Okay. Good morning everybody. Welcome to the class, our course on BC 214, Developing the Human Spirit. Let's take a moment to pray together and then we will get started today. Could somebody please lead us in prayer? That's great. J. Heavenly Father, we come to you under the name of Jesus. We thank you for this day. We thank you for the beautiful class we are about to have. We pray that He will help us to open our mind and heart and listen to the deep truths the pastor is teaching us so that we can develop our spirit love, so that we can live a life that glorifies you and we can be a blessing to others. Be with us and guide us throughout the session. Give us the good Wi-Fi connection that we need for this section. Don't be with us. Let everything we do be done for your glory. We bless pastor ashes. I thank you for all my classmates. We give you all the glory and all the Jesus name at you. Amen. Amen. Thank you and Kira Wan. So let's quickly review what we did last class, last week. I know this has been a kind of a short course, but we introduced this course maybe one or two years, maybe two years back I think. So this is only the third time we're doing this course. The whole intent was we want to really emphasize for all of us that we have to develop our spirit, man. And that's one reason why we are here in the Bible College. We are going to gain knowledge, of course. We're going to learn a lot of things intellectually. But most importantly, we want to develop our spirit in a person so we could be effective for God and in the service of God. Last class, we talked about the seven functions of the human spirit. That means the human spirit, what does it do? What does it do? What are the functions that it serves? And we enumerated these. First, we talked about the conscience. The conscience is the voice of the human spirit. It tells us what's right and wrong. And the Holy Spirit, of course, is our guide. And if our conscience is right, meaning if we have our spirit is developed the right way, then the voice of the conscience will always be aligned to the voice of the spirit. There will be an agreement. The second function our spirit serves is in knowing spiritual things, receiving revelation or understanding of spiritual things. So our spirit understands many times even before our mind can comprehend. So we have to constantly live out of what we know in the spirit and not be limited to what we understand in our minds. Thirdly, we talked about communion of fellowship with God. So our God is spirit. He has created us as spirit beings so that we can fellowship with them spirit to spirit. So we don't see God in the natural. Like, you know, I'm seeing God, I'm shaking hands. No, I can't do that. But I can fellowship with God spirit to spirit. He is spirit. My spirit communicates or communes with God. Number four, the spirit serves as a container. So God fills us with His grace, His power, fills us. And then from there we dispense, we release to people. The spirit also carries our identity. This is who we really are. So the spiritual world recognizes us not based on our natural, who we are in the natural, right? The spiritual world recognizes us based on who we are in the spirit, right? So they see us as believers, they see us under the blood, they see us in Christ, because that's who we are in the spirit. In the natural we may be different things. You know, we have different things in life. That's fine. But the spiritual world recognizes us for who we are in the spirit. We carry that identity in the spirit. Number six, it is our spirit that takes action, that gets things done in the spiritual realm and thereby affects the natural realm. So we must learn to do that. The moment there's an emergency, there's a situation in the natural. Of course, there are things we can do in the natural and take care of things, yes. But we must also learn how to operate in the spirit, because our spirit can take action in the spiritual realm. And those things will then affect what's going on here in our natural world, right? And lastly, we said the spirit continues to grow. So there is continuous development. The spirit is continuing to develop, mature, increase in Christ's likeness. So these are seven functions of the human spirit and we should be aware of it and continue to grow in each of these seven areas. The last lesson or the last point or last area that we want to cover is imparting spirit to spirit. That means just as in the natural, you know, if you think about it in the natural, you can have, you know, athletes can have coaches, students can have teachers. You know, so in the natural, there is some impartation of knowledge or experience that happens in the natural, so also in the spiritual. So we can impart spiritually to other people and we can birth and nurture spiritually. So we must understand that there is the possibility of spirit to spirit impartation or sharing or giving into other people's lives. So for example, in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 3, the apostle Paul is writing to the Corinthians and he tells them, you are a letter written by us. Written not with ink but by the spirit. Written not on tablets of stone but on your hearts. So he's saying, you are a letter that we've written.  Okay, what's he saying? And then he says, he explains, it's not a letter that we've written with ink on some stone or some paper. It's not a natural letter but you are a spiritual letter. We have written by the Holy Spirit and we have written it in your hearts inside. You know, so you can think about, that's what ministry is when we are ministering to people. We are actually writing into their hearts by the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is helping us to write into their hearts. And what is written in their heart is indelible. Meaning you can't erase it with an eraser.  So that's an example where we can impart into people's lives into their very spirit. But it is empowered by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who helps us do that. So really in ministry, whether it be ministry of children or your teens or your youth or your adults or whoever, as you're ministering to people, we're actually imparting into their spirit. And it is only done by the power of the Holy Spirit. You see other examples in Romans 2.11, the Apostle Paul tells the believers at Rome, he says, I want to come to you and I want to impart to you some spiritual gift. So think about it, he's telling the Romans, I want to come to you.   Oh, we're giving them.  Give you gifts in the spirit. I want to impart to you some spiritual gift, something in the spirit. So you can imagine when we go from place to place ministering to different people, what we are doing is we are imparting spiritually, we're giving it as a free gift. It's not like they're paying money. You can't buy these things with money. You're giving it as a gift, you're imparting a spiritual gift into their life, something that empowers them in the spirit. We see examples of Paul and Timothy. Paul tells Timothy 1 Timothy 4 verse 18. He says, I want to remind you of what was given to you by the laying on of hands of the eldership. Do not neglect the gift of God, which is in you, which was given to you through prophecy, by the laying on of the hands of the eldership. So that means when the spiritual elders, they laid hands on Timothy, they prophesied over him, something was imparted into him. A spiritual gift was imparted. And so Paul reminds Timothy 2 Timothy 1 verse 6.  So there's imparting of gifts. That means abilities, things you're able to do, those things are given our spirit to spirit. So we must understand this, that as you develop in your spirit, spiritually, you can impart out of that into other people's lives. You can impart into their hearts. You can impart the gifts that God has given you. You can pass it on to people. There's a way through which that happens, which we will be talking about. And connected to that, we can nurture people. We can reproduce in others what we have been developed in ourselves. So Paul writes to Timothy 2 Timothy 2 verse 2. He says, did I turn the recording on? Yes, it's on. I suddenly forgot, but did I turn it on or not? Okay. So Paul tells Timothy 2 Timothy 2 verse 2. He says, the things that you have learned from me, commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. That means he's saying, Timothy, what I have given to you spiritually, you pass it on to others and tell them to pass it on to others. So there is this whole transmission of spiritual things and the nurturing of spiritual things that is happening. So as Paul has grown in the things of God, he's passed it on to Timothy and he's saying, Timothy, you pass it on to others and tell them to pass it on to other people as well. So one of our goals in developing the human spirit and growing strong spiritually is so that we can impart to other people spiritually. It's not like, okay, I develop everything, keep everything to myself and sit down quiet. No. As you're developing in your spirit, as you're receiving revelation and truth and grace and gifting and anointing and empowering in your spirit, pour it out into others, release it into others so that you can develop nurture and develop others in the spirit. So some practical roots on how spiritual impartation and nurturing takes place just so that we do this properly. I'm going to just share these points down in the notes. How this happens spiritually. So how spiritual impartation and nurturing takes place. So when we talk about impartation, we're just saying we're transferring what we have received from our spirit. We are passing it to somebody else. That's what's impartation, right? Something, it's a grace. It could be a gift. It could be an empowerment. It could be revelation. What we have received, we are passing on to other people. And we see this in the Bible in the Old and New Testaments. We see examples of it. We'll make mention of it. And we can also receive just as we can give. Romans 111. Just as we receive, we can also give to other people. So this is a genuine thing. It happens. But what are important insights? First, impartation is always aligned to God's call and assignment on your life. So when we talk about impartation, which is especially an impartation of grace and gift, it is always aligned to the call of God. Because God is not just, okay, I will simply give impart grace and gift and you do nothing with it. No. It's always given in alignment to the assignment that God has for your life and the call of God on your heart to be a worship leader. And I worship God personally, privately, but I don't go up in front of people. I can't lead them in worship. So there's no point in me going to, unless God gives that grace and gift. So there's no point in me going to some person and saying, who's a great worship leader, anointed worship leader, and say, please place your hands on me. I want a double portion of your anointing. I want to become a worship leader. Well, that's not going to happen because that is not the call and assignment of God on my life. If it was God's call and assignment on my life, yes, that's, there will be an impartation. There will be a, you know, God can impart into my life the grace and gift and gift is put on that