My full-time commitment to education began in 1970 as the Headmaster of the Oakwood High School in Los Angeles, which I had helped to create six years earlier. In 1975 I left Oakwood and in 1979 founded an experimental secondary school where the council-based “Mysteries Program” for children was created. The success of this program in encouraging authentic communication through attentive listening and honest expression led to my initiating council programs in other independent schools--notably the Crossroads School in Santa Monica in 1982 and, in the public domain, Palms Middle School (Los Angeles Unified School District) in 1992. The Palms Council Project, which now reaches more than twelve hundred students every year, received the Education Award from the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission in 1996. The council work with young people is now being made more available to educators, schools and other youth organizations nationally and internationally, through the creation of the Ojai Foundation’s “Center for Council Training” that I have guided since 1998. The Ojai Foundation is an educational land-based community and retreat center for youth and adults with which I have been involved since its inception in 1979. I am co-author of “The Way of Council,” with Virginia Coyle (Bramble Books, 1996) a comprehensive introduction to the practice and facilitation of council in a variety of settings.

Since 1975, Jaquelyn and I have conducted three-day intensives for couples called, “Flesh and Spirit: The Mystery of Intimate Relationship.” A book with the same title (published by Bramble Books in 1998) harvests our experience with couples and our more than twenty-five year exploration of relationship as a spiritual path.

All of these strands of my life have come together as a result of Jaquelyn’s and my work with Chelsey and other ASD children. These children are drawn to council and I believe this practice will prove to be of central value in schoolsystems that take the bold step to “go inclusive.” Chelsey has challenged us to go deeper and expand our relational field into the realm of healing. As the final chapter of “Starving Brains” suggests, the ASD children might very well be our inspiration in finding an entirely new way to raise and educate all of our children.