Every Day is Peace Day at Lafayette!

This past Sunday was the 30th annual International Day of Peace as established by the United Nations. It is a day to call for non-violence and peaceful interactions among all peoples and nations. 

We are so fortunate to be at a school like Lafayette, where we can celebrate Peace Day every day. There are no other schools in the metro DC area that devote as much time, energy, and resources to teaching kids about peace and conflict resolution as we do here at Lafayette.

September Back-to-School Transitions

Greetings Parents! Welcome back to school year 2014-2015.  It is now the middle of September and your child has already been in school several weeks.  The weather is beginning to transition from summer to fall.  Change is always happening in each of us and in the world around us.  We instill resiliency and teach our children success by helping them adjust to change.  Here are a few tips for a successful adjustment to school this year.  Enjoy!  

Harriet Lurensky Kuhn, M.A., M.Ed., NCSP, LPC.   Psychologist, Lafayette Elementary School and Kozy Girl, CGC, AKC/TDI Therapy Dog

Peace Classes Underway!

Welcome to another peaceful year at Lafayette!  Lafayette's unique mindfulness and social emotional learning program, Peace of Mind, is in full swing.  Peace Classes started with Ms. Ryden teaching second - fifth grade and Ms. Diesner teaching our Early Childhood grades.  We are learning about mindfulness and having fun with some "getting to know you" activities.  In fifth grade we watched a wonderful video about kindness (actually a life insurance commercial from Thailand!).  The kids loved it so much that I told them that I would post it here on our blog so that they could share it with you.  I hope you enjoy it.  Be prepared to shed a happy tear.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjLYwZkQ-rw
 
If you are new to Lafayette, you might be wondering what the Peace program is all about.  There is a description of the program on the school website (www.lafayettehsa.org) and you are always free to come in and check it out for yourself.  Kids seem to get it intuitively, but parents sometimes ask me what Peace Class is all about.  They wonder if it's some kind of hippie throwback.  In fact, Peace Class is a cutting edge program based on the latest research about how children learn and grow and thrive.  We all know that it's no longer enough to teach the 3Rs.  In this fast-paced and sometimes violent world it is crucial that we give our children the tools they need to be happy, mindful, emotionally intelligent, and able to move through the world peacefully and with confidence.

We could call it "Conflict Resolution, Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence, Anger Management, Anxiety Reduction, Empathy Development, Communication, Compassion, Bullying Prevention, Friendship Skills, Assertiveness Training, and Make the World a Better Place Class" but that's a bit unwieldy so we settle on "Peace Class" instead.  So try to let go of any '60's-era connotations you may have of the word peace and see if for what it is here at Lafayette: A class that helps us to educate the whole child.  A class devoted to the heart and the mind. A class that will give your child some of the most important skills they will ever learn.

- Linda Ryden

Welcome back to another great year at Lafayette!

It's finally here - the day parents dream about all summer - the first week of school! It passed in a blinding rush of hellos, hugs, laughter, "how-was-your-summer"s, and a perhaps few tears too. We've had a lot of fun seeing all the students back for another year, and are beginning to learn the names and faces of our new students too. We are so excited to be back and to have many wonderful changes happening at the same time. For an overview of the programs and services the Oasis team will be providing this year, click here. We are gearing up for a great school year, and here are just some of the upcoming events we'll be celebrating together soon:

September

·       Friday 9/5 and Monday 9/8: New Student Lunch Bunches for grades 1-5 (schedule forthcoming)

·       September is Peace Month

·       Weekly Peace classes begin in all grades

·       Friday 9/26: Wear your peace items to school day

October

·       October is College Awareness Month

·       Peace classes will include discussions on college & career

·       Friday, 10/24: Wear a college T-shirt day

·       TBA: First Oasis Advisory Group  (OAG) meeting

Stay tuned for more information on these exciting events, and drop by the Oasis to say hi if you haven't already. We'd love to see you! --Jillian

Mindfulness At Home Workshop

We had a great time at our Mindfulness at Home workshop the other night!  A nice group of parents gathered together to experience some of the mindfulness practices that we do in Peace Class.  They were so relaxed by the end of the hour that we all floated home!  I shared a bunch of resources that you can use to learn about and practice mindfulness at home.  It would be so great if the kids were able to keep up their mindfulness practice over the summer.  The resource list is below.  Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions at linda.ryden@dc.gov.  I'll schedule another parent workshop in the Fall.

