Karen McCown, MA

I have always believed that what is now popularly called “emotional intelligence” is essential if students and teachers are to become whole, healthy human beings. EQ will give children the tools and skills to make choices in their lives that have positive and productive outcomes — and, when they do experience adversity, these skills will increase the possibility of their coping — and rising above the troubling events. My mission, my passion, my commitment, my noble goal is to support myself and others to become “human beings.” To live that whole, healthy life.

Karen began her involvement with emotional intelligence when she founded the Nueva School (Hillsborough, California) in 1967. In planning the school she met with educators, political & business leaders and Nobel Laureates to consider the educational needs of our society. She saw that the central foundation of a school should be not simply giving students knowledge, but giving them the opportunity to develop wisdom. She created the nation’s first emotional intelligence curriculum, Self Science, a program she facilitated for nearly 3 decades. Karen is the Chairman of the Board for Six Seconds.

Anabel Jensen, Ph.D.

Anabel is the president and co-founder of Six Seconds and former Director of Nueva School. She is a world-leading expert on how to teach emotional intelligence. Anabel brings 30 years of pioneering experience as an educator, principal, and professor of education and has trained over 10,000 educators, parents, and individuals.

Anabel designs training programs and mentors principals so schools develop an effective program and climate for social-emotional learning. She is a full professor at the College of Education of Notre Dame De Namur University. Anabel delivers keynote addresses and workshops to schools and organizations that provide inspiration and practical advice for increasing emotional intelligence.

Anabel is coauthor of the Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence Assessment,  Assessment of School Climate, the Handle With Care EQ Activity series, and the Self-Science Curricula series for emotional intelligence.

Gigi Carlson, M.Ed.

When a child is happy because he/she feels good about what he/she is able to do and believes that every challenge presented is doable, then I know we are doing our work.

Gigi is the director of the Synapse Institute. She is an educator, author, theater practitioner and multimedia producer, with a passion for creating learning environments that address multiple ways of learning and prepare young learners to become leaders and thinkers. She developed a learning strategy called Helical Learning, which enables students to integrate critical and creative thinking and achieve subject matter mastery based on the Constructivist theory. In this structure, children learn in a supported and socially-interactive learning structure of five levels: play, explore, connect, imagine, and remember.

With a twenty-year artist-teacher experience and as former director of the Central Institute of Theater Arts in Southeast Asia, Gigi connects visual arts, music, dance, and drama as strategies for multiple ways of knowing and learning. She was an international exchange instructor at the University of Calgary where she taught undergraduate and graduate courses including “Creating Performance” and “Participatory Learning.” She recently completed a curriculum blueprint for a 21st century school where students learn like they are industry and civic professionals.

Author of Digital Media for the Classroom: Strategies for 21st Century Learning, which garnered five stars at amazon.com, Gigi also designs educational environments that enhance learning through the use of state-of-the-art technology. She taught a professional development program at the Digital Media Academy at Stanford University called “Digital Media in the Classroom.” Gigi is an Adobe Education leader and program director of Multipleminds Educational Foundation, specializing in integrating digital media to create active and relevant learning environments. She was also a producer of interactive games for young learners, where design and development included children as mentors of the games and a producer of a website by teens and for teens.

Gigi has a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Gifted/Talented students and a master’s degree in Southeast Asian Studies.

Katie Gibbons

Founding Teacher 5′s and 6′s

I believe in a learning community that holds the highest respect and compassion for the process of human development; we all develop skills and strengths at different times and we all learn in different ways. A community that is flexible, creative, and full of humor, imagination, and fun will only bring out the best in children.  I truly believe in creating a school culture that cares for each individual and honors their role within the group.

Katie is a founding teacher at Synapse Institute. She taught in a remote Yup’ik Eskimo village for three years. Katie participated in the  University of Alaska Fairbanks relevant math curriculum research project called Math in a Cultural Context (MCC) funded by the National Science Foundation. She was a three-year teacher-participant in 4-H Alaska Fisheries Salmon Incubation project, collecting, raising, and releasing salmon as part of the classroom learning environment. Katie completed her B.S. in Education from Elizabethtown College and has a California Teaching Credential.

