|
Cyber Contract
Safety Comes First! Before turning your keys over to a young driver, you make sure they know the rules of the road and understand how to operate the vehicle safely. Technology shouldn’t be any different. As a parent forming agreements and teaching basic cyber safety is just as important. Take time to create a formal contract with your children on the use of cell phones, the internet, social networking, texting, and instant messaging. This sample contract is provided to start the discussion. What is most important here is the process you use to create the agreement.
Click Here for
the Sample Contract! (PDF)
Tapping into Hidden Potential
By: Shelley A.W. Roy
How do you treat people? Do you treat them as who they have been in the
past? Do you treat them as who they are right now? Or do you treat them
as the people they can become? How you treat others reflects back to you
through their actions. When you treat them based on who they have been
in the past, you keep the past patterns of your relationships alive.
Click Here for
the Full Article! (PDF)
Man Up!
By: Glenn Smith
When you hear the phrase “Man Up” what comes to mind? I remember when I
was about 12 years old my sister, who was eight years my senior, came
into my room and asked the question: “Who are better, men or women?”
Without hesitation, I answered, “me.” I was stumped when she asked,
“What are the reasons you would say that?”
Click Here for
the Full Article! (PDF)
Learning to Be Heard and Understood
By: Shelley Roy
Most peoples’ frustrations with relationships stem from getting others to listen and from being understood. The good news is you can get others to listen to you. The bad news is that you will most likely need to change HOW you deliver information. You can’t make someone listen; you can change how you express yourself. The question you need to ask yourself is, “Do I really want others to listen?” People who are into the blame game speak and act in ways that disengage others. When someone doesn’t listen to you, it is a lot easier to blame that person than to take responsibility for your actions. Another strategy blame gamers use is to not speak up when they feel strongly about an issue. Not speaking up is a form of passive aggressive behavior, a way to coerce someone else to get what you want by keeping silent. Once you decide you really want the other person to listen to you, the next step is to learn to speak in a way that will engage the individual in paying attention to the message. The process is rather like being in a foreign country trying to figure out how to communicate.
Click Here for
the Full Article! (PDF)
Why Become?
After Shelley and I wrote Creating Your BE-Print; Drafting Your
Personal Blueprint for Living, people have asked us some extraordinary
questions. What would be so great about everybody becoming who he or she
wants to be? Would the world be a better place if everyone were working
towards being who he or she wants to be? What if someone wants to be
hurtful to others? What do you believe about human nature and the role
it would play in a person’s progress toward becoming who he or she want
to be? Would people become more "alike" as they work towards being who
they want to be? How does anyone know who he or she is supposed to be?
Click Here for
the Full Article! (PDF)
Jumping into Recess
This lesson provides students with concrete strategies for what to do if they feel they are being bullied. Students will explore a definition of bullying, create an anti-bullying jump rope rhyme and learn specific ways to handle mean behavior.
Click Here for
the Full Article! (PDF)
And, So & Because:
A Doorway to Peace
Have you ever felt tense and irritable? Challenged
by what is happening in your life? Feeling as if the people around you
are just making your life miserable? Do you wonder why that is?
Click Here for
the Full Article! (PDF)
Bumping it up! Moving from a
Human Feeling to a Human Being
How we live our lives day to day determines who we are. What we know about Perceptual Control Theory is that we can input information from various levels of perception. When we look at the world, we see a lot of things.
Click Here for
the Full Article! (PDF)
Venn Meets Coercion
An activity and article for 5th-8th graders, suitable for advisory or as an interdisciplinary math and language arts lesson.
Click Here for
the Full Article! (PDF)
MAKE YOUR TIME COUNT
“My current predicament is a direct result of my once warped
decision-making. Little did I know, a seemingly rational decision could
have used a little more thought. Now that I have an opportunity to
reassess my decisions, I’ve realized that several of my most hasty
choices were the cause of the derailment of my life. I’ve learned that
time isn’t always a friend to life. You ask how so; well just look back
on the past 3 years and what do you see?
Click Here for
the Full Article! (PDF)
FORGIVENESS – AN UNFINISHED JOURNEY
“A person who forgives is not practicing an act but is a person devoted to a path.”
