BenjaminSystems.com - - - - - - - - - Boosting Student Engagement, Knowledge, Skills & Character

Invitational Education Overview
Home
Starting or Continuing Your Journey
Who Am I? / What's New & How to UseThis Website?
ARTS INTEGRATION
CHARACTER EDUCATION
SCHOOL TRANSFORMATION & INVITATIONAL EDUCATION
Hong Kong & China: Reflections and Plans - Hong Kong, Foshan, Guangzhou, Liannan, and Zhongshan
Schools & Projects
Strategies
Prompts, Modules & Courses
Standards & Assessment
Research & Resources
Lesson Banks: Finding or Creating - INSTRUCTIONAL UNITS
Other Working Papers & 'Projects'
-
Findings, Quotes & Reflections
-
Search BenjaminSystems Website
-
-

Enter subhead content here

Invitational Education 'At-A-Glance'

Invitational Education - Glossary

Twenty Schools On The Move Project
Betty Siegel & Richard Benjamin
Winter 2012
 
These schools are, to us, remarkable and highly instructive - well along the journey toward "cordially summoning....students and faculty and school leaders toward their higher potential" - intellectually, socially, psychologically, physically and spiritually.
 
One of the most remarkable aspects of these schools, as good as they are, is the internal understanding that there is work to be done, building and then maintaining a culture of continuous improvement.
 
Leadership changes are especially important is continuous improvement, and several of these schools have recently, or are coming up on, key leadership changes.  Special attention is needed to insure maintaining and even extending the positive culture needed for school transformation. 
 
Admittedly, these are schools we know, and there are many others we have not visited, and so do not know so well.  And, admittedly, we are more than a bit prejudiced.  With limited resources, but with tireless enthusiasm, we do want to provide both recognition of these schools and an beacon to other schools still charting their way.
 
The task is important on so many levels.......

Creative Primary School, Hong Kong

Ling Laing

CCHPSS

Has won everything to be won.  Leadership in 'Environmental' Character, with its Taoist underpinings, and strong enough to keep striving toward Invitational Leadership, in both administrative and teacher leadership.

CCHPWSS School Portfolio

Durham Middle School, Kennesaw, Georgia

Foshan Experimental Primary School

An 80% residential private school with over 3,000 primary students, this school excells on so very many dimensions.

R. Benjamin had the honor of making a home visit, along with the teachers of an exceptional student, one who is clearly a member of an exceptional family, and has great artistic talents.  The dedicated parents are clearly full partners with the talented staff.  All this provided insight into what it might be like to be growing up in a country, in a school, that demonstrably treasures its children

MFBM CLCT Memorial College

Zai Kong Center Primary School, Liannan, China
 
This school is in the early stages of adopting Invitational Education, and is exemplary for early involvement of teachers and parents.
 
R. Benjamin again had the honor of making a home visit with a student and had a chance for a leisurely talk with her mother.  Her father is working in Foshan, because jobs are so scarce.  He can only return home one or two times a year, the same frequency that the family can afford to eat chicken.  There were chickens in the house, under the stairs, to supply eggs.  Some of us helped cook the noon meal, with eggs cooked and folded into some vegetables.  We also walked about 20-30 minutes to the family farm plot, and all helped 'harvest' some rice.   Clearly the mother had the best approach.  There was a small 'silo' of rice in the girls' bedroom, perhaps 5 feet high, with a 5 foot circumference.  There were three children, since farmers are exempt from the Single Child Policy.  A small cat, which is not fed, pulled a corn cobb from a trash basket and ate the remaining kernals off of it.  This was, for me a sobering new level of poverty.  The student pulled out wonderful art which she had done at home, and exhibited all the talent and excitement about her work that one would wish for in one's own child.  In a pretty barren home there were three posters on the living room wall, providing assistance with math facts and language learning. This will demand much more reflection.

Siegel / Benjamin China Brochure

Siegle / Benjamin Brochure Insert

Enter content here

Invitational Education - Foundations

Advanced Invitational Education

Enter content here

Humanistic Psychology

Enter content here

Enter supporting content here