Back from SEED

I have always known when a program or place resonates with me. It is how I found my way to Bank Street College, to Reggio Emilia and now, to SEED. I know now that the strength of all of these is the attention to process and the value of scholarship. 1987, 2003, 2011, markers in my personal timeline.

It helped that SEED was held on a remote campus nestled in the mountains of Marin County, near San Anselmo. The air was clear, the days were warm and the evenings cool and the night sky was filled with stars. The San Domenico School is a preschool to 8th grade and a boarding high school, 9-12th grades.

It turned out that it was the 25th anniversary of the National SEED, Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity, Project. At the end of the week we learned that they had received funding for two training sessions next summer, doubling the number of participants who will be able to attend. Also, funding to support attendance by public school teachers whose schools cannot pay the fee of $3,900. Peggy McIntosh, the founder, said that she felt it was time for SEED to take its place in the movement of modern American education. How special to be there this year as she steps aside as a co-director to do other work and begins to assess the impact of SEED on the teaching profession.

The idea behind SEED is to nurture teachers; to give them ownership of their own professional development. The central concept of the "scholarship of the shelves" and the "scholarship of the selves" brings content and experience together to further learning. This is accomplished by looking at what Peggy calls the two bookends of education: stories and systems. Stories from the learners' lives and the systems that become evident through the patterns that rise out of stories. Thinking systemically is the route to change.

The concept of mirrors and windows is also central to SEED. Other people's experiences as mirrors of one's own world and as windows into another world, different from our own. Both are vital to learning, to building community and to a deeper understanding of the world in which we live. One affirms and the other broadens our viewpoint.

Being at SEED brought me back to the study tour in Reggio Emilia. Both experiences were carefully planned and well-executed processes with clear intentions and purpose. Both groups of leaders had a strong shared mission and a conviction that their work can bring about better outcomes for education. Both experiences valued an attention to details and aesthetics, provided nourishing meals, and dedicated time for discussion and conversation. Even the building of relationships was similar. I recall someone asking for a mailing list of all participants on the study tour and the leaders said they believed it was the responsibility of the participants to meet and make contact with others to collect this information. SEED started not with a sharing of names, titles, schools or any other specific information, but with a sharing of childhood stories. The leaders said it was a different way to know someone.

Coming back from SEED has filled my head with words very much like the list that Amelia Gambetti read to us on the study tour to demonstrate the concepts that are embedded in the Reggio Emilia approach: transparent, process, relationships, visible, organization, listening. Here's the beginning of my SEED list of words and phrases: listen, respect, observe, appreciate, trust the process, mine experiences, democratic use of time, serial stories, mirrors and windows, systemic thinking. The one concept that is completely new to my growing list is DKDK, you don't know what you don't know. There is so much DKDK yet to discover.