Kerry Ruef - Founder and Director
Kerry is a dynamic, innovative educator whose goal is to give kids (and adults) the most efficient and powerful intellectual tools for success in life.
She is also a poet, writer, amateur naturalist, and former classroom teacher. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, Kerry was twice a Writer-in-Residence with the Seattle Arts Commission and originated The Floating Poetry Gallery, a statewide collaboration of visual artists and writers.
The seeds of The Private Eye Project sprouted when she began seeking the habits of mind that are common denominators behind painters, poets, scientists, inventors, businesspersons, salespersons, great learners, and great teachers.
By 1988 she’d arrived at a theory, encapsulated in The Private Eye process. On a four-year grant from the Discuren Foundation, she piloted The Private Eye process in The Seattle Public Schools. In doing so she introduced jeweler’s loupes (as a thinking tool) to the world of education, and identified the concept of thinking by analogy as the most powerful means to magnify minds. Students showed remarkable gains in ability to communicate, think creatively, and problem-solve. To date the nationally-acclaimed Private Eye program has spread to thousands of teachers (kindergarten through college) and over two million students in the United States and Canada.
Kerry is the author of The
Private Eye (5X) Looking / Thinking By Analogy - A Guide to
Developing the Interdisciplinary Mind; The
Private Eye - Simple Steps to a Magnified Mind; and The Private Eye - Five Fun Steps. She's finishing up a book on the Great Depression, and also tickled that she still manages to squeeze out time to write and send out her poetry; she is the winner of the 2009 Prism Review Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2008 Third Coast Poetry Award; the 2009 Sow’s Ear Poetry Award; and the 2009 Harpur Palate Poetry Award.
Listen as she tells how The
Private Eye began:
"On a hot summer day, in 1988, I'd
been thinking about the enormous power of the metaphor mind,
the mind that sees the world through the lens and network
of analogy.
The doors of my studio were open and bees sometimes
swept in and began banging their heads against the skylight.
The bamboo outside was rustling like taffeta skirts
and it was an altogether lovely day to be thinking."
— from Chapter 1,
The
Private Eye - (5X) Looking / Thinking by Analogy
(Ruef, 2003, 1998, 1992, The Private
Eye Project.)
“I’ve made over 800 presentations all over the world and exhibited at hundreds of conferences, and I’ve never seen the level of enthusiasm following a presentation as I did from the teachers coming from Kerry Ruef’s Private Eye session. It was almost like a religious experience.”
— Ron Perkins, CEO
Educational Innovations
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David Melody -
Associate Director
A graduate of Harvard, David Melody brings an array of talents to his work with The Private Eye Project. He has spearheaded taking the project from a regional level as a pilot project in the Seattle Public Schools to a nationally acclaimed, nationwide education program reaching thousands of teachers and over two million students.
Along with Kerry Ruef, David facilitates The Private Eye workshops and conference presentations, where his humor and electric presentation style keep teachers on the edge of their seats.
He is also a writer whose short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, and a gallery exhibiting photographer whose work has been published in The Smithsonian magazine.
