Hakuna Matata

As part of her internship program, Ms. Sidra Tareen, our HGSE guidance intern, started a blog to house her learning as well as strategies and tips for managing worries. Please check it out and subscribe to it for updates.

Here is the link to: Hakuna Matata Blog

A Minion Reasons to be Thankful

"Hate" has 4 letters, but so does "Love"

"Enemies" has 7 letters, but so does "Friends"

"Lying" has 5 letters, but so does "Truth"

"Hurt" has 4 letters, but so does "Heal"

Transform every negative energy into an aura of "Possibility".  

It is our perception that makes the difference in the way we feel.

Wisdom from Stuart, who will be joining the board tomorrow~

How to Disagree - Wisdom from Kid President

Quoting Mandela, Gandhi, and Meowth!

Say it Dufferently

Transitioning back to a full schedule with school, music, sports, and a myriad of activities and demand on our energies can be stressful.  Let's be mindful about our words.  They are powerful~

Buddy Bench

We will be starting our grade 1 guidance lessons in the next few weeks featuring the heart-breaking and heart-warming book "The Invisible Boy" by Trudy Ludwig.  

This year we are going to explore this idea as well because "Sometimes, it's good to have a buddy."

Buddy bench a big hit at Willowgrove School
Sometimes, it's good to have a buddy.Full story: http://www.cbc.ca/1.3505066via Leisha Grebinski & #SaskatoonMorning
Posted by CBC Saskatoon on Thursday, March 24, 2016

Kindness Month

The Lowell School is working on growing in kindness this month.  November 13th was World Kindness Day but every day can be a Random Acts of Kindness day!  Check out the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation's #ShareAMonster project.  There is also a calendar of ideas for spreading kindness.  Consider becoming a RAKtivist like Bert from Pittsburg who shared "Kindness can be a smile, a kind word, or a helping hand. It is simply the act of caring for each other, without judgement."

Me and My Community

This school year, Guidance and Library Sciences will continue in the tradition of co-teaching our guidance series for our Kindergarteners through 5th graders.  (Kudos to Ms. Steim, our amazing librarian!)  We will once again, start with our leaders in grades four and five, spending four weeks talking about friendships, how to approach diversity and differences, and ways to prevent bullying in our school.  Weaving through our discussions will be threads of kindness, courage, and community.  Please visit the Lowell Guidance website for more specifics about the "Me and My Community" series.

On the issue of diversity, I learned something rather interesting this summer while taking a course called "Evolution & Cognition".  There has been some research evidence that we are not wired to be racially biased, although many of us actively categorize people by race and culture.  When shown pictures of "people" in generic shirts and different skin colors, subjects sorted and stored (remembered) the individuals based on their skin tones.  When the pictures had different soccer team uniforms instead of generic shirts, subjects remembered the "people" by their teams, or affiliation/coalition, rather than skin color.  Given the evolutionary history of human, it has always been important to our survival to be able to distinguish if someone belongs to the same "group" as us and whether they are friend or foe.

If we learn to recognize ourselves as a community, whether in the form of a classroom, a grade, a school, a town, etc., we will perhaps put down barriers embedded in perceived differences and be more inclined to be interested and respectful in the differences between us.  Seeing ourselves as a community may also help us engage in civil discourse when conflicts arise and help us multiple our acts of kindness.

We Use Our Hands for Helping not Hurting

I-Care-Cat, the kindergarteners and first graders recently learned our second I-Care-Cat rule and talked about how to use our hand for helping and not hurting.  We read the book Andy and the Lions.  In the story Andy uses his hands to help the lion remove a thorn, to stop a crowd from hurting the lion, and to take his book back to the library.



Another good book on this topic is Hands Are Not for Hitting





I-Care Cat  hopes the students found a good place to hang their helping hands and caring hearts!

The Listening Walk by Paul Showers

Good Friends Listen to Each Other

We just finished our first round of I-Care-Cat lessons with our Kindergarteners and First Graders.  We talked about listening to each other with our "ears" (big, big ears), "eyes"(looking at the speaker), "month" (not interrupting), and whole bodies (neat feet and quiet hands when on the rug in the library).  We read the book "The Listening Walk" by Paul Showers, closed our eyes and listened to all the interesting sounds around us.  The most memorable comment....

Me: "So....what part of our bodies do we use to listen to each other?"
Student: [with much enthusiasm] "With our hearts!"

Civil Discourse

Conflicts are so hard. They make my stomach churn. At a recent Caring School Community training, we learned some great prompts for difficult conversations:

"I agree with [name] because . . ."
"I disagree with [name] because . . ."
"In addition to what [name] said, . . .

Being able to talk through disagreements without anger preserves our sense of safety in relationships. Perhaps we can all give these a try.

Building Community is the Key

It's common sense that building community is the key to preventing and combating bullying behaviors. Nevertheless, it is encouraging to be supported by research. Caring School Community - here we go!

There’s Only One Way to Stop a Bully
By SUSAN ENGEL and MARLENE SANDSTROM
Published: July 22, 2010