's a dream i've nurtured for nearly 20 years, so it's a slo-mo rapture to see it taking shape... but it's a fairly sober high: i've spent years enough in India to know that things often fall apart faster than they come together, so the prospect of constructing anything here is guaranteed to be, to some extent, an exercise in futility, vanity, and existential humor. With the road to the building site vanishing seasonally, with the world-class red tape of a singularly quirky bureaucracy, with intermittently absent laborers, with a formidable cultural divide that in some ways seems to grow only wider (and richer) with time and familiarity, and with a shortage of funds to meet expanding expenses, how on earth will we get the roof on this thing before the beginning of the next monsoon torrents...?

And, more importantly, if we succeed in finishing the building (and i have an utterly irrational faith that somehow we will), will it actually make a difference? For us, the international team of volunteers who get to take this great ride, it will no doubt be far more than worth it; we have so much to learn here. But for our friends the noble villagers whose green ambitions we endeavor to support, and for the tenacious-yet-fragile environment that sustains them, will this be helpful? That question, more than the overwhelm of myriad mysterious logistics, is floating in the background of everything today.

Of course we believe it can make at least a small contribution toward sustainability and economic advancement in the region or we wouldn't be doing this. H.H. the Dalai Lama advised us as we were just getting the Earthville vision on road back in the '90s (and i'm paraphrasing here), "It's important to understand that one can only accomplish so much in one short lifetime, but even if you can make a deep and lasting change in the life of one person, that is enough; your life has meaning. And if you can reach ten or even a hundred people, that's wonderful. And if you're very lucky, maybe a thousand..."

Well, seeing the suffering and environmental devastation around us, we can't help but hope for higher numbers, but we'll start out with baby steps, and let's see what happens...