A Visit to St. Kevin’s

Yesterday afternoon I spent a couple of hours at St. Kevin's School speaking on Maximizing your effectiveness as a teacher, balancing IQ, EQ, SQ (Intellectual, Emotional and Social Skills). I thought I might follow up with all of you from St. Kevin's by offering a few extra immediately useable storyboard activities for the classroom as well as the PDFs for storyboards.

Included you will find the team activity that we discussed yesterday as well as 7 other uses for the storyboards. Many of these were contributed by your colleagues in other schools. I invite you to post some of your ideas with us also! Download Storyboard Uses St. Kevin's

The 4 box is for the younger students including Kindie through year 3 or 4 or so depending on the development of the students.Download 4 box A4 copy The 9 box is for year 4 or 5 & on through the year 12 groups. Download 9 box A4 copy

Before doing a storyboard activity, I get students engaged by teaching them how to do a storyboard. I do this in stages:

1. Using your favorite 2 colors, draw a simple border around the first 2 boxes.
2. Now try a little more complex borders around the next 2 boxes.
3. Then do some background colors using highlighters instead of bold color.
4. Then draw some symbols on the board or ask students what are some of the symbols they might use on their storyboards to show different thoughts or ideas. (Examples might be a light bulb, a bolt of lightening, a smiley face etc.)

Here is a sample of a student's storyboard to give you a sense of the creativity that can occur.

  And here is another.

Notice how different the interpretations and uses are. No two storyboards from two different students will be alike! I'm sure that you can immediately guess that the one on the left was done by a 17 year old male student. (Notice the habits burning up in the fire!)

For all of you, please enjoy the activites and let us know how you do once you have a go at it!

Taking Mindfulness on the Road

Without my home refrigerator, I’ve been keeping my sticky notes as ‘NOTE TO SELF’ in my mind’s eye. It’s been a great few days in Australia so far. We kicked off the tour with a management training for the Department of Education & Early Childhood Development of the Eastern Metro Region.

It was a fabulous two days with an incredible professional team. I’m always amazed and inspired by individuals and teams when they commit to raising the bar and the then go for the leap!! And that is just what they did!

To my great regret, I was so immersed in the people and the event that I completely forgot to take any pics, and there would have been lots of good ones… There are stunning visual indications in the faces and the body language as units of people turn into teams. I’m so sorry that I did not document some of the two days.

We closed with Lisa, one of the team members, singing Bobby McGee. Lisa started playing the guitar when she was 7 years of age and she is, in my humble opinion, truly gifted and exceptionally good!

But there you go; I missed a great photo op!! So instead we have a photo of AU by night. It’s nice, but it doesn’t quite take the place of the light in people’s eyes when they have an insight, or the beauty of individuals totally engaged in a meaningful dialogue. I promise to get some photos of the team when we return for another day in August!

Anyway, mindfulness rules! The NOTE TO SELF in my mind’s eye is working. All is good. I even kept a positive mind set even when the pilot surprised us with the news that we had to land in American Samoa to refuel on the way to Sidney. The reason… the plane wasn’t built to do long distance travel and didn’t have enough fuel tanks to make the long trip.

Follow-up on Retreats

About three weeks ago I said that I would follow-up with the dates for our upcoming retreats. We have a definite date for the first two day retreat in Melbourne, Australia. The dates will be: the evening of May 21st, and all day Friday and Saturday. The title is, 'The Power of Personal Purpose'. 

The Power of Intention

Life always has a way of tugging at my awareness and moving me towards the fulfillment of my goals and intentions. This tug sometimes comes in the form of a small inner voice, as it was when I was lead to the discovery of my home in Kona. In that particular case, I had written down my intention in my little intention notebook. I knew exactly what I needed and wanted: an open airy home with a view, a pool, wheel chair access to a downstairs apartment for my parents, and separate master bedrooms for guests. The voice was adament on this one. "Turn right at the next street. There’s a house for you in this area." And I was lead right to the home that fit the exact description that I had given.

So back to present time. I’ve been asked quite frequently about starting my personal retreats again. So I’ve had it on the back burner of my mind, but I haven’t moved forward on scheduling it.  In other words Procrastination Polly was hanging out dallying with my intention.

However, the universe gave me a giant shove this morning in the form of a serendipitous meeting with a couple from California. I was having breakfast at a coffee shop that I frequent on the stunning Kona coast when a woman at another table noticed what I was reading. She caught my eye and started talking with me and finally asked me to join her and her husband at their table. They introduced themselves as Claudia and Cliff, a retired couple who had been visiting Kona every year for 27 years. Claudia said it was my energy and glow that caught her eye. She wanted to know where I came from, what I did, and why I was so happy.

To make a long story short as the proverbial saying goes, we spent the next two hours talking. By the time we were finished they were asking me to to do a retreat so they could come and learn meditation and some of the higher principles of life and living. The universe could not have made the message any clearer. I promised to get the program scheduled within the next three weeks (only because Lynne, who sets the schedule, is on vacation with her family right now).

So there it is. I have put my word behind it. We are going to be scheduling at least 1 five day retreat and 1 or 2 weekend retreats for 2009. I’m excited about it. These personal growth programs are still my passion. They are a joyous expression of our humanity, our goals, dreams and reason for being. The only reason I ever stopped doing the retreats was because of a very full travel schedule. But I’m home for some extended times now and I’m ready to give it a go!! I’ll let you know as soon as they are dated.

Thought you might like to see a shot of the open air pagoda where I teach meditation.
It’s on the lower terrace of my home. You can see the rest of the property at my website:  http://www.elan-learning-institute.com

Until such time as the dates are set, Aloha, from Hawaii and from me… Trin

August and September Aussie Trip

I’m almost ready to head home to resume my summer in Hawaii after two terrific weeks in Melbourne. But before I leave your shores, I promised I’d have the presentation material.

The VIEU Support Officer Conference – Download retrain2.pdf