person. But when it's not part of God's call and assignment for my life, definitely I can have that person just pray a general prayer for me. But the impartation of the grace and gift is not going to happen because it's not aligned to the call and assignment on my life. So God is not wasting this, right? There is a purpose behind all of this. We must understand that. Secondly, impartation often takes place in a measure. The normal that we've seen, that you can see in Moses and the 70 elders, Moses and Joshua, Elijah and John the Baptist, is there was a certain aspect of what the person carried, which was given to the other person. So in Moses, you know, when the anointing of God was taken up from Moses and placed on the 70 elders, they didn't become, all 70 of them didn't become like Moses. No, there was a certain aspect, which was the grace and the anointing to judge the people or to lead the people in a certain degree. That was given. So they could then sit and take care of smaller groups of people. So that was imparted to the 70 elders. They didn't all become, you know, like Moses, the prophet, right? So there was an impartation, but it was given to them in a measure to do what God had called them to do. When Moses laid hands on Joshua, Joshua didn't go and start doing all the wonders that Moses did. He received a measure, which was specifically the wisdom of God to lead the people into the promised land. And then of course, yeah, God did some signs and wonders through Joshua, but not in the same way that he did through Moses. You know, so that we could say there was a measure given to Joshua, but not everything. Joshua did not become a copy of Moses. He did it. He had a different assignment and he fulfilled it and he was God imparted into his life. You think of Elijah and John the Baptist. The Bible says John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah, but John the Baptist, there is no record of him doing a single miracle. Elijah did many miracles, but the Bible says John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah. So that means there was only one aspect of the anointing that was imparted to John the Baptist and that was to turn the hearts of the people to God. Just as Elijah in his ministry, through his ministry, the people were saying, the Lord he is God, the Lord he is God. Similarly, John the Baptist turned the hearts of the people to God. That was the measure. That was the impartation of the transfer that happens. So he was understand that in transferring and imparting, it's always aligned to the call of God on the person's life and there's a certain measure or certain aspect that is imparted It's not everything that's given. The third thing is this, that whatever has been received through impartation has to be nurtured and developed. That means you don't impart something in its mature states. You impart something in its nascent or in its initial state and that gift and the grace has to be developed and nurtured. That's what Paul is telling Timothy. Timothy, don't neglect the gift that's in you.  I want you to exercise it. I want you to make use of it. Don't leave it dormant. So Timothy received an impartation but he had to nurture and develop it. So everything received through impartation has to be exercised. It has to be nurtured. It has to be stewarded. It has to be developed. Number four, you can go beyond what was imparted. That means we are not limited to the impartation we receive. The impartation is like a seed that's sown into you. You can develop it. You can increase it. You can increase in measure and in realms. You can go beyond what was received because it depends all on how you develop it and grow in it. Number five, you can receive impartation from more than one ministry of God. Some people say, okay, you can only receive from one person, only from your spiritual father and all of that. All that is not supported in scripture. God can give to you. He has raised up so many men and women in the body obviously to impart into the lives of his people. So we receive impartation from multiple servants of God, multiple people of God. As God brings them into our lives, we can receive. Number six, there are two important factors that determine what we receive through impartation, which is our hunger and secondly, our assignments. That means we must be hungry for that kind of grace and gifting and pursue that intensely. And second, it must be aligned to the call of God on our lives. So both must be there. If I'm hungry, I'm eager for something that's not aligned to the call of God, that's not going to happen unless God has that as part of his calling on my life. So both these things have to be in alignment, the hunger for it and the assignment of God on our lives. And God can at times sovereignly impart that. He can initiate that impartation. Sometimes when you're not even thinking about it, somebody comes, lays their hands on you and impart something. God can do that. But normally, you're hungry for it and it's connected to the assignment or the call of God on your life. Number seven, key to impartation is association and honor. As we saw in the Bible, Joshua and Moses, Elisha and Elijah or Moses and the 70 elders or Paul and Timothy or Paul and Titus, there was association. They kind of knew each other. They worked together and there was honor. And so that kind of facilitates the transmission of grace and anointing. I'm not saying it's exclusively that because God can work apart from it. But normally, that's how it happens through association and honor. Impartation can take remotely. That means it can happen through distance. We can read books, we can listen to messages, we can observe from a distance and God can do that. We see an example of Elijah and John the Baptist. These two people never met. They lived hundreds of years apart and yet the Bible says that John the Baptist came in the spirit in the power of Elijah. So that means over centuries and I think I will mention that again later on. Over centuries, there was a transmission across generations. There was an impartation of certain grace and gift. Number nine, impartation cannot be purchased with money. I just want to emphasize this because sometimes people say you give an offering and you'll get my anointing and all that. That doesn't happen. You can give as much money as you want. That will not make the anointing come on you because anointing, this is a gift of God. This is a work of grace and sure, you can partner with people. You can be a part of what they're doing by giving financially but you cannot buy their anointing or buy their grace or gift through money. That's made so very clear for us that in Acts 8 Simon the Sorcerer wanted to buy the grace to impart the baptism of the Holy Spirit and Peter rebuked him.  Number ten, a double portion can only be received from God. That means no man can give beyond what he has. If you want more than what a person has you'll have to go to God because everything we receive comes from God ultimately. Remember, in impartation you're not receiving from the man, you're receiving from God through the individual. The individual is only a channel of what the individual carries then we have to go to the source that is God himself. A double portion can only be received from God because everything we ultimately receive will come from God himself. He's the source of the grace that gives the anointing. The last point is that impartation can take place across generations. John the Baptist, he walked in the spirit and power that was in between them but God determined this was going to happen and so it did happen. Can God do the same thing today? Yes, of course. God can raise up people today who may walk in an anointing or a certain grace or a certain gift that somebody many generations ago walked in in similar manner. But that is a work of God and it's not something that we dictate but that's a sovereign work of God. It starts in mind when we talk about imparting into people's lives this is how impartation happens this is how we can give into their lives. As we associate together as we work together there's an impartation that takes place, we receive but it can it's according to God's plan and call we can't force something into somebody. So it doesn't mean that everybody's going to be a carbon copy of the person who's doing the impartation. No, it's going to be always according to God's call and God's plan for their lives. Let me pause here and see if there are any questions on this subject and then after this I will do a full review of the course. Any questions on this? On nurturing and impartation Go ahead Zafira Go ahead So once it happened with me a person genuinely came when he wanted to pray for me and then he suddenly started saying I'm imparting everything to you but then I mean I didn't think about it later or I didn't feel anything I didn't even think like that's the prayer that I kind of needed or something like I was not even thinking about getting his gifts into me or something so I just want to know that is it really nice or good to go to someone suddenly and then say I'm imparting all my gifts to you when I was standing and listening to his prayers I was wondering why he's doing all these things yeah that's what I wanted to know is it really good a good way to approach someone like this and then suddenly say I'm imparting all my gifts to you I'm imparting the grace imparting the power and stuff I felt very different that day but then yeah I just want to know Yeah so the answer is two things right one is was the Holy Spirit genuinely leading him was God really in it or was he operating purely was the person operating purely out of their own mind you know because sometimes we can go do it on our own oh I'm giving everybody here stand up everybody receive my anointing my grace and all that you know that usually amounts to nothing you know it's something if we are doing it by our own cells it may seem like a very spiritual thing but it really amounts to nothing if the Lord is in it then yes there will be some fruit coming out of it so the real test is in the fruit right Jesus said you know Matthew 7 he said by the fruit you will know them so how do we test something look at the fruit what was the outcome was there some immediate change in the idea of ministry or did you recognize certain gifts did you recognize certain grace flowing and operating in your life that you didn't have before that would be the evidence of a sorry sorry I lost connection in between back now yeah so what we were saying is so we will know them by the fruit so the real test is if there was the initial evidence of receiving of certain gifts or grace or anointing or even revelation then you know that some impartation has taken place otherwise if we are operating on our own accord in our own mind then usually nothing happens it's just an exercise we go through but if the Holy Spirit has led it okay sorry about that once again the connection went off and came back I hope it doesn't go off again okay so the second part that we were saying has to do with our desire right so we need to be desiring the the impartation you know that God I want that what's happening I want that I want to see it in my life I've got a desire for it so that's important so these are