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Appreciating as an Action

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

elliewithhandbook

TRUE APPRECIATION: CELEBRATING THE NEW HANDBOOK'S ARRIVAL!

rowithhandbooks
ellieandrowithhandbooks

So, no surprise that on Thanksgiving, as on any other day, I was caught up in the language of the occasion. In particular, I began wondering about the name of the holiday itself, Thanksgiving. Even someone without a degree in linguistics could tell you that it comes from giving thanks.[1] But the general public might not know how much complex appreciative action is hidden inside this humble noun (in addition the action of removing toddler-sized cranberry sauce prints from your sweater, of course…):

First, there is the action of giving, giving thanks. And hidden in there somewhere is someone or something that you’re giving that thanks to – perhaps your parents, your friends, your partner, your religious institution, or maybe the universe. Either way, there is a hidden recipient in there that bears pondering.

Second, there is the action of thanking. And, again, there is a missing recipient – thanking someone or something. Further, there is a hidden cause for thanks in there: you are thanking someone for something – health, friends, family, laughter, etc., etc. As I hope many Project Happiness students are learning this year, engaging in the action of thanking – appreciating – actually changes your brain, turning it towards the positive. So this action isn’t really new for Project Happiness fans.

Finally, there are, oddly, some historical connections of the word thank to the actions of thinking and feeling. These may seem far removed from thanking, but they are all what some linguists refer to as mental processes: things that go on inside your head (or heart!). These same linguists often chunk mental actions up even further into the actions of perceiving, thinking and feeling. I would argue that thanking involves all 3 of these. To thank we must first practice mindfulness so that we can perceive the things around us we appreciate. Then we need to grapple with understanding these things using our intellect and, finally, we must hold them in our hearts to experience the feeling of thankfulness.

All in all, then, the noun thanksgiving is action-packed. This week, as you pursue your own mindfulness practice and encourage the mindfulness practices of your students, children, friends and colleagues, think about some of the actions hidden in the nouns in your lives[2]:

School –> to school

Whom? In what?

Food –> to feed

What part of yourself? With what?

Friend –> to friend/to befriend

Whom? How?

Work –> to work

With what materials? By what methods?

Class –> to classify

Whom? By what standards?

Homework –> to work at home

On what? To what end?

So here’s my challenge: verbify the positive things in your world. Take just 5 minutes out of class, a busy work week, or a homework session with your kids. Ask your students/colleagues/kids to name some of the most important things in their lives – the things they value. Then work together for a couple minutes working out some of the actions behind those things, using the columns above as a starting point. Share some of those verbified values as comments on the blog and perhaps together we can come up with a grammar of appreciation.

Giving thanks for all the amazing people in my life who have given me the occasion to create a grammar of gratefulness,

Abby

[1] For those of you desperate to learn more, more, more about word structure, here are some other fun facts about the word Thanksgiving:

  • Giving is a present participle (or a gerund…it depends…)
  • Participles come from verbs but they, themselves, are officially nouns
  • The verb to give takes 2 objects: the thing given and the person who’s receiving
  • The second object of give (the receiver) is missing in Thanksgiving
  • Thanks is itself derived originally from a verb, to thank
  • To thank originally comes from a waaaay old form, tong (this form is Proto-Indo European if you really want to impress people at parties)
  • Tong originally meant to think or to feel, not to thank

Okay, I could give you a lot more linguistic tidbits, but if I did that, there wouldn’t be anything else for linguists to do!

[2] For you grammar mavens out there: these are NOT all legitimate etymologies – just
fun with language!

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Who Are ‘You’?

Monday, November 9th, 2009

11.8blogcartoonThe first set of social and emotional wellness skills The Project Happiness Handbook teaches pertains to self-awareness: exploring who I really am. Students learn to practice self-compassion, they build an understanding of their own emotions – particularly what brings them lasting happiness – and they gain confidence in their gifts.

