Learning From Others

I feel so fortunate that my life includes opportunities to learn from and be with children. Here is a bit of learning that I journaled about the other day. One day as a school counselor, a fortunate human being, sharing, relating and exploring in an educational community.

Today I learned about bravery.

These children are so brave to reach out to someone and ask for help with emotional problems. To accept and surrender to a feeling state that isn't serving them and to vulnerably reach towards another and ask for help.

I learned from the teachers, honoring their bravery to open up and be willing to learn in public, from their peers.

I learned about gossip from a group of third grade girls. They discussed some of the reasons that people talk about other people... For "Something to do", because we're bored, and because it can help to strengthen a bond with another person by talking about a different person. I felt humbled hearing the clarity they expressed of some of the reasons why gossip happens... and how those self-serving intentions can effect the well-being of others.

And I learned about how deeply someone can be touched (I can be touched) by a thank you that bellows out straight from the heart. It amazed me how profoundly I was (and still am) effected when I reached out to a family, helping them to have a resource they needed. I was on the phone with a grandmother when a 5 year old un-promptedly called out a "thank you" that was the most heartfelt, genuine expression of gratitude I have ever heard.

It still echoes through my core, vibrating as my cells, sparking and fueling a current of hope and life's vitality.

Photo collage Celebrating Children by Cocoabiscuit

Roots of Empathy on CBS

Another taste of Roots of Empathy (with a commercial at the beginning)

Roots of Empathy

Tomorrow begins the next amazing (I imagine) training of this summer. I am very fortunate to be participating in the pilot of bringing the successful Canadian based program, Roots of Empathy, to the United States.

I first learned about this program at the Vancouver Dialogues with the Dalai Lama on Educating the Heart (you can listen to those dialogues here). Of all the programs that were presented, Roots of Empathy was the one that most deeply touched my heart as a powerful program with the potential to touch and effect many individuals.

Have a peek at their mission:

The focus of Roots of Empathy in the long term is to build capacity of the next generation for responsible citizenship and responsive parenting. In the short term, Roots of Empathy focuses on raising levels of empathy, resulting in more respectful and caring relationships and reduced levels of bullying and aggression. Part of our success is the universal nature of the program; all students are positively engaged instead of targeting bullies or aggressive children.

The basic structure is that an infant and parent and their relationship are used as the teaching modality for such content as emotional literacy, inclusion, neuroscience, infant development , perspective taking and much more. The infant and parent visit a classroom 9 times throughout the year. A Roots of Empathy instructor goes to the classroom with them and the week before and the week after the parent/baby visit. A synchronistic chain of events has lead to the opportunity for me to be a Roots of Empathy instructor at a local public school. (I'm very excited!)

Here is my response on the application to the question of Why do you want to become a Roots of Empathy Instructor?

I am deeply inspired by this program and how it uses relationships as the core of its teaching, invites and facilitates community connection and belonging, teaches through modeling and experiencing, and has potential to reach a wide variety of people (students, parents, teachers… of all types of diversity). I would like to become an instructor because I would like to see this program touch as many people as possible and therefore I would like to help facilitate that sharing and touching!

Here we go!

On a separate but related note, I'm having a hard time figuring out what to write here these days. There is so much pouring through me on both a personal level and a professional level that I've been clueless about where and how to jump in and share with you (and a little uncertain as to who 'you' are these days). If there is anything that you are curious about from these trainings or anything else that has been going on in my life, please feel free to ask me questions and maybe help inspire forward some writing here! Thanks.

Educating for Wholeness

I recently updated Educating for Wholeness. There you'll find perspectives from parents, teachers and students as well as learning activities that I facilitate with students and parents. Have a peek:

• What We'd Like to Learn
• Giving Information Rather Than Nagging
• Turning the Television Off
• The Value of Class Meetings
• Making Our Fraction of the World a Better Place
• What Can We Give to Others?

Creativity, Education, Intrinsic Strengths, Innate Curiosity and Play

Some educational and parenting resources for you:

A MUST see, hysterical and insightful TEDtalk with Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson is author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, and a leading expert on innovation and human resources. In this talk, he makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. (Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA.)

Thank you Christoph for directing me to this talk.

An interesting NY Times article, So the Torah is a Parenting Guide?

“Indulged, coddled, pressured and micromanaged on the outside, my young patients appeared to be inadvertently deprived of the opportunity to develop an inside,” she writes in her book. “They lack the secure, reliable, welcoming internal structure that we call the ‘self.”’ ...

There is a Hasidic saying that Mogel quotes, “If your child has a talent to be a baker, don’t ask him to be a doctor.” By definition, most children cannot be at the top of the class; value their talents in whatever realm you find them. “When we ignore a child’s intrinsic strengths in an effort to push him toward our notion of extraordinary achievement, we are undermining God’s plan,” Mogel writes.

Which leads me to aPsychology Today article on the Sudbury Valley school:

At Sudbury Valley School, there's no other way to learn. The 38-year-old day facility in Framingham, Massachusetts, is founded on what comes down to a belief about human nature—that children have an innate curiosity to learn and a drive to become effective, independent human beings, no matter how many times they try and fail. And it's the job of adults to expose them to models and information, answer questions—then get out of the way without trampling motivation. ...

Play—it's by definition absorbing. The outcome is always uncertain. Play makes children nimble—neurobiologically, mentally, behaviorally—capable of adapting to a rapidly evolving world. That makes it just about the best preparation for life in the 21st century. Psychologists believe that play cajoles people toward their human potential because it preserves all the possibilities nervous systems tend to otherwise prune away. It's no accident that all of the predicaments of play—the challenges, the dares, the races and chases—model the struggle for survival. Think of play as the future with sneakers on.