Kids for Peace, a global nonprofit and home to The Great Kindness Challenge, mobilized its network to join together and create the world’s longest recycled paper chain, each paper link decorated with messages of love and hope. Kids for Peace is home to The Great Kindness Challenge, providing a platform for youth to actively engage in socially-conscious leadership, community service, global friendships and thoughtful acts of kindness.
Read more here: https://bit.ly/3xJkpim
Nine Indigenous youth climate activists journeyed to Glasgow from around the globe to attend COP26. They came here with a shared view of how lands and waters are connected, and how to care for them. They would also like to see plans to protect human rights and Indigenous rights spelled out in the text of the COP agreement. But, even though they have had meetings with top officials, these activists are sometimes on the outside looking in, trying to carve out space for their people. Now that they’re at the conference, they say it sometimes feels like everyone wants to put them in a box and force them to conform to standards with a history of colonialism.
Bismarck Public Schools is teaching their students that giving back is key. With the weather steadily growing colder, there is work that needs to be done to clean outdoor recreation areas. Two groups of Wachter Middle School- 8th grade students made their way to the Dakota Zoo to help in their clean up efforts. While at the zoo they helped to rake leaves. Over the course of two days, 300 students were able to take part in the project. The school hosts a community service event every year around this time. Wachter Middle School teacher, Kevin Schmitcke, says this is a great opportunity for kids to work together outside the classroom. Read more here.
Dr. Dan Tomasulo, SMBI’s Academic Director, wrote a new book: “Learned Hopefulness: The Power of Positivity to Overcome Depression” which has been named one of the best books for depression in 2021. Dan shared:
Hope is the only positive emotion to require negativity or uncertainty to be activated. Learned hopefulness demonstrates how hope can be taught and cultivated, and how doing so gives us the ability to become more resilient in the presence of daunting obstacles. As a result the new science of hope is improving outcomes in medicine, education, psychotherapy, and business—and this is only the beginning of understanding its potential.
Link to Dan’s book “Learned Hopefulness”: https://amzn.to/3lqEaGG
Article about the best books for depression: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/books-about-depression
I had the pleasure of presenting the main research of CSE at the Symposium on the Spirituality of Children hosted by Virginia Theological Seminary in late October 2021. While I often present our research, and our work is often well received, this particular presentation felt like a spiritual community. The people who were together shared from their own practice, and felt that our research reflected what they had seen in their classrooms over the last several decades. That, too, felt aligned, as our research was conducted by interviewing and observing master educators to understand what they did. It truly felt as though we were co-creating a spiritually supportive conference space, one where everyone felt seen, known, and valued. It was a profound experience for me! You can view the recordings from the Symposium here.
The Reverend Norman Hull, chaplain at Campbell Hall in southern California and CSE fellow, has recently written a reflection on his work encouraging middle school students to share their spirituality through the school’s Chapel program. As Norman describes, “A 6th-grade boy reflected in chapel on his love of science by saying, ‘In science there is always a new challenge and something new to do and that is what keeps it interesting. He went on to connect the Bible message from Isaiah to his homily by saying that, ‘it reminds me of how God’s ways are more spectacular than our ways and this connects to my love of science because with science you can understand so much, but there’s always so much more you can’t understand.’ When students realize that there is so much they don’t know, they are tapping into the mystery and sacredness of life.”
Norman’s reflection for the National Association of Episcopal Schools Chaplain’s Blog, “Connections Between Spirituality, Chapel and the Classroom,” can be found can be found here: https://www.episcopalschools.org/naes-news/the-commons-our-blog/
Kids for Peace, a global nonprofit and home to The Great Kindness Challenge, mobilized its network to join together and create the world’s longest recycled paper chain, each paper link decorated with messages of love and hope. Kids for Peace is home to The Great Kindness Challenge, providing a platform for youth to actively engage in socially-conscious leadership, community service, global friendships and thoughtful acts of kindness.
Read more here: https://bit.ly/3xJkpim
Nine Indigenous youth climate activists journeyed to Glasgow from around the globe to attend COP26. They came here with a shared view of how lands and waters are connected, and how to care for them. They would also like to see plans to protect human rights and Indigenous rights spelled out in the text of the COP agreement. But, even though they have had meetings with top officials, these activists are sometimes on the outside looking in, trying to carve out space for their people. Now that they’re at the conference, they say it sometimes feels like everyone wants to put them in a box and force them to conform to standards with a history of colonialism.
Bismarck Public Schools is teaching their students that giving back is key. With the weather steadily growing colder, there is work that needs to be done to clean outdoor recreation areas. Two groups of Wachter Middle School- 8th grade students made their way to the Dakota Zoo to help in their clean up efforts. While at the zoo they helped to rake leaves. Over the course of two days, 300 students were able to take part in the project. The school hosts a community service event every year around this time. Wachter Middle School teacher, Kevin Schmitcke, says this is a great opportunity for kids to work together outside the classroom. Read more here.
The Fetzer Institute and CSE co-hosted a Learning Summit, “Cultivating the Spiritual Core,” offered virtually November 11-12, 2021. Over 200 participants joined us live for keynote addresses from Dr. Lisa Miller and Dr. Timothy Shriver, as well as sessions from Linda Lantieri and Meena Srinivasan, John Bickart, Gerard Senehi, Laura Bakosh, and the Holistic Life Foundation. These sessions explored various practices which support spirituality in K-12 schools, as well as offering participants a space for reflection and dialogue around their own work. Recordings are available on our website here!
In just one year, The Awakened Schools methodology has had a positive and profound impact on children around the globe. One of the most beneficial experiences has been the practice of manifesting individual dreams through meditation. Children have reported feeling a new sense of happiness, freedom and deeper connections to their fellow classmates.
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