But there’s bad news from postmodern scholars: there is no self! You thought you had thoughts and feelings, made choices, and generally went about your day as an individual, but all along you were just this freakish creature, an amalgam of all the societal and cultural influences around you. Bummer.

While the former may be philosophically true, it’s not very practically helpful (my husband, the philosophy Ph.D. feels there is no distinction, but try living with a philosopher and let me know what you conclude!). At the very least, we have a real, individual experience of selfhood and we need to honor that experience in ourselves and our students by practicing self-awareness. As a nod to those postmodernists, though, we do need to be aware of the influences on our selfhood: friends, family, cultural norms, and – the biggie – the media (see ShapingYouth.org for a great blog exploring issues of media and youth identity).

But how do you become aware of media influences when they are so complex and pervasive? You do something I’m very good at: make things strange (also called ‘denaturalization’ in the postmodern literature…)! Ads and TV and movies are all around us, so we get used to them, they become ‘normal.’ But if you can make them abnormal, you can see the inequalities and dangerous ideas behind them more easily. And what is my favorite way to make things strange/abnormal?…

You guessed it – linguistics! In this case, take a look at ‘you’ – no, don’t run to the mirror (or ask your students to do that – you won’t have enough bathroom passes). Simply become more mindful of the pronoun ‘you.’ How do the media position ‘you’? Ask kids what their favorite stores and products are and then ask them to write down all the actions a ‘you-who-is-a-teen’ takes part in. Take a look at the examples below from J.C. Penney’s wildly successful (as rated by ypulse.com, a youth marketing site) Facebook page. Teen consumers are asked to engage in the following 7 earth-shattering actions:

  • Mix
  • Match
  • Make your own (=buy)
  • Layer
  • Wear
  • Get (=buy)
  • See faves (=a link for more styles)

To be fair, J.C. Penney is trying to sell clothes, but it’s simply dazzling how many verbs they have come up with simply for wearing and buying. And here is the central verb teen users are responding with:

  • Love (J.C. Penney, Olsenboye [a new J.C.P. brand], jeans, etc.)

When broken down linguistically, it is a very clear, cut-and-dried consumer relationship: J.C. Penney asks teens to buy and wear (which they can do by mixing, matching, layering, etc.) their products and teens respond by buying, wearing and loving those products. There is, at base, nothing wrong with this: J.C.P. offers a product, teens buy it. But it is the last part – loving it – where a bit of a wrinkle comes in. In this case, teens are turning right back around and doing the advertising for J.C.P. And they are making J.C.P. a part of their online identity by making it a part of their ‘community’ on Facebook.

A simple exercise like this can start a conversation about how students see themselves, what roles they play in the broader culture, and what roles they want to play. This would be particularly powerful when integrated with the activity, “Who Am I?” on p.41-43 of the Project Happiness Handbook. This can help students become aware of not just how their friends and family see them, but how companies, governments, and social organizations see them.

“Who are you?” is a question adolescents are developmentally primed to answer (see chapter 2, section 3 in the Project Happiness Facilitators’ Guide for more information). Let’s provide them with the resources to answer it thoughtfully and intentionally.

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“It’s Not a Problem: It’s an Idea Emergency!” -Imagination Movers

Friday, October 30th, 2009
ImaginationMovers

Imagination Movers Solve an Idea Emergency

“It’s Not a Problem: It’s an Idea Emergency!”

-Imagination Movers

My 4-year-old daughter’s favorite program is the Imagination Movers: 4 silly guys from New Orleans who reframe ‘problems’ as ‘idea emergencies.’ I, too, love the program but at first I was skeptical that their lessons would make their way into my daughter’s everyday life. Then the other day she was on the phone with her grandmother, who was struggling a bit with Skype (she has owned an iPod for 2 years and still hasn’t figured out how to work it, so I’m impressed that she’s gotten as far as she has with Skype!). After hearing the tinkering around on the other end of the phone line, my daughter said, “Grammy, this is a problem! No…it’s an idea emergency!” After which my daughter came up with several ‘solutions’ (including having Grammy simply hang up the phone and board a plane) and Grammy did finally get connected.

