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This issue featuring the Mead School was the
most popular edition of Dromenon, a journal I
published in association with Jean Houston
to get the word out to teachers, therapists,
managers and other professionals about
innovative thinking and quality work
going on in the so-called New Age. [JP]
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We don’t know quite how the magic happened when Elaine was inspired to start a pre-school and elementary school in the basement of the Second Congregational Church in Greenwich with minister Otis Maxfield, but it happened in the year 1969 and they called it the Mead School for Human Development. Not long afterward, the
In between all that teaching, founding, administrating and designing, Elaine gave seminars for parents once a week for 7 years.
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| Elaine in her early days not long after the Mead School was founded. (Photo: The Mead School) |
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Here's how Mead remembers Elaine on their website:
The Mead School mourns Elaine de Beauport, School Founder
Elaine de Beauport, educational visionary and founder of The Mead School, died on March 13, 2013, surrounded by her family and friends. Our thoughts are with Elaine’s sons, Pierre and Patrick, as they grieve the loss of their mother.
Our school has been inspired and strengthened by Elaine’s tenacity of vision. Her teaching career in independent schools led Elaine to deconstruct the educational norm and envision meaningful education for all students. When she and her colleagues began The Mead School, they were a small but dedicated group of educators asking questions still debated by educators today. How can teachers fully engage students in the learning process? How can teachers provide materials and program that contain depth without limiting a student’s ability to understand that all knowledge is interconnected? Given the importance of a child’s emotional connection to environment and learning, how can a school provide guidance and program structure that supports student independence and fidelity to learning while addressing the affective nature of each child? These questions have been essential elements of program development and work with children from the day Mead welcomed its first students in the fall of 1969.
The vision for the Mead School began in the late 1960s when Dr. Elaine de Beauport was a teacher and researcher at Rosemary Hall.
Dr. de Beauport’s experiences in the classroom at Rosemary Hall and her research in brain function and processes inspired her to create a new and better kind of educational environment. She observed that while she had the brightest students in her classes, they were very passive learners, lacking a real connection or passion for what they were learning. She believed they needed a much more experiential environment to inspire them and to engage their curiosity so they would become active learners
Through her research, Dr. de Beauport identified that the human brain is capable of at least ten different intelligences — some mental, some emotional and some behavioral. She observed that students could become passionately engaged with learning if they were allowed to access and develop their particular learning styles. Her research showed that children were driven to learn and would thrive in a learning environment that tapped into their individual curiosities and passions.
Dr. de Beauport put her research into practice by founding The Mead School with Otis Maxfield, a Senior Minister at the Second Congregational Church in Greenwich, CT. Dr. de Beauport and Mr. Maxfield shared a dream of starting a school dedicated to life-long learning.
The Mead School opened its doors in 1969 with 80 students attending kindergarten through fourth grade. In 1970, nursery and pre-K and the fifth grade were added, with sixth grade added in 1971. The seventh and eighth grades and the 2 year olds/Beginnings program opened nearly ten years later.
In 1986, Mead opened the Child Care Program and an after school program, known as Sundial, to help meet the needs of working parents and guardians.
The school moved from Greenwich, CT to Stamford, CT in 1997. Today, the school has over 167 students in Child Care, preschool and grades K through 8th.
Enter the Adults
Dr. de Beauport’s experiences in the classroom at Rosemary Hall and her research in brain function and processes inspired her to create a new and better kind of educational environment. She observed that while she had the brightest students in her classes, they were very passive learners, lacking a real connection or passion for what they were learning. She believed they needed a much more experiential environment to inspire them and to engage their curiosity so they would become active learners
Through her research, Dr. de Beauport identified that the human brain is capable of at least ten different intelligences — some mental, some emotional and some behavioral. She observed that students could become passionately engaged with learning if they were allowed to access and develop their particular learning styles. Her research showed that children were driven to learn and would thrive in a learning environment that tapped into their individual curiosities and passions.
Dr. de Beauport put her research into practice by founding The Mead School with Otis Maxfield, a Senior Minister at the Second Congregational Church in Greenwich, CT. Dr. de Beauport and Mr. Maxfield shared a dream of starting a school dedicated to life-long learning.
The Mead School opened its doors in 1969 with 80 students attending kindergarten through fourth grade. In 1970, nursery and pre-K and the fifth grade were added, with sixth grade added in 1971. The seventh and eighth grades and the 2 year olds/Beginnings program opened nearly ten years later.
In 1986, Mead opened the Child Care Program and an after school program, known as Sundial, to help meet the needs of working parents and guardians.
The school moved from Greenwich, CT to Stamford, CT in 1997. Today, the school has over 167 students in Child Care, preschool and grades K through 8th.
After she started the Mead School
From these three areas of research a concept of educating “Multiple Intelligences” was developed, emphasizing mental intelligence, emotional intelligence and behavioral intelligence. From 1980 onward, Elaine evolved and cultivated an adult curriculum of courses of innovative education for adults offered to small groups, organizations and corporations with appreciable success. From 2000 onward Elaine developed the same innovative adult education system in Caracas , Venezuela
She trained 30 facilitators in “Dialogue-Negotiation-Agreement” (DNA ) to teach the course in schools and universities as well as to the general adult public in Venezuela Venezuela Ecuador Colombia
The Mead School Mead School
Elaine's K-9 Mead School for Human Development became one of the most successful efforts in innovative learning in the United States. Of nearly 260 innovative schools of its kind launched in the 1970's and 80's, Mead is one of only four surviving today. Mead welcomed unusually different children -- different because they had different learning styles or "strengths" as Elaine called them.
