Hear Our Voices Ep. 1 Community

With great gratitude comes great appreciation. Thank you and have a wonderful summer!

Dear Richard D. James, Thanks for all the nightmares. Here is a bedroom beat inspired by the goodness of Aphex Twin. Yours, LMSolfeggio

5 of 10 ways to cultivate gratitude (join us for 6-10) 1. Create a Gratitude Ritual. 2. Send a thank-you note. 3. Give a free hug. (if that is appropriate and welcome) 4. Give thanks for today or just try to find the space to be thankful you're alive! 5. Do someone a free favor. 6. Give a little gift. 7. Give someone a list of all they've done that you're grateful for. 8. Acknowledge them publicly. 9. Surprise them with kindness. 10. Say thanks even for negative things in your life.

This month we will focus on gratitude as an essential SEL Skill. However, due to the most recent acts of gun violence we need to pause for a moment of reflection, and a venting of our own unpleasant emotion information, before we get into our work with gratitude. Join us for this important work.

We are considering some of the traits of optimism. When bad things happen do you recognize a way to explain them as, general in life, specific in incident, and temporary overall? Join us for this!

When you explain the "why" something is bad when it is bad, do you make personal, permanent, and pervasive? What does that even mean? Let's find out.

May is AAPI Heritage Month and we are considering the skills of Seattleite, Wing Luke. We do not know Wing Luke but we can look at his life and guess that he probably had the skills of using both pessimism and optimism in order to make positive change in our community. You can too! Join us!

Do you recognize a pattern in the way you explain to yourself the "why" behind the way things are? Did you know that you can learn to recognize how you explain things to yourself? Join us for this important learning!

Did you know that you can have a choice about how you look at things? Sometimes you may want to see things through a positive lens. Sometimes you may want to view things through a negative lens. The choice can be yours, when you know how to use it. Join us!

Understanding your perspective (your point-of-view) and other people's perspective (their point-of-view) is one of the foundations of empathy. Empathy is an important Social Emotional Learning Skill. Join us for a short connection between perspective and empathy.

We are starting this month's theme of perspective by thinking about point-of-view. Hear a story and some great quotes about perspective. All featured music created by our own community! Join us!

Adapting well is dependent on the culture of and context of the situation and the people involved. Today we share a story that may help you think about resilience in your life. Join us!

Resilience may be most easily defined as the ability to adapt well after a challenge, setback, or struggle. This week are asking students to reflect on their skills of resilience. When is a time you were able to bounce back after something difficult? Join us!

Have you had times in your life when you've continued working toward a goal even when it is difficult? That's perseverance. You have it in you. Take time to reflect on your skills and experience!

We are starting Women's History Month strong, by focusing on the SEL skills of Perseverance and Resilience. Knowing how to use Perseverance and Resilience can help you achieve your goals. Find out how!

Taking more resources than you need may keep others from getting what they need. This is called resource hoarding. In schools bullying is a form of resource hoarding. See the connection between this and so many other things in our latest episode. Music to highlight Black Excellence - Bring the Noise - Public Enemy Changes - Tupac Shakur Still I Rise - Maya Angelou Don't Believe the Hype - Public Enemy

Resources matter. Not having enough resources to do the things we need or want to do is called resource scarcity. When resources are scarce we need to ration what we have to make things work. Join us for thinking about this in our school community. Special music: Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud - James Brown Multi Colored Blue (with Wynton Marsalis) - JLCO Mood Indigo (with Wynton Marsalis) - JLCO

Understanding how resources like land, air, water, time, and human life energy shape our emotion information is foundational for knowing how to build and maintain healthy relationships with self and others. Join us! Special music from the Benedict College Trombone Section - Black and Blues

Pausing to remember our skills of empathy. Empathy is the ability to share in the feelings of others from different backgrounds, cultures, experiences, and social situations. Join us for this important refresher. Special guest music: Sweethearts on Parade - Louis Armstrong New Orleans Function - Louis Armstrong No Fun - The Stooges What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong

We need to pump the brakes for a second and check-in with how we're feeling in regards to the experience of "worry". Are you feeling a lot of worry these days? Are you worrying more than you'd like to be? Join us for this important pause.