(more…)

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Radical Possibilities

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

“Anything is Possible!” – this is one of the explicit messages U.S. culture feeds to its youth. From Kevin Garnett to self-help gurus to Debbie Gibson (not that I owned a Debbie Gibson album in the 80’s, I swear…), cultural icons, parents and teachers tell our children that anything is possible, that the world is their oyster. This message is even more prevalent now that we have elected our first black president, and the first president in quite a while whose campaign was about collective possibility: “Yes we can.”

But in reality mainstream media’s implicit messages present a very narrow range of possibilities to young people. This is not new information for any of the readers at Shaping Youth or Project Happiness. We all know that sex, money, fame and power are the commodities that big business is selling to our youth (and through those commodities, they sell their physical wares: video games, food, clothing, etc.). But I’m guessing that most of you haven’t examined this information from the point-of-view of an undercover linguist. That’s what I’d like to introduce here – because I think it gives us a different perspective on the specific limitations being placed on possibility. So shut down your computer if grammar makes you queasy because here comes a mini-grammar analysis of possibility and pop culture:

Since Debbie Gibson is one of the original cultural icons to make the claim for limitless possibility (and also the claim that she’s “lost in your eyes” – also worth exploration, but perhaps at another time…), let’s look at the possible roles provided by pop music language. Below are the title lines of this week’s top 10 hits from Billboard (highlighted pieces are the actual titles, with links to lyrics):

1. Are you down?
2. It’s a party in the U.S.A.
3. Who’s gonna run this town?
4. Whatcha say?
5. I gotta feeling that tonight’s gonna be a good night.
6. I’m your biggest fan; I’ll follow you until you love me, papa, paparazzi.
7. Been here all along so why can’t you see you belong with me?
8. Why you so obsessed with me?
9. You know that I could use somebody, someone like you.
10. Empire State of Mind (Title not in song. First line of chorus: New York. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there’s nothing you can’t do, now you’re in New York.)

Since pop music, like most of mainstream media, focuses quite a bit on sexuality, let’s break down the language of each top 10 song by gender:

Roles Women Get to Play Roles Men Get to Play
1. Being down Inquiring about state of down-ness
2. Partying (no explicit mention)
3. Being desired Running the town
4. Inquiring about an affair Apologizing for an affair
5. Anticipating partying Anticipating partying
6. Desiring and following a man Being desired and followed
7. Desiring a man/being unseen Being desired/not seeing a woman
8. Being desired by a man Desiring a woman
9. Accepting/declining relationship offer Declaring readiness for a relationship
10. Presenting possibilities to a man Narrating New York accomplishments (essentially ‘running the town’ as in #3)

One thing you might notice on first glance is that women are indeed becoming more equal: they are not simply desired by men, but desire men as well. And both men and women enjoy a good party (co-ed, of course). But men are still the ones with the only roles outside the dating and partying game: they get to ‘run the town’ (which includes, but is not limited to, partying). And heterosexuality is not just the preferred paradigm, but the only paradigm. And (this one I was honestly surprised about) both a homosexual slur and a generic foreigner insult are present in the songs on the top 10 list (and the lyrics websites, which leave out well-recognized swear words, do not edit these offensive phrases).

So where does that leave young people? ‘Possibility’ comes from the same Latin root as ‘potent’ (play with an online etymological dictionary one day – so much fun!), from the Latin to have the power to/be able to. The powerful corporations are not giving young women and men real power; instead they are handing out heterosexual attraction and masculine competition.

But we do not have to choose these possibilities; we can choose the radical possibilities presented by sites like Shaping Youth and by the “Project Happiness” documentary, being shown this weekend at the Mill Valley Film Festival. This film follows high-school seniors from California, India and Nigeria as they investigate the nature of happiness and begin to see the possibilities for true power: compassion, forgiveness and community.

