Education and Science: Save Our Youth

By Christopher K. Slaton Ed.D

2011-2012 SOY Pilot Merced Building Human Assets Project

Building Human Assets Meetings

Youth Leadership and Workforce Development

Parent Education and Resource Coordination Services

Crisis Management Conferences for Males

Human Systems Science Seminars for Educators

Mentoring Services

Community-Based Learning

Learning how to Live in a Home

Learning how to Learn in a School

Learning how to Think in a Neighborhood

Learning how to Respond in a Workplace

Help to Improve: Californias Public Schools

Human Systems Science

Save Our Youth

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479710478

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Christopher K. Slaton, Ed.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The following terms used throughout this book are the proprietary service and trademark of the Progressive Investing Institute of Focused Learning:

Progressive Investing

feeling system

systems feeling

human learning systems

human systems science

human systems research

Building Human Assets

Building Human Assets Meetings

field of experience

community-based learning

family-centered learning plans

Dr. Slaton Live™

evidence-based reporting

mentation services

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

119350

Contents

Context to Human Systems Science and Dr. Slaton Live™

Chapter One  Save Our Youth

Chapter Two  Methodology

Chapter Three  Save Our Youth, the Next Generations’ Community-Based Learning Network

Chapter Four  Youth Development

Chapter Five  Participant Parent Education

Chapter Six  Education and Science: Educating the Brain to Discipline the Body to Focus the Senses

Chapter Seven  Special Problems Addressed by Human Systems Research

Chapter Eight  Mentoring, Leadership, and Consultant Services

Glossary of Terms

Selected References

2012 Building Human Assets Meeting

Join us for the release of findings and recommendations from Save Our Youth Community-Based Learning three-year study.

Year 2 of this project showed the following:

When you lead a child, youth, or young adult in crisis because he or she resists contact and are irritated by the demands to interact, to receive contact, and to process interaction, he or she becomes more open to being informed and to being instructed. This, in turn, motivates him or her to cooperate with the goal in mind to participate.

1.   Year 1 was the setup for Building Human Assets Meetings through parent education and mentoring services.

2.   Year 2 was the setup for service learning, youth leadership and workforce development, and community-based learning teams for a BGCM Taco Bell Technology Fair.

Year 3 was the setup for a child, youth, and young adult learning system; participant parent education; and leadership and crisis-management conferences for males.

December 1, 2012

8:30 AM to 12:30 PM

Boys and Girls Club of Merced County

615 West 15th Street, Merced CA 95340

The people of California can only benefit and ultimately grow and prosper from the work of this collaborative to help improve the lives of current generations of parents with children in crisis as they learn how to move through their public schools more effectively into the future years. Through the structured use of service learning, mentoring services, youth leadership, workforce development, and civic participation, the Boys and Girls Club of Merced County has served as the focal point of a human systems research study.

Meet Dr. Slaton, along with a team of Merced community leaders, parents, children, students, and participants of this three-year pilot study conducted by the Progressive Investing Institute of Focused Learning. This study is the first of its kind in the nation that examines family, education, government, and business affairs through the applied use of human systems research.

At the Building Human Assets Meeting, where results of this study will be released, participants will learn about the findings and help prepare more youth and young adults to learn how to develop his or her labor as a service and respond as a product to improve their home, school, neighborhood, and workplace networks through further human systems research. There will be a limited number of seats made available.

For more information about the Building Human Assets Meeting, contact Dr. Christopher K. Slaton of the Progressive Investing Institute of Focused Learning: 916-955-1368, [e-mail], [e-mail], or contact the Boys and Girls Club of Merced County at 209-722-9922.

In Dedication to Our Belief in

Progressive Investing (1994–2012)

I feel blessed to be able to write this preface to my third book. Each of these books are reports, written in response to the need for new approaches to help improve learning and support services to children, youths, and young adults in crisis due to family decline, school failure, delinquency, lack of employable skill sets, and poverty. These concerns have grown to become more resolved through my first and second books: Education and Science: How the Body Lives, the Brain Learns, the Human System Thinks, and How Human Systems Research Responds; and Education and Science: the Information Processing Age, the Learning Parent and Child in Crisis. In fact, this work seeks to synthesize eighteen years of focused learning about family, child, and community development to offer my readers alternative approaches to living, learning, thinking, and responding in poor home, school, neighborhood, and workplace networks.

