Teaching

Partnership Systems Course

The Partnership Systems Course titled “Reimagining Power and Revaluing Care: Actualizing the Potentials of Partnership Systems” is a seven-week online course taught by Riane Eisler and Aftab Omer.

The Partnership Systems concentration and course is intended for Master’s and Doctoral students in the Psychology and Education programs who aspire to be Partnership Systems Practitioners in the context of their professional goals.

About this Course:

On our long human journey, our ancestors invented both systems of partnership and systems of domination. Domination systems have had disastrous consequences, while partnership systems have enabled human flourishing. This course explores how the potentials of partnership systems can be harvested by developing partnership capability as applicable to all system levels, from intimate – starting in families – to societal and economic, including specific principles and practices that guide the process of transforming adversaries and bystanders into partners and allies.

Partnership capabilities enable members of a system to collaborate in generating synergistic outcomes. Five dimensions of partnership capability will receive particular emphasis: relationality, pleasure, prosperity, creativity, and spirituality.

Course Modules:

Week 1: Care, Consciousness, and Partnership Capability

• Partnership-Domination Social Scale
• Five Dimensions of Partnership Capability

Week 2: Relationality: The Foundations of Care

• Families, Gender, and Intimacy
• Reimagining Feminine and Masculine
• Habits of Mutuality, Interdependence, and Reciprocity
• Moral Codes of Fairness and Mutual Accountability

Week 3: Pleasure: Affirming Aliveness and Connection

• Belonging and Well-Being
• Play, Learning, and Joy
• Beauty and Connection to Nature
• Sacralizing Sexuality

Week 4: Prosperity: An Economics of Caring

• Measuring the Truly Valuable
• Transforming Policies, Practices, and Professions
• Productivity and Artificial Scarcity

Week 5: Creativity: Art and Craft in the Service of Human Flourishing

• Re-emergence of Cultural Synergy
• Art and the Regeneration of the Commons
• Imagination and Cultural Leadership

Week 6: Spirituality: Regenerative Sources of Culture

• Purpose and Meaning at Work
• Ritualizations of Connection and Caring

Week 7: Another World is Possible

• The Presence of the Future
• Whole Systems and World-Making

Online Course Format:

• Seven-week online course from September 14 through October 31, 2021
• Six live 75-minute Zoom sessions with faculty held Tuesdays at 11:00 am PT (Pacific Time) and recorded for participants who cannot join every session live
• Resources, networking, and emergent community outcomes
• Content and collaboration via Meridian’s social learning platform

Course Schedule: 

• September 14 at 5 pm PT – Course begins asynchronously via the Pivot collaboration platform, participants begin engaging with course resources and activities
• September 21 at 11 am PT – First live course session
• September 28 at 11 am PT – Second live course session
• October 5 at 11 am PT – Third live course session
• October 12 at 11 am PT – Fourth live course session
• October 19 at 11 am PT – Fifth live course session
• October 26 at 11 am PT – Sixth live course session
• October 31 – Course ends, participants continue engagement via learning platform’s social group

Course Fees: 

$250, including the synchronous course video calls (with recordings), online learning platform access, participation in the course learning community, plus course resources and written activities.

Accreditation: 

Meridian University is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) – a higher education accreditor recognized by the United States Department of Education. WASC is also the accreditor for Stanford University, UCLA, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Learn more about the course here.

Eisler is co-leading the new Partnership Systems Concentration at Meridian University, with Aftab Omer, sociologist, psychologist, futurist, and the president of the university, and Melissa Schwartz, Chief Academic Officer at Meridian University, psychologist, and marriage and family therapist.

World-System and cultural crises are unfolding around the world in communities and societies at an intensifying rate. On a long journey of perhaps 200,000 years, humans have structured their collective lives within what could be understood as either partnership systems, or domination systems. Both types of systems can take less or more forms of complexity.

Eisler is co-leading the new Partnership Systems concentration at Meridian University, with Aftab Omer, sociologist, psychologist, futurist, and the president of the university, and Melissa Schwartz, Chief Academic Officer at Meridian University, psychologist, and marriage and family therapist.

An understanding of Partnership Systems has been substantially articulated and affirmed by the work of Riane Eisler as well as the research and scholarship of others, for example: David Loye, Marija Gimbutas, Ruth Benedict, Douglas Fry, David Korten, Jean Baker Miller, Nancy Folbre, and Nell Noddings.