Richard Davidson, a prominent neuroscientist interviewed in the film, talks about the possibilities inherent in the brain, particularly the young brain. Scientists used to believe that, after childhood, the brain was pretty much stuck: it couldn’t behave in new ways. But scientists like Davidson are discovering that the mature brain can change. In fact, the brain grows 5,000 new brain cells a day. This growth – or plasticity as it is called in the literature – means that:

“All of us, and youth in particular, are in a constant state of flux and change and that gives you radical possibilities for growth and development.”
-Richard Davidson in “Project Happiness: The Film”

It is these radical possibilities that the young people in the film discover and that all young people can discover. We do not have to accept the roles handed to us by mainstream media. Instead, we can create new roles and new possibilities. This means that anything is possible – we have the power to make it happen.

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Throwing Kids A Lifeline

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
The timeless conundrum...

The timeless conundrum...

It probably comes as a huge surprise that someone with a Ph.D. in Slavic Linguistics was not the coolest kid back in high school. In fact, you will probably be amazed to hear that the secretary of the Latin Club (not even the president – it’s a geeky position inside a geeky organization!) was the butt of many of the popular kids’ jokes. My lack of self-awareness didn’t help: for instance, in order to find out how to be popular, I brought a notebook to a school dance and, following the scientific method, gathered data to find the ‘formula’ for popularity. My husband has pointed out, now many years later, that one of the observations I did not make was that…nobody else was taking notes!

Oddly, however, I was pretty happy in high school and, if asked, I would have described my social life as “pretty good.” On the whole, I was confident in my gifts and was connected to my friends (I won’t impugn any of them by calling them geeky, but they know who they are…you evil people who subjected me to endless hours of discussions of the relative worth of the various Dr. Who’s…). I was, to be sure, anxious about my academic performance and prone to overreacting, but I had a lifeline of friends, family, teachers and counselors. This lifeline helped me to weather the storm and maintain resilience through the cruelties of high school.
…

Bullying is a topic that has been overdone lately in the educational literature. And with SAMHSA’s (the federal government’s mental health branch) launch of their bullying prevention program, there are tons of resources out there for teachers, administrators and parents. But there was no Project Happiness approach, based on compassionate communication, finding your gifts, and self-nourishment…until NOW!

As I talk with more and more facilitators, one of the central needs emerging this year is parent trainings. Parents want to help their children – and bullying is just one of the more prominent examples – but they often don’t have the tools or the confidence to talk with their teens. In response to this need, Project Happiness has developed a number of parent trainings, including a special training on bullying complementing the SAMHSA program. Through experiential learning, we give parents a way to build a common language with their teens around social and emotional wellness.

Somehow, way back when, my parents instinctively spoke that language. They spoke to me without judging, were genuinely interested in my experiences, and nurtured the social relationships that were supporting me. Nonetheless, I was quite a difficult child and I was so socially out of place by the end of third grade that they had to make special arrangements to send me to school in another district. It was there that my parents and teachers nurtured my first set of healthy and supportive social connections. My little group of friends were not the class leaders or academic go-getters, but they taught me social management: how to show compassion, nurture collaboration, peacefully negotiate conflict, and make ethical group decisions. I lost touch with these friends (until now, thanks to the miracle of Facebook!), but they were the foundation of my resilience. And it was my parents who recognized and nurtured this connection.

If you’re interested in parent trainings for your school or program – either run by someone at your school or the Project Happiness team – please contact me and let me know. We want kids to have as many lifelines as possible: thrown by their teachers, their parents, their friends and, most importantly, themselves. Let us know how we can help bring some of these resources to your school or program.

Abby Konopasky, Ph.D.
Director of Education
Project Happiness
abby@projecthappiness.com
(650) 833-3882

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A Challenge Worthy of One’s Gifts

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

mister_rogers

While I still have to remind myself to take a deep breath and calm down, I think I do pretty well when faced with challenges these days. The other day I managed a work phone call while assisting my 3-year-old on the potty and making sure my 1-year-old didn’t unroll the entire toilet paper roll (half, maybe…). So I think I’m doing pretty well.

