First Annual Meeting

Our meeting was held on August 12th, on the UMass Amherst campus. In attendance were Colin Fredericks, Emma White, Diana Pho, Stacey Cooney, Becki Davis, and consultant Sara White. The meeting started with introductions and an explanation from each member of why he or she is part of the group.

The intention of the meeting was to allow all the foundation members to be on the same page as regards the school and the foundation. To this end, a sizable portion of the meeting was spent brainstorming, generating a list of ideas that members held related to the school itself, and then reducing that to a minimal list of the most important items. The brainstorming covered more than two full-sized blackboards, and reducing it was not a simple task.

The final list contained five ideals important to the creation of our school. In the order of greatest to least votes received, they were:

  1. Methods: Our agreement was not that a single method was important, but rather that the methods used at our school are important. This may seem like a trivial statement, but it is not: most schools do not attempt to use a particular method or type of method in their teaching, instead allowing teachers to do whatever they like. In our opinion, having the school's teachers use modern, research-supported, engaging methods of teaching is more important than any other factor.

  2. Developmental Learning: This covers a great deal of ground, including teaching students about their own methods of learning, teaching them about their own mental and physical development, and improving their character and "emotional IQ."

  3. Commnuity and Civic Engagement: The school should not be an island in the world. A connection to the local, national, and global communities is a key part of our vision, including a community service requirement and community service learning courses.

  4. A Self-Sustaining School: There are two major aspects to this ideal: economic self-sufficiency and ecological self-sufficiency. An economically self-sufficient school does not require external sources of funding every year (though it can certainly benefit from them). An ecologically self-sufficient school produces its own electrical power, grows a portion of its own food, and produces as little waste as possible.

  5. An Integrated Environment: We desire a school that has students from many racial and socioeconomic backgrounds If possible, we want to have our school do this in a way that is representative of the local community. Most importantly, we want a school in which these students don't segregate themselves.

It should be noted that this is a list of five out of more than thirty. That an item made it to this list at all indicates a great deal of importance to more than one member of the foundation.

Presentations were also given on diversity in schools, character education, and logic models, with other presentations reserved for later meetings to save time.

The meeting was concluded over dinner.

Research Assignments

Colin -- Methods

Becki -- Developmental Learning

Stacey -- Community and Civic Engagement

Emma -- Self Sustaining School

Diane -- Integrated Environment

On Fundraising

We'll need to identify sources that fund:

Long-term Goals for Next Year

  1. Have a Mission Statement by August 2007.
  2. Be incorporated by end of 2007.
  3. Start researching a grant to get an office assistant.

Finally, it was agreed that we should set up a time for a late September/Early October meeting.