two important things right so if I'm just speaking towards what Jeffina was sharing if God was directing it if there was desire for it yeah then that's the normal way through which impartation happens now God is sovereign so sometimes God directs it even when we are not aware that's fine but I'm just talking about the normal I'm just talking about the normal way in which impartation happens that is God directs it and usually we are seeking for it we're desiring for it and then God directs the impartation we are seeking for it then impartation happens but God is sovereign so sometimes when we are not even aware or not knowing God can direct an impartation can happen but usually the evidence will be there the fruit will be there that something is beginning something has changed in my spiritual journey either in terms of the grace or the gift or the anointing or the revelation something has come up in my life that means I know impartation something has been given to me in the spirit okay sorry about the interruptions I'm not sure today whether we've had these problems happen playing to okay it's a little blurry but it's still okay okay so let's try to see if we can make progress today otherwise we will meet again is there any other questions that are there any questions that anyone would like to ask hopefully this connection won't go again but let's see if there any questions first I have a question regarding impartation wouldn't be possible for demonic powers also to be imparted if that the man of the person who is operating gives who is imparting is operating under the influence of the enemy just wondering because sometimes people initiate themselves to come forward and impart and give money stuff so wouldn't be possible to happen that way also yeah so in theory so we look at the full picture in theory there is a possibility that if a person is operating under familiar spirit so let's say there is a believer a man of God whatever and certain areas of his life are not right so that means in that area he is actually given room to familiar spirit so he may be a believer operating under the Holy Spirit in certain aspects but in other aspects he is operating under the influence of familiar spirits because he has accommodated that and that's possible because in those areas he would have compromised and he has given room to familiar spirits now when that person lays hands and prays if the person is compromised in the same area then it is possible I am saying theoretically or theologically it is possible that those familiar spirits will begin to attack themselves of this person so for example there is a pornography is a weakness in his life and he has given room for it he himself is in bondage to pornography which means in that area of his life actually unclean spirits have him kept he is weak and they are actually operating in his life in that area if he lays hands on praise of somebody who that person also has a weakness for pornography then it is an open door where these familiar spirits can accommodate and begin to affect this person this weakness will be worse I am just giving an example in theory this is possible but as believers when we go forward to have hands laid on us we have no idea we may not know anything about that pastor that preachers laying hands on us we don't know about his personal life we don't know what are his areas of weakness so what do we do? we make sure that we ourselves are under proper standing before God that we are walking in faith and love and holiness with our life in proper submission to God that means we will not be affected even if that person has a certain weakness so if my life is all covered let's say that pastor laying hands on me he is anointed and I am going to receive off the anointing on his life in a certain area there are certain unclean spirits operating but if I keep my life covered the doors shut I am not going to be able to I am not going to entertain those unclean spirits because I have kept the doors closed in my life but I can receive the good things that are in his life which is the grace and the anointing the gift that God has put in him so that is how we should operate before we go to receive make sure we are closed we can receive we can receive the good things if there are any negative things is it okay? did I answer your question? yes pastor also in Christianity 522 do not lay hands on anyone easily no share in other people's sin keep yourself pure does this also imply when we impart to others or is it just appointing people as leaders but it also says that not sharing other people's sin so could you share some light on that hmm yeah so the context of 1st Timothy 5 is really about when you go back a few verses Paul says against an elder do not receive an accusation except in the mouth of two or three witnesses the context is eldership then he says those who are sinning rebuke before all that all may fear that means if an elder is continuing against sin then you have to publicly rebuke him because he is an elder he has got responsibility of the people of God then people of God are watching him and you need to publicly expose his wrongdoing but in that context he says lay hands suddenly are no men and do not be particular on other men's sins that means do not hastily appoint somebody into eldership because if we appoint somebody in eldership we are actually participating in their wrongdoing if we are like in English we are becoming an accomplice to their crime because we are endorsing their wrongdoing by actually laying hands and appointing them to a place of leadership if they are continuing in sin so that's the context the context is eldership and how to deal with the sin of eldership and not to appoint somebody to eldership if they are actually doing sin living in sin because then we actually become accomplices to their sin by endorsing them and putting them into a place of leadership so in that context he says lay hands suddenly on no man and do not be a part of their sins keep yourself pure right so in that context so we don't want to it's not like if I lay hands on somebody their sin begins to affect me lay hands on somebody and endorse them yeah I still want to yeah good thank you both yeah welcome alright so in this course so through you know what we covered and I've given full course notes so I encourage you to read through it and I feel there's a lot more in scriptures that we need to dig out and explore and hopefully as I go along and I keep learning more I'll put it into a book and share it and of course try to apply it to my life and share some more practical things but what we've tried to cover is I'm just going through the overview of the course I emphasize that we are a tripod being spirit, soul and body but we are primarily spirit beings the spirit is the most important part of us and the condition of our spirit affects both the soul and the body so we have to keep our spirit strong full of the things of God we looked at some analogies of the human spirit you know the human spirit is compared to a vessel is compared to a house is compared to a temple and so you can learn some things about human spirit by looking at the analogies and we said our human spirit is given to us so we can actually connect with the spiritual realm so in the way of living in this natural world and spending some more time with the natural world we can actually connect with the spiritual realm and engage in the spiritual realm through our human spirit then we talked about the five faculties of the human spirit which we need to develop we talked about seeing, hearing, feeling smelling and tasting we need to develop these faculties because they enable us to see and exceed in spiritual things what God is giving to us we talked about actually I moved this chapter here but we talked about you know seven steps or seven ways by which we can develop and train our spiritual stances through the word, through meditation, through worship through quietness and the presence of God through the declaration of the word of God we develop and strengthen our spiritual man we talked a little bit about walking in the spirit how Paul says if we are living out of the spirit then two things we must be led by the spirit and we must walk in the spirit so we have life in the spirit but practically we have to be led by the spirit and we have to walk in the spirit that means let all that we do be governed directed by the Holy Spirit then we talked about the seven functions of the human spirit and do in us today we talked a little bit about how we became part of our people, spirit to spirit that is the gift, the grace, the anointing and the revelation God has given to us in our spirit we can pass on to other people or we ourselves can receive from other people but there is the right way to do it and we should do it properly so that's kind of what we've covered in this course I hope you found it useful I've set the full course notes which you can use so we will put out the assessment for this course you can do the assessment it's an open book, open bible assessment and hopefully in the coming days we will expand these notes into a book and share a lot more but continue to build on whatever information we've shared take it forward, strengthen yourself in it okay so we end this course here with close and prayer and I look forward to meeting you again in some other course with somebody close and prayer please Lord we thank you for this time of learning we pray to God that everything that we have learned through this course we'll be able to apply this in our lives and help us to strengthen and work on our inner man be in constant touch with your Holy Spirit and to develop our human spirit of God you pray that we would see the change even in our personal life and also the ministry that each one of us are involved in pray and thank you for this course God thank you for pastor thank you for all that you have learned through this weeks of God we thank you in Jesus name amen amen thank you Rohan thank you pastor see you again soon bye