Resources for practicing mindfulness at home

Building Emotional Intelligence, Linda Lantieri (with cd of guided mindfulness exercises)

Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (and their parents), Eline Snel  (book and cd)

A Still Quiet Place: A Mindfulness Program for Teaching Children and Adolescents to Ease Stress and Difficult Emotions, Amy Saltzman, MD

Ten Percent Happier , Dan Harris . 

Story Books:

Ahn’s Anger, Gail Silver

Steps and Stones, Gail Silver

Moody Cow Meditates, Kerry MacLean

Mindful Monkey, Happy Panda, Kerry MacLean

Websites:

 

MINDS Incorporated www.mindsincorporated.org

Mindful.org – Website of Mindful Magazine. Offers tons of resources about mindfulness

Mindfulschools.org

Check out our Peace of Mind Slideshow

 

Here's some great pictures and quotes from our students about mindfulness!

Mindfulness and Your Child: Post-Event Recap

A Pre-K student practices mindful breathing

Thanks to everyone who attended our event last night! We had almost 50 people out to learn more about Mindfulness and Your Child. First we watched a short video on Linda Ryden's Peace of Mind program and why she started the program. Next we heard a short talk from Dave Trachtenberg, Program Manager at MINDS, Inc. on the definition, science, and benefits of mindfulness. In a nutshell, Dave shared that "awareness" is another word for mindfulness and that there are thousands of scientific studies proving the benefits of mindfulness on our immune system, executive functioning, behavior, stress levels, and general health and well-being. He works primarily with teenagers and just wrapped up a mindfulness training program for teens at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, MD. He shared some anecdotes on how those teens have benefited from the training, and how much more our students will benefit having started the training so early while their brains are still malleable. He stressed that we want our children to learn how to "pause" and have awareness of their feelings (anger, hurt, sadness, anxiety, self-judgement, etc.) before reacting or lashing out, as these feelings become more intensified in adolescence and the ramifications of poor impulse control can be much more serious. He praised Lafayette for being "the only school in the DC/MD/VA area" to have such a large and intensive mindfulness program with 700 students! We ended the event with a slideshow of some of the Peace Classes with our students (to be uploaded to the blog soon!), and Linda and I told a bit about how we run the classes. It was a nice evening, but if you missed it and would like more information on mindfulness please feel free to contact us!
-Jillian

Fun with Magna Tiles at Peace Club

April 3, 2014 Mindfulness Event

Lafayette Elementary School Cordially invites you to Mindfulness and Your Child Come hear about the benefits of Mindfulness to you and your child, and learn about Lafayette’s own cutting-edge mindfulness program, Peace of Mind. April 3rd, 2014 7:00 p.m. This event will follow the general HSA meeting at 6:30 5701 Broad Branch Road, NW Washington, DC 20015 For more information please contact Linda.Ryden@dc.gov or Jillian.Diesner@dc.gov

A high-schooler at Wilson remembers Peace Class

Today I had a visit from a Lafayette graduate who is now in 9th grade at Wilson.  He came by, he said, to apologize to me.  He hugged me and said, "Ms. Ryden, I'm sorry for all the **** I gave you in Peace class!"  I laughed because what I remembered about him was that he was a skeptic who found Peace class a little too "touchy-feely" for his taste.  But then he said, "You know, I never appreciated what I was learning in Peace class at the time, but all through middle school I found that I was using the stuff you taught me all the time.  I guess I had to get a little more mature to realize it."  He talked about thinking about other people's feelings, understanding his own, and using the conflict resolution skills he learned at Lafayette.  Hearing a story like this obviously warms my heart because as teachers we never know whether or not we are really having an impact on a child.  It's a good reminder that we really don't know what is going on in a child's mind and we never know if the seeds we plant when they are young are going to grow and flower.  It's good to know that sometimes those flowers can bloom in the most unlikely places!

If you would like to find out more about what your child is experiencing in Peace Class come to our event, "Mindfulness and Your Child" on Thursday April 3rd at 7pm (right after the HSA general meeting).  Feel free to contact me for more information at linda.ryden@dc.gov.