First AERO Mini-talk Released!!!  New Podcast!!
Building a Local Community of Educational Professionals





Finally, the First Mini-talk!!
At the last AERO conference in Portland, Oregon August 2016, we pioneered a day of the first AERO mini-talks. We had seven short presentations similar to TED talks. In this issue we are releasing the first one with the others to follow shortly.
 
The one we are releasing today features Shilpa Jain. A previous AERO keynoter, Shilpa Jain has been organizing Education JAMs all over the world for many years.  She is Executive Director of YES! The JAM incubates exploratory and innovative programs. Each JAM has about thirty participants. AERO collaborated with YES to bring her group to the AERO conference. In this mini-talk she demonstrated some of the high energy, insightful activities that they were doing in her group. After watching this mini-talk you could do something similar with your group. Watch carefully when you get to the activities themselves. It may look at first like people milling round, but you will see the process emerging over a few minutes time. Please send us feedback on this talk and send it out far and wide to your networks!

You can see the next mini-talks at the AERO conference August 2-6 in New York. The whole five day conference is still at the Earlybird rate of $225. Or you could catch the similar TED talks for only $8500 in Vancouver, except that this year is sold out!

You can see Shilpa Jain's mini-talk here.

You can submit a proposal for a mini-talk at the 2017 AERO Conference here, and submit a workshop here.
New AERO Podcast Episode!
In this short podcast I describe the first AERO project in 1989. At a conference in Canada I heard about a tribe in Northern Ontario that had moved back to their ancestral land. They were not recognized by the Canadian government. They were living in tents in 30 below zero temperatures and their children were illiterate. They asked me to help them start a school. I traveled by train and Bearskin Airlines 200 miles away from the nearest rood, and by Skimobile 26 miles across a frozen lake to help the Kee Way Win tribe start their first school. 

The podcast is on SoundCloud here, or just search for "Education Revolution" on your favorite podcast app. We are also on Stitcher and Google 

Listen to the podcast here.
Building a Local Community of
Education Professionals
Despite the fact that most teachers are overworked and underpaid in Hungary, they meet once a month voluntarily; the sense of belonging to a learning community gives them energy to  become the change and helps prevent burnout.

2011 - Teachers take action for change, to be agents of change.

Seven people who had been living in the same city but had not all known each other earlier decided to meet to share experiences and ideas. They played games and talked about education and had such a fantastic time together that they made these meetings regular. Among the seven there many had several professions: teachers of English, History, and Mathematics, teacher educators, an economist, a tour guide, a journalist, a psychologist and a brain researcher. This group became our core team for what later became a professional community of practice. Despite the variety of professions, what connected us was that in the previous years we had all taken part in international  Pestalozzi Programme of the Council of Europe  workshops and courses as participants or facilitators. In 2013 we made our regular meetings open to other interested colleagues in Budapest.
We hoped to continue to learn from each other and also familiarize other colleagues with the background knowledge on and the practical implementation of education for democratic citizenship, intercultural competence development, and experiential and cooperative learning for inclusive schools.
Read the rest here.
 
Links and Calendar
Links
Ongoing
Calendar
Please send us feedback on this issue. also, we would like to have more articles written by AERO members and about AERO school and organizations.  Thank you for your ongoing support. With  your help , we will make learner-centered alternatives available to everyone!

In Service,

Jerry Mintz
Executive Director
Alternative Education Resource Organization

Please consider making a donation to AERO to help support our work. Thanks!