The Delta State government is pledged to recover all government lands illegally acquired by illegal land grabbers across the state. The chairman task force on land recovery and outright demolition committee, Chief Frank Omari, made the pledge at a meeting with occupiers of landed property of the Denys or high school. The wood that we are staying in our government land illegally. So just inform them exactly what the government of Delta State is doing. As government we are responsible people, we need to inform them that our land is going to be temporarily taken over the land. It is the invest land. Not other land. So many land in the 25 local government states. So if you study from university land, if you know you have a land in Burutu, in Escobar, in Agbarro, in Sapele, and it's government land, just vacate the land. If you don't vacate the land, we'll compare you to vacancies because we cannot, you know, you cannot. We, as governments, we have the documents, so we don't want to oppress people. So people that don't know that you are staying in that land and you don't have a building approvers, you don't have a building permit, you cannot in any way. No longer stay there, you should just be vacating from the place. It's all sentiments. On his part, the Vice-Chancellor, Denis Osadebe University and Waiya Sabar, Professor Ben Ogorjafo, thanked the state governor for constituting the committee to recover the land of the university, encroached upon by illegal land speculators, pointing out that a lot of persons have built ungovernment land. We're giving to those upon assumption of office, was being demarcated. That demarcation is contained in the sea of Oana, our survey plan of the university. With the permission of Land and Survey, the coordinates are well-addedified there. As to what extent are they encroaching our land? From Mubulu side, they are encroaching our land. From our road side, they are encroaching our land. Even our fence that existed under College of Agriculture, had been pulled down by the community. From their both side, their both side, they are also selling our land. In everywhere in the world, people speculate to buy land. And they are allowed to aspire to own land. But there is a provision in law, with a covenant at all. Buy and beware. Now my campus took over. And this lease agreement expired since 2004. And up till now, no compensation has been paid to the host family. We discovered recently that part of the land that the school are occupying, are being used by individuals that are known to us. Presently the matter is still in court, bending at the high court five, in poker. We are asking for an injunction, restraining the... We have some occupants who are known to us.  We sue them individually, because they are known to us. It is led for them to come to the court and tell the court that it is the school. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


s, we don't have enough mentor teachers. So if I'm a new teacher or if I'm a veteran teacher and I am having a rough day, by the time I get to you, I'm the mentor teacher, it's over.  I've gotten help from someone else in the building. And so it actually is one of the issues that we're tackling in the teacher advisory group this week is what would a new revised program look like? When I served as a teacher, we had mentor teachers in every building and they received a stipend so that that person was right there, he literally could walk down to the hallway and have your meltdown and get the support so that you could go home and figure out how to regroup for the next day and not wait for someone to triage you three days later. I'm sorry, New York City Nomenclature, that's what the teacher centers were intended to do. Yeah, so we've gotta go back and look at ours differently. This is just a little short tidbit there. One of the things that we're trying to do is to change this whole definition of what professional learning is. Oftentimes it sounds like it's a session, a conference, a training, an in-service, a thing. It is not just that. It is mentoring. It is coaching. It is collaborating. It is continuous. So certainly when we hear that mentoring programs are falling off the map, it certainly raises our radar to say, well, what do we believe professional learning is? Teachers helping teachers to improve their craft. Certainly that's foundational to what we would want to have happen. Similarly to what Monica mentioned, the state of Louisiana has decided that they wanted to overhaul what was required of all mentor teachers and actually start to make it more content-focused and coach-heavy as well. And so we've been working closely with them to help make sure they have that cadre of individuals. Now that takes a huge investment. Again, where are the funds there to make sure that you have these folks who are ready to do the job? We have these people who provide funding. I'd like to say around the mentoring piece, that professional learning for teacher leaders to become mentors is key. Because if not, you're in a situation where Angela was saying, we know that the PD was bad, but we didn't know what we wanted to ask for. So you have to have that kind of support in place so that teacher leaders and teachers who want to lead in that way can get the knowledge and tools needed to be an effective mentor because being an effective teacher is different than being an effective mentor. And so really ensuring that teachers get that learning and support to be the types of mentors is really a key to this kind of system that you're talking about. We have a pretty robust beginning educator support team is what we call it in Washington for mentors. We are asking this session to, along with the residency request to the governor, we are also asking for to finally fully fund it. We'll take another $9 million to fully fund the program. And we've expanded that to principal induction as well. Because this is about having system leaders building specially at the school level that really understand how important and critical that beginning educator support team is. And then it's not just a one to one mentor, it isn't for a team. But in a $6 billion budget that we have for our 1.1 million students in Washington, really $9 million to round out that whole system. And so we are hopeful, I have a call with the governor's office tomorrow about making sure that's a priority in his budget when it comes out. But we are like in the final step of making sure that we have that plan, working with folks to make sure that that is updated, that that beginning educator support team program is updated to address teacher retention, particularly teachers of color. So that is something that we've been embedding in our system locally, having leaders, especially superintendents involved in that process to understand how to embed that. It's especially challenging for our rural schools. 60% of our schools in Washington state have 5,000 fewer students. So we have a lot of rural schools. How do you provide the kind of mentoring and support in the URB new teacher within 50 months? And so we have teams regionally placed to help support those teachers. We have an infrastructure built, just done it fully. That will be my mantra this year. I think we have time to squeeze in one final question if we make sure that we're concise in this process. Hi, Loretta Goodwin. I'm with the American Youth Policy Forum and happy to report that we are one of those organizations providing those study tours for policy leaders so that they can get into the schools. But my question specifically was for Monica and if anybody else wants to jump in and this is following up on the previous panel, where we did hear about the importance of student voice and I'm curious you've got a teacher advisory panel that you listen to on a regular basis. I'm just wondering for any of you, do you have students advising you as well? And are you taking that feedback into consideration? Actually one, I wanna say I thought that was a phenomenal idea to have students participate in professional development, wrote it down and taken it back to my team. So we'll be doing that and tweeting that out. But the other one is yes, I do. This is the first year that I started a student advisory group. I meet with two separate groups. I meet with our student government association leaders that are representatives of middle and high school students. And then I also meet with students who were selected through literally random selection if they were interested to be on the student advisory panel. They all just send an email. I put all of the names in a hat and randomly selected. No criteria whatsoever. So we actually meet for the first time at the end of this quarter, but they have already, I publicly sell people, I check my own email. And so I get lots of emails from my students and those that are already selected. So we do have ongoing conversation. So I'm excited about what that will yield mainly about cafeteria food, which we won't be able to show you. But excited about what we can talk about and move forward. So I will bring up the notion of them sitting in on the question of development as well. If you are in education, I mean, for me, what's amazing is that we actually represent a lot of grad workers. We are the largest higher ed union now. And a lot of grad workers want to organize. And it's really interesting to listen to grad workers. It's also really interesting to listen to students right now in the era of math students and what is important to them and the difference between what's important to them and what's important to almost, and to a lot of non-schools people. And it's also been really interesting to watch the suburbs change because of all the math shootings. And so it's just, I just use those because you have to have structures to make sure that student voice is important and respected. We have structures actually within the union to make sure that that's true too. But it's more than the structure. It's the deep respect that students have to feel. And an array of students. Trans student feels really, really, really, if you don't start using, if everybody doesn't start using, this is my pronoun, as trans student feels really alone. And I would actually just say one other thing. I think as adults, we also have to be really mindful about how to make sure that people don't feel like the stranger in our land right now. The refugee doesn't feel like the stranger. That what happens in terms of Islamophobia, what happens in terms of xenophobia, what happens in terms of racism, we have to be really, really clear. And students will say this in an unbridled way. Thank God. But we as adults also have to be really, really clear about all of this. I just want to add really quick. It's student voice that allowed us to embrace mental health support. Because in my community it is not, there's a stigma around mental health support. And so actually our student board member asked to have a mental health forum last December. It is what opened the door for their parents to begin to receive it. And now we're offering mental health supports in 45 schools this year. Yeah, that was from Kids Voice saying we need help. It's not an indictment on our parents' parenting skills. We need other coping strategies that someone to talk to. So it was them. I think that's the perfect place to end on student voice. I really appreciate the wisdom and knowledge that everyone brought on the panel. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And just for those from here in saying that the PowerPoint and the reports are available online, you'll have a videotape of this event online in a couple of days. And just one thing to highlight in all of this, we're here talking about empowering teacher learning and that was the core of what we talked about and learned. But if you could hear, this is one part of a system about teaching and learning, a comprehensive system of teaching and learning. And so while we're focusing today on that piece, really we heard about the preparation that's needed. We've heard about the leaders that we need at all different levels. We've heard about the evaluation and the ways that we can partner and build relationships all with the center of value, driving all of that. So one of the things that we can take with us today is that empowering teacher learning is at the forefront of what we need is a system of teaching and learning. So thank you all for joining us and we appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you.