In the past 10 years Katie traveled to Alaska, Canada, Germany, Greece, Hawaii, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey. She is a licensed Avatar Master and Wizard. Avatar is a series of experiential exercises that enables one to rediscover oneself and align one’s consciousness with what one wants to achieve.

Marsha Rideout

The Admissions Director for Synapse and Associate Director for Six Seconds, Marsha brings extensive experience in educating with emotional intelligence.

Marsha has taught for many years in elementary and middle schools and raised two sons. Before joining Six Seconds, she facilitated Self-Science, a curriculum for emotional literacy, at The Nueva School. Marsha earned her BA in English and Art, magma cum laude, from Whitworth College and her Life Credential in Elementary Education from San Jose State University. Her focus of affective education set the tone in her kindergarten through third grade classrooms where curriculum was integrated and risk-taking, creativity, and accountability were modeled and encouraged.

Marsha is a coauthor of the Self-Science Curricula series for emotional intelligence.

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Barbara Fatum, Ed.D.

Barbara is the research director of Synapse Institute. She is a consultant school psychologist with 20+ years experience as a practitioner in public, private, and international schools.  Barbara is President of Teach Emotion, a consulting business with schools, parents, individual students, and groups in the San Francisco Bay area focused on implementing Emotional Intelligence programs.

Barbara teaches courses in the Certification and Masters program in Special Education as a core adjunct faculty member at National University in San Jose and in the Marriage and Family Therapy graduate program at the University of San Francisco.  She completed her doctorate from the School of Education, Department of Learning and Instruction, at the University of San Francisco in 2008.

Dr. Fatum has been conducting research on the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Academic Achievement in elementary-school children.  She has completed Level II training and SEI Certification training with the Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence Organization and serves as a consultant with them. Most recently, Barbara has joined the Synapse Institute in Palo Alto to develop an after-school enrichment program for children diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and high-functioning Autism.

D Paul Green, M.Ed

Teacher 9’s-and 11’s

Teaching highly intelligent students is much more than accelerating curriculum. As students’ intelligence (from a holistic perspective) increases, their individuality and uniqueness also expands. The challenge is to meet that expansion of individuality with an expanded range of possibilities and perspectives; opening doors with that student into everything we do at school that neither teacher nor student has dreamed of walking through.

Paul has twenty-six tears of experience teaching in elementary grades through university level. His educational practice includes developing curriculum, supervising student teachers, conducting educational research, and facilitating professional development for teachers.  Highlights of his teaching career include teaching university seniors’ language arts methods from K-6, where he supervised teachers, and participated in collaborative research with in-service teachers in Ohio State University. He is also the founder and co-director of the Ananda School on the Peninsula where he taught grades 3-6. Paul also ventured into business including writing grants and designing and conducting educational research for Polaroid.  Paul has focused on visual literacy and directed his own company’s activities in marketing and finance.

Paul has a B.A. in English, M.S. in Education, and a teaching certification for children with special needs. Paul also has credits from a NYU PhD Program in Philosophy and Education  and Curriculum and Instruction.

Quincy Jones, M.Ed

Teacher 7’s-and 8’s

I come from a teaching background that embraces excellence,individualized learning, and educates the whole child. I have seen how a successful learning environment emphasizes depth of understanding versus breadth of information; experiential learning and conceptually based lessons; activities in multiple modalities and personalized learning goals.

Quincy has had successful experiences in developing and implementing curriculum for elementary school. She was a teacher in Reed Elementary School and Bullis Charter School. In the latter, she contributed to the receipt of California Distinguished school award and WASC accreditation. She is trained in Schools Attuned to All Kinds of Minds.

Quincy has a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and an M.A. in Education. She also has a Multiple Subject Teaching Credential with emphasis on cross-cultural, language, and academic development.

