Cecile is the founder of the Phinney Ecovillage, a project to build Sustainability and Community in her North Seattle Neighborhood. The theme is living Simpler, Slower, and Smaller. The Ecovillage sponsers a monthly series on Slow Life in Seattle. For information, go to www.phinneyecovillage.net. She has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University where she received her doctorate in education, and an affiliated scholar with Seattle University. A former community college administrator, she now works with community groups to explore the issue of living more simply: how to live lives that are sustainable, just, and joyful. She is director of The Simplicity Circles Project with Seeds of Simplicity and a member of the steering committee of The Simplicity Forum. She lives in Seattle Washington with her husband, former technology writer and blogger Paul Andrews. Spectator On-Line: "Students Learn How To Take Back Time" Stanford Magazine: "Enough Already"

On Circles and Learning: All through my teaching career I found myself using the small group as the basis of my teaching. Instinctively I knew that if you let three or four people talk together on important matters, something important would emerge.

Then I discovered that someone had given a name to this idea – study circles, a form of learning used in the Nineteenth century American Chautauqua movement and a staple of education today in Sweden where the circles are called “education by the people for the people and of the people.”

Ultimately, when you use the small circle in learning experiences, it means that people experience equality and caring and community. Being in a small circle automatically helps people feel equal. When you sit face-to-face, it’s harder to act like you’re more important than someone else. In a circle you get to know the real person because it’s hard to pretend when people are right there.

And so, people begin to feel equal and real, and they feel comfortable about expressing their true feelings. When you hear someone’s true feelings, it’s hard not to begin caring for them. When you have a safe, caring group of people you begin to experience community and connectedness, and you begin to understand that we are all part of an interdependent web of existence and the well-being of each of us affects the well-being of all.