Very nice. It's always wonderful to be in San Francisco and in this great new library I want to thank the library. And the last time I was here was when I was chair of the NEA. I wrote this book because, well, the White House gave me two directives. One, stay out of the headlines. Impossible chore. And second, keep a diary, which was pretty ironic in light of the fact that about 18 months later everybody in Washington was ditching their diaries when Bob Packwood was ousted from the Senate because of revelations in his. But I may have been the lone person in D.C. who kept scribbling away. And I accumulated about 14 of them over the course of the four years that I was there, 93 to 97. And around the second year I was in Washington, I knew that I wanted to write a book because I found the environment there bizarre. Coming as I did from the relatively stable, sane world of the theater. I sometimes could make head nor tail of what was going on in Washington. And the learning curve was very steep and as you know the National Endowment for the Arts was under the gun. I'm going to read you some excerpts from the book. The confirmation process for anybody who is a presidential appointment is long and grueling. It involves an FBI vetting. It involves revealing all of your employment since the age of 16, which for an actress was truly daunting. When I reached 360 jobs, I stopped and that seemed adequate to them. I mean some of the jobs only last an hour, right? You're doing a voiceover commercial or something. Anyway, I want to read you my first courtesy call before I was confirmed by the Senate. Courtesy calls are appointments that you have with senators or members of the House, who will be in some way instrumental or voting on what you want to present to a committee. In this case, my first courtesy call was to Senator Strom Thurman. You're going to fund pornography? The senator barked at me across the vast expanse of government desk, made all the more intimidating by his diminutive size, or perhaps I was the one who was shrinking in my chair. Strom Thurman had been South Carolina Senator for 40 years. Over and over again he had been returned to office. He had a reputation for getting things done for his constituents, whether it was a tobacco issue or defense or a local favor. Call Strom, he'll take care of it. As I sat before this taut leathery gnome of a man with hair or color not found in nature, I couldn't help but admire his fortitude. At 90, he was still donning jogging shorts and doing a daily turn around Capitol Hill. He was a survivor and now he was going for the gold. He was determined to be the oldest sitting senator in the history of that august body. His 100th birthday was just around the corner and neither infirmity nor inability was going to stop him. The Guinness Book of World Records was waiting. You're going to fund pornography? His question to me was flung out like a glove slapping the ground. I rose weakly to the challenge and responded that the National Endowment for the Arts did not fund obscenity, that obscenity was considered unprotected speech. He said he didn't care what the endowment did, he wanted to know what I thought. I said somewhat grandly that I was an artist, that as an artist nothing human was alien to me. It was a phrase I had pondered a lot in the past, a phrase originally attributed to the Roman playwright Terence in 350 BC. As I said it, images of the fall of the Roman Empire arose in my mind. Aren't you a moral woman, Thurman shot back? Well, that was a question no one had ever asked me. It took me by surprise and I had to think a minute, all the roles I ever played flashed before my eyes. Mothers, daughters, lovers, wives, murderers, lawyers, judges and drunks, lesbians, nurses, saints and sinners. I had to love them when I played them. I had to love something about every character and moral judgment never came into it. As for my own life, had I been guilty about things? Sure. Had there been regrets? Of course, but overall I didn't think in absolutes. I replied, yes, I'm a moral woman. And then I began to descend the slippery slope. I felt compelled to defend the artist in me and all the artists who had ever existed, knowing full well that controversy and political expediency had been entwined from time immemorial to the present day. Hadn't the Pope in the 1500s asked Michelangelo to put a fig leaf on the private parts of his statue of David. And as I've been writing this, didn't New York's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani threaten to close the Brooklyn Museum because of a painting he thought was sacrilegious? I forged ahead anyway. First Amendment rights protect free speech, I said. This elicited instantaneous disgust. The senator was almost apoplectic. Ah, he spat it out. First Amendment rights are an excuse for people to do things they shouldn't be doing. Whoops, there goes 200 years of jurisprudence, I thought. I made one last try to rescue this disastrous interview. The endowment doesn't fund pornography, I repeated. And not wishing to alienate this venerable institution of the South any further, I beat a hasty retreat out of his office and down the marble halls of Congress. I was shaken. I was scared out of my wits. Was this the U.S. Senate? Was this what a senator of the United States actually believed? What had happened to the Constitution? Hadn't all the battles been fought already by the Continental Congress when they hammered out their brilliant document on the nature of democracy and the civil society? I knew the answer in my heart. I knew these precepts had to be defended over and over again with each generation. But it was a tough first visit to the Hill. And I hadn't even been confirmed as NEA Chairman yet. Things would only get worse as it became clear that the arts and the national endowment for the arts in particular were flash points for many of the issues troubling society in the late 20th century. My journey through the minefield of the next four years would change my thinking considerably about politics, the arts, and the government's role. My visit to Strom Thurmond was only the opening salvo in the ensuing war for the NEA. So that was the beginning. I was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. The last holdout, Trent Lott, finally was won over. And I began my tenure. One of the first things I did was to visit all 50 states because I wanted to hear from people in their own towns what they thought of the NEA. I wanted to know what I was hearing from legislators of the conservative persuasion in Congress was real in the communities of their constituents. And I also wanted to let people know what the endowment was doing for them in their communities, if they didn't know, because the endowment only has six people in public relations. It's not able to publicize itself very well. So I went on the road. And sure enough, I found in virtually every community that I visited that there was great support for the agency with the exception of two places. And they were diametrically opposed. Actually three. One was Fort Wayne, Indiana, where there was an organized demonstration by the religious right at a town meeting. And the second was another excerpt I'll read after this one. But when I got to San Francisco, I met the other end and I will read this excerpt. The other protest of any significance occurred at the town meeting in the gorgeous San Francisco Opera House. I looked out over the vast house and up into the balconies where people sat and scattered bunches. I made my opening remarks for about 30 minutes talking about all that the NEA was doing in San Francisco and in Northern California and praising the art I had seen in the city. The arts are deeply embedded in the history of San Francisco. Its opera, theater and museums are world class. And the city is hailed far and wide for its rich culture. When I threw the meeting open to questions, I wasn't expecting the artists in the audience to be so critical of me. They told me that I was not speaking up enough for artists and homosexuals and that I should let Congress know in no uncertain terms that I would not tolerate violation of First Amendment rights. It was hard to see my accusers in the huge dark space. I held my hand to my forehead to block the light and sputtered some inadequate response. How could I tell them what politics was like? That it did no good to rant and rave because no one in Washington would sit down with you again if you did. The gains were made incrementally and involved compromise and patience. I defended myself weekly protesting that they were not being fair to me and I left the stage a little shaken by their admins. The West Coast was 3,000 miles away from Washington and New York. For all their volatility, it could have been another country. San Francisco has one of the highest concentrations of homosexuals in the world and the city's population had been hit hard by the AIDS scourge. The NEA had been concerned about AIDS from the very beginning because so many artists were vulnerable and those in San Francisco more than most. In 1994, the NAMES Project housed the legacy of the 28,000 men and women who had died of the disease and were immortalized on squares of the quilt. When the quilt last visited Washington, it lay spread out on the mall all the way from the Washington Monument to the Capitol Building. No one who saw it failed to be moved. As a piece of cultural history, it has no equal. The sadness of death is conquered by the indomitable spirit of remembrance in each stitch of the cloth in every photo and poem woven into the squares. When the quilt or a portion of it is not on the road, it is carefully housed in a climate-controlled building in San Francisco and the NEA has helped pay for its conservation.  