Wellspring Living Arts

Spring Film Series

Jesse — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:22:42 +0000

The first offering is a fascinating film series with discussion panels, offered over the course of five weeks. Please join us at the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Nyack, New York. We hope you will partake in all five screenings and bring your insights and questions. You will glean from the series how a holistic education is vital to serve and meet the needs of young people today. All films are appropriate for ages 8 and up. We request a donation of twenty dollars for each film and its ensuing conversation and, if you would like to attend all five, eighty-five dollars. To donate ahead of time click here. The list of screenings and further info is in the flyer below.

Parents Embrace Documentary on Pressures of School

Jesse — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 19:34:08 +0000

By Trip Gabriel in The New York Times

It isn’t often that a third of a movie audience sticks around to discuss its message, but that is the effect of “Race to Nowhere,” a look at the downside of childhoods spent on résumé-building.

“How do you help your children balance when the whole education system is pushing, pushing, pushing, and you want your kids to be successful?” Alethea Lewis, a mother of two, asked a roomful of concerned parents who had just seen the film, a documentary, last week in Bronxville, N.Y., at a screening co-sponsored by the private Chapel School.

With no advertising and little news media attention, “Race to Nowhere” has become a must-see movie in communities where the kindergarten-to-Harvard steeplechase is most competitive.

More than 1,100 attended a screening last week at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill. About 500 saw it at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan in November. It has been shown to a roomful of fathers at Pixar during lunch hour and twice to employees at the Silicon Valley headquarters of Google.

All 325 seats in the auditorium of New Canaan Country School in Connecticut were filled during a screening for parents last Thursday night. Francie Irvine, the assistant head of school, said, “Our parents’ association president called me and said, ‘My sister just saw this in California and we have to, have to, have to have it here.’ ”

The film portrays the pressures when schools pile on hours of homework and coaches turn sports into year-round obligations. Left somewhat unexamined is the role of parents whose high expectations contribute the most pressure of all.

“Everyone expects us to be superheroes,” one high school senior in the film says.

Another tells of borrowing her friends’ prescription for Adderall to juggle her many commitments. “It’s hard to be the vice president of your class, play on the soccer team and do homework,” she says.

The movie introduces boys who drop out of high school from the pressure, girls who suffer stress-induced insomnia and worse, and students for whom “cheating has become another course,” as one puts it.

“When success is defined by high grades, test scores, trophies,”’ a child psychologist says in the film, “we know that we end up with unprepared, disengaged, exhausted and ultimately unhealthy kids.”

Vicki Abeles, the middle-aged mother and first-time filmmaker who made “Race to Nowhere,” picked up a camera when a doctor said that her then-12-year-old daughter’s stomachaches were being caused by stress from school.

“I was determined to find out how we had gotten to a place where our family had so little time together,” she explains in the film, which has an unslick, home-video quality, “where our kids were physically sick because of the pressures they were under.”

In many ways, the movie is the alter ego to the better-known “Waiting for Superman,” another education documentary playing around the country this fall.

That film has earned $6.3 million at the box office since its release and ranks 20th among the most successful documentaries ever, according to Box Office Mojo, in no small part because of a blast of publicity. The director appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and President Obama greeted its stars at the White House.

“Race to Nowhere” had a one-week run in two theaters, in New York and Los Angeles, but it has primarily been screened by community groups in school auditoriums, churches and temples. Local sponsors like parent-teacher associations sell tickets and split the take with the filmmakers.

Ms. Abeles, a corporate lawyer who briefly traded on the gold desk at Goldman Sachs before moving to Northern California with her family, said the film cost her and other backers in the “mid-six figures.” It will have been shown at some 700 locations through February.

With her movie’s grass-roots success, Ms. Abeles has been approached by major distributors offering to place it in commercial theaters. But she is not convinced that the movie would reach as wide an audience or inspire viewers to stay for the discussions, which are moderated by principals, child psychologists and sometimes Ms. Abeles herself. The film’s web site encourages viewers to follow up with local activism (and also links to research and studies supporting the film, which pretty much avoids citing any data).

“My passion is around the change this film has the potential to create,” Ms. Abeles said.

While “Waiting for Superman” lionizes urban reformers who embrace standardized testing as a necessary yardstick to hold schools and teachers accountable, Ms. Abeles believes that the testing movement is what has caused education to go off the tracks.

