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Marty Schneier
Marty Schneier joined the Life Experience School staff in 1996.
She has had a variety of roles at the school since then from coordinating
the Special Peace Corps to teaching in the classroom. Any day of
the week, one can find Marty teaching a class on world geography
and culture, commandeering the eighteen-passenger van on a school
outing or delivering groceries to shut-ins with the able bodied
assistance of members of the Special Peace Corps. However, her role
as a community activist and volunteer began long before her tenure
at the Abbey.
After having worked as a pediatric nurse in California, Marty took
some time off to raise three sons. She returned to work in 1992
as an aide in the Holliston Public School Science Department and
then a one-on-one aide to special needs students. Her involvement
in the schools led her to form the Holliston Peace Awareness Committee
in 1995. Through this organization, Marty was awarded numerous grants
and brought a variety of programs to Holliston ranging from speakers
and cultural programs on domestic violence to town organized activities
such as the "Violent Toy Turn In and Gun Registration Program".
Marty also successfully introduced and taught an after-school program
in conflict resolution to elementary children in the Holliston Schools.
Her programs were aimed at creating community-wide awareness of
the role that each individual--from school-age to senior citizen--
can play in the shaping of a peaceful community.
In 1995 she organized a town-wide public art display of more than
seven hundred "Peace Flags," which adorned the schools
and town offices of the during the month of May. These colorful
flags, modeled after Tibetan Prayer flags, were created entirely
by school children--each one expressing an individual hope and prayer
for peace. This effort was so embraced by the town administrators
that a proclamation was drawn up declaring May in Holliston, "Peace
Awareness Month". Not to stop at this, in 1999 Marty challenged
the entire town to create one thousand peace cranes and send them
to the peace memorial in Hiroshima as a gesture of solidarity with
the survivors of that tragedy. School children, senior citizens,
and town employees joined to create almost three thousand cranes,
well exceeding the goal. After being displayed around the town of
Holliston, one thousand of these cranes were shipped to the Children's
Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, Japan, where they remain today.
In years since, Marty has hosted numerous town-wide events focusing
on peace and social justice issues. Her work created forums in which
townspeople could meet and hear representatives speak from other
local peace organizations, elected government officials, and nationally-recognized
speakers ranging from members of September 11th Families for Peaceful
Tomorrows, to the regional director of the ACLU, to members of John
Kerry's foreign and domestic policy staff.
Her talents have not been limited to school and civic activities.
In 1999, she co-produced, with her husband, Barry, the documentary
film "Stonewalk." The film, which originally aired on
WGBH in Boston, went on to appear in numerous film festivals around
the country and won the prestigious Alan Fortunoff Humanitarian
Award, at the Long Island International Film Festival in 2002.
A native of Colorado, Marty resides in Holliston with her husband,
Barry, and their three children Michael, Drew and Jeremy.
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