GoodShop works the same way.  While we encourage you to buy local when you can, many of the places you are planning to shop this holiday season probably participate, and all you need to do is designate Global Village School as your charity ad click through to the site you want to shop at from the GoodShop website.  The merchant and Goodshoop will coordinate the rest!

http://www.goodsearch.com/goodshop.aspx

National Public Lands Day is the nation’s largest hands-on volunteer effort to improve and enhance the public lands Americans enjoy.  As part of this mission they have solicited videos that answer the question “How Do You Love Your Favorite Public Land?”

Avalon, a GVS 4th grade homeschool student, narrated a video for Camp Bayou and this video is a finalist in the National Public Lands Day contest.  Please check it out and if you like it, sign into YouTube and vote by clicking the thumbs up icon.

You can check out Avalon’s blog where she shares her love of frogs, snakes, turtles and other things she loves to learn about here: http://www.wanderingwhimsy.com/

Please spread the word.

http://www.globalvillageschool.org/k8-curriculum.html

Take a look at our curriculum samples by grade here:

http://www.globalvillageschool.org/k8-sample.html

http://medicine.arizona.edu/spotlight/learn-sarver-heart-centers-continuous-chest-compression-cpr

The book is called Teaching as an Act of Love: Thoughts and Recollections of a Former Teacher, Principal and Kid, written by Richard Lakin.  Here’s a brief description:

“The 55 thought-provoking, humorous and heartwarming pieces in this collection are geared to teachers, principals, parents, and all those concerned with making schools more loving and effective. It presents a close look at a school staff working together to create a caring and challenging learning environment where children come first, as well as at a real partnership between school and home.”

Download the book online here:
http://www.thanks2teachers.com/Portals/0/docs/Teaching_as_an_Act_of_Love.pdf

How did this happen so fast?

“I went to public school in Georgia until fourth grade,” says Pyron, “but I didn’t find it very engaging.” His mother decided to home-school him for two years, after which Pyron took the ACT and scored well enough to enter Georgia’s Piedmont College at the age of 12, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in biology at 16.
Looking at prospective graduate schools, Pyron contacted Professor Frank Burbrink of the Graduate Center’s Ph.D. Program in Biology, whose lab is based at the College of Staten Island and whose research focuses on the phylogenetics of snakes, reptiles, and amphibians.

Burbrink’s lab was a perfect fit. “I was extremely excited to be accepted at CUNY, as I knew that was where I really wanted to do my graduate work,” Pyron says. So a 17-year-old from rural Georgia headed to New York City to study his passion, snakes.
“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know I wanted to work with snakes,” he says.

In research for his thesis, Systematics and Historical Biogeography of the Lampropeltinine Snakes, Pyron found that the biodiversity of these types of snakes is greater in temperate North America than in the tropics—the opposite of which is true for most animals. He has also studied the evolutionary patterns of non-venomous snakes that mimic venomous snakes.

Next January, Pyron will become the Robert F. Griggs Assistant Professor of Biology at George Washington University, which runs a graduate program in his field of systematics and evolution jointly with the Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian. There, he will be on the fast track to becoming one of the nation’s leading herpetologists, and perhaps the youngest.

Original Source: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/press_information/current_releases/2010/May/commencement.htm

For more information contact David Manning at dmanning@gc.cuny.edu

The Institute for Humane Education is offering two dynamic, hands-on summer institutes designed to deepen your understanding of the interconnected issues of environmental preservation, animal protection, human rights, and media & culture, and teach you how to inspire students to be leaders for a sustainable world. Our summer institutes will challenge you to think creatively and critically about integrating global issues into your classrooms and communities, preparing you to enliven your teaching and add even greater depth and relevancy to your curricula – regardless of the grade you teach, the educational setting, or the subject areas in which you specialize.

Teaching for a Better World: A Summer Institute for Teachers
June 28-July 2, 2010
At the Institute for Humane Education in Surry, Maine

Develop new ideas and practice new skills with other committed educators who share your enthusiasm for inspiring young people to hope and action. Our Summer Institute is at our beautiful headquarters, just a 40-minute drive to Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park. Earn four (4) Continuing Education Units (CEUs) through the University of Maine (40 contact hours). Space is limited!

Teaching for a Positive Future:
A Distance Learning Summer Institute
July 5-30, 2010

Explore relevant issues and learn how to integrate them into your teaching without the need to travel. Participants complete five exercises per week on their own, with access to an online discussion forum and frequent phone salons that provide connection and support throughout the course. Earn 3.5 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) through the University of Maine (35 contact hours).
Early bird deadline: June 13 (save $25!). Special discounts for teachers from the same school.

Learn more and register: http://humaneeducation.org/

Contact: Amy Morley, Events Manager, Institute for Humane Education, amy@humaneeducation.org or (207) 667-1025

Ojai, CA April 20, 2010 — In celebration of Earth Day (April 22), Global Village School, a leader in distance learning through homeschooling, is proud to announce its new K-8 Whole Child, Healthy Planet curriculum. This innovative approach in education features a learning styles-centered program, focusing on engaging the whole child with an emphasis on diversity and developmental stages.

The school’s new K-8 curriculum guides are centered on the four core principles of the Earth Charter: (1) Respect and Care for the Community of Life (2) Ecological Integrity (3) Social & Economic Justice (4) Democracy, Nonviolence, Peace and Diversity.

Families of children attending Global Village School are already enthusiastic about the new curriculum. Parent Beth Campbell-Rafdal says, “We received our Whole Child, Healthy Planet curriculum guide last week. We are so excited that we found Global Village School. I feel as though the curriculum was written for our family! Thank you for helping us navigate an even more meaningful path of homeschooling with our kids.”

While most standard curriculum is shaped by a textbook and a workbook, the Whole Child, Healthy Planet curriculum is built around the inspiration found in many types of literature.
Sally Carless, founder and Executive Director of Global Village School explains, “The K8 curriculum guides cover all of the core academic subjects in a way that engages students through a sense of enchantment, awe, and wonder as well as through the incorporation of art, music, nature, imagination, and story.”

“Global Village is truly a school with heart,” says Marriage, Family and Child Counselor Nancy Hart, M.A.. “How can a child truly learn when his or her focus is the fear around test taking and memorization? If the strongest emotion around schooling is fear, then that fear gets connected to the learning process. Promoting the love of learning, not the fear of failing to learn–wow! What a concept! Isn’t this what we want for our children?”

About Global Village School -
From its base in the coastal hills of Southern California, this successful distance learning school reaches out to students as far away as Arkansas, Argentina and Australia. The school offers an international K-12 homeschool diploma program that empowers students to cultivate their gifts and passions by engaging them in a creative, flexible educational process grounded in the principles of peace, justice, diversity, and sustainability.

The K8 Whole Child, Healthy Planet curriculum is currently being used by private and charter schools as well as by homeschoolers.  To explore samples of the K8 courses, visit www.globalvillageschool.org/k8-curriculum.html.

Media Contact: Michaella Seveney
Phone/Fax: 805-646-9792
P.O. Box 480 Ojai, CA 93024
E-mail: info@globalvillageschool.org
http://www.GlobalVillageSchool.org