A three-year mentoring program of mind, body, soul, spirit; call Lesley @ 206-552-1177 for more information

We all know children are born into this world open. We all want them to stay open, and it seems to me that most of us as parents and as friends and as educators are aware of when our children are in places which make it challenging for them to stay open. I tutored middle school students at Pathfinder Alternative K-8 in West Seattle, and found that the reason why the kids were not doing their work at level was because of emotional blocks. As an adult, this came as no surprise to me. I also learned something else. I'd taught before, college, at South Seattle Community College, and learned the enormous difference between teaching with expectation and teaching without it. As a tutor, I had very little responsibility to ensure the child was learning; as a teacher, I felt far more responsibility. I used this time at Pathfinder to make the most remarkable discoveries, including this one: every single student is brilliant.

The kid who moved and talked and performed far more slowly than anyone else turned out to be the one child who really seemed to know himself thoroughly. He also lived with a depressed father, and that slowed down his concepts of what was possible. I hooked him into career mentoring ideas which he ended up rejecting, explaining that his parents would never approve them. The truth is, we don't know. This is a ripe point at which to ask the child to go deeper within. Even children tell stories about their parents, often shifting the responsibility there rather than reaching for their dreams.

The two girls who wanted to do a report on Sijourner Truth were stalled. I asked them what they wanted to write about for their term paper and neither had a word to say. As it turns out, and information only possible to me after a lot of creative questioning, both of these girls were besotted by Truth because she spoke up for herself. Still, their projects lacked creative fuel and both paper and computer screen lay empty of thought, empty of energy. What worked here was to align the girls with a friend of mine who teaches African American history at the University of Washington. The girls, both 14, were awed as I made the phone call to the University of Washington's Quintard Taylor from the little portable where we did our work. They giggled and blushed as I handed the phone to one of them, and after she talked to my friend, the next one. The project began to take on real life and real pulse through this outreach.

At South Seattle Community College. I taught English to high school drop-outs through the Career Link Academy. We played with music. I put the kids in a circle, which many of them resented horribly but which brought out an honesty which facing the teacher exclusively never does. I asked the kids to keep journals and to follow their dreams. Most of them dreamed of going into real estate and becoming professional basketball players. It's all good, but none of this takes wing without steady application and effort and I'd guess none of them will ever play pro ball. It seemed to me that they could all go deeper into themselves to find out what really nourishes their soul. The most telling detail of teaching was this: I liked to give presentations on creative discipline, especially because I was raising a 5 year-old five days a week by myself and because I know an awful lot about the discipline of writing and the discipline of creative movement. I asked all 17 of my students: how do you begin your day? Not a single one seemed to spend a single moment in solitude or in discipline. They raced to the phone. They raced to the computer. They grumbled at their moms for waking them up. The jumped out of bed, panicking, threw on clothes, grabbed a soda and bolted their little brothers in the car just in time for the little brothers to be just a little bit late to school.

Welcome to Brilliance

Brilliance: You know it. You are it. Now is the time to be brilliant, to be brilliant without apology, to go forth into the deepest layers of your own inner brilliance and to shine, shine, shine!

Early Morning Brilliance is committed to helping to remind you of your own inner brilliance. The creation of Lesley Holdcroft, a Vashon mom of Sam, 8, and a longtime journalist and now novelist, Early Morning Brilliance intends to open the heart and the creation power of Vashon kids and parents. For the next three years, we will work together on achieving our dreams. The participants will work with a variety of modalities to learn how to access their own deepest wisdom, how to set and achieve goals and how to continue on, no matter what. This is long-term dream-making and mentorship. Lesley is choosing a three-year project to ingrain early in these children's lives the power of committing to a goal and to standing behind it, and themselves. Over three years, the children will grow and grow and Lesley will be there to record the process through her writing, her interviewing and through the help of a few photographers and video takers. The kids will make presentations every quarter for a total of 12 presentations.

Our first meeting is Friday, August 20th. Kids and grown-ups will come to air their dream of creating their finest reality over the next three years.

Please come to hold a space for these remarkable Vashon Islanders.

Brilliance Book Club

Those of you interested in reading about education viewed through the prism of a brain researcher are invited to join me in a reading of The Unschooled Mind by Harold Gardner. I just read the intro in the Farmer's Market Park. What stood out to me is this: all children master language nearly effortlessly and without any tutoring. All people are essentially unschooled for up to five years and we fall back on this understanding of the world our entire lives. At school, the era of scholastic enterprise begins and no one evinces much understanding of the topics. No one.