But as an adolescent I did not respond well to challenge – I saw it as a test and, thus, as something I could fail. My parents were sensitive to this anxiety and realized early on that indirect requests worked much better than direct challenges. But then school started and, well, you can’t avoid challenge there.

My first catastrophic response to a challenge came in elementary school when we were challenged to use our bodies. My body was not then, nor is it now, up to any kind of challenge involving coordination. I once crashed my bike into our neighbors’ yard because I couldn’t figure out how to pedal backwards (luckily, the neighbor was a doctor, and I got some free medical help). The big game they loved to have us play in elementary school was kickball. I was always among the last 2 or 3 children picked for a team, which didn’t do much for my self-confidence going in.

One day, after I caused our team a few outs, the teachers couldn’t find me when it was time to go back in to class. My response to the challenge had been simply to walk home. I remember my thinking: “Hey, my mom is just a few blocks from here. This game stinks. Why don’t I just go home?” My mother had been putting my sister down for her nap and she heard the front door shut. When she came downstairs she found me relaxing on the couch watching Mr. Rogers. Of course Mom brought me right back to school. And the next week a fence appeared around our playground – no more escape from kickball!

Although I was a pretty smart kid, I didn’t respond well when challenged to use my mind either. Once, after what I perceived to be an embarrassing performance in math class, I tried again to leave the school. Unfortunately, this was after the advent of fences around school yards and I was inside the school and this was my middle school, located about 10 miles from home – all factors working against me getting home for a nice, relaxing afternoon with Mr. Rogers, his comfy sweater and his friend, Henrietta Pussycat. But I did try to escape, resulting in the principal having to physically restrain me and an (I still claim inadvertent) kick in the principal’s shin (a few days’ suspension for that one).

Thanks to my parents, my teachers and patient administrators (like the one with the bruised shin), I made it through secondary school and into college. I learned how to manage my emotions and deal with academic and (minor) physical challenges. But it wasn’t until college that my school institution challenged me to use my gifts for personal connection. The Tucker Foundation (the college’s volunteer organization) challenged me to direct and further develop the Adopt-A-Grandparent program, pairing college students with elderly men and women who needed help and community. Phi Tau, my co-ed fraternity, challenged me to work with my peers to create a fair and comfortable community. And my supervisor at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston challenged me not only to interpret for the hospital’s Russian patients, but to make them feel part of our community.

What I responded to as a young person, and continue to respond to now, is a challenge to create community. And this is what we are challenging you and your classes to do: to use your individual gifts and talents to create community, however you define it: you classroom, your school, your neighborhood, your city, your country, or your world. We have created a 7-step project (to go with the 7 chapters of the Handbook) that culminates in the germination of a plan, a plan for your students to bring more happiness to their community using their gifts. This challenge to community can be found in chapter 8 of the Facilitators’ Guide (let me know if you still haven’t received one – I’ll send you one via e-mail ASAP), but I’ve reprinted (sadly devoid of the lovely orange background — too technologically complex for me!) below:

A CHALLENGE

I. Ask students to interview a community member using the “Exploring in My Community” activity on p. 14. Share your results as a class and try to find commonalities. What have you learned about your community that you didn’t know before?

II. After reflecting on “My Defining Moments…” on p. 35, find people in your community who have suffered and struggled and ask them to share their defining moments with the class.

III. Have students reflect on “Ideas about My Gift” on p. 67. Then have everyone share their greatest gifts with the class (it can be anonymous) and compile a list. Ask students to show the list to 3 community members and interview them about how they feel these gifts might relieve suffering in the community.

IV. After learning about active listening (pp. 102-3), explore resources for those suffering in the community (counseling, state resources, etc.). Do those resources provide true listening? How do they work to relieve suffering? Is there anything missing?

V. After writing or talking about “Reflecting on Compassion” on p. 113 and summarizing what you have found out about the community, begin to brainstorm about how compassion in action could be applied in your community.