Kathryn Price

Co-Teacher 5′s and 6′s

I believe in teaching the “whole” child, heart,body, mind and soul. With my parents both as educators, I have always loved teaching and aspired to be a teacher. At Synapse, my creativity has been embraced introducing new/complex ideas to young minds.

Kathryn is the co-teacher for the 5-6 year old classroom. She received her credential and degree in Liberal Studies from Sonoma State. She has taught in kindergarten and fifth grade classrooms. Her first job was being the GATE( Gifted and Talented Education) teacher for fourth-sixth graders in a public school.

Kathryn is well-rounded and enjoys traveling. She traveled to Jamaica, England, France and Brazil.

Jeannie Goldman

Children’s art is a process involving all of who they are and helps open the door to a lifetime of self-expression. Art experiences can come from anywhere at anytime so artists need to be ready everyday with eyes wide open.

Building her lessons around seasonal themes with the use of richly illustrated children’s books, Teacher Jeannie inspires children to create using carefully selected art projects of her own design. She introduces children to many different art mediums and knows just how to instruct them in their use for ultimate success. She brings her sense of freedom and spontaneity with her into the classroom, along with the ability to allow just enough freedom so the children can find their own way… bringing out a sense of self-worth by learning to trust their own creative abilities and their artworks.

The results speak for themselves. Teacher Jeannie encourages children to explore the subjects she brings to class through their own creative process, bringing to light their own ideas and discovering that the possibilities of creation are endless. She has taught art to children aged 3-8 years old for over 35 years, She has been offering art lessons at the Portola Valley Town Center for more than 20 years.

Amy Penney

Amy is an actor, director, writer and teacher who has worked extensively in Los Angeles and San Francisco. She taught acting technique, improvisational acting and scene study classes to adults and youth in LA for over ten years at Strasberg Institute, Ventura Court Theatre, The Raven Playhouse and The Actor’s Forum. Since moving to the Bay Area a year and a half ago, Amy has taught youth drama, dance and music classes for NCTC and Handful Players and has performed with Ragged Wing Ensemble, Ray of Light Theatre Company, NCTC and Playwright’s Center of SF. Amy won an LA Weekly Theatre Award for “Best Featured Female Performance” in Hound Dog performed at the Hudson Theatre in Hollywood. An accomplished writer, she just finished a comedy feature screenplay and directed her one-act play, The Lady In Red, at a one-act festival at her alma mater, University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She appears in two feature films, Holyman Undercover and Destiny and has also played roles on Boston Legal and the Sci-Fi Channel’s Monsters of the UFO. Of all of her pursuits, Amy has enjoyed teaching children most of all and feels extremely grateful for the opportunity to give back to her community in this way.

Alexander Eisenberg

Alexander Eisenberg was born in Odesssa, former Soviet Union.He belongs to the famous Russian Violin School, which has produced a great number of extraordinary masters of this instrument. He began his studies in Odessa under professor Michail Greenberg and Julia Greenberg, then continued his studies at the Moscow Conservatory. As a student, he won numerous Soviet competitions. Later he studies at Hochsschule fur Musik, Vienna.

After leaving the Soviet Union, Eisenberg won the First Prize a Gold Medal in the Michelangelo Abbad Violin Competition in Sondrio, Italy, along with the Paolo Bornciani Special Prize for Chamber Music. he is also a winner of Concorso Internationale Rameau in France. He recorded for RAI (Italy), ORF (Austria) and RTV Beograd (former Yugoslavia).

As a soloist and chamber musician, Eisenberg has performed in Europe and North and South America with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Vienna Soloists, Odessa Philharmonic, Belgrade radio Symphony Orchestra, Dubrovnik Festival Orchestra, Kansas City Chamber Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Hidelberg Chamber Orchestra.

Eisenberg is currently Music Director of the New Millenium Chamber Orchestra in Silicon Valley, California.