Schools are designed to teach children social values and to create what's considered to be good citizens. Schools are not so helpful at helping the children understand the topic at hand. Gardner speaks to the surface quality of learning in schools, but again, is this relevant to me? Is there a way to assess the quality of the school experiences before me and my child? I have come to know that a book does not create my reality: I create my reality. In any case, to get back to the book, Gardner has found that good grades mean nothing in terms of true understanding: the better the student, he's found, the less well they actually understand the material but do understand how to answer the test questions. In his book, he says kids with so called "learning disabilities" are often the ones who are highly intelligent but who do not respond to the ways of measuring intelligence available in schools.

Are there any teachers out there reading this? What do you believe?

Gardner is talking about a template where students learn in settings with meaning. He likes the apprentice model: of course, it gave us Michaelangelo! I think of the classically educated artists I've interviewed and known through family friends in Europe. When children are directed early into their strengths and passions, they can manifest nearly superhuman talent in those fields,
though I doubt most America families could stomach the rigor of that type of education. From the Pacific Northwest Ballet, dancer Stanko Milov told me of how he left his home by 8 to study ballet and the classics. I don't know him well enough to have an opinion about his overall growth. What are Americans studying, and why and what are the criticisms of education?

At my Envision Women event, a 14 year-old cried deeply over feeling pressured by her teachers at school. In conversation, I knew I would never know if she was pressuring herself, or if the source came exclusively from the teachers. Like lightening, it struck me then and there while looking into her crying eyes: if she learns to work from her whole being and can tolerate others pressuring her without feeling pressured, she has mastered a life-long lesson. Many, many people I meet say they want their children in school for the life lessons. School is a cauldron of unpredictability compared to home life. School is a place to learn to get along - with anyone. Some people do this marvelously. At Pathfinder, where I tutored, a sixth grader named Audrey received a Citizenship award for her ease with everyone. She never joined a clique and remained a friend to all. She wrote a poem I love: If I'm ugly, thank you. If I'm stupid, thank you. If I'm beautiful, right back at you.

I am hearing much about education. A nanny told me children do benefit from learning how to work with bullies, but they should not have to do this at age 7. (And yet, the concepts of good and bad come so early in the development of a child, by 5 at least.) She ended up putting her kids in private school. With every single story I hear, I wonder if the storytelling would be the same if the speaker practiced a form of mind yoga which allows them to go deep into their being and to see how every problem they see can be sourced within themselves as well.

Well, there is a lot of learning to do.

In the beginning....

Early Morning Brilliance: the name, the blog, the curious impulse which drives me to continually be striving toward greater levels of awareness, and alertness.

My son, 8 in just seven days, and I dreamed up the moniker "Early Morning Brilliance" one quiet morning in our Talequah home on Vashon Island. Essentially, I've been awed by his brilliance since his birth. His brilliance and his outright radiance and the way his life opens the doors of my perception to the brilliance of other kids and - if truth be told - to other adults.

Early Morning Brilliance is my research trail as I talk to other minds about educating children. This process of copious interviewing I inherited through my journalism work for the Seattle Times, the Seattle P-I, the Tacoma News Tribune and others. As a real-life researcher, I began to learn pretty early on that nothing is true except for the truth of the heart. Ultimately, I gave up my journalism career and began working around stories. What are the stories we tell ourselves and others? My research led me to talk to a couple hundred women in West Seattle for the Envision Women project, and now roots me here on Vashon this summer working on education for Early Morning Brilliance. As people tell me stories, concerns, hopes, fears and delights, I am putting together a presentation. This presentation will occur Friday, August 20th, 7 p.m. at the Vashon United Methodist Church 17928 Vashon Hwy SW.

I've intuited quite a lot of information regarding education through experience with public school and large state universities for my own education, and then extensive physical study through years of yoga, dance, massage and slow muscular release work, as well as a practice I call mind yoga. This practice challenges the mind to show how a stressful belief is no more true than its opposing and much kinder belief. My own child has gone to Montessori, public school and private school. I've taught at South Seattle Community College and tutored middle school kids in public school. I know a little about education but certainly not much so I'm going to the people now to glean more information from their experience.

Early Morning Brilliance.