From the Back Porch
Jane Vella
Global Learning Partners
Still Glowing
As I sit in the warmth of the autumn sunshine slanting into my back porch, I am still glowing from the experience of the Global Learning Partners’ Semi-Annual Meeting which took place here in Raleigh this past September.
First, the Seven Partners and two staff members met in Raleigh!
The Seven Partners and Jane. From left to right: Peter
Noteboom, Darlene Goetzman, Jeanette Romkema, Peter Perkins, Jane
Vella, Valerie Uccellani and Karen Ridout.
On Saturday evening, in the home of our long time Associates and friends, Joe and Sue Button, we had a book signing, celebrating
ON TEACHING AND LEARNING and a supper for over thirty GLP graduates.
Then, I had the joy of cooking Sunday dinner for everyone. Marian Darlington Hope’s beautiful daughter and grandson joined us, as did Valerie Uccellani’s husband Chris and darling two year old, Tess!
Then, I had the honor of dining out with them on Monday evening, showing off the wonders of Raleigh’s new Convention Center and our Capital City’s haute cuisine, y’all!
And then – I had been invited some weeks before to be on the Partnership Meeting program on Monday morning, for ninety minutes. Ninety minutes in a packed four-day semi-annual meeting program! Karen Ridout, hostess and leader of the program group, had said, “We want you to teach us on Monday morning, Jane.” Wow! “Teach you? What?”
“Anything you wish,” Karen responded with a smile. Again, Wow! (Read what was taught and learned in “Learning, Transfer and Impact”
in this issue of
Voices in Dialogue).
In these days of crass, profit driven systems fomenting disaster on every corner, with corporations tumbling from their own weight, I find myself in the midst of this earnest group of educators who really do manage differently. The revolution is not coming, friends. It is here. And I am still glowing in its warmth.
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