The Houston Business Journal believes in Lemonade Day and as part of their amazing Celebrate!Enterprise program, they are hosting an event for wine and cigar connoisseurs called Vintage Capitalism.  A portion of the proceeds will benefit Prepared 4 Life’s Lemonade Day!

If you like great wine and cigars, please consider joining us at this wonderful event at Uptown Park.

Tuesday, May 18
The Tasting Room – Uptown Park
1101-18 Uptown Park
Houston TX 77056
6 to 8:30 p.m.

Learn more or register here.

Tickets to this event include:

• Great C-level networking
• Five wine tastings
• Two cigars
• Hors d’oeuvres
• Donation to Prepared 4 Life

“Today’s global demand for creativity and innovation cries out for a new model for the learning environment,” Trung Le says in his Fast Company write-up on dynamic, student-centered classrooms. “Great alternatives to this outdated spatial arrangement are entirely possible.”

More and more classrooms in higher grade levels are taking tips from the open, hands-on kindergarten setup. The storytelling and collaboration that drive the kindergarten classroom are the same interactions that drive many successful adult workplaces.

Click here to read the full story: Redesigning Education: Why Can’t We Be in Kindergarten for Life?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidrn/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

• Are You a Highly Qualified Emotionally Intelligent Early Childhood Educator? HT: National Assocation for the Education of Young Children
• Edutopia Seminar: Social and Emotional Learning: Making a Case in a NCLB World Teachers share how they integrate social and emotional learning with traditional academics.  HT: Mike Falick
• Calm Down & Pay Attention: Cultivating Emotional Intelligence for Kids Daniel Goleman

http://www.flickr.com/photos/airgap/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

During the 1-hour forum, you can get in on the dialogue right from home!

Call (713) 743-8513 or e-mail HaveYourSay@HoustonPBS.org.

Check out the list of guests and more details on the show.

Motivation, schmotivation, suggests Bob Sullo, educational consultant and author of Activating the Desire to Learn.

The ASCD Whole Child blog reports on Sullo’s session at ASCD’s San Antonio conference. Sullo says motivation can be a form of control. What’s more important is to inspire and engage kids rather than control them.

Five steps to inspire and engage:

1. Build positive relationships.
2. Create relevant lessons.
3. Set realistic expectations.
4. Create a needs-satisfying classroom.
5. Teach students to self-evaluate.

I especially appreciate the last tip. By self-evaluating, students can think about their original goal and think: Did I meet it? What can I do better next time?

While motivation is clearly important, I think Sullo is trying to say it doesn’t necessarily produce results every time on its own. You can be motivated to lose weight when you try on clothes that don’t fit. But that doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly embark on an effective weight-loss regimen. On the other hand, contestants on the TV show The Biggest Loser, are inspired and engaged for weeks and taken through each of the five steps Sullo lists. That’s when they see life-changing results.

What success stories have you seen of youth who have been inspired and engaged through Sullo’s five steps?

Education is changing from being lecture-based to emphasizing interaction and collaboration. No more absorbing and spitting out information to make a grade.

Take, for example, the American Immigration Digital Storytelling Project by students at Life Academy High School in Oakland, Calif. The project was sponsored by the National Writing Project and Pearson Foundation. Students interviewed a family member of friend about the immigrant experience, knowing their end product would be a voiceover narrative.

They didn’t just write an essay and turn it in.

Working in pairs, students brainstormed and pared their stories down to the most compelling parts. They composed storyboards, analyzed best practices on the Internet and constantly edited their writing.

“This process of recording, listening, editing, and re-recording allowed students to shoot for mastery over their voiceover narrative, rather than simply completion of the project,” teacher-consultant Clifford Lee writes.

How often do you see students concerned about writing and performance for its own sake? They examined the feeling of their language and how it flowed when written and when spoken. They thought about the audience that would interact with their pieces.

Let’s not forget the human interaction experience. Students learn conflict resolution when dealing with a peer partner they may not get along with. They manage the struggle to pin down interview times and acquire the sound bytes they need from interviewees.

Most importantly, from scratch, they tell a true story of human struggle.

“It’s a human being you’re doing the story about, so you put all the effort and all the time you can because we’re making it for somebody who has sacrificed, so he can have a better life here,” said student Israel.

Have you seen similar projects in your community that compel students to collaborate and think critically? Are you seeing a trend toward this type of learning?

The truth is people across the nation are finding out what works, what really engages children in the long term to be successful. Youth themselves are taking a leadership role to help transform their peers.

We hope to share those stories here — your stories — and be part of a movement of people creating positive change.

Whether you’re a parent, neighbor, uncle, aunt, educator, police officer, retail salesperson or someone else, we all have a place in creating a community that supports youth.