Last week I read you a few pages from a book I'm reading "How May I Serve You" by Lori Desautels. Lori is a professor in Indiana and she is also a supervisor and teacher for Indianapolis Teaching Fellows and Teach for America Programs - she teaches 5th grade part time(!). Jennie Donnels and I attended Lori's inspiring session in Des Moines in early August and it truly is magical the work she is doing and the brain research she has conducted around compassion and teaching those students whom have experienced trauma in their lives. The following is an excerpt from her book.
"When we keep doing, never stopping to listen to the wisdom of our intuitive organ, the heart, or to the words of one another, we spin in suffocating circles of negative emotion, because what we all crave in the end is to feel successful, to feel we have made a difference, and to feel worth of what is before us. The only lasting way to attain these feelings of self-worth individually and systematically comes from within, where the power and magnitude of heartfelt compassion reigns. When we see and imagine the best in one another, we begin to posit those feelings, experiencing improvement across all facets of our lives. Optimism is contagious. Perspective drives learning, teaching, and LIFE, and we must return to the power of playing with "perspective" as we enter into the conceptual age of educational reform and expansion."
- Lori Desautels, How May I Serve You?, p. 15, (2012).
Spread positivity. Spread optimism...it's contagious.
