Efficacy vs. Esteem

In a remote area in the Calabasas hills, there is a stone building, an outdoor amphitheater, a tree house and a garden. Children come here each day, ages preschool through 5th grade, to follow their passion. The lessons are based on what they want to learn that day. A simple question to a teacher like, “How does a robot work?” can turn into months of instruction and international Skyping to engineer and build a working robot, just to see how it is done.

Students at this learning center are also engaged in a professional, unique communications strategy called the Process Communication Model (PCM). This personal development training allows children to identify their own personality and how it relates to their peers – all while learning traditional subjects of reading, writing and arithmetic.

Founders Suzy Amis Cameron and Rebecca Amis

Inspiration following Frustration
The Amis sisters, Susan and Rebecca, founded MUSE School CA in 2006. Before this, their first-hand experience – namely frustration – with the public education system made them wish for a better way of learning for their children. As a result, Suzy Amis Cameron chose to home school her oldest son in the eighth grade. Then she hired a teacher who wrote a school curriculum just for him. This, Cameron says, is when he burst wide open.
“If we had known his learning style when he was two or four years old, it would have saved us a lot of heartache and tears,” she says. “Next we found a Los Angeles high school that catered to his passions. In one month, just watching him go from having his spirit completely squashed to witnessing his essence come back was amazing.”

Cameron says the same spirit-crushing school environment made her oldest daughter “live under her hoodie” for two years. Placing her daughter in the same L.A. high school as her son, Cameron watched the hood hiding the girl’s face disappear and see her essence rise again. Then Cameron met, married and started a family with film director James Cameron. When it was time to place their five-year-old child into a school system, Cameron once again considered home schooling. She had researched the Reggio philosophy of child-led learning and decided to open a private school that would accustom ten children in its humble beginnings. Fellow parents soon heard of the school’s focus on giving children an opportunity to pursue knowledge within their own heart. Today, MUSE School CA has grown to 90 students and 15 teachers for preschool through 5th grade levels.

“When we searched for a name my husband, Jim, referenced the Nine Muses of Greek Mythology and the inspiration they create,” Cameron says. “The MUSE school is really about inspiring children and adults. We want to be a muse and give everyone the courage to be who they authentically are.”

Child-led Learning
Cameron says MUSE school teachers are trained to identify a child’s interests and build curriculum into projects that suit each individual. This allows each student to grow and learn at their own pace. This can often mean children engage in subject lessons offered at one or two levels above their grade in school.

MUSE School boasts a tag line of inspiring children to live more conscious lives in relation to themselves, others and the planet. This includes learning to take care of Mother Earth. MUSE School has a no waste policy. They eat snacks and lunches grown in their own gardens and drink water from Kleen Kanteens. Students clean the school using dye-free, toxin-free and pesticide-free products. MUSE School students also participate in community outreach programs, for example, raising money for a local animal shelter and cleaning up beaches.

“These sustainable practices are about taking care of, respecting and honoring one’s self and one another,” Cameron says. “We have three sets of relationships, teacher to teacher, student to teacher and student to student. This is a place where each child’s idea is as good as an adult’s idea.”
Sustainable education isn’t cheap but the MUSE School maintains its original 501(c)3 status. Cameron also says half of the students receive financial aid to cover tuition. The end goal, she says, is to teach sustainability at a young age so that as the child grows into adulthood they believe it is commonplace to recycle and avoid toxins.

“If people don’t make big changes very quickly, there won’t be much of a planet left to grow up in,” she says. “We teach them that it is how you live and that they should do it for the greater good.”

Learning How to Communicate
As if it weren’t enough to open a school that literally teaches children how to live and learn, Cameron’s sister, Rebecca Amis, began raving about the PCM. Amis told Cameron repeatedly how amazing the Next Element-led course is and finally, Cameron gave in and attended her first PCM session.

“It was so much fun learning personality styles and realizing why people do things the way we do,” she says. “I was hooked from there. We incorporated PCM into the MUSE School three years ago by having a one-day parent training. Parents said they learned a lot about their own children, and specifically, how to talk to them in a different way, which was really mind-blowing.”