In the halls of Congress, and I want to read you an excerpt that I think illustrates just one of the meetings I had. There was one very influential Democrat I needed to win over. Charlie Stenholm from West Texas held sway over about 25 colleagues, many of the moderate Westerners who were known as Blue Dog Democrats. The Blue Dogs were unpredictable as a block and more conservative than others in their party. They had voted to eliminate the NEA, so I set out to court, Charlie. I knew West Texas went on forever and that the arts, like the failing oil wells, were dispersed far and wide between patches of tumbling tumbleweed. I wanted to understand why Stenholm and the others had chosen to abandon the rest of the Democrats on this issue. We had a frank discussion. I began by telling them how much I grew to love Texas when I made a film there in the 1980s. I was one of the producers and stars of a low-budget feature called Square Dance, which introduced 14-year-old Winona Ryder to the world. I had spent the better part of a steaming summer in the state, kicking up my heels, dancing in country Western bars as research for my role. Just as Texas legend has it, the men were taciturn and charming and the women were loud and spirited. I didn't see any reason why they wouldn't welcome the arts in the farthest corners of their state just as they welcomed strangers in their midst. Charlie was clear.  I pointed out that the battleground included controversial heterosexual art as well and that the NEA did not make the battleground. I suspected that there were plenty of homosexuals in Texas, just as there were in the other 49 states, and that they were part of the tax-paying public too. The Tony Alamo boots shuffled under the low table, just itching to swing up on top to complete the laid-back cowboy look. His constituents wouldn't stand for it, Charlie said. They received so much Christian right mail that nailed the NEA and homosexuals as sinners that we didn't stand a chance. He didn't go on, but the gist of it was that I wouldn't have his vote or those of the other blue dogs if I didn't cut out the grants to gays. Stan Holm was powerful, but not mean. I had the feeling he was acting on purely political motives that he himself was not prejudiced. I met with him again a few years later in hopes of convincing him to change his mind, but that never happened. In my naivete, I still believed it was possible for a congressman to lead rather than follow his constituents and to uphold the constitutional rights of all the citizens of his district, rather than only those of a very vocal special interest group. As time went by, it became clear that the money required to get elected led all the legislators by the nose. But in the first year of my tenure, I still hoped that I could convince the opposition to see the value of the endowment in and of itself without money as part of the equation. Now, of course that never happened, and what I began to learn was that special interest groups that had a lot of money behind them were those that made the legislators beholden to them. The arts didn't have that. They couldn't deliver. The commercial arts, the big studios in Hollywood, the music publishing industry, the music and publishing industries had money and they could make a difference. But the non-profit arts in America simply didn't have the money to contribute and there was no sense anymore that our legislators understood the value of art to society or to their communities. I was always grateful for the administration support of the NEA. The president always put an increase in the budget every year that went to the Hill. But I wanted more from my president, so I'll read a little excerpt. I'm a great admirer of the president's, but I'll read this. I do not know what happened to my letters or calls to the White House and the president. They went unanswered. Roger Stevens, who was NEA's first chairman, his words to me rang in my ear. Always talk to the president. I couldn't get on his schedule. His scheduler often never got back to me or to my chief of staff, Sandy Quarry. Sometimes I thought that if I were simply Jane Alexander's citizen, I would have been able to get to him more easily. After all, he was a gregarious man and an impassioned letter about the arts from an actress on the outside might have elicited a response. I did see him at social events, but only a few sentences at most were exchanged. And even sitting behind him in the presidential box at the Kennedy Center had been no guarantee of conversation. He was always delightful when I ran into him, exuberant and boisterous. Bill Clinton is a seducer and a rescuer by nature. The combination is extremely attractive to most human beings. In a split second, he can make you think you are the most important person in the world, and who doesn't like to think that? One time as I was entering the doors of the West Wing of the White House for a meeting with the secretary to the cabinet, he startled me with a big bear hug from behind and an affectionate hello, Lady Jane. We moved in tandem through the security check, leaving the officer at the desk and me dazed in the president's wake. Does the president know you, he asked? And then he quickly answered himself, well, yes, I guess he does. I've worked for five presidents and I never had one so friendly with so many people. It's hard to keep up with him. These fleeting moments were fun, but that was all they were. In times, someone on the president's staff, probably Leon Panetta, must have urged him to be more presidential because the hugs and the kisses diminished, and he stopped wearing shorts when jogging. Neither was missed much. In time, too, I finally did get a private meeting in the Oval Office, but by then a lot had changed. The 104th Congress was in power, and the 104th Congress was the first Republican Congress in 40 years with Newt Green-Gingrich as Speaker of the House, and the NEA was slated for elimination. It was top of their agenda. I'll just read a couple more excerpts and then we'll open it to questions. I continued to go on the road whenever I could and occasionally I would meet with very clear protest. Stephanie and I flew to Kansas, which was especially important to the NEA now because of Nancy Casabam and Bob Dole, who had become majority leader. The flight was long and it was difficult for me to concentrate on my reading. I gazed out the plane window at the reflection of a full hunter's moon brightened the sky. It slithered across the land, its silver light catching hold in patches of field water along streams, rivers, and pools. Sometimes it ran ahead of the plane and sometimes it lagged behind depending on how we lined up with the moon. Kansas itself was not nearly so magical. As always, there was good art to be found. There were some stunning paintings in Wichita's Art Museum in the Northeast Magnet School of the Arts and Technology. A brilliant teacher of ceramic and fabric art was transforming the lives of kids. One boy had kicked drugs and made ceramics his new habit. He gave me a finely turned reiku pot. In the town of Womigo, population 3500 and NEA grant to restore large paintings from the 1893 Chicago's World's Fair had resulted in the complete restoration of the Columbian Theater and brought the community together as it had never been before. The hardware store, the pharmacy, and the bank, as well as individual citizens all helped match the NEA grant and now took special pride in the restoration they had collectively brought about. Community theater had sprung up there as well, bringing a mini renaissance to Womigo. In Topeka, while riding up to the Museum of History, where our folk and traditional art program sponsored a cowboy boot exhibition, we bumped up against the ugly side of the religious right. The road was lined with people holding signs that said fag, Jane, NEA, or whore, Jane, NEA. I was sickened to see that some of the carriers were small children, maybe five or six years old. The group was not large, maybe several families, but it was beyond me to understand how they could inculcate their children in such venal ways. The Museum had canceled Maya Angelou's visit two weeks earlier because of these people, but we moved intrepidly on and entered through the back door of the building where they did not attempt to follow us. These zealots were sorry figures and in no way representative of the people of Kansas. The town meetings were held, we held, were filled with enthusiastic art supporters and only an occasional dissenter. Still, for all the great people in Kansas, there was a traditional, fundamentalist core. Being in the middle of the country can do that to a state. A kind of hunker down. We'll get by and don't you Easterners try to tell us what to do, philosophy. I knew that from my own father's Nebraska background. He had astounded me at times with a deeply conservative viewpoint, conveying a sense that indecency could creep up behind you and take over the world if you weren't careful. My brother Tom inherited that same backbone whereas my sister and Pam and I were laissez-faire, preferring to believe that people find their own moral compass, given enough freedom, education, and compassion. I certainly never loved my father or my brother less for their rectitude and it served me well in trying to understand the motivations of a state like Kansas which was veering further and further to the right. The battle was fought over a period of three years and finally with the help of arts advocates like many of you here in the room, we triumphed at the midnight hour in 1997. The House gave the NEA for the first time in its 32 year history zero appropriations but the Senate kept the agency alive despite we had a 40% cut when I came into the endowment in 93, the budget was 174.5 million and it was reduced to 99 million and it now is under 98 million regrettably but I have no doubt that after this election year it will start to go back up again. I want to read one brief passage about my main nemesis man named Speaker