Spotlight on Our Social-Emotional Learning

In our work with Non-Violent Communication strategies, the students practice identifying and expressing their feelings. As I mentioned in a previous post, we also practice identifying the needs behind the action, remembering that every choice that everyone makes is to fulfill a need. We think about how two people who totally disagree about a certain situation are both attempting to fulfill a valid and important need that the other can relate to.

Our next steps involve specific language that is useful in so many ways, but especially in conflict resolution. Today we defined and discussed the differences between observations and evaluations. As we defined them, an observation is a specific thing that a person does. An evaluation is your idea about what happened. It's an opinion or judgement.

In the pictures below, students are working in groups to categorize different statements as being observations or evaluations.
For example:
This is an evaluation- You are a bad sport.
This is an observation- In P.E. you said, "Ugh. Why am I always on the bad team?!"

Students explained the thinking behind their categorizations and came up with their own examples.

Later in the lesson, students worked in pairs to come up with a possible observation that could have fueled a given evaluation. Moving forward, we will discuss and experience how observations and evaluations inspire different qualities to conversations.

"Observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence." -Krishnamurti

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I also wanted to share some pictures of the students during our daily morning meditation. We work with a number of strategies and always have time to share our experiences and learning. Here are some of my favorite quotes from our mindful mornings recently:

"When we're doing radio listening, I can hear all the way to Sir Francis Drake!"

"I feel like I'm floating in warm water when I meditate."

"My puppy thoughts are out of control today!" (We describe our wandering thoughts as little puppies. Sometimes they're zooming around all over the place, bouncing off one another. When we notice them, we don't get mad at the little puppy. We love the puppy! We simply say, "Come on back, Pup. Let's try this again.")

"I don't know if I can stop thinking. Then I'm just thinking about not thinking."

"The 'ball of light' meditation makes me feel warm in my belly."

"Sometimes I can feel my breathing more in Anapana, but today it was hard. I wonder why..."

"I like to visualize that I'm in my bed."

"My favorite mindfulness activity is watching the flame dance."

 
Students usually choose their own posture for meditation and many like to cover their eyes or ears.