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Biography... in brief
Peter Donaldson has 24 years experience as an educator, curriculum
designer and instructional coach. He is a performance artist and consummate storyteller
with two one-man shows that tour the Pacific Northwest annually;
Leonardo da Vinci and
Salmonpeople. Peter has authored a
dozen plays, produced some sixty others, and publishes his poetry in an annual collection.
He has created numerous public school partnerships integrating American history with six
traits writing, ecology, drawing, drama, dance, playwriting and poetry. Peter was
recognized as National Youth Theater Director of the Year by the American Alliance for
Theater and Education. He is a national practitioner of
Open Space Technology and an experienced group facilitator. He is dedicating his life to telling the big stories of
the new renaissance awakening the wisdom of ecological and economic sustainability.
A Story
In the spring, when I was a boy, I remember walking past a colonial brick building
with four white columns and tall windows just a block short of the park. After school I’d hear
piano music coming from inside. On warm days the doors would be open and I could see the young
dancers floating back and forth, an older voice calling out lyrical critiques, the voice, the
dancers, the music mirrored in the wooden floor, everything the same amber polish. I knew I was
supposed to be in there.
But I didn’t. In school, I acted in plays and competed in sports and went to all the dances and
learned to walk on my hands and work with wood and clay and read and write, but the bell would
ring in between things and so I learned to disconnect one experience from another.
When I went to college, I took a degree in painting and learned how to put on and take away layers
of meaning. But each painting, once completed, seemed too soon silent. My palette was not broad
enough. Ideas and conversation were becoming colors.
I became a teacher and learned how to learn. I developed curriculum. I coached other teachers.
Fascinated with the opportunities of brain compatible instruction, performance based assessment
and constructing meaning, I further enriched my understanding of an integrated approach. I begin
to paint broader strokes. And I was delighted to discover that the source, indeed the richness
of my color was coming from the students themselves.
I taught middle school for a number of years. I conducted experiments in student motivation
to find out what would happen if I gave up control yet championed criteria. Surprise. When
given the choice, students set expectations and timelines that surpassed state standards.
Human beings, it seems, take great joy in the drive to excel, expand, and self-express. I
began to see that learning was about meaning and motivation not curriculum. And to the extent
to which school was becoming a curriculum factory instead of learning community I noticed student
curiosity and creativity atrophy.
I left the schoolhouse to fully attend to the children’s’ theater company I was helping to birth.
I authored a dozen plays, produced some sixty others and built a non-profit organization to a
$350,000 budget. In 1994 I received the national award for Youth Theater Director of the Year
from the National Association of Theater in Education. My painter’s palette now included song,
setting, lights, action, story and, at long last, the dance.
One day, I left the theater, and became a traveling storyteller, painting pictures of the stories I found worth living.
Now the seasons of my year flow from touring as Leonardo da Vinci every spring to spawning Salmonpeople projects each fall. With these stories as my calling card, I spend the rest of my time supporting community learning in both adult and youth populations, in schools, in organizational settings and amongst the good citizens of watershed communities everywhere. In these circles, my own learning deepens, a criterion I hold for measuring my usefulness in the world.
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