Partnership System Practitioners are needed at scale to respond to these cascading crises.

Partnership Systems Practitioners facilitate the development of partnership capabilities within intimate systems, teams, organizations, communities, and societies. The Partnership Systems concentration is intended for Master’s and Doctoral students in the Psychology and Education programs who aspire to be Partnership Systems Practitioners in the context of their professional goals.

Practices, methods, ideas, and topics engaged within this concentration’s courses, by way of example, include domination hierarchies & actualization hierarchies, affective neuroscience, relational & emotional development, collective trauma, gender, childhood development, economics, synergy, interdependence, mutuality, accountability, regenerative practice, cultural leadership, coalition building, and restorative justice.

Learn more about the Partnership Systems concentration here.

June 1, 2020

In this virtual Town Hall, Dr. Riane Eisler shares how in these volatile times it is vital for us to work together to create viable Partnership social systems and Caring Economic policies.

Learn about the new Social Wealth Index and how you can get involved. Moderated by Rosie Von Lila.

Hosted by the Center for Partnership Systems.

What Town Hall attendees are saying:

“I am a Latín women, and I am committed to support this cause among my community.”

“Thank you so much for this valuable Town Hall conversation, love it!”

“This is our future way.”

“We have a choice—we can tell ourselves there’s nothing we can do to change policies that damage our environment, create huge gaps between haves and have-nots, and lead to untold suffering. Or we can together contract a saner more caring economics and culture.”

From the June 1, 2020 Live Twitter Feed: #Partnerism is a New System for Our Future

Dominating or being dominated are not the only options; the real alternative is #Partnership.

#Domination is NOT the answer; #Partnerism is.

Fear of the “other” is built into domination systems, starting with the in-group of “mankind” and the female “other”; it is NOT human nature. #RianeEislerTownHall

For 300 years progressive social movement mainly challenged traditions of domination in politics and economics; now we must go deeper, to the foundations on which domination systems rest, by changing domination and violence where children are first taught they are normal: childhood and gender relations. #Partnership

We are witnessing the erosion of America. 20% of our children live in #poverty. #PracticePartnership #DisruptDomination #RianeEislerTownHall #Partnerism

#TotalDomination is not the answer to the suffering and strife.

#Partnerism is a new system for our future. #CPS #Domination justifies inhumanity. #Partnership is the alternative which address the root issues and moves beyond short-term fixes.

A “normal” which includes child poverty, natural devastation, domination, inequality and injustice is not worth returning to. We have metrics to move us towards #Partnership –#SocialWealthIndex

Conventional economic thinking utterly omits the household and natural economies, the value of the work of care for people and the planet. #CaringEconomy #RianeEislerTownHall #Partnerism

#Partnerism starts in families, where hierarchies of domination are replaced with hierarchies of actualization, where power is used to empower rather than disempower. #RianeEislerTownHall

Without a solid foundation of partnerism between parents and children and men and women, we cannot make sustainable progress towards a healthier, equitable, and enduring society. #RianeEislerTownHall #Partnerismcultural

We invite you to be in conversation with us to build our new future fueled by #partnership via economic, social, and educational policy changes. #CPS #RianeEislerTownHall #Partnerism

Thanks to Valerie Young, CPS Social Media Manager, for facilitating the Twitter Live Feed.

Webinar presenters Dr. Mary Crnobori, BCBA, Khayree Bey, BBSc, M.Ed. and Dr. Riane Eisler present a timely dialogue that shows how trauma-sensitive practices in schools is a crucial way to ignite broader societal shifts that move us away from domination systems and toward partnership systems that support equity, peace, and well-being.

In this challenging time of systemic upheaval, hear what it takes to implement effective, compassionate, trauma-sensitive practices at all levels in public school systems, from whole-district initiatives to classroom-based strategies.

Mary and Khayree share on-the-ground stories offer effective models and resources to help you join the trauma-informed movement in your classroom, school or district.

Facilitated by Sara Saltee.

