Merge Education has the tools you need!

Explore our site to discover a fresh and exciting contribution to creative education, and see how the Merge System for Creative Education can make a difference in your teaching, parenting, or mentoring. We welcome you!

Parents and teachers — Mentoring Guide and Curriculum to break negative patterns and power struggles, and create new pathways into happier relationships with your children.

K-12 Schools — Creative Education to engage and motivate students to learn, plus all the tools you need to develop an after-school arts program including sophisticated yet simple-to-use evaluation and assessment software.

Community Organizations — All the specific, hands-on tools you need to develop a creative mentoring program, including sophisticated yet simple-to-use evaluation and program management software for the competitive edge on grants and other funding.

The Teacher as a Model of a Joyful Life

by Mary Helen Rossi

As a volunteer for a non-profit arts organization, I recently wrote a request for funding to a national foundation that supports and encourages programs that create joy through rhythm. While reflecting on how the program I was writing about cultivates and nourishes students so they begin to experience feelings of joy, I gained a better [...]

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Mistakes are Really Half Steps: a Refreshing Take on the Learning Process

by Mary Helen Rossi

A lot of us perceive mistakes as problems – or, at best, as opportunities – so when Bill started talking this morning about mistakes really being half steps I became almost gleeful. Half steps towards success! Something that’s necessary to move forward! I was pretty much falling all over myself to make the connections – [...]

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Student Assessments: they make my life easier and make 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 written student assessments from the SETS program were a part of my very inspiring teaching career with MERGE. I have always know that better organization will ideally make me more focused, but [...]

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My Experience with Strengths-based Mentoring

by Dawn Mehan

As I was saying in last week’s post, when I started teaching it quickly seemed that really enjoying teaching would at best be a far off destination and that I, too, would join the other martyrs to tiredly serve the deserving but uncooperative youth. But much has changed for me since then. When I started [...]

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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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The Value of a Creative Educational Environment

by William Rossi

Perhaps 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 of [...]

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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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My Teaching Experience before Strengths-based Mentoring

by Dawn Mehan

Over recent years I have been struck by the feeling that our young people are falling through the cracks. Without ever realizing why until now, I felt disturbed and protective when listening to adults complain about kids being unfocused and withdrawn. At the same time, I have noticed a growing social awareness around the environment, [...]

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