She talks to students, teachers and experts who say that teaching to tests, including the advanced placement tests, narrows education and diminishes creativity and independent thinking. Employers complain that college graduates these days lack initiative. An educator, Denise Pope, a lecturer at Stanford, says that the University of California requires remedial courses of half its students, even though their high school grades were stellar.

“They’re spitting back but not retaining the information,” Dr. Pope said.

Most of the families in “Race to Nowhere” are suburban and privileged, and the film has found its audience in those communities where parents often move for excellent schools. In addition to New Canaan and Winnetka, there were screenings last week in Los Altos, Calif., Bethesda, Md., and Chappaqua, N.Y. — towns where an Ivy League sticker on the back of a Range Rover is a given.

“You would not believe what reactions you get from other parents when you mention what colleges your children are looking at — you’re so judged,” Tara Vessels, a mother at New Canaan Country School, told about 40 other parents and staff members who discussed the movie last Friday in the school cafeteria.

The school espouses a “whole child” philosophy, and its mission statement, inscribed on the cafeteria walls, includes the sentence: “We value the imagination and curiosity of children and respect childhood as an integral part of life.”

But parents said the larger community imposed its own values, and their children clamored to join an ice hockey league that practices until 10 p.m.

“Imagine if a sign out front of school says ‘Mistakes Are Made Here Often,’ ” mused one teacher, echoing a theme in the movie that schools should accept failure as part of learning. “No one would come here! But why not?”

A mother complained that her 13-year-old “had a chapter test, and that night had to study for a quiz” in the same class. “What is the point of all the testing?” she said. “It’s so stressful.”

Tim Bazemore, the head of school, acknowledged ruefully that “the whole child in high school is a full résumé,” telling the parents that this reflected “a failure of education leadership.”

Nonetheless, he wondered how parents would feel if teachers assigned less homework and did not penalize students who did not do it. Would families think the school was failing to prepare their children for high school and beyond?

The school “needs an honest dialogue with you,” Mr. Bazemore said.

Students Feel Like They’re In a “Race to Nowhere”

Jesse — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 19:26:23 +0000

By Bob Sweeney (The writer lives in Ossining and is a guidance counselor at Mamaroneck High School) in The Journal News

“You have to be smart, but also you have to be pretty and also you have to do sports and you have to be involved in the arts, and you have to find something unique about yourself. And you have to know yourself, because if you don’t know yourself before you do all that, you’re going to lose yourself.”

So declares Kelly, a ninth-grader featured in the documentary, “Race To Nowhere.”

The film is drawing national attention and has resonated with large audiences throughout the Lower Hudson Valley this fall, raising provocative questions regarding the value of homework, the overemphasis on testing, performance and competition and how much is too much?

Are we creating an epidemic of overscheduled, unhealthy kids, proficient as test takers but rarely challenged to think creatively?

As a school counselor and father of a high school student, I was riveted by the film’s focus on so many issues that have been a longtime concern. Vicki Abeles, a parent, first-time director and filmmaker, aims the camera on her own family and how the stress of school is taking its toll on her three children. She takes the camera well beyond her living room in the San Francisco Bay area to interview students, counselors, teachers, psychologists and education experts across the country to understand an achievement culture of high costs, high stakes and high pressure that has found its way into our schools and into our children’s lives.

I have attended several screenings and helped facilitate audience discussion afterward. At each, comments and reactions from so many parents and students confirm that their own lives and fears and concerns just came to life on the screen. They recognize the self-inflicted and extrinsic pressures to get A’s and high SAT scores, to take as many honors and Advanced Placement courses as possible, to create the perfect resumé, to do community service and to discover a passion by age 17; all ingrained as standards for success and needed to get into the elite colleges that can only admit 3 percent of the eligible high school seniors in the country. And this pursuit begins long before high school.

Sam, a 12th-grader quoted in the film, is not alone with his feelings about school.

“School’s just so much pressure that every day I would wake up dreading it.”

Exhaustion, worry and long hours of homework every night with little time left for reading, fun, family or dinner together are often more the rule than the exception in the “race to nowhere” as one student described it. Anyone who sees the film can’t help but ask whether this is the reality in their own home and community? If so, should it be and how do we then redefine “success” or raise well-adjusted children at a time when they feel they have little margin for error? Because grades determine their future and because school is seen as a place to compete and to sort the high achievers from the average or less gifted, it should not surprise us that for so many students, a sense of worth depends on their last report card.

