Friday Summit Buddy Families, German with Frau Sylvana, Research Partners, The Emotion Tunnel & More!
/The Sea Lions have had a busy two weeks, leading others, learning new things and working together to grow and strengthen our classroom and school community.
Last Friday, the Sea Lions once again led our Family Summit, this time taking the reins on all aspects of the gathering. They led the Gathering Meditation (one Sea Lion is in charge of gathering all students in the school with a meditation breath and bell), then the Summit Meditation (a call and response, with hand movements choreographed by the Sea Lions), the Morning Song (a Sea Lion assists a younger student in leading the song) and our Land Acknowledgement (a Sea Lion leads the dedication of our land to the Atfalati-Kalapuya people). In addition to all that, last week the Sea Lions led our newly formed Buddy Families in a fun activity called “Drumroll, Please!”. Our Buddy Families have been set up as a way for us to connect all the students at the ELC, forging mentoring relationships that encourage trust and community between our older and younger students. The Sea Lions did an expert job of gathering, organizing and running the entire Buddy Family experience! We’ll be working on new Buddy Family games and art activities throughout the remainder of the school year.
Hallo! Guten Tag! The Sea Lions are having so much fun learning German with our amazing student teacher, Frau Sylvana! The students have been focusing on greetings, how they are feeling, how old they are - and more. Students have made good friends with Frau Sylvana’s pet, named Cappy. Cappy only speaks German and is very patient!
The Sea Lion’s meditations this week have been focused on how to deal with big feelings. We’ve been thinking of our emotions as tunnels which we work our way through, instead of caves we crawl inside and can’t find our way out of. We normalize those big feelings, knowing that we are strong enough to get through them and make our way to the other side. We also talked about the importance of recognizing that (when you are in your amygdala) your brain will often send you messages that simply aren’t true. We talked about the importance of our 3-Breath Pause, giving our brain a chance to put those crazy thoughts through the “Truthometer”…and throwing them in the garbage if they just aren’t true!
We have been completing some really interesting partner research papers about the history and impact of mass communication on our society and the way that communication builds a bridge between people and communities. We look forward to presenting our research papers through oral presentations next week!
