HY 2011-2012

New Parents’ Orientation

What is HEdCen?

HEdCen is a school but not a school.  It is a school for lack of a better term that will easily be understood even by the policemen,  but it is in fact a home.  A home that is a rarity.  It is a home where traditions, respect and discipline, nurture and freedom, will and character are formed.  It is a home where “parents” can be found!

It is a community where there is a felt fellowship with one another because of a shared mission, vision and goals.

HEdCen is a society where a society is a group of people living together with shared customs, laws and organization.  It is a simulation if not a microcosm of a society characterized by diversity, an organized set-up of different religions, beliefs, backgrounds, and abilities, talents or gifts.

This school that is not a school, is  a learning environment, a practice field for real life.

I could go on and on and tell you that HEdCen is a garden or a farm, it is a construction area, (where character is built) it is an exploration ground or a mining site.  It is an ukay-ukay shop where you find used and unused, unlabelled and unbranded pieces, but once discovered, the child who is the result of the “Ukay” or unearthing is put on center stage, beautiful and magnificent. 

And all the more, it is not a school if schools are a bad place to be.

Why do I say that schools are no longer the ideal place to raise children?  Because :


Parents who send their children to school have forgotten

To teach, reinforce and model good behavior and moral conduct

To give the right kind of love

To  believe in their child’s capacity to survive and withstand adversities, frustrations and disappointments

To allow their child to speak his mind and sort out his experiences

To value nobility and magnanimity

To honor obligations and own mistakes

        

So if it is not the parents’ fault, it must be the yaya’s , or perhaps the grandparents, or the television, computer games, the ipods and play stations or the Gmo’s they eat or the BPA in plastic food containers.

         So that the schools nowadays have become the melting pot of bad habits or deformed character or future politicians -  because politicians not leaders went to schools to- and if not all of them are corrupt and immoral, 91/2 out of 10 are,  and here again I would say that I can go on and on and still end up on the same path where I started and that is the path of  truth!          

“Therefore, we are not talking about intellectualism. Education is not just intellectual formation nor instruction; it is the formation of the whole man” (The Jesuit Model of Education  by    Fr. Michael McMahon,)

         Now would you want your child to be in school?  If homes are a rarity and schools are bad, where will you put your child? 

         I cannot offer you any answer but I can give you hope!  There is hope if the schools of the future will not carry its sins of the past- the  hope comes from believing in a child’s potential  and from having found the lost art of making learning interesting and relevant, of not leaving behind the children who are learning disadvantaged, and of recognizing  all forms of intelligences.  For all these reasons and more, I claim that HEdCen is a good school. It is visionary and innovative.  It is organic and organismic.  It is, if it is a school, a school of the future. 

There are things that we do in HEdCen , that I call  the SACRED in the Ordinary.    

§  learning beyond our grade level

§  taking a retest for a second chance to learn

more and rise above our  mistakes

§  bringing home our own trash

§  eating healthy food

§  saving water and electricity

§  choosing to recycle

§  indulging in play and laughter

§  owning up to our mistakes

§  wearing our Wednesday ethnic

§  respecting all creatures

§  adoring the rain and basking in the sun

§  remembering that we are guardians of the earth

§  choosing to be an “everyday genius” and an “everyday hero”

 TIPS TO PARENTS

IF YOU WANT TO TEACH RESPECT, SHOW IT, DO IT, LIVE IT

IF YOU WANT TO RAISE A BRAVE AND CONFIDENT CHILD, BE GENTLE DURING TRYING SITUATIONS, DON’T JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS, SPEAK YOUR MIND BUT LISTEN TOO. 

Realize this,  the most important ingredient to success is failure.  Teach your children both.

REMEMBER too THAT THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS THAN money if MONEY  MAKES ONE GREEDY. GRADES ARE just numbers IF WE FORGET THAT THEIR CHARACTER IS MORE IMPORTANT, SCHOOL SUBJECTS ARE BUT A MEANS TO EXERCISE DISCIPLINE, FORTITUDE, OPTIONS, DECISIONS, habits, focus, and many others including integrity and self discipline!

When you enter the gates of  HEdCen,   please  leave your ego at the gate.  We can learn more and understand each other more  if we take the Namaste idea of recognizing that the highest accord that one can give himself is to treat others with respect.    

Take home your garbage, don’t bring take-out food inside HEdCen grounds.  Let us not be plastic, let us be plastic free!

Don’t kill ants

Respect all children- everyone has the right to be here.  In our mind, some children are different or born different, but in these children’s mind, we who think they are different, think that we are the ones who are “strange”. but who is not and who are we to judge when we are all children of a universal God?

Be classy- don’t shoot the guard or lose your poise when you lose your guard!  A lot of times this is just over the last piece of toast in the canteen or over a grade, of course!

Trust us. Work with us not against us.  Do not terrorize us because we cannot be terrorized although we are the gentlest people on earth!

 So if you want an alternative way of looking at how your child should get educated, then hop in.  We have a year-long cruise together.

This is HEdCen – a place for noble people, a place and time for your children to be- Better People for Better Earth!