Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington, DC have been selected to get money to reform schools in the second round of the $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” grant competition. Congratulations to these states and the District of Columbia, however what about the 41 other states? Are we really going to make a significant impact in our future generation by rewarding only 10 percent of our states? Financially, they rightfully deserve the financial rewards for implementing innovative solutions in their school systems. Educationally, all 50 of our states deserve the right to know what is working and learn how to best implement these techniques within all of our schools so that we can collectively excel and build off of what is working.

I’ve tried, and failed, to find out about these winning solutions, so that myself and other families from the 41 other states can be able to incorporate them within our households and schools. Why is it so difficult in the information age to find useful, relevant, and important information that has lasting effects on our future generation?

I’m sure if I surfed the web hard and long enough I’d be able to find some answers, but the fact of the matter is I’m able to know more about a golfers personal life then innovative educational models that affect millions of people. I wouldn’t say our priorities are mixed up, but they’re misrepresented. Until the media begins to provide valuable and relevant information to us, then we won’t ever make the profound changes in our daily lives and our local neighborhoods. If we aren’t provided useful information, we won’t be able to ever reach “the top” that the Obama administration is apparently working towards.

The only way we’ll reach this summit is by having all of our states work collectively for a common goal in making a difference in the lives of our children. The media must change their priorities and report on information that is needed. After the Race to the Top competition is finished, the administration must also create an incentive program for the 41 other states to adopt what is working. In order for our country to continue excelling, we must continue to work jointly for a common goal of positive change in our school systems around the nation. We are called the United States of America for a reason. All 50 states, all 310 million of us must work together to improve our school systems and race to the top, together.

WELCOME STARSHINE FAY LANDRUM ACADEMY

It’s our first week of school, and as always, there is so much happening here at StarShine. We’re kicking off this year by introducing our newest school, StarShine Fay Landrum Academy! Arizona State Senator, Leah Landrum Taylor  wanted to open a school in honor of her grandmother Fay Landrum, who was not allowed to attend school past the sixth grade, but through many hurdles her grandmother managed to graduate from ASU with honors at age 66. StarShine is so fortunate to have had the opportunity to play a part in helping Senator Landrum Taylor turn her vision into reality. Congratulations!

Please come over to see the campus as soon as you can!

1902 West Roeser Road

Phoenix, 85041

INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF YOUTH

In Dec. 2009, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to proclaim a year to signify the importance the international community places on integrating youth -related issues into global, regional and local development agendas.  Under the theme Dialogue and Mutual Understanding the year will aim to promote the ideals of peace, respect for human rights and solidarity across generations, cultures, religions and civilizations.

“Youth deserve our full commitment–full access to education, adequate healthcare, employment opportunities, financial services and full participation in public life.” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

StarShine Academy was recognized for its efforts in “our exemplary work with youth” at the opening ceremony August 12, 2010 with CEO and President, Trish McCarty and Vice President, Jan Shoop.

We are so excited in opening up an additional school as well as receiving international recognition! What a great way to kick off our new school year!

StarShine Academy has had a school garden since we opened in 2002 and it has been extremely beneficial for our students and our community. Our StarShine Garden Curriculum continues to evolve, and this past year we had our inaugural StarShine Farmers Market, selling produce to our local neighborhood. The long-term goal that our students and teachers are working tirelessly towards is to expand in our pursuit of developing a sustainable food supply for our school lunch program and instilling agricultural awareness within our student body.

The culture of our school is distinctive. Global awareness, financial literacy, career, personal, and holistic development, StarShine also instills environmental awareness in our students as well. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is our motto. Our students understand that lettuce doesn’t come from McDonalds, but from hard strenuous labor in a garden similar to their own. Because they are aware of the origin of the food they eat, our students instantaneously develop a sustainable mindset. They are able to relate with the farmers, and the hard work it takes in growing and selling food. Our garden is distinct in its own right, but our students’ actions in collectively improving the garden impress every visitor of our school. It’s because of our environmental awareness curriculum that has been instilled in our students subconsciously. Planting crops, adding leftover food to our compost bin, watering our garden, and harvesting crops lends a sense of normality within our school. Compare that to my experience in primary and secondary education where the closest thing I’ve ever had to gardening was putting a potato in water and watching it grow leaves.