Next Element teaches PCM as a framework for appreciating, respecting and developing the uniqueness and dignity of others. MUSE School CA uses this adaptive approach as an environment for better learning. It helps teachers and student’s negotiate conflict in productive ways and empowers children with skills to be more effective throughout their lives.

MUSE Schools incorporates PCM and facilitates self-efficacy with teachers to help them connect with students on social-emotional learning, academic achievement and behavior. MUSE selected Next Element as its communication partner because of the company’s expertise in helping businesses align metrics and training with organizational communication and staff development.

The PCM Experience
The next PCM-MUSE encounter was a three-day training with school staff. Again, Cameron says the group had amazing results. Cameron has now completed the advanced training – twice – and is working to earn her training certificate in PCM.

At MUSE, gifted teachers offer the PCM experience on a daily basis. Through inquiry, listening and observing, they evoke the authentic interests that animate our students and bring personal relevance to project-based learning. This not only engages children toward learning but models how to fully engage them in everything they do, for a lifetime.

Cameron also says PCM offers great solutions for conflict resolution, which is key for reducing children’s  frustration. When MUSE teachers speak to students in their channel, the child responds to the challenge and distresses.

“At a very young age, MUSE children participate in council, a traditional way of communicating by passing a talking piece around,” she says. “They learn to speak and listen from the heart at a young age, in contrast to so many adults who can not articulate how they’re feeling. PCM has also been strong in teaching children how to navigate relationships and even if they don’t get along with everyone, it raises an awareness and encourages respecting each other as individuals.”

Jeff King is a partner with Next Element and has been helping incorporate PCM with MUSE Schools CA for the past year. After training both Amis and Cameron in the communications program, he also travels to California once a month to observe teachers using PCM in the classroom. At the end of his day-long visit, King provides feedback, telling teachers what they did well and how to improve their connection strategy with students based on personality types.

“Multiple teachers have felt their connection with students and realize PCM is a more efficient way of learning and communicating,” he says. “MUSE teachers love it.”

Personal PCM
On a daily basis, Cameron uses PCM to better communicate with her husband and five children, each of whom, she says are all different personalities. PCM training has helped get her family to the same end point by using various channels. One daughter is a Dreamer, constantly reading a book in a discreet corner of the room. Cameron says PCM tells her to specifically command her to complete tasks, which actually motivates this child and removes her from stress.

“She will go read for ten minutes then come back to the group,” Cameron says. “She knows how to recharge and feels empowered about taking time for herself.”

One of Cameron’s sons is a Rebel, a jokester yet difficult to stay mad at. PCM gives Cameron insight on the right channel to talk and motivate him to accomplish tasks as well. Her youngest daughter is a reactor, who loves hugs and wants to be with other people. Cameron’s director husband is a Promoter, and her sister, Rebecca is a Reactor.

Cameron herself is a persister-workaholic. She maintains a tight schedule and does not like to be late. She says she is constantly looking for and gathering more information and though she often wants to manage everything on her plate, Cameron has realized how to de-stress through PCM.

She also enjoys discovering other people’s communications channels, a PCM skill that she will hone as she works toward her PCM training certificate. During one of the advanced PCM sessions, Cameron made the comment to King that she wanted a quick reference of each of her family, friends and teachers PCM profiles, preferably on a keychain.

King presented her with this exact gift, made from business card-size tags, all looped together on a keychain. Cameron keeps this at her side at all times.

Accomplishing Her Goal
Six years after building a place to help her own children grow and learn in a positive educational style, Cameron has built a multi-grade, international school system that celebrates individual children for who they are. MUSE School CA students learn at their own pace and are not expected to sit in a box all day. Watching MUSE students flourish and hearing comments from happy parents is what truly motivates Cameron.