I have always wanted to be the person who was able to forgive even in the most difficult of circumstances. Discussing and studying the essential characteristics and the benefits to those who adopt forgiveness as a way of life intrigues me. I have read numerous articles, books, and religious texts, and I have listened to several explanations, speeches, and sermons. Still, when I self-evaluate, I find I often fall short of my reference of a forgiving person. What has been more distressing is that I felt I was falling short spiritually. I understood the ramifications of holding on to resentments that I believed to be the poisoning of one’s own soul in the name of wanting others to suffer for their actions. Still, I would fall short again and again of being that merciful person I really wanted to be.
Click Here for
the Full Article! (PDF)
Click Here for the Full Article! (HTML)
Getting Into & Staying in
The River of Joy & Well-being
Life is about living in a constant current of well-being and joy. For some it has been a long time since they stepped into the river; others expend a lot of energy trying to stay in the river and for a few the river has become home. If you are standing on the banks, start moving towards the river. If you are struggling to stay in, recognize that it may be time to surrender and flow with the river. If you are in the stream be aware of the moment you begin to fight the river or step towards its banks, and remember living in a state of well-being and joy should be effortless.
Click Here for the Full Article! (PDF)
Click Here for the Full Article! (HTML)
Is it OK to Make a Mistake?
If you visit my home and take time to read the items that hang on the wall of all that is treasured, the refrigerator door, you will find a sign that says, “We the Smiths
are not interested in blame, shame, fault, regrets or excuses - we are interested in how we are going to fix our mistakes.”
Click Here for the Full Article! (PDF)
Click Here for the Full Article! (HTML)
The Warp & Weft of Working With Teens
...This week I received a call from a friend who is a counselor and a
middle school teacher. He works in a district in which a group of us has
been working trying to change how people view behavior and how they
manage themselves, especially when they work with others. He shared with
me a conversation he had been involved with during his lunch break. He
was sitting with several individuals who had been through the workshops
over the past two summers, and he was listening to them share their
views about the content of the training and the programs and support
structure that have been put into place. Those sitting with him had no
idea that for more than four years, he has studied these same ideas and
has worked to integrate them into his interactions with his students and
clients. The gist of the conversation was that what we were working to
accomplish was never going to work because the practices we were
recommending weren’t being ‘hard enough’ on these kids. They needed to
be disciplined more severely.
Click Here for the Full Article!
(PDF)
Click Here for the Full Article! (HTML)
Four Classroom Agreements
As the school year begins across the U.S., educators and students
alike are contemplating the upcoming school year. Fall is often a time
of reflection and reorganizing our lives after the hustle and bustle of
a summer of adventure and vacation. ---- In successful classrooms,
teachers and students are members of a team. Individually and
collectively, they ask and answer three basic questions during the
team-forming process: “Who am I?” “Who are you?” and finally, “Who are
we?” In answering these questions, in building classroom agreements,
teachers and students build a firm foundation for the upcoming school
year.
Click Here for the Full Article! (PDF)
Click Here for the Full Article! (HTML)
The Secret to Understanding Human Behavior
When The success of The Secret, Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol and the newly released movie
Avatar offer strong evidence that everywhere and in every way people are realizing that our planet is composed of interconnected systems of energy and consciousness that extend far beyond the connections that we imagined in the past. At the center of this new understanding is the idea that every thought and everything is a bundle of potential energy, and that thoughts can become things.
Click Here for the Full Article! (PDF)
Click Here for the Full Article! (HTML)
The Three Most Powerful Letters
-A-N-D-
We are surrounded by people whose minds are stuck in the linear, mechanical thinking of Descartes. This thinking is easily captured by two words: OR and BUT. Our use of these two words polarizes our thoughts; we engage in black and white thinking in which we are unable to recognize the power of AND thinking.
Click Here for the Full Article! (PDF)
Click Here for the Full Article! (HTML)
Shifting Towards PEACE
When I hear the term “bully” I cringe because I know what typically will follow will be another set of labels that someone-- usually an adult--is going to give to the actions of others. In the 1960’s Stephen Karpman
described what he called the drama triangle--placing individuals in
three boxes on three points of a triangle and labeling them persecutor,
victim, and rescuer.
Click Here for the Full Article! (PDF)
Click Here for the Full Article! (HTML)
|