Today, President Obama delivered an education reform speech at the National Urban League’s 100^th Anniversary Convention. In it he explained how important charter schools are to “stir up” things by trying innovative techniques to engrain true knowledge within our future generation. He hit the nail on the head, and its what the foundation of StarShine Academy is all about. Our garden and our environmental awareness curriculum is only a small example of different techniques we have used in the past 8 years to change struggling students into healthy, productive, and happy individuals. Meeting the needs of Maslow’s Hierarchy allows our students to grow into their full potential. At StarShine Academy our curriculum is based around knowledge based learning. As mentioned before, our students have a StarShine Farmers Market where they sell their produce to the local community, and learn first hand entrepreneurial skills.

It’s so rewarding to see how our garden, our students, and our community has grown and flourished together over the past 8 years. We look forward to another great year at StarShine Academy, and we can’t wait to try whatever creative ideas our students always tend to come up with for how to best use our garden.

Please feel free to comment on any advice you would like to pass on to our StarShine Student Gardeners. Thanks!

Changing our next generation begins with the parents. Imagine a world filled with strong, functional, effective and loving families, who are led by committed, compassionate, knowledgeable and well-trained adults. Adults who know and love themselves; who know how to parent their children, taking their role as parent seriously and have learned how to match the joy and playfulness that their children bring into the world with the humor, perspective, tenderness, vision and wisdom that world class parents bring into the equation. Imagine the change that would resonate throughout the world, one parent- one family at a time.

StarShine was founded on the idea that we can turn children into peaceful and productive citizens through our holistic curriculum addressing the entire individual- mind, body, spirit, health, wealth and happiness. We proved that children from any socioeconomic background could transform their lives because our curriculum wasn’t primarily education oriented, but was community and family based as well. We reach out to their parents indirectly by involving them in our community events such as the StarShine Farmers Market and our annual holiday festivals. Before our school opened up 8 years ago, the neighborhood had the highest drive by shooting rate in all of the Phoenix Metropolitan area. Today, the community is ranked as one of the safest, with a newly opened StarBucks on the corner solidifying the amount of change our school has had on the community.

Through our teachers and administrators’ efforts we proved that any parent has the ability to relate to and connect with their children. It’s possible for anyone to raise independent, responsible young adults well and without unnecessary worry and hassle. Having the right mindset is the key; clear strategies, and relevant and effective tools- and that’s truer now than ever before. If you’re a parent, parent-to-be, parent surrogates or a grandparent, you are very aware that you are in a real competition for the hearts and minds of your kids and teens. You may feel you are ill prepared to compete effectively in part because you yourself feel uncertain and exhausted. If that’s the case, your focus should be on changing yourself. Your children will in turn, follow suite.

Over the course of 8 years StarShine has had a profound change on children, parents, families, communities, and businesses. We are fortunate to be honored by the United Nations, the Episcopal and Catholic Church, and also with large corporations such as Toshiba and Macy’s. To date, we have conducted training seminars in Liberia for 700 teachers and to many school leaders and parents in the United Kingdom. As we open up thousands of additional schools in the coming 3 years, we are in need of administrators and teachers to be a part of StarShine.

If you are a parent, soon-to-be parent, prospective StarShine teacher or administrator, or even an individual who seeks a profound change in your life, then I highly encourage you attend our seminar events. If you have the desire to make a positive change in your life and in others please visit us at www.SQI.US.com for upcoming sessions.

May 5, 2010

There is a huge rumbling going on, not caused by the Phoenix earthquake or the volcano in Iceland, but grander than those. Families and teachers all over the world are fed up with the fact that kids hate school in astronomical numbers. Half of them leave school while, too many others continue to sit in classes while they are bored to death. And taxes continue to pay for schools to fail children and get rid of art, sports and music. Kids are not being taught to read past the third grade reading level, and then we wonder why they can’t learn in high school.