As a human systems scientist, I have a need to learn how to acquire authentic information concerning the way the brain, body, and senses are set up to live, learn, think, and respond to contact. In my studies of the brain, body, and the senses with school-age children, I have learned why he or she may not be set up to receive, process, and respond to contact along an action-learning continuum (such as grade school) of planned interaction. In truth, to measure the event of how a child lives, learns, thinks, and responds in home, school, and neighborhood situations, learning goals are identified in relation to the ways in which these places may be used in moving them from childhood to young adulthood. Through his or her progression or regression along the continuum, the affect between the event and the goal on how the participant chooses to live, learn, think, and respond to contact is realized. Hence, my purpose is to explain the existence of a sense, feel, and focus cycle as I write this third book in search of ways to reduce behavior, learning, and thinking and mental health problems that affect how a child, youth, or young adult experiences academics.

What I am working to do in this book is write about the principles of Progressive Investing from human, cognitive, and behavioral assessments on how he or she is or has to be set up to experience the experience of experiencing self, other people, and the environment. For instance, in 1997, I wrote the following:

•   A child is an investment. If you fail to make consistent deposits into a child’s development, then their life after high school will be too inadequate to challenge the pressures of living in a competitive, individualistic, and cooperative society.

•   A family is a business and should be run like one. If you fail to operate a family as a business, then you risk developing family members that are disconnected from desirable outcomes. We need more competent family members. As a child approaches adulthood, a family should be already receiving returns on their human capital.

•   A community is a laboratory. Children and their families should receive numerous opportunities to expose themselves to experimental learning by doing. Social knowledge is never absolute. Society changes, technologies bring forth new goals, and education breeds adaptation and acceleration.

•   Children need social places where they can experience the activity of exploring their environments to learn firsthand how important it is to value family and to stay in school.

Following through on these stages of action learning, I have learned how to live each day to become more informed and to form a high sense of identity through self-development, information processing, community-based learning, and ways to participate. I have done this, of course, according to theories of motivation and learning. Hence, I must confess, this book is an attempt to build more small learning communities made up of parents, children, teachers, helpers, and professionals. The need is great for small learning communities of youths and young adults that dare to care about how they live with self, learn with other people, and think with the environment in mind. This book then outlines ways to invest in a child, teach parents how to run a family as a business, and use the community as a safe place to practice learning how to live, learn, think, and respond together.

In reflection of the first and second books, I was learning how to study the human body as a system to conceptualize and to write about human systems science first, and then how information processing affects sense-and-receive paths. This was the social and academic learning that led me to set up the principles of Progressive Investing to learn how to live; my wife, Dolores Slaton, has acted as the first Progressive Investor. To this reality, I must add, the practice of Progressive Investing derives its academic imprints from the way she moved from the Progressive Investing Institute of Focused Learning through the aim to experience college and greater occupational success as events and goals. These observations have helped me form a vital grasp of what it may mean to live, learn, think, and respond to a woman as a friend; to express some of the acting and performing that takes place; and to move through sensory, physical, and mental feelings of emotion. But this also helped us work together on a theory of action with thoughts that framed the way we sought to live in a home, learn in a school, think in a neighborhood, and focus on the way we respond in a workplace.

I have then admired the way Dolores used the practice of Progressive Investing to earn a doctor of education degree and to become my model in constructing and writing the action-learning continuum, which are the fruits of our labor. Living each day to learn how to work together as individuals is the practice of Progressive Investing to learn how to think with other people in mind. In each step of the Progressive Investing practice, thinking is required to learn how to move through our environmental contact to compete alone, together, and with other people. This is how we inform, instruct, and motivate our students to act, to live, and to perform in order to learn through the practice of Progressive Investing ways to control and to manage emotion.

