April 2006

Dear Readers – Welcome to the first edition of S.M.A.R.T. News. We are excited to launch this communication and through it, hope to share with our Designated Learning Sites...including those which have completed the three year mentoring process as well as those current and potential sites...a variety of articles to enhance learning readiness. Each month we will share tips on Better Training, Better Tools and Better Results. We are fortunate to have a number of outstanding contributors, including Launa Ellison, a 40+ year retired Minneapolis school teacher.  Launa had not only developed a truly brain friendly classroom at Clara Barton Open School but also served as editor of the Consortium for Whole Brain Learning starting in 1984.  Her first book, Seeing with Magic Glasses: A Teacher's View from the Front Line of the Learning Revolution, was published in 1993 and she has since published a second book, entitled The Personal Intelligences:  Promoting Social and Emotional Learning. Both relate stories of her classroom practices in relation to recent brain research.  In addition, Launa has trained teachers around the world and is currently a consultant for UNICEF in Canada, Singapore, Bangladesh South Africa and Alaska. We are pleased to have Launa donating her time and incredible depth of knowledge. I know you will enjoy and learn from her first article below, Learning Your Learner’s Style.

Kathy Orth, who many of you know as your on-site mentor in schools across northern and southern Minnesota and in North Dakota, will be contributing articles on a regular basis, often providing S.M.A.R.T. program tips in our Better Training portion of the newsletter. Kathy taught in Los Angeles area schools for a number of years before moving to Minnesota where she helped Cold Spring Elementary to become a “S.M.A.R.T.EST School” site, one that implements all three of the MLRC’s interventions, S.M.A.R.T./Boost-Up, NeuroTechnology and Auditory Stimulation. As a mentor who puts on thousands of miles annually, Kathy sees scores of schools doing outstanding work with our programs and will be sharing her knowledge and experience through her writing contributions. I am sure you will find Kathy’s tips on Alligator Crawls this month helpful.

Our other MLRC mentors who cover the S.M.A.R.T. states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Delaware, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee will be sharing stories and information as well so we urge you to share with them your own testimony on what you see as working well in your schools and also specific information on gains made by individual children or entire classrooms so that we can spread the good news.

Finally, credit goes to our terrific in-house MLRC Team here, Cheryl Smythe, Amy Deden and Toby Talbot, for their work on everything from design, to layout and data updates, in order to make this newsletter possible.  

We hope you enjoy this communication and welcome your comments and insights!  Nancy Farnham, MLRC Director