Daily Announcements

Weekend Highlight Round

Daily Announcements

HW Roundup

Mini-goals for the week

Daily Announcements

HW Roundup

Core Practice

Daily Announcements

HW Roundup

Metaphor Cards Check-In

Daily Announcements

Mini-goal mini-trophies

Highs and Lows of the Week

Intro whiparound + summer highlights

Check in on schedules

Opening: Blessing for a New Beginning, John O'Donohue

Check-in: one word that describes you when you are at your very best (on a plate, as centerpiece)

Discussion Rounds:

-What actions would you like everyone in the room to agree to take in order to make this a safe and welcoming space to share our thoughts and feelings?

-What is a personal trait you have that has been working really well for you and that you want to continue to develop?

-What is an area that hasn't been working well and that you want to change for the better?

-At the end of this year, what is something that you want to be able to say that you are proud of?

Check-out: What words would you like people to use to describe you at the end of this year?

Closing: The Summer Day, Mary Oliver

Opening: Mockingbirds, by Mary Oliver

Check-in: What color best fits your mood right now? Why?

Discussion Rounds:

Explain: In Circles, we try very hard to listen from the heart and speak from the heart. We are not always abel to do that, but we keep trying.

Round 1: Share a story of time that you felt someone really listened to you deeply and what it meant to you.

Round 2: What does it mean to listen from the heart?

Round 3: Who do you know who is good at listening from the heart?

Round 4: What does it mean to *speak* from the heart?

Round 5: Who do you know who is good at speaking from the heart?

Round 6: Who in your life can you talk to from your heart?

Round 7: What helps us listen from the heart and speak from the heart?

Check-out: What is one thing that someone said in today's circle that you connected with or that will stay with you?

Closing: CF, page 336. "Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. Think how the friends that really listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius as though it did us good, like ultraviolet rays.

"This is the reason: when we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life". --Brenda Ueland, writer, from "Tell Me More: On the Art of Listening"

Opening reading: Wheatley excerpt

Check-in: how are you doing?

Explain: All of us need support and help from others to do our best work. The purpose of this circle is to talk about what we need from others and ourselves so we can be our best here. For me as a teacher, to do my best I need...

Exercise: everyone write down on paper provided the ways they need to be treated by the teacher, fellow students, and themselves in order to do their best work.

Exercise: when you are done, add your responses to the newsprint sheets on the wall

Virtual gallery: walk around and look at responses

Question Round: What do you notice as you look at all of the responses?

Question Round: Can you find and name at least one thing people have asked for from fellow students that you can do?

Question Round: What can you do to help yourself the best?

Question Round: What new insight do you have about yourself and what you need after doing this exercise?

Question Round: What new insight do you have about someone else in the circle after doing this exercise?

Question Round: If you were in charge of a classroom, what might you do in order to make sure that these needs were met?

Check-out: How did you like today's circle?

Closing: "I always trying to believe the best of everybody--it saves so much trouble" -- Rudyard Kipling

As an individual makes its way in the world, it exercises its freedom continuously. It is free to decide what to notice, what to invest with meaning. It is free to decide what its reaction will be, whether it will change or not. This freedom is so much a part of life that two Chilean biologists, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela advise that we can never direct a living system, we can only hope to get its attention. Life accepts only partners, not bosses, because self-determination is its very root of being.

Life's second great imperative propels individuals out from themselves to search for community. Life is systems-seeking; there is the need to be in relationship, to be connected to others. Biologist Lynn Margulis notes that independence is not a concept that explains the living world. It is only a political concept we've invented. Individuals cannot survive alone. They move out continuously to discover what relationships they require, what relationships are possible.