Vermont's
Dialogue Education Network Thrives
by
Peter Perkins
The words
Jane Vella likes to quote about us 'standing on the shoulders of those who have
come before' us are so relevant to the successful and busy 2004 with dialogue
education in Vermont. This past year saw the most courses offered in Vermont in
a single year since I have been teaching dialogue education with GLP. They include
two courses sponsored by the Department
of Education, and one by the Vermont
Center for Crime Victims Services. We had our first school district sponsored
course for the Lamoille North School District. We also had one successful public
offering of the Advanced Learning Design course. We had another first with the
University of Vermont sponsored course called "Managing a Learning Organization"
modified for the Masters in Public Administration Program.
Thanks
to key GLP Senior Associates in Vermont the number of people in state government
and non-profits exposed to dialogue education has increased rapidly. Kathy
Johnson laid some critical ground work by gaining the commitment by the
Vermont Institutes to use dialogue education as the basis for orientation and
training for their math, science, technology and equity teacher and school consultants.
She also helped to bring on several new GLP Certified Teachers: Pam Quinn, Marcia
Jaquith and Claudine Praire. Kathy's networks also enabled Bert
Troughton to bring this work to the American
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals nationwide. Bert has prepared
herself to be a Certified Teacher as well as an avid practitioner.
Matt
Myers has helped to expand the network dialogue education practitioners
through the Vermont Department of Education with the help of Doug Dows to get
over 40 DOE staff trained. Through his work Casey Boyle Eldrigde, an emerging
new Certified Teacher with lots of energy, looks to expand into new areas of non-profits
and business.
One of our newest Certified Teachers,
Jo Romano is working with an old hand, Barb
Gassner and other dialogue education advocate Sarah Munro to get
the Vermont Agency of Human
Service to use the principles in training of managers and staff through out
Vermont. Other advocates such as Certified Teacher Lu Van Zeeland and graduates
Fran Weinbaum and Willa Farrell are looking to the future when high
schools in Vermont will use these principles to improve teaching and learning.
I received an email just today from a person who completed
the last course I taught with Matt Myers in Stowe, Vermont. She asked about upcoming
courses in Vermont because she has some associates who had to miss the last one.
She has been witnessing those who took the course use the principles quite successfully.
She and other colleagues are anxious to take the course as well. She went on to
say, "As for the ones that took the course last semester, they cannot
say enough about it and are using it constantly... Just thought you should know!"
<<back