Newt Gingrich. The relationship between Hollywood and Congress is schizophrenic and hypocritical. The 104th Congress regarded Hollywood stars as elitist and yet when the opportunity presented itself Congressmen all scrambled for a photo up with them. I was not in the Hollywood star category myself having only limited wattage in the movies but it amused me to watch the interplay between politicians and movie stars. Liz Robbins who was lobbying for an organization with the unwieldy name of the council of literary magazines and presses slash literary network held a reception and a dinner one summer night in the garden of her quaint Georgetown home. I was invited to write Wendy Wasserstein, the actress and director Joanne Woodward, Bill Clinton's favorite mystery writer Walter Mosley and the movie star Melanie Griffith. They were to pay calls on the hill the next day and had graciously made the trip to DC to support the endowment. I knew from watching Wendy as a grant recipient and as an NEA panel chairman that she would be a superb spokesman and Joanne was quietly articulate too. I did not know Walter or Melanie but decided to introduce myself to them and thank them for giving their time. It was a balmy evening and I looked over at Melanie dressed in a white designer outfit with breezy decolletage tall as a reed. I introduced myself and told her that I enjoyed her work in films. In her soft kitten voice she gushed a bit about my film work and then said, and what are you doing now? I dropped her like a hot potato rushed over to Liz and whispered forcefully in her ear, prep that girl for the hill. My friend Wyoming Senator Al Simpson was there chatting with another GOP senator Hank Brown from Colorado. We spoke business for a few minutes and then I asked whether they'd like to meet Melanie Griffith knowing full well they were salivating already. They hovered over her as they've never hovered over a fellow politician. Al's six foot six vantage point being perfect for stargazing. Wendy later reported to me about the meetings that transpired the following day. NEA Chairman Alexander couldn't get an appointment with Newt Gingrich but celebrities came and went with relative ease it seemed. Perhaps it was the fact that Newt Gingrich's first novel was being published and he felt he was now in the same league as other writers. In any event he flirted with Melanie and told her there was a good part for her in the film of his book. Wendy managed to steer the conversation to the NEA telling the speaker that the NEA fellowship she received had helped her write the Heidi Chronicles which won a Pulitzer Prize. Gingrich replied, Arthur Murray never needed a grant to write a play. Wendy restrained herself from saying that perhaps the famous ballroom dancer should have applied to the dance program. A little while later as they were leaving Gingrich realized his mistake and said I'm terribly sorry I meant Arthur Miller and Wendy replied yes and he did have a grant it was called the WPA. So these were the kind of bizarre occurrences that were happening with regularity. There was so much that congressmen did not know and I can hardly blame them they're flying by the seat of their pants trying to be up on issues and their aides are most of the time callow youth who don't know much about anything they just graduated from college or an internship program and they're there and I just thought over and over again this isn't any way to run a government certainly not at our top levels in the United States of America but as I say because of arts advocates all across the country the NEA is still alive today and although the stress was enormous on me personally through those years I had a dream one night that I want to recount to you in finishing. Despite the constant pressure I knew I was growing stronger I felt that I could withstand anything that came my way and one day I had what I regarded as a clear strong omen that we would prevail. I dreamed of a peregrine falcon a bird that had once been on the list of endangered species because the pesticide DDT made it impossible to produce viable eggs once the poison was no longer in use however the bird had made an incredible comeback I dreamed that the falcon flew into my outstretched hand and let me hold it in my palm and that was the extent of the dream. The next morning as I walked the three blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue to my office in the old post office building I chanced to look up chanced to look up and there to my amazement a peregrine falcon was wheeling 50 feet above the rush hour traffic chasing a flock of pigeons I expected the clouds to part and a bright ray of sun to shine down so vivid was the omen I skipped the rest of the way to work quite convinced that the NEA was going to be okay after all Thank you I'd be happy to take any questions anybody might have Yes What are the signs that you actually see that the funding for the NEA is going to go up? The reason I believe it's going to go up is that the local arts councils in the nation and the state arts councils have increased their own budgets which means to me it's only a matter of time before the federal government gets the message as well that people in their communities really like their arts also communities are dealing with controversial work in very good ways there was an issue in Charlotte, North Carolina a few years ago where Tony Kushner's play Angels in America was done by the Charlotte Repertory Theater and it was picketed by a group and the mayor thought that he was going to withdraw the funds and close it down etc which he obviously couldn't do under freedom of expression and so on so that didn't happen but the next year the Charlotte Mecklenburg Arts Council reduced the arts budget by millions in punishment to the Charlotte Repertory Theater to make a long story short I just spoke to the arts council leader a couple of weeks ago and the budget has now doubled the community has kicked those guys out of office and they said we want more money in our arts council for the arts in our community so I see that this is happening you know you get very right wing forces and then it polarizes the community and the community has the good sense to say wait a minute what are we talking about here and I see that happening many many places and as I say the budgets are increasing the federal government has got to get the message pretty soon yes in the back there in the right I actually heard that there's going to be a discussion in Congress this week about the NEA around the issue of lesbian and gay film festival funding and I wanted to know what you had to say about that and also how you figured the vulnerability of the NEA in Congress it stands right now we know that we have the votes to keep the NEA going whether we'll get a raise in funding I don't think so but the attacks on lesbian and gays have been going on for over a decade now many in Congress are getting tired of it even in the conservative they know that it's not an issue that they're going to win when I was there in the last few years that's almost exclusively what they were attacking outside of one poor congressman who thought he could make headlines by saying the Indian the NEA funds basket makers and he only succeeded in really maddening the Northern California Indian basket weavers association so they got pretty desperate the attacks on gays and lesbians are ongoing but as I say they've been going on for a long time now I think that Congress realizes there are no constitutional rights to try to stop any grant making to people whatever their sexual preferences so I don't think it's much of an issue right now that gay and lesbian film issue has been around for ten years well hope but it you got to get your calls in to your congress still you just still have to call them yes I'm so happy to hear you and that you've maintained and retained your sanity and sense of humor I developed one there you told us that you traveled all over the United States and I wondered what you did you do anything about studying what the arts are getting in Europe oh sure we're giving about 32 cents per person per year now to the National Endowment for the Arts and Finland now is over 350 per capita per year dollars isn't that amazing so we're pailing in comparison but we are unique in that our funding is still about 90% private and it's citizens like you and me here in this room who make up the bulk of the private giving to the nonprofits in the United States and that means the arts as well corporations kick in about five to ten percent foundations the same thing and then a pitiful ten percent is public money but actually that's increasing because the state and local councils are going up I'd like to see public money 20% and then 80% private the rest of the world funds 90% public money and 10% private and they want to increase their private part you mentioned earlier your travel to Kansas and the controversy you came across with people protesting the arts and Senators Bob Dole and Nancy Kasselbaum both Republicans and I was a little confused and well their stance at being presidential election year and the fact that Senators Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts had lobbied Miss Kasselbaum among other Republicans who were sympathetic to the arts community could you give some clarification over that matter please if I understand your question Nancy Kasselbaum was always a staunch supporter of the NEA but she had very conservative constituents in Kansas she worked very closely with Ted Kennedy obviously a champion of the arts and humanities in the senate and they were partners in creating a lot of fine legislation for the arts and humanities does that answer your question or yeah Bob Dole by the way did not vote for the NEA when he was majority leader and when he was running for president but he was not obstructionist he did not get