There you will find two topic entries, for the first two weeks of school.  These suggestions are not found in your Tribes book, but they support many inclusion strategies you are already doing to get the school year off to a good start.  Week 1 addresses how you might incorporate agreements and names.  Week 2 is a variation of “cares-concerns-compliments”; students and teachers have the opportunity each day or week to “appreciate or apologize”.

Each week this forum will provide a quick suggestion, strategy, idea, reminder, or refresher to keep you and your students energized and moving along the Tribes trail.

Related posts:

1. Weekly Tribes
2. Creative Community Circle Strategies
3. The Tribes Community Forum

Final TOT Location this year:

Honolulu, Hawaii: September 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 2010

The registration deadline is September 1st!

The purpose of the Tribes Training of District Trainers (TOT) is to train experienced teachers and administrators who have used the Tribes Learning Community process in their classrooms or administrative positions for at least one school calendar year, to train other teachers and administrators within their school districts.

Upon completion of the TOT, participants will:

• Be confident of their abilities to effectively facilitate the Tribes TLC® Basic training plan
• Understand how to handle difficult issues and situations that may arise within their school communities
• Have assessed their skills as trainers in order to commit to specific goals for professional development
• Have developed a plan to gain support and cooperation for the immediate and extended use of Tribes in their district
• Understand their on-going relationship with CenterSource Systems, LLC.

Pre-Requisites:

• Successfully complete a Tribes TLC® Basic or Middle School Training, and provide a copy of your certificate to CenterSource Systems
• Implement the Tribes process in your classroom or school for at least one school calendar year
• Have the support and a letter of recommendation from the District/School Administration
• Provide a letter of recommendation from a Certified Tribes Trainer, supporting you to become a Tribes trainer
• Hold a 4-year degree from an accredited college or university and a credential for teaching, administration, counseling or other education-related field
• Have the confidence, skills, background, knowledge and dedication to be a Certified Tribes Trainer for your school and district and for CenterSource Systems.

Registration fee:
The Registration fee is $1275.00 USD, which includes books, training binders, materials, articles, research information, instruction by CSS staff trainers and daily lunches.  Participants are responsible for personal travel expenses, accommodations and any items not listed herein. Payment must be in U.S. Dollars and accompany all applications.

Complete this form to receive the TOT APPLICATION PACKET and more information about HOW YOU can become a Certified District Tribes Trainer.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Related posts:

1. Training of Trainers
2. High School TOT for Trainers
3. Where Do I Sign Up?

Related posts:

1. Homework?!

Among the many valid points made by Mr. Christensen and his co-authors, here are a few that stood out for me:

The big reason that US students are out-performed and out-scored on testing for achievement?  Motivation.  One of the many reasons that students in the US lack motivation?  Education doesn’t “reach all learners”.  One of the many reasons why?  Multiple Intelligences aren’t utilized in many learning environments.  One of the many ways to reach all learners and incorporate some Multiple Intelligence theory in teaching?  Individualized instruction.  And how might this be accomplished?  Technology…and the author is NOT about the countless computer labs, carts, and dollars spent for technology in schools that goes either unused or misused, potentially.  He advocates for online courses available at, and during, school – and not just for high school.

Motivation, Multiple Intelligence theory, individualized instruction, technology…and the Tribes TLC process; all are, to some degree, a “disruptive innovation”.  They present a challenge, a new way of doing business; they require training, education, planning.  They cannot be ignored; they might just make sense, even though they have yet to “be proven” or “guaranteed”.

Think about it.  The Tribes TLC process is a “disruptive innovation”!  It challenges an existing culture to change; it encourages teachers to be facilitators, to develop student-centered learning experiences.  It introduces and expects positive behavior, responsibility, and respect.

You can order your copy of this outstanding book from the Tribes online bookstore!

Related posts:

1. Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom
2. Disrupting Class
3. Have you read…?