Much attention has been focused, as well it should be, on the underscheduled, underpressured and underserved student, most prominently in another documentary making headlines, “Waiting for ‘Superman’.” “Race To Nowhere” highlights the toll on communities where students feel marginalized and good teachers leave the profession because standardized achievement exams are held as the gold standard in education. Both films have raised awareness and encouraged discussion, but “Race To Nowhere” has done so without focusing blame on any one group. It suggests concrete steps for action, both big and small, in homes as well as in classrooms and in the offices of the stakeholders at every level who care about the education of children. I do urge school administrators and PTSA leaders to arrange a screening in their community and join in the conversation.

Follow-Up Discussion for Race to Nowhere

Jesse — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 21:15:28 +0000

On Tuesday, October 26th, over 200 people viewed the documentary Race to Nowhere at the Green Meadow Waldorf School. Race to Nowhere points to the silent epidemic:
· cheating has become commonplace;
· students have become disengaged;
· stress-related illness, depression and burnout are rampant, at times to the point of suicide;
· young people are arriving at college and the workplace unprepared and uninspired.

Race to Nowhere calls us to mobilize! Parents, educators, and policy makers need to take up this challenge and dramatically change the current educational assumptions. We must educate and prepare the youth of America to find their path in life so they can contribute their part in creating a healthy and socially just society.

Immediately after the film was viewed, an audience-led dialog took place. There was a palpable air of discontent and disenchantment. We see the significance of continuing this discussion and also the importance of joining our community together as we seek to turn the tide of how children in our country are educated.

You are invited to join us at the Christian Community Chapel
to continue the conversation where it left off!

Why Education Reform?

Jesse — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 20:10:11 +0000

There is a prevailing assumption that nothing can be done to overcome the challenges facing the education of children in the United States. Inaction can be justified with statements such as: “economic forces are too powerful;” “the government does not support new paradigms;” “circumstances have already gone too far to change them.” In reality, the expenditures for education in our nation have increased by 85% in real dollars since 1970, but there has not been a proportionate increase in student successes nor equity in our educational system. Those who engage in primary research and apply empirical evidence declare the system we have in place is actually taking considerable strides backwards!

Currently the static system resembles an assembly line used to funnel our children in and through a rigid process for the goal of controllable homogeneity. Educator John Taylor Gatto is one torchbearer who enlightens us to this reality. He questions the methodology the current system provides “as a means to achieve important economic and social goals for the national character,” and in essence this formula is used “to bring the whole continental population into conformity with these plans so that it might be regarded as a ‘human resource’ and managed as a ‘workforce’.”

What happens when students are “round pegs” that do not fit the “square holes” demanded by our educational system and, eventually, the workforce? Many parents are told there are no viable options but to medicate or even institutionalize their children. A system that sees many a student as a to-be-managed commodity is one in need of drastic redesign.

At Wellspring we advocate from another perspective. We provide a curriculum that is designed to challenge students in constructive and purposeful ways, through which we foster development of life-skill sets for innovative and independent thinking. Wellspring provides a healthy human-serving curriculum. Through our hands-on Life Skills Program, we emphasize experiences in the trades and crafts paired with academics and environmental education. We awaken the senses of a student’s experience of real processes so they can grow into self directed, critical thinking individuals, and fulfill their personal potential.

We are writing because we need your help and participation. Many students who wish to engage in the Wellspring Life Skills Program have limited resources. We are asking you to please consider a generous donation to support and sponsor a student.

Your donation supports an environment where the learning is alive and purposeful, meeting the unique talents and capacities of each student and bringing to life what they have learned in their academic schooling.

Together we can shift the course of education. Together we can change lives!

With warmest wishes and appreciation,
Scott Dunn, Susan Shurtleff, Joyce Speziale, Jesse Tolz, Maria Ver Eecke
for the Board of Trustees

Introduction to Wellspring Living Arts

Jesse — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:23:51 +0000

Introduction to Wellspring Living Arts: Social Change through Environmental Waldorf-Inspired Education
by Katie Ketchum

We live in a world dominated by competition and the ever-increasing drive to consume, where we are rapidly losing the art of community-building and creativity. Wellspring Living Arts is an initiative that seeks to combat against this impulse through the development of human capacities and is intended to provide the tools for self-sufficiency and a range of life skills for 12-20 year olds in the Spring Valley and surrounding region of New York State.

In 2005, a small group came together who wanted to “do something progressive with Anthroposophy and youth.” Their vision was to develop an experiential Waldorf-inspired school, with a biodynamic therapeutic farm on the same grounds. Children and youth between the ages of 12-20 would be able to attend and, alongside academic education, learn a variety of life skills and gain the experience of working with the environment, mechanics, and culinary arts and so on. Out of this vision came Wellspring Living Arts.