up except for maybe once or twice and say things against it a non-political question could you name a few of the projects that the NEA funded during your tenure that you're either most proud of or most impressed with yes I'm very proud of the partnerships we created with other federal agencies Justice I sat down with Janet Reno who turned out to be my next door neighbor so Janet and I became friends but before that happened I sat down with Reno to talk about crime prevention for our youth in America I mean they were talking about midnight basketball programs I said come on let's get the arts in there too to make a long story short we have there's a lot of partnership programs going on across the country now for kids after school and kids at risk being caught in the judicial system either in the judicial system in one way or another so and then we have health and human services we have partnerships with them we have partnerships with the department of defense and design and we have a lot of and I was very proud of those Writers' Corps was one and we have Writers' Corps right here in San Francisco some of you may know about it Writers' Corps in San Francisco began with when I sat down with Eli Siegel of AmeriCorps which then became national service and I said you know you need to have an arts program in AmeriCorps too so Writers' Corps won that contract with AmeriCorps and I just love that program those kids and I haven't seen the San Francisco one recently but the kids in the Bronx and Washington DC are doing fabulously Writers' Corps and I know the books here are terrific because they send me them so that's probably one of the things I'm most proud of yes first of all thank you for writing that beautiful editorial in the New York Times where you put into words the value of arts education thanks we beefed up arts education a lot at the NEA too and I was wondering I saw a full page ad from an organization in yesterday's times I think about computers versus arts education a sort of guns and butter issue do you see it that way? no I never did they used to say things to me like congressmen would say well you know what are you going to choose? you're going to choose breast cancer or the arts? I said we can fund them both we're talking about one of the greatest countries in the earth what are you talking about? we can fund it all we need to reduce the defense budget here in San Francisco the last two or three years the arts have really been suffering as sort of a spillover of the booming economy and gentrification and the rise of the cost of living here I made it in the paper this week that 40% of the artists have moved in the last two or three years have left San Francisco and I guess it's a problem that we will have to address here at the local level but is there any talk about this in Washington in terms of like you know spillover areas that gentrify what happens to the artists? boy it is a problem you're right and it's not just San Francisco it's all across the country New York of course they've moved over to New Jersey and way up in the Bronx and parts of Brooklyn certainly the visual artists can't have the spaces that they used to have I've seen it many many places that this problem I don't know what the answers are really don't because I'm not a real estate mogul I don't know how it works I think it's a good issue for you to contact people at the NEA about and so that they start talking about it maybe the mayors can start to put aside certain areas just for artists I don't know the answer it doesn't work okay yeah starts out that way I know where do I go from here? oh yeah I have a few more cities to go to New York and and DC again and then then I'll take a little break with my husband yes in the back for a person in our country how would you like to see that money spent specifically? gosh first of all I would institutionalize arts education in the schools nationwide so that yeah I mean I'm not sure that the NEA we can't pay for all that but somehow we would find grants or artists in residence or something in all the schools in America and that would take a big chunk of money I would have programs for the elderly in the arts everywhere as well as kids and then I would also give substantially to the existing institutions that are having such a hard time doing the kind of work that they dream of doing are performing arts centers dance, theater I would I would well that's a good start I'd have to sit down but there's a lot to do you know to try to keep up with other countries has anybody been to Prague lately? I mean boy you can get really envious when you see the size of those performing arts companies when you see the vitality of art everywhere all over the place oh another thing I would do and we did start it at the NEA you know you can lose a language a recipe or an art form in one generation and the United States has so many wonderful different cultures and immigrants coming in right now and some of them just give up their past just like that and so we had a pretty strong consensus program I would like to make sure that that still happens because now that we have what we call globalization so many cultures are going to just be subsumed by the American commercial arts culture and I don't want to see that happen I was curious about your kind of transition from artist to public servant how you came about to accept the nomination and then agree to change paths where there are people who inspired you in public service as role models I grew up in Boston you can't grow up in Boston when I did in the you know 40s 50s without having some some idealistic sense of what leadership can be like the cradle of liberty type thing and the first militia that marched against George III's troops and so on so I thought it could be really great and I still do I think good government is ours to achieve in this country but we have to have a lot of reform right now I went into the NEA because I was an NEA baby the great white hope that Neil mentioned with James Earl Jones and myself began with an NEA grant in Washington DC and I performed in nonprofit theaters in the United States that had been seated and nurtured and developed because of the NEA I love this agency I'm passionate about it I know what it does and so that's why I just wanted to get in there and try to educate our legislators in the public about it the good thing now is the rhetoric has really really toned down I mean yes you're going to have little about gay and lesbian festivals and stuff like that but I don't think that they're going to be substantial and I don't think they're going to continue in the years to come we hope I think I'll end it there I have a question here yes hello let's go back 30 years you were involved in the great white hope you did a theater and you also did it at the movies it was quite a controversial row for you there were some things that involved an interracial relationship did you receive any adverse attention or negative publicity as a result of being in that row yeah I did in the theater when we took it to Broadway we ran it on Broadway for a year there was a lot of hate mail which after a while my stage manager just opened and took care of and I did have a couple of death threats they were white bigots it was the height of the black power movement in the United States they didn't like to see a white woman in bed with a black man on stage and Jimmy and James Earl and I were the first interracial couple to lie in a bed together we were clothed but that was enough to cause real consternation among some people yes please wait for the microphone I'm curious about your alliances with the media it's been my experience that there's not a lot of support among pundits particularly for progressive issues and of course certainly during the Newt-Ginrich reign they were caught up in all of the rhetoric and incendiary rhetoric about every issue so I'm wondering how do you think the media have treated the issue of the arts then and now it's a good question newspapers like any other entity have to sell newspapers they have to sell themselves so they're going to go for what is sensational what's going to sell papers and they found the NEA a good issue or certainly the discussion about it but then I have to say whenever they interviewed me it was very fair and I felt that I got my point across that I was quoted accurately with the exception of the very conservative newspapers in the country when we knew where they were coming from anyway with regard to the editorials and or let me just say the columnists nationwide I agree with you I think most of them are they like to put one over and get points for that and it was easy the NEA was an easy whipping girl you know and so I think that they could have been stronger the editorials from individual citizens were very fine usually even people like Paul Newman wrote terrific editorials about the heads excuse me about the NEA I don't have a beef with the media I know what they have to do I just want them to do their homework better because a lot of time they're just misquoting somebody else's work and they would often get some of the controversial grants we did totally wrong you know they would look to the conservatives who had brought the issue to our attention to the attention and to begin with and it was highly distorted and inflamed it was like there was one controversy we had of a film called Watermelon Woman which was about an African American group of lesbians who were looking for a mythical film star called Watermelon Woman and it was a charming film and there was just one very gentle scene of love making nothing as as incendiary as some of the ones from commercial Hollywood but boy did they come down hard on that and the press really inflamed it all but I would try to put that right and a lot of people would write letters rebutting it okay I think that's the end thank you so much for coming