Welcome
Patrick and Eileen Howley, Personal and Professional Development Facilitators
For over 30 Years, Pat Howley has been a "Seeker" exploring inner space. That exploration began with his realization during his masters degree in counseling that there was an inner life that he had not paid much attention to. The founder of Client-Centered and the Person-Centered Approach, Carl Rogers, in his book On Becoming a Person, became his first guide for the journey. The next journey guide was Sidney Jourard who said in his beautiful book, The Transparent Self, "We camouflage our true being before others to protect ourselves against criticism or rejection. This protection comes at a steep price . . . when we succeed in hiding our being from others, we tend to lose touch with our real selves. This loss of self contributes to illness in its myriad forms." In his chapter, An Invitation to Authenticity, he says that his entire book can be regarded as that invitation.
After many years on this inner personal path of exploring being authentic, Pat and Eileen invite you to join them on that journey of authenticity. It is the only true way to go beyond the personal and realize the Ultimate, the Witness, the Oneness of the Self.
Eileen S. Howley, Ed. D.
Dr. Eileen S. Howley dedicated her career to the development of educators and educational leaders. She has cultivated a “person centered”, relationship driven approach to leadership development, school and district improvement efforts. She and Pat co-facilitate “person centered” retreats and meditation groups that use a deeply reflective percept aware process, originally created by Joyce & John Weir. She has consulted with districts across the state and the country on best practices in instructional improvement and educational leadership. She has been a long time contributor to the Connecticut State Department of Education work in teacher assessment, including the Connecticut Competency Instrument, the Connecticut Common Core of Teaching, and portfolio guidelines for new English and Elementary Education teachers. She is currently also serving as a consultant in educational leadership for the CT Center for School Change, supporting a leadership network for superintendents focused on instructional improvement through district leadership development. She recently retired from her position as Executive Director of LEARN in June 2019. Prior to LEARN, she served as Assistant Superintendent for Instruction and Curriculum in the West Hartford Public Schools and Interim Superintendent of Schools and Assistant Superintendent in the Farmington Public Schools, Farmington, CT. She also served as the Bureau Chief of Curriculum at the Connecticut State Department of Education, a teacher and staff development specialist with Area Cooperative Educational Services, a Regional Educational Service Center, and as a teacher of English in Avon, Connecticut. She earned her doctorate at the University of Hartford and focused her research on expert teacher development. She earned her Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from Central Connecticut State University and her Bachelor’s degree in English from St. Michael’s College, Winooski, Vermont.
J. Patrick Howley
Pat currently “sees” clients in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Kentucky, New York and Connecticut. In addition he coaches several Principals and teachers in a number of schools in Connecticut. The workshops & retreats that he does with Eileen, (to use some of the language of Ken Wilber) help people to wake up, grow up, open up, clear up, clean up and show up in their world with more of themselves available to contribute to growing and sustaining our planet. Pat has a rich background in education and many professional connections statewide, nationally, and even internationally. Pat was an educator for many years working in a variety of roles and organizations. He has been an elementary school teacher, a middle school counselor, a director of a high school gifted program, and a human resource specialist for the University of Connecticut School of Social Work. He has taught courses in human relations, teacher preparation, and counseling at Sacred Heart University, Connecticut College, and Southern Connecticut State University. For fourteen years Pat worked at the Yale University School Development Program created by the psychiatrist, Dr. James Comer. While there, he was the Director of Teacher Development and Adult Development as well as being an implementation coordinator to several school districts, such as Guilford County Schools, North Carolina, Miami-Dade and Detroit Public Schools. Most recently Pat has worked for the Connecticut Association of Schools as an Assistant Executive Director, assisting colleagues in implementing an Executive Coaching Program for Connecticut principals.
Pat's main interest and training experiences have been focused on adult development. He has studied extensively a development process called the Enneagram; received certification in the use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Carol Pearson's The Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator; and uses a Jungian archetypal model for understanding adult development. His approach is grounded in Carl Rogers' core attitudes of acceptance, understanding and genuineness. With these attitudes as the primary base, he has integrated a powerful process that he learned in several workshops over many years with Joyce and John Weir. His approach also includes meditation processes that he experienced in workshops with Junpo Kelly Roshi, Dan Brown and through his research of the self-inquiry process of Krishnamurti and Ramana Maharshi. This integrated approach in a climate of unconditional positive regard has facilitated powerful transformations in his clients.
Currently, Pat is coaching several principals, using a unique approach that integrates his client-centered background, percept orientation and Ken Wilber's developmental perspective model. He sees clients in his office and consults with clients by phone in several states. He continues to do facilitation workshops for the Connecticut Association of Schools and is writing a book on percept orientation, which is a specific process to help people do a much more direct and deeper self-reflection.