“The mission of Wellspring Living Arts, a collaborative of education, agriculture, and medicine, is to contribute to positive social change through the education of the will.”

Skip forward to the present, Wellspring Living Arts is well on the road to fruition. On Monday April 27, 2009, the inaugural Wellspring Life Skills Program commenced on the grounds of Threefold Educational Center, Chestnut Ridge, NY, with 12 young people ages ranging from 12 to 18. They represented both public and private schools in the area. Inspired by the Waldorf curriculum, with a focus on environmental education, this pilot program was a resounding success.

The Wellspring Life Skills Program will continue this semester, once again under the direction of Scott Dunn, an expert experiential and outdoor educator. Activities offered include design and construction, biodynamic gardening practices, ceramics, garden to table culinary arts, furniture building, leadership training, Goethean Observation, and team building to name a few.

“When children come to the age of puberty, it is necessary to awaken in them an extraordinarily great interest in the world outside themselves. Through the whole way in which they are educated, they must be led to look out into the world around them and into all its laws, its course, cause and effects, into men’s intentions and goals – not only into human beings, but into everything, even into a piece of music, for instance. All this must be brought to them in such a way that it can resound on and on within them- so that questions about nature, about the cosmos and the entire world, about the human soul, questions of history – so that riddles arise in their youthful souls.”
From Education for Adolescents, Rudolf Steiner, Stuttgart, June 21, 1922

The future of Wellspring Living Arts depends upon the procurement of appropriate land and facilities. We have located the perfect property for the vision; the former Gould Academy, a beautiful 156 acre property, with all the required buildings for our work, located 1 mile away from the Threefold campus. Our fundamental aim would be to procure this property, which would allow the full vision to take shape. The Wellspring Living Arts Community would model itself on a number of self-sustaining communities such as Sekem in Egypt, Ruskin Mill, Glasshouse College in the UK and the Fellowship Community in Chestnut Ridge. Wellspring Living Arts would thus be able to, collaboratively with our students, run and operate small cottage industries on the property which would support the school, allowing for nominal tuition to be charged and expand the scope of the project to reach out to the more under-served communities in the area. Planned businesses include: bakery, farm, shop, a conference center with residential opportunities, a fine dining organic restaurant, artisan galleries, and others.

Wellspring has come a long way since 2005; all that we have done has been made possible through the enormous generosity and goodwill of everyone who has thus far been involved.

As we prepare for the next phase, we need your help to keep the momentum going. If you feel that this is a vision that you feel connected to, and would be willing to support in any way, or if you would like to receive some more information, please contact a member of our working group.

Extending help can be as simple as putting us in touch with someone you know who could help, volunteering some time or expertise, sponsoring a student in the Wellspring Life Skills Program, or making a regular financial contribution to our endeavor. Your help, in whatever form, is vital to the health and strength of the work necessary as we meet the needs of youth. It has been said that every dollar spent on education is five dollars saved in penal and rehabilitation costs. The importance of this endeavor cannot be stressed enough!

In the words of Scott Dunn, the Life Skills Program director:

“Our hands-on work in the natural world will build and strengthen our connection to ourselves, to our diverse human community and to our place in the community of the earth.”

Thank you for your support!

Beginning

Jesse — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 04:35:41 +0000

My theme for today is beginning. It seemed apt for both the blog and myself as I have recently moved to Chestnut Ridge and am very new at Wellspring. To this end, I would like to start with a quote from Goethe.

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it”

Our vision is to begin a way of working in community with our youth.

We aim to meet young people as individuals in their learning, and engage them in activities to suit their learning style. They are met by educators, invested in their futures and mix with fellow students from a wide range of backgrounds. Hands on, experiential and vocational style learning completes this vision, with young people learning life and work skills from committed professionals with a vested interest in all of our futures.

The nature of beginnings is such that we meet a lot of obstacles while striving to reach this vision- ideas fail, things don’t quite go to plan. I know that I certainly feel despondent some days, when what seemed like a perfect idea falls flat.

What has been important to me though is this idea of commitment that Goethe so eloquently describes. (You can read the whole piece here). When we go out into the world with the kind of commitment he speaks of in this piece, things do happen. The important thing is to take action- to keep picking yourself up and try again. There is a kind of magic to it, and this is what gives us the hope and energy to go out and do it again, and do it better!

This work is so necessary for all of us, and for so many reasons. We must be bold!

by Katie Ketchum