VI. After reading about “Interdependence…With Others!” on p. 145, guide your students in tracking the ways people suffering in your community are interdependent, looking at family, business, government, schools, media, crime, etc.

VII. After reading about the young social entrepreneurs on pp. 167-168, use all the information you have gathered to create your own social entrepreneurship, either as a class or individually.

And there will be an incentive (beyond the rewards of community building). The class that comes up with the most amazing social entrepreneurship (as judged by our expert staff at Project Happiness headquarters) will receive a prize to be announced in next week’s blog. So, stay tuned…

And I still think Mr. Rogers’ words are some of the best advice to someone panicked by challenge: “I like you just the way you are.” We all have gifts and struggles and we are all truly good, just the way we are.

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An Invitation to Teachers: The Project Happiness connection

Sunday, September 13th, 2009
Catching up on some very important reading!

The new Director of Education catching up on some very important reading!

September 13, 2009

Hello to Current, Past, Prospective and Eternal Project Happiness Teachers:

I’m writing to introduce myself: my name is Abby Konopasky and I am Project Happiness’ new Director of Education. For those of you who have worked with Maria Lineger, she’s still on board, but we couldn’t keep her away from the hands-on, experiential work that is so critical to our program. I am fortunate to have her foundational work to build on and her guidance to do it.

Let me start by telling you a bit about my path to happiness, and Project Happiness in particular. I come from an academic family and I carried on the tradition by getting a Ph.D. in an obscure field: Slavic Linguistics. I taught Russian, then writing, then English, linguistics, pedagogy and ESL in my final academic position at the University of New Orleans. Then Hurricane Katrina not only wiped out my home, but my job and community as well. I was 8 months pregnant with my first child at the time and saw the obstacles to my happiness as insurmountable. My husband used the opportunity to change careers, starting law school at Stanford University the next academic year. I went with him as my daughter’s primary caretaker, unsure of precisely where I belonged: Mother? Educator? Researcher?

Without knowing it, I was completing a Project Happiness curriculum of a sort. I worked on self-awareness, identifying the things about my job and my parenting that brought me lasting happiness and developing self-confidence. I learned self-management and how to combat my Monkey Mind, particularly my feelings of depression. Through trial and error I developed a cadre of positive thoughts about myself and my future. I worked on social awareness and social management, finding joy in showing empathy and compassion to other mothers of young children at Stanford. We developed a loving and interdependent community, working together and negotiating our differences.

Nearly 4 years after the heartbreak of Katrina, I decided that I wanted to use my gifts to improve the lives of adolescents. That brought me to Project Happiness as a volunteer and, as they say, the rest is history!

It is not, then, the SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) research studies or the pilot program testimony that make me such a strong advocate for The Project Happiness Handbook. It is, rather, my own personal journey: the gifts of self-discovery are too precious and the risks of self-ignorance too great for us not to share these tools with our children.

And you will find that I am a strong advocate for the curriculum (perhaps too strong for some of you!). Adolescents need help finding the eye of the storm*, particularly in the face of obstacles like:

•Bullying:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/09/03/high.school.put.downs.study/index.html,

•Depression:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/saffo/detail??blogid=79&entry_id=46284,

• And even national anxiety over things like the swine flu: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/health/08well.html?hpw.

While Project Happiness is not a cure-all, it is a way to start the conversation, a way to give adolescents, parents, teachers and even the community a common vocabulary to open the lines of communication.

This year The Project Happiness Handbook is being used in many locations (across the U.S. and Canada and in Rome, India, Nigeria, Guatemala, Australia and Nepal) and in many contexts (performing arts, leadership, yoga and meditation, living skills, adult enrichment and teacher preparation, to name a few). But we would love to spread it even farther and broader. And we want to help existing programs explore the curriculum’s rich resources and build new ones.

To that end, I’m putting out a call for connection. How can our team help? I can help you navigate our large curriculum, make lesson plans, facilitate project-based learning, make your classroom a more mindful and nurturing place, and create opportunities for your students to reach out digitally and in person. E-mail or call me any time.

