Whole Schools Initiative
“Resiliency and the Arts”
Mini Curriculum
July 17-19, 2007
Facilitator: John Woodall, MD
Founder and Director, The Unity Project
President, Resilience Education Services
Course Description: Through reading, discussion, role play, experiential activities, lecture and demonstration we will explore some of the key interdisciplinary themes related to the field of resiliency. Insights from clinical psychology and brain studies will be related to understandings of the personal and social effects of trauma and the latest findings on the optimal responses to the challenges and crises of life. Together, this holistic approach will be adapted to the arts oriented classroom setting so that effective resilience building lesson plans can be developed and carried out.
Objectives:
To understand the effects of crisis/trauma on the personal and social identity.
To identify key resilient strengths to be mobilized to help a child deal with the challenges of life.
To understand the essential sequence of conditions needed to build safety and trust so that resilient strengths can emerge.
To understand the sequence of experiencing, naming, valuing, choosing and acting on inborn resilient strengths.
To experience and comprehend the value of the course learning activities that encapsulate the above learning objectives so that they can be adapted to the student’s classroom.
Day 1:
First Session: “The 2 Finger Table Lift,” introduction to resilience, experience of hope, delight, safety and trust, possibility, Form the Bowl, Founding story: The Cheer, Rigid Identity, Shattered Identity, Compassionate Identity, Elicit strengths to build unity.
Second Session: “There’s a lot in a Name,” 5 Stages of the Bowl, “experience, name, value, choose and act sequence of positive decision making.
Make dignity (resilient strengths) the central value.
Third Session: “Ground Rules,” Safety and trust allow for unity, motivation, commitment to the group, ownership and responsibility to group, and creativity. Reinforcing strengths generates motivation and commitment. “Closing Exercise.”
Safeguard dignity/Build trust
Day 2:
First Session: “Shuffling Cards,” Review ground rules. Habits of thought, feeling and behavior. Self reflection as basis of choice and freedom, Introduction to bias, if time consider “Move to the Right” and “How to be More Likeable”
Remove obstacles to unity
Second Session: “Still the Water: Breathing,” Strengthening reflective ability, quieting the mind, emotions control perspective taking, gaining emotional mastery, in the moment
Clarify perception
Third Session: “Out of the Box,” “How Many ‘E’s’,” “This Smees Issmpobile” perceptual, emotional, cognitive, behavioral and social bias. False confidence, bias vs. prejudice, categories, generalization, “Closing Exercise”
Suspend Judgement
Day 3:
First Session: “Circles of Strength,” heritage of resilience/character, you are a living legacy, Glaze the Bowl,
Trace roots of strengths to develop value, belonging and commitment
Second Session: “The Fish Game” identity assumptions, interdependence, cause and effect, consequences, self-interest, holistic vision, “see with the eye of oneness.”
Holistic vision. The Big Picture
Third Session: Review of sequence of resilient skills. Lessons learned. Resources. Assessment. Next steps.