As a scientist and practitioner of Progressive Investing, I continue to design and develop projects and programs to further elucidate the work of human systems science. The Progressive Investing Institute of Focused Learning (PIIFL) under my direction and in partnership with Save Our Youth, the Next Generations, including the Boy and Girls Club of Merced County (BGCM), became a collaborative to conduct a focused study using human systems science.

This particular human systems research study took place from August 26, 2011, to May 4, 2012. As an author and human learning consultant, I served as the project developer, using my experiences as a human systems researcher and being a human asset to the children, youth, young adults, and parents who participated in the project within the city and county of Merced. As the executive director of Save Our Youth the Next Generations, I worked through a partnership with the BGCM as a volunteer to share my work with children and families in crisis. Since 1994, I have participated in many community-based learning projects in the state of California, which involved child and youth development, parent education, in-service trainings to teachers, consulting with community-based organizations, and project curriculum development to plan, organize, and implement special intervention services.

Context to Human Systems Science and Dr. Slaton Live™

Education and Science

Education is the service being delivered to people in exchange for his or her participation in Save Our Youth, the Next Generations’ effort to improve the home, school, neighborhood, and workplace networks of children and parents in crisis. Science is the technology that results from the study of the parent and child in crisis; the study of home, school, neighborhood, and workplace networks; the study of self, other people, and the environment; and the use of human systems research to study brain, body, and sense events as human systems science.

Human systems science is a product of the Progressive Investment Group, known as Christopher and Dolores Slaton. The Slatons began their study of human potential in 1994. They used community-based learning and academic learning to build their knowledge of Progressive Investing as an action-learning theory to study brain, body, and sense events. This is why, at the Progressive Investing Institute of Focused Learning, they invest in human potential.¹

Dr. Slaton Live™

Dr. Slaton Live: Learning How to Talk to His or Her Brain is a result of human systems research to study ways of improving the lives of children and parents in crisis through the use of education and science. For parents, Dr. Slaton Live speaks through the use of Parent Education and Resource Coordination Services; for children, youths, and young adults, Dr. Slaton Live speaks through mentoring services and youth leadership and workforce development; for teachers, Dr. Slaton Live speaks through Human Systems Science for Educators; for professionals, Dr. Slaton Live speaks through crisis-management conferences; for community leaders, Dr. Slaton Live speaks through community-based learning; and for students, Dr. Slaton Live speaks through Progressive Investing.

Talking to the brain is a diagnostic learning method that assesses the use of the senses, for the most part, to study the act of receiving contact or to study the process of interacting. It is the way that words are used to inform, to instruct, or to motivate the act of moving through contact and the process of moving through interaction, where sense data forms a mental state that depicts how the brain receives and sends messages through the use of talk. Talking in this sense is a science that connects a person’s sense-and-receive path to participate or not. This is because one of the most critical aspects of talking to the brain is cooperation. For contact and interaction to be sustained, both the sender and the receiver must choose to receive, process, and respond to each other’s states of participating. Hence, how a person receives, organizes, and expresses feelings through the use of talk is considered critical skills of inquiry in learning about the human response system.²

Why the Progressive Investing Institute of Focused Learning (PIIFL)

The PIIFL is a human learning center for a Progressive Investing school of thought. When a person learns how to take action of living each day to become more informed, it is to learn more about self, other people, and the environment. Hence, he or she is learning how to live with the person they are, how to learn with the person they want to be, and how to think with the person they feel they can be. Living each day to become more informed as a Progressive Investing school of thought means the human system is being focused through brain, body, and sense events.

