Dear Telfords, What wonderful work you two are
doing in the Blue Mountains of East Timor. We celebrate with
you!!!
I don't know if Elise is on this list or not, so I am
making sure. The first item that came to mind as a gift to the
minister of education would be a statue of the Iron Person, standing tall, along
with this wonderful story of Alice Baumbach's about the gifts of local people
being trained to do the jobs they care so much about, except lacking
credentials. Also Lela Jahn's & Karen Bueno's reflection yesterday
about those early years. Since we only have 24 hours, I would suggest a
framed copy of the Iron Person ( Great one on cover of 2010 Directory about the
right size). I also thought of the current work that Elise is doing with
Early Childhood Education. Don't know what is downloadable, but could
certainly be pointed to as an ongoing program. There is someone
at Kemper who is Elise's teammate who might have ideas. Pam
or Jean or Marge could possibly direct this to her if Elise is out
of town.
Our best wishes for a successful and meaningful meeting
with the Friendship Committee. Keep us posted.
With fond memories of our work down under many
years ago. (Jeremiah was 8 months old so that makes it 35 years ago.
Surely not!)
Lynda Cock
Dear Colleagues
Although I never actually met Ruth, her name
and her contribution to our common mission is lodged in my memory.
Now, a
question - was the curriculum which was developed in 5th City the foundation for
what later became known as Imaginal Education?
This coming weekend the
Blue Mountains East Timor Friendship Committee, which Elaine & I are members
of, are hosting a visit by Dulce Soares, the East Timor government's
Vice-Minister for Pre-School and Basic (primary) Education - the ET Government
has recently launched a new Pre-School initiative to establish pre-schools
widely across the nation and I understand they are at the stage of putting
together a curriculum.
I was meeting with a couple of members of our
organising team this morning and we were discussing what would be an appropriate
gift to give to the Vice-Minister, and having just read about Ruth and the 5th
City curriculum before I went to the meeting, I said I could possibly come up
with a gift related to that.
Is there something I could download which at
least would give her an introduction to our approach to early
learning/development?
Any suggestions you can make in the next 24 hours
will be most welcome.
Grace & Peace
John