StarShine is going to change all that. We have begun a peaceful revolution to bring                                   the very best in education to each and every child. As long as one child on the planet is angry or uneducated, the rest of us are in danger. They are all wanting relevance, significance and to be lovable, either way, good or bad. It is up to us to show the pathway to being significantly good.

Jan, Ryan and I just returned from London this past Sunday night. We had been asked to provide a three-day course we created called Teachers as Leaders to a group of consultants. The venue was http://www.BroughtonCastle.com which was stunning and magical. It was where a group of leaders formed a secret MasterMind group to begin the European revolution. In the 17th century William Fiennes, 8th Lord Saye and Sele, opposed Charles I’s attempt to rule without Parliament and refused to take the Oath of Allegiance. Broughton Castle became a secret meeting place of the King’s opponents.  It is only a few miles from Stonehenge and Oxford. The Knights of the Round Table met there. In about 1377, an owner of the castle started Winchester College and New College, one of the most famous and academically successful of the Oxford colleges. The College is one of the main choral foundations of the University of Oxford. The College Choir has a reputation as one of the finest Anglican choirs in the world and have recorded over seventy albums. John Harvard was brought up in a nearby church and left to go to America to become the founder of Harvard University. St. Pauls, the Cathedral in London is known as the Phoenix.

Held in the seat of this rich history, we all felt as if we too, were being called to a new revolution in education; a Phoenix.

John Findlay, of http://www.anyzing.com accompanied us and provided the technology interface that we use for expedited learning and collective thinking results. John’s group is from Australia and is just one of many incredible technologies that we have formed partnerships with to make learning more interesting and participatory, putting us in a unique position to change the way we educate our children.

We met with some great leaders of education reform in London, where we will form partnerships to accomplish more.

We are nearing the end of the eighth year of StarShine Academy schools. Our three schools in Phoenix are full of beautiful, loving, hard working, fantastic mannered, charitable, smart, goal-oriented youth. Our schools in Africa continue to win academic and social responsibility competitions. Our teacher positions are sought after by the most incredible teachers on the planet. They win award after award and they run their classrooms as if the children in it, are their own. Our StarShine teachers are powerful, independent, free thinkers. One of them, Chris Anderson, just received one of the highest LSAT scores in history and will be leaving us to pursue his law degree at Harvard. He will continue to work for StarShine part-time and will one day represent us in our international schools.

We have developed StarShine In A Box, StarShine Boot Camp for Families, StarShine Boot Camp for Teachers, StarShine Boot Camp for Students, StarShine Boot Camp for Leaders and entire manuals on running schools efficiently. Nearly all of our processes are replicable, cheap and simple, but they all cause “the StarShine Effect.” We have created a for-profit company, StarShine Planet, to sell these processes so that someday we won’t need government funding, as it has been a pain to manage all of the budget cuts this year.

Many people think that there is no “silver bullet” in education, but there is. “The Silver Bullet” in education is to focus on each individual child as a gift to society and one that needs to be nurtured to grow to be strong and significant.

If we all focus on what is right and good, and try to do more of that, we will have less and less time to focus on those things that are not what we want.

If you are not now, we encourage you to become involved with StarShine in whatever way your heart leads you. You can become a mentor or a volunteer. You can give us paper, money or supplies. You can become a speaker to advocate for us. You can join us on Facebook and Twitter and help us to reach more people to give them hope that help is coming. On http://www.starshineacademy.org and http://www.eduresources.com you can apply for two separate StarShine MasterCards, which are different and absolutely beautiful, giving us monthly income from merchant fees. We are looking for financial partners for StarShine Planet to help us spread quickly.

As we near the end of this school year we have so much to be grateful for. We have accomplished great things because great people are working together.  As in Alice in Wonderland, we constantly love to think up impossible things to do. As Walt Disney said, “It is kind of fun to do the impossible.”

Trish McCarty