The purpose of a human learning center is to acquire knowledge on the human response system in relation to brain, body, and sense events. How humans learn is studied through the use of a Progressive Investing Curriculum, to send and to receive messages through the use of talk and special words. Learning involves a forward and backward process of being open or closed to receiving sense data designed to move the student through states of participating for the experience of responding. The student becomes more informed through the act of receiving and the process of interacting through the practice of responding to the way sense data makes them feel. This results in knowledge, facts, and learning about the human response system.³

Among the people of California, there is a need for a new generation of human assets to help improve America’s home, school, neighborhood, and workplace networks. Learn about the work we do at the PIIFL, because we care. Read to learn why human systems science fuses as the senses become more organized; observe the words, learn from the way the words feel, listen to the mental activity the words create, help the words pass through sense-and-receive paths, and lead the words we use to set up the act of Progressive Investing to focus your brain’s response.

We are here to build the next generation of human assets. Since 2002, the PIIFL has been at the forefront of Building Human Assets through the use of human systems research. This is a vision to prepare a new help the helper help system of learning how to help people with learning, behavior, and conduct problems live with us, learn with us, think with us, and respond with us. The people of the great state of California and the people of the United States of America cannot afford to lose another parent, child, youth, or young adult to family decline, school failure, delinquency, lack of employable skill sets, or poverty.

The PIIFL is on the cutting edge of a new human science to change the lives of people that have been hurt by major life events in their home, school, neighborhood, and workplace networks through a progressive education approach that teaches them how to live, learn, think, and respond. Community-based learning of this nature is new because it honors the past and builds on the innate talents of people through the nature and motivation of their need to learn how to live in today’s more complex world. This is a new global economy where, because of its complexity, more people need help learning how to compete from where they are in life.

Learning how to live is a crucial strategy for helping those who must learn how to live through learning, behavior, and conduct problems that affect the ability and capacity to achieve and earn competitive wages. In the twenty-first century, putting family, education, government, and business affairs first is a crucial lesson to learn that requires safe places to practice in order to be a sign of help for children, youths, and young adults in crisis with the capacity of becoming a learner who is doing this work to think things through completely. New ideas about how to live, learn, think, and respond to the tension, stress, and pressure of the new economy need to be generated.

PIIFL offers fresh, new, and effective strategies to help people with learning, behavior, and conduct problems learn to address their physical, mental, social, or emotional weaknesses in ways that help them learn how to help improve California’s economy. Hence, by teaching a parent, child, youth, or young adult how to help us reduce family decline, school failure, delinquency, lack of employable skill sets, and poverty, we create advanced human systems to help build human assets that can apply the things they learned to recover basic connections to California and to serve the future system.

Because many of California’s children, youths, and young adults have diverse needs that are not being met, the PIIFL is designed to meet those needs. They represent those that have the right skill sets, those that do not have the right skill sets, and those that want to have the right skill sets to participate as members of the community. Building Human Assets from this state of need is an honorable strategy that ought to appeal to the interests of people from all backgrounds. Especially to students of the PIIFL, who are learning about the economy through the system’s approach to identify ways to improve how they live—as the method to help self and other people as learners who come from home, school, neighborhood, and workplace networks throughout California—share ways to live, learn, think, and respond to reduce feelings of hurt together.

Have you heard about our community-based learning teams? Have you read how every student will learn how to add something helpful to the welfare of self, other people, and society? We want you to think about this: students learn how to be safe and share their space, time, and energy to sense, feel, and focus their brain, body, and senses as a human asset. The learning process is set up in public places as goals to help children, youths, and young adults. Parents help us build human assets who seek to reflect on the experience of being a physical sign of care in response to their need for a disciplined body and a self-controlled brain to challenge the day-to-day issues, problems, and concerns of human learning and human systems research.

This is a multidisciplinary effort: social work, education, criminal justice, labor relations, and human capital; setting learners up to learn from contact—human science; how to best interact with the people in these situations with them—cognitive science; and to cooperate more effectively while learning how to participate in their own need to know how to live, alone and with other people, to succeed—behavior science. Progressive Investing in learning how to live alone and with other people while the study of home, school, neighborhood, and workplace networks link students to the idea of producing new generations of human assets, the strategy of helping them learn builds new skill sets that move them to take this action more seriously.