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| A Mead School artist. |
Her system of learning at Mead used creative arts as a cognitive frame and tool for active stimulation of new ways of thinking, including somewhat more "right brained" learning styles we would now say today, a phrase unknown but strongly intuited by Elaine as her career as an educator began. A regular meditator and yogini, she lit all the lamps of her considerable intelligence in search of better ways to be alive. She was an explorer in consciousness and not surprisingly devoted to non-violence and peace about which she once addressed the UN.
Photos above and below show the Mead School, designed primarily by Elaine, with its curved walls, "Aha" moments and art all over the place. You can see examples of the extraordinarily imaginative art the kids created. Long before brain scientists had discovered hemispheric specialization, Elaine was educating the left brain and right brain in young children. She was a pioneer in modern education. "Matters of Consequence" was a Dromenon interview I did with Elaine, where I first met her. A serious matter of consequence for me, to be sure.
Dr de Beauport (with doctorate in education) was so far ahead of her time intuitively that before she read the work of Dr Paul MacLean, Chief of the NIMH Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behavior (and before she traveled to Bethesda MD to meet with him), she was educating the limbic system and reptilian brain MacLean had discovered and named. He called the whole system the "triune brain."
Elaine developed a "School for Adults" (called the Mead Institute) based on what she called the "Council" process, sometimes called a School for Emotions. A drawing by a Mead School student, while expressing his own ambivalence, also happens to capture the exasperated expression of an adult struggling to grapple with so much power while feeling helpless:
The same drawing expresses the stress of executives, mid-level supervisors and 1200 overwhelmed nurses at Mt Sinai Medical Center in NY City for which Elaine designed a stress-management program called "Self Care." She brought her innovative educational interventions into successful engagement with stressed-out adults with statistically significant results. She was also a lecturer on "The Triune Brain" at the New School for Social Research in NYC.
ELAINE GOES TO CARACAS
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| Elaine on her birthday in 2010. |
As time went on and word of her work spread, Elaine (fluently Spanish-speaking) was invited to develop a university course of study in Caracas, Venezuela, devoted to educating multiple human intelligences. This project became so successful that in 1995 she was awarded a special government decoration for service to education in Venezuela. The Elaine de Beauport Chair was endowed in 2005 at the Central University of Caracas where facilitators, trained by the Mead Institute, currently teach the curriculum created by Dr. de Beauport.
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| Elaine with adult students in Caracas |
Elaine de Beauport’s Second School after Mead:
LOS CENTROS PARA EL DESARROLLO HUMANO
The Centers for Human Development in Caracas
During the last trimester of 2004, all 2005 and beginning of 2006 Elaine de Beauport created in Caracas a school based in the triune brain for 96 street kids for the organization La Colmena de la Vida. It was a model in every sense: the curriculum put emphasis on the brain, especially the Reptile Intelligence of values, parameters, flexibility, and acceptance, and the Limbic Intelligence of love, choices and appreciation for any accomplishment.
The "two-teacher" approach that Elaine developed at the Mead School in the US was brought to life in this second school in Caracas. There was one "coach" accompanying the child throughout the day as well as a teacher for each curriculum subject. We instructed the teachers in brain function -- and also the parents who were living at the Center with the children.
We went to the poorest places in the city to choose the kids, and chose the Director and the teachers for each subject.
There was an Art Center, an Economy Center, a Language Center, a Humanities Center where the children were taught brain abilities, a Film Center where the children were taught “See, Hear, Feel Film,” a program created by Anne Marie Santoro; a Sports Center with a swimming pool, a Music Center, a Theater Center, an Environment Center, and a Library.
and brought to life the curriculum for each center. We had a never-
ending 16 working hours per day for several months.
After the first year, the students underwent tests from the Ministry of Education. Some of the officials approved the curriculum for one, two and even three years in one. Academically it was a great success.
The students were happy and enthusiastic with their new house and
their new school in Caracas.
We have the feedback of some of the teachers and coaches which might be a bit lengthy to read here. One day I will write the whole experience for the world to really understand the mind of the best teacher that has been around us during my lifetime.
Aura Sofia Diaz.
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READ THE BOOK
Elaine wrote a book guiding adult readers through her ideas, entitled "Three Faces of the Mind." She laid out an easy-to-read blueprint with exercises for replicating her work for present-day and future generations. Here's the chapter on the Reptilian Brain to give you a taste of how Elaine adapted brain research to human education and translated it further -- into human life.
You can order Elaine's book in paperback from Amazon or favorite
bookseller for less than $20 bucks for a lifetime of insights about our three ways of looking at the world and acting within it. An eye-opening and useful guide to "self-care," a perfect gift for friends, including life-partners.
Here's a recent reader review from Amazon:
Fascinating book! February 4, 2013
By Annette M. Laughlin
Having studied psychology for many years, I found the scientific aspects of the brain/mind system brought to light by Elaine de Beauport fleshed out my understanding of how the mechanics of the brain play such an important role in who we (think) we are. I came away with a clearer understanding of why I behave the way I do and the choices I make.
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Read a chapter on the Reptilian Brain from Elaine's book.
Order the book from Amazon or your favorite
book-seller, less than $20 including shipping.
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NEXT: The Interview
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LINK:
Elaine and Aura Sofia Diaz's website: The Infinite Human (El Humano Infinito). Go to this link for current info about activities at the Mead Institute in Caracas.
