At our MMM last week, many of entered the cafeteria with some pretty mixed up feelings about the Superbowl the evening before. It was great to gather as a community and reflect on these feelings together. We left feeling proud of the effort the Seahawks made as a team this season and proud of ourselves for being good sports when faced with such an unexpected end to such an emotional game. Mr. Liner introduced our school-wide focus trait for February ~ Compassion. As usual, he did a great job of connecting the empathy and awareness that good sports have for their opponents with compassion. He shared some quotes and showed us the Kid President video below to help us start constructing an understanding of this important quality. As we journey through this month of Valentine's Day, I wanted to pass along a few quotes from some of my favorite peace leaders. Enjoy and feel free to share favorites of yours. "It's the self-directed aspect of play that gives it its educative power." ~ Peter Gray, On Wednesday, Room 203 participated in the 1st Annual Global School Play Day. The idea behind this day is to raise awareness of the importance of unstructured play in the lives of young people. At QAE, the play our kindergarteners engage in during Choice Time each day is considered as important as their academic activities ~ by both teachers and students. It was fun on Wednesday to add to this play time, and to really focus on the unstructured and electronics-free aspect of the day. I gathered the kids on the carpet for Choice Time, but instead of helping them make choices I just said, “Go play!”. Other than making sure kids were safe and taking some photos, I was invisible as much as possible. One of the things that Peter Gray says about GSPD is that it will "signify to children that we recognize the importance of play in their lives." I visited my son’s 4th grade classroom next door during their play time, and loved seeing these “big kids” playing. They had built forts, were playing strategy games, creating their own games and making all sorts of masterpieces out of all kinds of materials. Everyone was engaged and calm, and many kids were working together. So cool! Here is Peter Gray's TED talk. | PBL ~ Changing The World |