Also part of this call for connection is an invitation to reach out to other like-minded facilitators. What are you doing with The Project Happiness Handbook? What is working for you? What are you struggling with? Would you like to connect or collaborate with another class? I invite you to either respond to this blog post (go to www.projecthappiness.com, click on Blog, and then on What do you think?) or join our Google group for facilitators by e-mailing me at project-happiness-facilitators@googlegroups.com.

I look forward to meeting, speaking with, or e-mailing with all of you over the course of this exciting and challenging school year. I wish you luck guiding your students on their journeys and continuing your own journey. I am still in shock that I get to work with such extraordinary teachers on such a remarkable project. So bear with me as I get used to ‘directing’ the program – I will be looking to you and your students for the true direction.

Abby Konopasky
(650) 391-7012
abby@projecthappiness.com

*See page 26 in The Project Happiness Handbook. “The Eye of the Storm” is an activity that teaches students to find the calm center in the midst of struggle.

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From Flower come Flowers: Field Report from Kathmandu

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Hello, I am Kaurav (Khil) Bogati from Kathmandu Nepal. Nepal was thought of as a beautiful and peace country in the years before our favorite king was murdered. Late King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev is regarded as the best king in our history. He was the source of authentic happiness in the minds of Nepalese people. After his untimely death our Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal which is now called Republic of Nepal is suffering from strikes, blockades, demonstrations, electric power shortages and lack of drinking water. In this crazy situation I found PROJECT HAPPINESS and Rolando Sandor.

Through the Project Happiness organization I am going to bring happiness to the students of Nepal so that it may spread all over the WORLD. I am the luckiest person in the world to work with this project. I also hope that soon we will all unite and bring real happiness which has eluded us in the past. Children are the golden star of our future. With good modern education and technology they can change themselves for good. It begins with personal change and then they can change their family society, nation and the whole world.

I work with the students at Tarun Secondary School. Because of limited resources and severe disruptions to the educational schedule, I’ve only done a few activities with the students from the Project Happiness curriculum. All students in this school come from humble families but are always looking for that golden opportunity to make their life better. I will not let more obstacles limit teaching positive education and to love other human beings. I believe we change the perspective of people for good, then automatically good creates greater good.

I along with my students, I wish to thank everyone at PROJECT HAPPINESS and everyone who is part of this great movement for lasting world-wide change.

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Being online is good for you!

Monday, November 24th, 2008

The SCHOOL ProjectA new study funded by the MacArthur Foundation describes some ways that being online can be good for teens.

…we found that spending time online is essential for young people to pick up the social and technical skills they need to be competent citizens in the digital age.

According to the MacArthur Foundation:

The researchers identified two distinctive categories of teen engagement with digital media: friendship-driven and interest-driven. While friendship-driven participation centered on “hanging out” with existing friends, interest-driven participation involved accessing online information and communities that may not be present in the local peer group.

We introduced digital media within Project Happiness in order to achieve several goals:

  • Emphasize story-telling as an essential way of sharing experiences and feelings
  • Enhance students’ abilities to coherently explain and illustrate what they’re learning (in other words, enhance their skills in written, visual and auditory expression)
  • Preserve stories for future reference

Please visit our SCHOOL Project pages to see some of the video and other arts produced by Project Happiness students around the world.

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GLF on -Privacy in a School Setting-

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Privacy in a School setting

The George Lucas Educational Foundation, a good resource particularly for teachers, has an article that has provoked some discussion about when it is or isn’t appropriate for someone to record students and then post the recordings online. Keep the Lens Cap on: Internet Security and Privacy in a School Setting

If there’s a musical performance at school and a parent video tapes the performance, can they put it up on YouTube without any worries? What if the parents of one of the students on the tape doesn’t want their teen to appear on YouTube? What about the copyright on the music that’s being performed?

Thorny issues with lots of potential ramifications.

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