Topic: RMA closing hurts but it doesn't have to be the end
Gentiana
Junior Member
Member # 4461
posted February 12, 2005 07:16 AM
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"I've got to say that at first I was pretty torn up to hear that Rocky Mountain Academy closed. My child graduated from there in 1999 and it was life-changing permanent experience for our family.
I was in Mel Wassserman's last advanced work-shop---he had just sold CEDU to Brown Schools and was about to go into retirement (if anyone reading was in that last workshop on Bottle Bay Road---email me).
I remember a moment in the workshop when Mel was asked something or other about the direction that CEDU would take.
His rather brisk answer (and remember, Mel could be a bit cranky by nature) showed that he was somewhat suspicious of change for change's sake-- what he called "program masters" coming in and reinventing things just to get their own name out there. But he also addressed the fact that change is always going on and that the important thing, with CEDU or anything else) is to guard the essential truths, the core beliefs, in the midst of change.
I'm sorry for the kids and families that got caught in the middle of the closing---I'd be mad too. Maybe company management bungled the decline and closing, I don't know.
But what I do know is that everyone who really believes in the things that we learned, as parents or as kids in CEDU (at least as it was when our family were connected to it)---if we really believe, then it's up to us to keep that knowledge alive---and that can be done by simply living as a complete loving person with integrety and connected to others, or by actively being involved in a field of endeavor that allows for the actual use of what was learned there.
I think that, at first, I was sad because I was overly connected to the physical place of RMA---now I'm trying to focus on the ideals---that's really what matters, what changed our family, what currently fuels the career change that I made after those workshops---it's sad, like a death even, but it's not the end.
I'll still finish my training and I'll work with kids in trouble, and I'll apply what I learned from our experiences with the school and with Mel and Bill and others--whether or not a school specifically called Rocky Mountain Academy is in operation.
If we keep that focus---which I think was Mel was talking about--- we can build in ways, a variety of ways, that improve even what RMA was at its peak---and the memories of what it was then, can be the energy that will keep us motivated and energized to do as much or even more in the future."
Awwww, ain't that touching, Ottawa5... Boy, you musta drank a few gallons of the Kool-Aid!
A "complete loving person" with "itegrety"? Shit, you don't have "integrety" or integrity. Where are your "ideals" when you post your hateful garbage?
"If we only believe enough..." Yeah whatever, lady. Your beliefs and $1.50 will get you on the A Train.
You, as a person, simply don't stack up against what you'd like for others to believe about you. You're so full of shit it's not even funny. How does it feel knowing that everyone else knows you're a complete and total fraud?