What People Say About GEMS RoundTables . . .
"...parents are quite impressed with the way [their children] share information so clearly and maturely!"
KATIE GRAF, 2nd Grade Teacher, Pennekamp School, Manhattan Beach, California
"...a great way to increase oral language...the leadership role I think is an awesome opportunity."
SANDRA RUMBLE, 4th Grade Teacher, Pennekamp School, Manhattan Beach, California
"...good for airing important issues... [in faculty meetings]."
DALE KELDRAUK, Principal, Pennekamp School, Manhattan Beach, California
"A powerful way to learn!...the RoundTable provides a kind of learning experience that makes a real contribution to the community as a whole..."
SUSAN McCORMICK, Superintendent, Polson School District, Polson, Montana
"[Using the GEMS RoundTable] I can sneak real Systems Engineering processes into Middle School/High School (MS/HS) Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) events ... without the participants even realizing they're doing real Systems Engineering." (more info)
MIKE PAFFORD, President International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) Chesapeake Chapter; Instructor, John Hopkins University (JHU) Whiting School of Engineering
"I am so excited about the RoundTable. I tried it in my class with undergraduates in their internship. It went so well. I even had two students come to me privately and tell me how much they appreciated that way of dealing with curriculum."
PEGGY GILL, Assistant Professor Educational Leadership, University of Texas at Tyler
"Two of the educational leadership students who are school counselors are using the RoundTable in their high schools with various groups of students with much success."
SUSAN J. KATZ, Associate Professor, Roosevelt University, Educational Leadership/College of Education
"It speeds up the cumulative learning needed for effective action plans."
SHARON PETERSON, Consultant, Small Business Development Center, Hawthorne, CA
"...very relevant for staff development ‘rounds’... something of value in the workplace."
DIANA RYAN, Assistant Professor, University College, Roosevelt University, Illinois
“The RoundTable made space for people to connect at the level of human to human in a way that no amount of free time, meal breaks, or presentation question periods seemed to do...To the question I often ask myself, ‘Is there anyone else out there?’ The RoundTable gave me a definitive ‘Yes!’ What a joy and relief!”
PAMELA BUCKLE, Assistant Professor, School of Business, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York
“I went to the American Society for Cybernetics conference the next week.... and suggested we use the roundtable format, except we would just keep going round for the full two and half hours of each session. It was VERY, VERY powerful. We were listeners for 5/6th of time and only spoke for 1 minute in each round. So we covered a huge amount of territory in a very short time, and we all grew to trust each other very deeply. We all agreed we had the most profound and powerful constructive learning period in our lives.”
BRIAN HILTON, Associate Professor, International Business Strategy,Nottingham University Business School, Ningbo, China
"...I see the potential [in the RoundTable] to enable the emergence and sustainment of a collective mindful consciousness related to deep psychological transitions--shifting of individual and collective mindsets--contributing to the building of a community identity."
PATRICK JENLINK, Author: Systemic Change: Touchstones for the Future School
"[The RoundTable] could be used either as a component of a whole system design (WSD) program. Or, in case a system is not ready to engage in WSD, the model is appropriate to help an organization to 'get ready' to design."
BELA H. BANATHY, Author: Systems Design of Education; A Systems View of Education;
Designing Social Systems in a Changing World
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