Annabelle Nelson is a renaissance woman. She has primarily worked as a psychology professor for Prescott College and the Fielding Graduate University, but she has also walked her talk using spiritual practices in yoga and Zen meditation to expand consciousness. Blessed or cursed with a wild mind, her visions have helped set the cornerstone of her archetype wisdom model.
She has traveled the world to sacred sites in India, Turkey and Japan, created a nonprofit to prevent HIV infection in youth, published psychological research on imagery and storytelling, started college programs for Native Americans, completed a Fulbright in India, and developed a nationally recognized prevention program, Storytelling for Empowerment.
Directly from graduate school, Nelson worked for the Marylhurst Education Center, which was a leader in creating programs for working adults and giving college credit for experiential learning. She was a faculty member and administrator at Prescott College for 10 years, where she started the Adult Degree Program, a BA program for working adults, and the Center for Indian Bilingual Teacher Education, a teacher certification program for American Indian teacher aides living on reservations. She led the College in getting approval for its teacher education certification program from the Arizona Department of Education.
(2015) With Cordova, D., Bauermeister, J.A.; Fessler, K., Delva, J., Nurenberg, R., Lua, F.M., Francheska, A. and, Salas-Wright, C.
Latino adolescents are disproportionately impacted by HIV, but researchers have documented few programs to prevent and reduce HIV risk. The Storytelling for Empowerment (SFE) HIV StoryBook was designed with an innovative ecodevelopment approach combining empowerment, family communication, and positive cultural identity. A mixed method design used both a randomized control group design, as well as grounded theory coding of semi-structured focus group interviews.
This research used a structured storytelling narrative methodology to capture the lived experience of youth participants to identify effective factors that helped them in three programs in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, California. Thirty-nine youth aged 8–17 participated in two storytelling protocols at their home sites; one was a written narrative of a vivid experience in the project, and the second was a group story about a character who had been a participant. Categorical content analysis reported the following themes: positive peer experiences, caring adults, family atmosphere and learning new skills particularly computer literacy. Participants reported changing from being isolated or acting out to succeeding in school.
The spacious mind model combines Hindu and Buddhist philosophy on spiritual maturity with the Jungian view on psychological maturity to delineate how archetypal work can spur the development of wisdom. Both psychological and spiritual development defuse the ego's hold on reality to create a spacious mind that has contact with the spiritual Self. To explain such a transformation, this article discusses 5 parts of the mind: the ego, the conscious, the unconscious, the archetype, and the Self.
(2005) International Journal of Learning, Volume 11. Article: Electronic (PDF File; 324.399KB). Article: Print (Spiral Bound).
Cultural identity and positive youth development: The centrality of culture in effective health interventions for Latino adolescents Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
(2015) With Walters, A. S.
In A.D. Warmer (Ed.). Ethnic and cultural identity: Perceptions, discrimination and social challenges.
(2003) According to Mezirow, transformational learning changes problematic frames of reference to make them more inclusive. Using inclusive frames is more likely to be "more true or justified." This definition of transformational learning is similar to Trungpa's definition of wisdom. Trungpa says that wisdom is aimed at helping humans become wise by removing the clutter in the mind that interferes with clear perception and actions.
(December, 2003) The Storytelling for Empowerment Program decreased marijuana and alcohol use in high risk middle school youth, aged 11–15, across two years of implementation (Cohort 98 and Cohort 99). The program was a unique combination of cultural empowerment, cognitive skills, storytelling and the arts for emotional expression.
(1993) This book describes a conceptual framework for multicultural education that is based on how various cultures lead their members to know about the world. This approach accounts for diverse ways of knowing and learning and is based on the symbol of the wheel as an ancient organizational model from Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America. This model involves multiple intelligences as ways of knowing that are supported by different cultures. The wheel intelligence model represents five intelligences, one in each of the four cardinal directions and one in the middle.