View from the Observation Deck
Dee Dickinson

Turning around the behavior of many at-risk students can be accomplished by engaging students in learning with new tools and by activating the curriculum. Dee's observation this month is about ways in which schools can engage the most difficult students by helping them to identify and learn through their strengths or areas of greatest interest.

Spatial Relations and Learning
Carol Stockdale and Carol Possin, Ph.D.

The ARK Institute of Learning's research is focused on learning problems relating to spatial understanding. The article presents background information on these disabilities and how they affect a student's ability to learn reading, math and a variety of academic skills.

A handbook for The Learning Window
Carol Stockdale and Carol Possin, Ph.D.

A handbook describing The Learning Window, a tool that can be built with inexpensive materials and used to teach a variety of skills to children and adults, especially those experiencing difficulty with spatial skills. The Window can do double duty for students learning perspective and life drawing as well. It's a cool tool, and booklets can be ordered from the Institute at a very reasonable cost if a school or district decides to put shop students to work building Learning Windows!

Multiple Intelligences Reaches the Tibetan Children's Village
Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell, teacher and author of books about applying Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences in the classroom, recently visited the Tibetan Childrens' Village near the village of Dharmsala in the north of India. Bruce has found that teaching and learning through multiple intelligences has value across cultures and worldwide; Tibet is no exception. He shares obsercations from his immersion in the rich culture and joyful lives of these people who have endured so much.

Pain, Waste, and the Hope for a Better Future . . .
Margi Nowak

Margi Nowak is a cultural anthropologist and parent of a child with an "invisible" but very real disability. Her experience is similar to that of other parents in similar situations, a lack of coordination and delivery of information and help to teachers of special needs children, reluctance on the part of educators to trust and work with parents, and a bureaucracy that more often thwarts than supports advocates for special needs students. The end result is that the educational system "is the site of far too much needless pain even as it wastes far too much human potential."

State of Washington: Guide to Mediation Services
OSPI

A guide to mediation services available to parents of students with special needs in the state of Washington. Parent rights and responsibilities are outlined.

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This is the first of a series of articles by Dr. Renée Fuller about the power of stories. We begin with her observations of young readers and what they look for and emulate in the stories they love.

Understanding Good and Evil in Children's Literature
Dr. Renée Fuller

When the strong models of good and evil Dr. Renée Fuller had included in her reading series made the books unpopular with commercial publishers she took another look at the content of her stories. She decided not to change the series when she found that the children in her experimental groups seemed to need the security of knowing that good triumphs over evil. They identified with the good, and saw things in themselves that they admired in their heroes. Fuller maintains that it is no accident that stories of good and evil appear in all cultures -- they are essential to the mental health of young children.

GIRAFFE OF THE MONTH

We asked the folks at The Giraffe Project to let us share stories about some of the heroes they've discovered quietly sticking their necks out to make the world a better place. This month The Giraffe Project shares the story of Myrah and Richard Green and the Crown Heights Youth Collective .

Read about Myrah and Richard Green who, when they achieved career success, chose to live in and contribute their talents to the troubled neighborhood where Richard grew up. Their program, the Crown Heights Youth Collective in Brooklyn, lets neighborhood kids choose from an astonishing array of top-drawer programs. The Collective also trains children to become community peacemakers who defuse conflict and work toward unity.

Window on the Future

Futurists from groups like the World Futures Society, a nonprofit organization sponsoring research and dialogue on the future, periodically contribute to this area of New Horizons' Building. The Window on the Future is located up on the Observation Deck.

The Last Taboo on Television
Duane Elgin

The last taboo topic on television is television itself -- and how it is profoundly biased toward high consumption ways of life that the earth cannot sustain. Futurist Duane Elgin maintains that by programming television for commercial success, the television industry is also programming the mindset of civilizations for ecological failure. He proposes using television in new ways to encourage people to contribute creative and positive ideas and for our planet's future.