Can You Help Me Write a Song?

As a school counselor I host Friendship Groups in classrooms. In the past I was responsible for 15 classes (preschool through 3rd grade). This year my main focus is with 9 classes (1st-3rd) which is providing me an exciting opportunity to be more explicit in the curriculum that I use and develop. I imagine there will be more to share about that as the year proceeds.

At the moment I’m focusing on our starting rituals. An important element at the beginning of a group is some sort of shared ritual, shared experience. When I was a teacher with my own classroom, I used a song for this. When I entered this job with 15 classes that I move between I started my groups with a bell and moment of silence. Unfortunately, however, coming and going busily from one class to the next, I was inconsistent and eventually stopped using the bell regularly. This year I want the opening ritual to be sacred. To always start each group.

I would like to create a song that shapes the space and invites us to be connected to ourselves and connected to one another.

Qualities of the song that I am interested in:

• I’d like the song to be punchy – to invite body movements and voice inflection, to invite us to wake up and be engaged! A celebration.
• I’d like for the song to provide an opportunity to experience harmony with each other, a vocal sense of togetherness.
• I would like the song to invite us to be in our bodies, connected to our hearts with open minds, ready to learn, and connected to each other.
• I imagine that at the end of the song there is a brief moment of silence.

Below are some words I’ve been playing with… they’re not ‘right’ yet, but it will give you a sense of the direction I’ve been exploring.

And then comes the request (you knew this was coming, right!): Do you have ideas to add to the creation of this song? I’m not very developed in my musical sensibility. Are you? Do you have a tune to offer that this song could go to? Would you like to help me create this song? If you’re technologically inclined and want to share an audio idea with me, I believe you can sing into this site, odeo.com… or if you want to schedule a phone call, send me an email and we’ll set a date to talk (opening space (oneword) @gmail.com).

Thank you so much for any help you have to offer.

The latest version I’ve been playing with:

You and me are here right now
Alive in our bodies
I’ve got an open mind
Ready for new ideas

I’m going to listen from my heart
I’m going to speak from my heart

You and me are here right now
Let’s feel us here together

….bell….

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?