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news for Sonoma, Marin & Napa Counties

“Official Newspaper of Adoring Change’s Constancy�

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F8==4AB Educator Mark Collin has developed a new method of teaching K-6 students that is based on nurturing emotional intelligence.

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Mark Collin wants a Toolbox for every child By Jessica Dur

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n 1993, Mark Collin walked into Cazadero’s Montgomery Elementary School expecting to spend a few months accruing hours as a school counselor. A longtime student of Jungian and transpersonal psychology, Collin was interning at the Lomi Psychotherapy Clinic to become a licensed marriage and family therapist. Thirty-five years since his own stint in elementary school, he was shocked at the normalized cruelty he witnessed. Older kids were literally putting younger kids headfirst into trash cans while under-resourced teachers struggled to cope. Collin, who spent two of his college years living alone while building a cabin in the Mendocino redwoods, realized that the school’s commitment to “literacy� was too narrow. He started asking questions. How

can kids learn reading and algebra if they are distracted by their own self-defeating behaviors? How can students be expected to thrive academically if they are suffering emotionally and socially? According to Collin, the answers came from the students themselves. He saw they needed to calm down. Starting in the safety of the kindergarten class, he sat with them in a circle on the floor and asked them to breathe. Thus was born the first of 12 “tools� designed to activate the innate wisdom inside each person. The breathing tool is a simple reminder that our most basic instinctual habit can bring relief. From that starting point, Collin developed an entire “Toolbox,� a curriculum for social and emotional learning whose mission, he says, is “to build children’s capacity and resilience for learning through development of personal awareness, self-

mastery and empathy for others.� Collin’s “few months� at Montgomery soon stretched into nine years. People have long challenged Descartes’ rationalist “I think, therefore I am� philosophy in favor of a more holistic view of what it means to be alive. In the mid-’90s, Daniel Goleman’s groundbreaking book Emotional Intelligence, which challenged the sanctity of the IQ as the measure of success in life, spent a year and a half on the New York Times bestseller list. Studies were conducted to show that social and emotional learning, which incorporate “self-awareness, selfmanagement, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making,� are fundamental aspects of a high-functioning school or work environment. Even the federal government is taking notice. Currently, HR 4223, the Academic, &&

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THE BOHEMIAN

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10.20.10-10.26.10

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