Jonathan Cohen , Ph.D., is Director of the Program for Social and Emotional Learning and Adjunct Associate Professor in Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Related posts:

1. Building Academic Success on Social and Emotional Learning
2. Look! Learn! Go!

Now, in his long-awaited new book, Clayton M. Christensen and coauthors Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson take one of the most important issues of our time-education-and apply Christensen’s now-famous theories of “disruptive” change using a wide range of real-life examples. Whether you’re a school administrator, government official, business leader, parent, teacher, or entrepreneur, you’ll discover surprising new ideas, outside-the-box strategies, and straight-A success stories.

Related posts:

1. The Big Picture
2. Creating Futures of Promise
3. Educating Minds and Hearts

We have created a few different sized Tribes buttons than you can post right on your website quickly and easily just by copying some short code to your site. Your webmaster should have no problem with the task if you have questions about the process.

Here’s an example… by copying the following code to your site, this attractive clickable image will be magically created on your website.

Copy and paste this code to your website…

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

<a href=”http://www.tribes.com/welcome”><img src=”http://www.tribes.com/links/tribes-link-300×250.jpg” alt=”Tribes Learning Community” /></a>

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

and this clickable image will help your website visitors find Tribes.com

If this image it too large for your site, you can find smaller sizes (and corresponding code) on our
Resources page – right here.

Your website visitors will know instantly that you are a Tribes Learning Community and they will be able to access numerous articles, research and other information about Tribes. We appreciate your support and willingness to share Tribes Learning Communities with the world!

Related posts:

1. Welcome to the New and Improved Tribes.com!
2. Look! Learn! Go!

It’s complicated. Or is it? The research abounds, the skills and competencies are spelled out clearly, various “programs” persevere…and the ongoing struggle to prepare students for the future persists. Yet one simple standard still anchors us all in the process of maturity – human development. We all experience and manipulate and evaluate and regulate our development. This article will consider the congruence of human development tasks and attributes to competencies needed in the 21st Century world of work.
In 1990, the U.S Department of Labor commissioned the SCANS report, The Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills: What work requires of schools.1
The know-how identified by SCANS is made up of five competencies and a three-part foundation of skills and personal qualities that are needed for solid job performance. The competencies include: resources, interpersonal skills, information, systems, and technology. The foundation, or what “competence” requires, is comprised of basic skills, thinking skills, and personal qualities. In its “additional remarks”, the SCANS report counsels that for “tomorrow’s students to master the full repertoire of SCANS competencies and their foundation, schools must change…Students will not acquire what they need to progress in life by osmosis, either in school or in the workplace. Learning through experience is okay only if all students and workers are exposed to the right experiences. The SCANS skills can be taught. Schools and workplaces must provide structured opportunity for their acquisition… SCANS believes that teachers and schools must begin early to help students see the relationships between what they study and its applications in real-world contexts.”2
Many schools have adapted have created programs to encourage development of the competencies as noted in the SCANS report. And, arguably, some do it quite well. Generally, though, the “problem” persists; couldn’t schools being doing more to ensure that kids are better prepared for a job now?
What are the jobs, now, that schools could be preparing students for? While the skill set is relevant, perhaps it is the “target” that makes the career education goal elusive.
Daniel Pink, in A Whole New Mind, advocates for a “high touch, high concept” approach to the emerging “conceptual age”. He writes,
Ours has been the age of the “knowledge worker”, the well-educated
manipulator of information and deployer of expertise, But that is changing.
Thanks to an array of forces – material abundance that is deepening our
nonmaterial yearnings, globalization that is shipping white-collar work
overseas, and powerful technologies that are eliminating certain kinds
of work altogether – we are entering a new age.3

Again, in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About what Motivates Us, Pink explains that, due to outsourcing opportunities for “algorithmic” tasks (which involve following a set of instructions to accomplish), most jobs available in the U.S. are “heuristic”; you have to experiment with possibilities and design a novel solution4. The consulting firm McKinsey and Co. estimates that in the United States only 30 percent of job growth now comes from algorithmic work while 70 percent comes from heuristic work.5

