Strengths-based Mentoring: a Great Resource for OST Programs

by William Rossi
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Education should encourage self-discovery and enable students to engage with themselves and think for themselves. It should fill the students’ emotional needs along with the intellectual. Students need to be able to create an inner dialogue and converse with themselves in order to form a foundation that makes them whole and turns the tide of [...]

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The Rossi Approach

by Mary Helen Rossi

For the creative learner, life is an ever-unfolding and interrelated process that leads to a greater understanding and experience of being human. The Rossi approach stimulates, develops and nurtures this process in teachers and students alike. We believe that three of the most important characteristics of a successful human being are a well developed sense [...]

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Strengths-based Empowerment

by Diane Allsman

The Merge approach provides a vision of hope in others’ potential for success –and the tools needed to empower someone to find their way, their personal path – the ultimate goal of every recognized Human Being. First we have to recognize, validate a person – give them a taste of what it feels like to [...]

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The Teacher as a Model of a Joyful Life

by Mary Helen Rossi

Years ago, as a volunteer for a non-profit arts organization, I wrote a grant request to a national foundation that funds programs that create joy through rhythm. While reflecting on how the program I was writing about cultivated and nourished students so they began to experience feelings of joy, I gained a new perspective on [...]

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OST Evaluation: it makes my life easier and makes me a better teacher

by Dawn Mehan

I have not experienced myself as a particularly organized person as of yet. So needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled to know that evaluations with the SETS software were a part of what was an otherwise inspiring teaching career with MERGE. I have always know that better organization will ideally make me more focused, but [...]

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The Value of a Creative Educational Environment

by William Rossi

I think we need to broaden the current perspective of what constitutes an educational environment. Actually, since children and youth are constantly learning, everything that goes on around them is an educational environment—adults and peers are their teachers, for better or worse. Unfortunately today’s environment contains many negatives. Hopefully in time we’ll realize the meaning [...]

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Standards-Based Education (2)

by William Rossi

As I suggested in my first post on standards-based education, the focus on imposed knowledge greatly minimizes students’ chances to develop into whole human beings. Imposed knowledge never becomes real knowledge—that can only come from within a person. By teaching primarily information, education can break the spirits of students who learn differently or have learning [...]

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Standards-based Education

by William Rossi

With its focus on a narrow, one dimensional performance, standards-based education not only misses the point, it compounds the mistakes of traditional education by discouraging and repelling those students who can’t relate. One explanation for this is that in its drive to be efficient, standards-based education often approaches students as if they all learn in [...]

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