Today I had the pleasure of joining numerous representatives from the community at a Mayor’s forum to discuss how local churches, non-profit organizations, educational institutions and government agencies can work together to help Riverside residents affected by the recession. This was, as Mayor Ron Loveridge described it, “an historic meeting” and just the first step in building a community-wide network of support for our families in need.
We all know that our nation is experiencing some of the most devastating economic times in history. More and more of our neighbors as losing their jobs and homes and our community’s children have to do without basic necessities. They need our help. It was clear from listening to those gathered at Tuesday’s meeting that a lot of help exists here in Riverside. We just need to do a better job of sharing resources and letting the public know what is available to them. As Pastor LeeRoy Coleman from the Kansas Avenue Church said, “Sometimes it’s not how good the players are, it’s how well the team plays together.” From what I saw Tuesday, we have an amazing team here in Riverside and we all are focused on the singular goal of helping each other.
Rick and other community leaders,
ReplyDeleteI would like to suggest a visit to the following website; www.leadered.com. At the International Center for Leadership in Education you will find some very interesting and useful research and tools. Under research you should check out the Efficient and Effective link. Here you will find a matrix that aligns high student performance strategies with practices that are low costs. It's nice to know RUSD already does many of these things. As a staff developer, I was much more interested in the Rigor and Relevance matrix. This is used to move teachers to educational practices that are high on Bloom's Taxonomy and help students to prepare to be real life problem-solvers. Using these concepts Riverside could strengthen and build the necessary social capital to survive these difficult times. Service learning has the potential to be a powerful learning experience and provide both providers and receivers with positive results.