So, what should secondary schools be doing to help students explore career choices and connect school subjects to real-world work? What highly valued job skills, such as collaboration and communication, should schools teach?
Think back to the original premise – a congruence between human development skills needed in the 21st century world of work. Authors Jeanne Gibbs and Teri Ushijima have compiled and synthesized a relationship between workplace competencies and human development tasks and attributes in Engaging All in High School Learning Communities. The tasks are what students are trying to achieve during high school, this “most formative stage of their lives.” 6 The authors link these skills to attributes of resiliency – qualities that enable us to “face a seemingly insurmountable difficulty and overcome it”.7

8

SCANS defines “basic skills, thinking skills, and personal qualities”; “high concept” (creating) and “high touch” (empathizing) also link well to the relationship described above.

Gibbs and Ushijima go on to describe a process that creates a culture that maximizes learning and human development. Advocating for collegial learning teams, modeled by teachers, the process provides students with opportunities for meaningful participation and positive expectations in a caring and supportive environment. By creating a culture for learning, students are encouraged to engage in the very behaviors they will employ in careers emerging in this “conceptual age”.

It follows that the environment, the culture of the high school is key to supporting any program or curricula within. Human development affects learning, one’s career path, success, and well-being throughout life.

References:

1 – http://wdr.doleta.gov/SCANS/
2 – http://www.innovativeeducation.com/tracs/scans.htm
3 – Pink, Daniel. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future. Riverhead Books. 2005.
4 – Pink, Daniel. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Riverhead Books. 2009.
5 – Bradford C. Johnson, James M. Manyika,and Lareina A. Lee. “The Next Revolution in Interaction”, McKinsey Quarterly 4 (2005) 25-26. (quoted by Daniel Pink in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us)
6 – Gibbs, Jeanne and Ushijima, Teri. Engaging All by Creating High School Learning Communities. CenterSource Systems LLC. 2008.
7 – Ibid.
8 – Ibid.

Related posts:

1. Have you read…?
2. Using the Tribes TLC process for “back-to-school” night
3. Tribes is the “plate”

http://www2.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2010/03/03082010.html

DEADLINE is May 12, 2010.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund will support the development of path-breaking new ideas, the validation of approaches that have demonstrated promise, and the scale-up of the nation’s most successful and proven education innovations. The fund is part of the historic $5 billion investment in school reform in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

“Many of our generation’s greatest breakthroughs occur when people are willing to invest in small scale projects with big scale potential,” said Duncan. “We need to identify these pockets of promise in the education community and give them the resources they need to grow.”

Individual school districts or groups of districts can apply for the i3 grants, and entrepreneurial nonprofits can join with school districts or a consortium of schools to submit applications. To qualify for the competitive grants, applicants will need to address one of the four areas that are driving the Obama administration’s school reform agenda: supporting effective teachers and principals; improving the use of data to accelerate student achievement; complementing the implementation of standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and careers; and turning around persistently low-performing schools.

Applicants will receive a competitive preference if their project addresses one or more of the following priorities: improving outcomes for young children; expanding students’ access to college and preparing them for success in college; addressing the unique needs of students with disabilities and of limited English proficient students; and serving schools in rural areas.

In the i3 program evidence is a formal eligibility requirement. Three tiers of evidence will determine possible award amounts. Contact CenterSource to obtain supportive evidence on the effectiveness of Tribes TLC and background information for your grant proposal.

An i3 applicant must secure at least a 20% private match, but this match does not have to be secured until after the grant is awarded. The Foundation Registry i3, a consortium of 12 large foundations, simplifies the process for organizations seeking matching foundation funds. Registering your i3 proposal on the Foundation Registry i3 makes it accessible and viewable to participating member foundations.

Let us help you with your grant application!

Every school should be a model home, a complete community
actively developing future compassionate citizens capable of creating,
leading and contributing to the kind of democratic communities
in which we all long to live.
THE TIME IS NOW!
- Jeanne Gibbs

Related posts:

1. Grant Opportunities

Related posts:

1. Posters – Middle/High School Design
2. Posters – Elementary School Design
3. Tribes Agreements Magnets