Together as a learning community, each human asset makes up a Progressive Investor within the emerging synergy of a team, which creates a high sense of feeling for the Building Human Assets process. With these points in mind, the PIIFL offers the individual, the group, and the professional new ways of being informed, instructed, and motivated or of informing, instructing, and motivating self and other people in response to the basic need to participate through high states of performance.

State of Mind

Poor, minority, and high-need youth need safe places to learn through the experience of family decline, school failure, delinquency, lack of employable skill sets, and poverty. As a human systems scientist, Dr. Slaton’s studies of brain, body, and sense events examine learning problems that affect how a child receives language, organizes cognitive experiences, and deals with being a physical, mental, social, environmental, and emotional human being. The importance of learning with Dr. Slaton is that we study the brain, body, and sense events of school-age children. As cited in the Mental Health Capacity Act of 2005, this work relates to disorders that affect state of mind.

The Child Brain Injury Law under the Mental Health Capacity Act of 2005 is designed to affect any person aged sixteen or over who is unable to make decisions due in part to the following:

1.   A learning disability

2.   Mental health problem

3.   A brain injury

4.   Alcohol or drug misuse⁴

We are very concerned with the countless numbers of youth entering this age group conveying signs and symptoms of mental health problems that should have been assessed at earlier stages of their development within the school system. During the parent and child intake, Ken reported—and his mother confirmed—that there are times when he hears voices. A review of the medical records provided by the parent revealed an entry by a psychologist confirming their conversations about the voices. Ken was a child who was abandoned by his father; he lived in the same area, would frequently see him, but would not speak, make contact, or interact with him. Ken’s father was a drug addict who abused drugs while he was in utero.

School records revealed that Ken entered school through signs of withdrawal since he experienced difficulty leaving his mother’s side or making contact with others. Ken was ten years old when we received him for learning and support services. Reviews of Ken’s cumulative school records revealed signs of not being comfortable with the environment of school. He was constantly removed from class for not being responsive or focused, and he cried a lot. Reviews of Ken’s report cards and grades revealed failing grades in multiple subjects over more than a three-year period. For instance, Ken’s mother initially submitted a written request for an assessment in 2002. When we received Ken’s case in 2003, he was in the fourth grade. Attendance records revealed not only a pattern of reaching school late but also a pattern of calling his mother with frequent requests to pick him up and leaving school with an upset stomach, headache, or other illness.

When I met with the regular classroom teacher, she called me to the side and asked for help. When I met with the school principal, the vice principal, the resource specialist, and representatives from the district office, they denied that the behavior was a learning disability that affected his school performance. Hence, the prereferral process in Ken’s case had not worked. Ken’s deficits were being treated as a behavior problem under Public Law 504 with a classification of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as not being eligible for more special services. Hence, our community-based learning team—the parent, a close relative, my research assistant, and myself—organized Building Human Assets Meetings (BHAM) and conducted interviews in his home, school, and neighborhood network to gather, organize, and present Ken’s case. We filed a complaint from evidence-based reports on his family, education, and social histories. As a result, Ken was made eligible to receive special learning and support services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997 for severe emotional disturbance.

Because Ken had developed a behavior at home that exhibited signs of anger at home, fear at school, and anxiety in his neighborhood, we defined him as being hurt by the major life events taking place in these situations. Ken’s attachment to his mother affected other relationships in the home. Ken had fallen so far behind in school and had trouble maintaining relationships with peers his own age; Ken was placed in a community day school. His mother tried to obtain the following:

1.   A school placement that would reduce his frequent calls and requests to return home

2.   A school placement that would work to help him learn to focus and stay on task

3.   A school placement that would help him reduce his resistance to sitting still, controlling his use of talk, and hand contact

4.   A school placement that would help him to finish classroom assignments

5.   A school placement that would allow his mother to focus on her workplace responsibilities

Ken did not recover from his social or academic injuries or disabilities. Ken got a girl pregnant at age sixteen, struggled to obtain his high school diploma from his placement, and did not develop any workplace skill sets. We have spoken to Ken several times to explain (a) what he is doing wrong as a mentee (e.g. not thinking with his child’s interests in mind) and (b) what he should be doing