Teaching Love in the Class Room
Thursday, July 26th, 2012
One of the greatest gifts of the work I do is hearing the inspiring stories from our readers about how they make love work in their personal lives and career. Learning how to receive the goodness and love surrounding us is a lifelong process and, even as children, we must learn that we are worthy and loveable. Here is one fine teacher’s method which could be adapted to your own family. Thanks for sharing it with us…
“I retired from the elementary classroom last year after 36 years, most of them with 11 and 12 year-old students. Love that age and the changes that occur during the grade 6 year. Every year, usually on a drab January or February Friday afternoon, I would hand out an index card to each student and have them put their name on one side. I collected them. Then, sworn to secrecy, I gave the rules: 1. you will get a card, not your own, and I want you to peek at the name and then write one compliment on the other side anonymously. It could be about a strength or anything that makes this person special or unique. 2. After this activity, try really hard not to tell the person what you wrote, even if it’s a best friend.
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues- it is the form of every virtue at the testing point.” -C.S. Lewis
Half of all the honey bees on the planet have died in recent years. A startling fact when you consider not only the impact that this has on the food chain and our food supply, but the even deeper metaphor that this represents for our culture. The disappearance of the bees has been named “Colony Collapse Disorder” and one well-known bio-dynamic bee keeper featured in the new film by Taggart Siegel, 
Monday mornings often create this jarring emotional space in me. I am never fully prepared for the alarm and especially on weeks that are looming with large events, I wake with uncertainty and sadness. I don’t always know where my sorrow comes from, sometimes I have a clear and ready story about some injustice perpetrated or received. But more often lately it is just another color that lives in me that needs space to breathe and a compassionate regard.
“This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the compassion I need.”
The first time I learned of the idea of self soothing, I was reading a parenting book and trying to let my first child settle herself to sleep. I was more upset than she was that evening, gripping the door knob, willing myself to not open it and go in to soothe her. Awash in my own inability to self soothe, I cried as she whimpered herself to sleep. That night provided only a glimmer of the power that comes from being able to hold onto and soothe yourself in your own pain and suffering.