“Because PCM allows you to be exactly who you are, it gives you ways to differentiate yourself,” she says. “Schools are mainly started and created by Workaholics. Then a Reactor goes in and starts making mistakes and a Promoter without the right attention stirs things up. Rebels are left to do their thing and are kicked out because the teacher doesn’t know how to communicate. Before we brought PCM into the school there were times when I would get frustrated but I’ve seen extraordinary things happen since our teachers went through their first PCM training.”

Cameron is an avid reader and when she was a single parent, she accumulated volumes of parenting and leadership books. Though they contained interesting information on motivation and sibling rivalry, she says PCM has taught her how to manage communication techniques much more effectively.

“Early on I was a single mom for many years and went to a child psychologist to become a better parent,” she says. “If I didn’t have PCM skills now, I would have many more frustrated days of not knowing how to reach my children. Now I have five children who are successful, gorgeous and darling and will become functioning adults. Even as a mommy and a wife, there are things that come up with Jim where I’m able to see where he is coming from and have the ability to get him out of distress and let him go.”

Cameron says her hope is for each child of the world to appreciate who they are as authentic individuals.

Now isn’t that a dream coming true?

Learning about your own and others’ personalities can be a wonderful thing. New insights, new perspectives, and new tolerance. This is progress, right?

It depends where you take it next.

I often find myself beginning a sentence with, “As a Promoter…”  As people become more aware of their personality and comfortable with PCM terminology and concepts, we often hear people preface a statement with “As a Reactor base…” or “As a Workaholic phase…”  We admire this effort. And, what comes next can lead to enlightenment, or for some, entitlement.

The entitled PCM user seeks special treatment because of their personality, or expects others to tolerate them without accountability.  “Hey, as a Rebel, I need a hands-off management style, so back off and leave me alone.”  This is entitled, selfish behavior, and it’s a misuse of PCM.  “I’m a Persister so I can’t trust you until you prove yourself.”  This is an irresponsible use of PCM because it avoids one’s own role in healthy, trusting relationships.  “I’m a Reactor so my feelings are easily hurt.”  This is a Victim statement, and only perpetuates the Myth that others are in control of my feelings. (enter “Drama Triangle” for a search on our website to discover more on this)

This is not unique to PCM.  We’ve heard countless reports of the very same dynamics happening with DiSC, MBTI, and many other personality/communication models.  Thankfully, we know that PCM offers much richer tools for moving beyond entitlement.

The enlightened PCM user shares insights, welcomes feedback, checks out assumptions with others, and uses his new learning to take ownership over being “self-ful.”  In this way she mobilizes her gifts and reaches out more effectively to others.  PCM is an invitation to more enlightened responsibility for self, and to others.  Enlightened use of PCM, or any other personality model, seeks to understand rather than be understood, to motivate rather than discipline, to invite rather than control.

There’s hope!  Even if you find yourself taking an entitled attitude, rest assured that you’ve come a long way and can do so much more!  Moving towards higher levels of effectiveness means taking all you’ve learned, moving beyond labels and categories, and developing confidence in your skills to respond to the behaviors in front of you.  And, this takes practice and support.  We are eager and ready to help you develop enlightened PCM practices in your life, your organization, and your community.

The PCM is about types in people, not types of people.  The PCM profile is merely an initial way for us to get a handle on all the mechanics of personality.  And from that foundation, we begin to understand how we experience others – their choice of words, tones, gestures, posture, facial expressions.  We learn to recognize the internal processes that we go through, and ways that we work toward getting our needs met in both positive and negative ways.  PCM provides real, hands-on strategies to accurately and rapidly observe behaviors and language of personality structure, and from there we can connect and motivate for effective, accountable communication behavior.

We have always believed that once you have gone through this training and are committed to being intentional around applying and using PCM, it is not necessary to have the profiles of those around you in order to achieve healthy communication.  You will see and hear what is in front of you, and you will be able to effectively connect with and motivate others.

Thanks again Andrea, for your words of wisdom.

Learn more about:

Next Element philosophy

PCM and Child Development

Parenting and Power Struggles

Next Element seminars

MUSE featured in LA Times article