Hosted by the Center for Partnership Systems https://centerforpartnership.org/

Learn about:

•  Intergenerational trauma and the roots of domination systems
• The neuroscience of stress in domination systems
• Trauma-sensitive schools: Models for district- and school-wide approaches
• Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and school success: the latest research
• How to support healthy self-regulation in educators and students
• Mindfulness practices in schools
• How healthy schools are a foundation for partnership cultures

Resources

April 2 Webinar Full Resource List

Educator Resources from Riane Eisler:

• Resources for Educators
• Excerpts from Tomorrow’s Children
• Caring Family Policy Agenda
• Children’s Bill of Rights

Educator, Parent and Community Resources from Mary Crnobori and Khayree Bey:

• Resources for Trauma-Sensitive Practices
• Mr. Bey Full Resource List
• Mindfulness With Your Child
• Family Schedule Templates
• Check Ins with Your Child
• Calming Strategies

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Educator credits, WA clock hours and OR PDUs available through the World We Want self-design program for K-12 teachers. Download the CEUs flyer. Contact instructor Ann Amberg for more information.

All registrants will receive the full session video link and Resources Packet.

Mary Crnobori, coordinator of Trauma-Informed Schools for the 169-school Metro Nashville Public School District, will share how she is working at the district level to raise awareness of childhood and intergenerational trauma, using a collective impact framework to promote system-wide change and implementation of school-wide trauma-sensitive practices, and collaborate with police and other community agencies to support students experiencing traumatic events. Watch Mary Crnobori at TEDx Vanderbilt University: Why All Schools Should be Trauma Informed.

Khayree Bey, 2019 SHAPE Delaware’s Health Teacher of the Year, will share how he is implementing an equity-based trauma-informed approach in his classroom based on the art of mindfulness, Kemetic yoga and other self-care practices, and how he is teaching other teachers, community and staff to do the same. Khayree serves on Colonial School District’s Educators of Color committee which focuses on equity and the underrepresented population in teaching by recruiting, assisting, and maintaining educators of color. Watch Khayree Bey on Colonial School District’s October edition of Keeping up with Colonial.

In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, many schools are closing for weeks or longer and we know that students, parents and communities are in need of informed and inspiring support.

In the March 19, 2020 webinar Trauma-Sensitive Schools: Responding to COVID-19, Riane Eisler, Mary Crnobori and Khayree Bey addressed how we can better care for our families and school communities in the coming weeks.

The Center for Partnership Systems and Riane Eisler welcome Dr. Mary Crnobori, BCBA and Khayree Bey, BBSc, M.Ed for a timely dialogue on how families and school communities are impacted by COVID-19.

Given the urgency of the real issues at hand, how can we can better care for our families and school communities in the coming weeks?

Our webinar presenters are working directly with parents, teachers and schools to smooth this transition and offer effective trauma-informed responses.

In this webinar, they address:

• Trauma-sensitive practices that can address the fear, confusion, and questions of our children, while offering compassion and kindness.
• How to prepare for traumatized children when they return to re-opened schools
• The mental-emotional challenges of life-threatening personal illness and illness of loved ones
• Issues related to equity for districts considering moving to distance learning
• How our family, community and societal immune system is boosted and sustained by partnership systems

Hosted by the Center for Partnership Systems

Facilitated by Sara Saltee

School communities, educators and families are responding to COVID-19 by working together in partnership to find creative local solutions.

Here are resources including trauma-sensitive practices that will support your children:

Educator Resources from Riane Eisler:

• Resources for Educators
• Excerpts from Tomorrow’s Children
• Caring Family Policy Agenda
• Children’s Bill of Rights

Educator, Parent and Community Resources from Mary Crnobori and Khayree Bey:

• Resources for Trauma-Sensitive Practices
• Mr. Bey Full Resource List
• Mindfulness With Your Child
• Family Schedule Templates
• Check Ins with Your Child
• Calming Strategies

Mary Crnobori, coordinator of Trauma-Informed Schools for the 169-school Metro Nashville Public School District, will share how she is working at the district level to raise awareness of childhood and intergenerational trauma, using a collective impact framework to promote system-wide change and implementation of school-wide trauma-sensitive practices, and collaborate with police and other community agencies to support students experiencing traumatic events. Watch Mary Crnobori at TEDx Vanderbilt University: Why All Schools Should be Trauma Informed.

Khayree Bey, 2019 SHAPE Delaware’s Health Teacher of the Year, will share how he is implementing an equity-based trauma-informed approach in his classroom based on the art of mindfulness, Kemetic yoga and other self-care practices, and how he is teaching other teachers, community and staff to do the same. Khayree serves on Colonial School District’s Educators of Color committee which focuses on equity and the underrepresented population in teaching by recruiting, assisting, and maintaining educators of color. Watch Khayree Bey on Colonial School District’s October edition of Keeping up with Colonial.