Director of Ethical Education Blog
I hope you all had a great Spring Break! I'm thrilled that we're back with one of my favorite activities of the year -- Stream Cleanup!
For folks attending, please meet at the Ballanderson's house at 10:45. If you haven't already let me know that you're coming, please do via the Paperless Post invitation or through email or text. We'll be ordering pizza, so a rough number of how many people to expect would be helpful.
Don't forget your reusable water bottles and I can't wait to see you all on Sunday!
Join us to discuss Ibram X. Kendi's newest book, How to Raise an Antiracist. This series is open to anyone who has kids in their lives -- not just parents! We will be reading a few chapters each week and, because the book focuses on different ages in each chapter you can join in at any time (or for the whole series)!
I'll be posting more details on the website, but please let me know if you are interested in participating and I will be sure to share details with you as they are posted.
As you may have seen in the March newsletter, the kids participated in a fun design sprint last month. Last week, we continued our work by starting a project to help us "leave animals alone". What we decided on as a group was to create a game that we could share with others to share ways to avoid having a negative impact on our ecosystem. We spent our time together brainstorming and came up with a great idea...But we need your help!
At platform on Sunday, I'll put out some sheets of paper for you to write down ideas in two different categories:
I sent out a book club survey in last week's newsletter. If you happened to think, "wow, I should definitely fill that out" and then immediately forget and move on to something else then I have great news for you! The survey will be open for a few more days!
Please fill in your preferences by the end of the day on Tuesday, 3/14. After that, I'll be picking the days and times and advertising more broadly.
On a programming note, tomorrow is our Service Project day! We'll be continuing our work following our design sprint last month and figuring out what we want to do to "leave animals alone". With Jim's help we have some great options for places to raise money for or outreach activities that we can do and I'm looking forward to co-creating our next steps together!
I'm really looking forward to March, when we have four solid weeks of class before April's schedule of Spring Festival, Spring Break, and Stream Cleanup!
Here's our schedule for March:
March 5: Regular Class (Every Day is Earth Day for K-2, Comparative Religion for the older kids) March 12: Service Project building on our design sprint from last week March 19: Regular Class March 26: Regular Class
For those of you with kids in your life, I also have an ask of you! I'd like to organize a virtual book club to read How to Raise an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi. I want to make sure that we have the best chance possible at landing on a time when people are available, so please fill out this survey to let me know what does and doesn't work for you.
“By asking people for their input early in the process, you help them feel invested in the outcome.” (Jake Knapp)
In my day job, I often joke that I can turn anything into a (modified, short)design sprint https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-sprintsdesign sprint -- an activity where a diverse group come together to work together to brainstorm, narrow down solutions, and prototype ideas. Whenever we're faced with a big, ambiguous problem or a wide variety of solutions and idea that we need to organize I pull up a virtual whiteboard and we organize our thoughts on sticky notes.
When thinking about our next monthly service activity, I realized that I wanted to let the students help define what we work on between now and June. We're going to kick that off on Sunday with our own mini design sprint and I can't wait to see what the kids come up with. I'll bring the sticky notes and markers and I hope our students bring their ideas and open minds!
Thank you so much to all of you who signed up to bring something for Darwin Day! Keep an eye out for an email this morning reminding you of what you signed up for. If you aren't able to bring it, please let me know and I'll plan to go to the store in the evening to pick up anything outstanding.
I think it's so valuable for the kids to see us all chip in to make this successful. They're ready to do their part on Sunday!
Next Sunday, February 12, is Darwin Day! The Sunday School students are bringing back their tradition of serving banana splits after platform so I hope to see many of you there. This Sunday, I'll have a sign-up sheet at the front table in case you'd like to bring any ice cream or toppings. We'll provide bowls, napkins, utensils, and anything that doesn't get claimed.
I'm always happy when we're able to bring the NoVES membership and Sunday School together. NoVES membership is always so supportive of our Sunday School, and I really appreciate all of your help and support!
This Sunday, some Ethical Societies across the country will be sharing how their students put ethics into action. I wanted to take this opportunity to share how our own students have helped the community in the past several months.
As you may know, our students do a service activity each month. This year, I've focused on bringing student choice into the activities and sharing the impact with the kids to help them understand the value that these activities bring to the community.
Did you catch Elliot's interviewing debut last week? It was so much fun to listen to him interview Betty-Chia and Hank about their experiences in the Civil Rights Movement! I want to take a moment to extend a huge "thank you" to Elliot for taking on the role and for all of the work (and Betty-Chia and Hank!) did to prepare.
In case you want to learn more about some of the events that we discussed, links below!