Social Engagement is one way to keep the work of the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. alive. Join us to see how to apply SEL skills in your community! Guest music: Coleman Hawkins - Body and Soul Laura Karpman & Raphael Saadiq - Never a True Believer

Starting with basic definitions for school: Equality = Same Equity = Fair Paradox = D'oh! Music samples from Roy Eldridge, Van Halen, Our School Choir, He Who Shall Not Be Named Join us!

Happy Holidays!

Just a quick welcome back. Wishing you a wonderful reconnection with friends in school.

We are thinking about making connections through humor. Humor often utilizes references to other things. Basically, we're telling jokes this time! What a great way to start a week! Join us!

Connections are about seeing relationships between things. We are starting with the relationship between food and relationships. How many times can we say relationship in this description? #Relationship

We may receive messages about our identity all the time. But do we make time to reflect on the emotion information that can come from a variety of different messages? Join us as we start to look at some of the many ways messages can impact our identities.

"Us & Them" is a big part of our social landscape these days. It probably has been since time immemorial but with self and social awareness we might start to understand ourselves (and "them"selves)a little differently. Join us/them!

Did you know you can thing of yourself as more than one identity? There are many ways to reflect on who you are. Join us as we explore self-concept from 5 different pathways. Native American Heritage Month music - Angajuksakuluk - Northern Haze

In what ways do you identify yourself? Do you share identity with any groups? Join us as we start to work on understanding identity. Native American Heritage Month Music - The Halluci Nation - Electric Pow Wow Drum

Empathy is the SEL skill that allows us to share in the thoughts and feelings of others from different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences. It is also the ability to use energy to support the folks you are empathizing with in ways that they identify as helpful. It's a "must- have" skill. Join us!

Who is responsible for ensuring people receive their protected rights? Are famous Tik-Tokers responsible for making a better society? Only the hard-hitting questions this week. Or, "This Week Only - The Hard Hitting Questions!" Join us!

What protected rights do American citizens have? What ones would you want to live without? Join us! Hispanic Heritage Music: Fonseca - Gratitud

We're starting to unpack what citizenship means. For us, the way in is recognizing protected rights and expected responsibilities. We begin this sweep by focusing on rights and responsibilities in our school. Join us! Hispanic Heritage Music: Natalia Lafourcade - Mi Tierra Veracruzana Bostich - Polaris

A recap of our first month. What's the state of our community? Do people feel accepted? Do we all know the expectations? Do we have someone to talk to when we need support? Join us! Hispanic Heritage Month Music Feature - El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico - Brujeria Brujeria - El Desmadre

Communities share goals. The path toward goal achievement is paved with expectations. Some expectations are easy to spot, some are not. What happens to our brains when expectations are "challenged"? Join us! Special music this week - Los Lobos - La Pistola y El Corazon Lionel Belasco - Go Away Gal Pleasurecraft - Comfortable

Do the members of a community need to all feel and think the same? What if some folks feel different? But what if those different thoughts and feelings are...? This is what we're tacking this week. Join us!

Community matters! A sense of belonging matters! One way people can feel belonging is through feeling accepted as a part of something. Feeling accepted builds belonging which creates community! Join us as we start to explore acceptance and belonging in our school community.

For our last podcast of the school year we make time for reflection and gratitude. Join us and consider some things you may be grateful for, even if this has been one of the strangest/hardest/weirdest/worst school years ever. There may be silver in those clouds if you look for it.

The Covid-19 Vaccine is now available for people age 12 and up. Dr. Helen Chu visits with us to answer many common questions about the vaccine. Join us!

Now that 12 - 15 year old students are eligible for the Covid 19 Vaccine, would you get it? Join us to hear from folks in this new category. (plus some oldies chiming in still.)

What is your hope for school in the fall? Sometimes you talk. Sometimes you listen. Sometimes you do both.

Back in the building, after a year away Everything is going...forward. Let's hear what folks are saying...

It's April Fools on April 5th. Does humor belong in schools? Let's hope so, otherwise it's "f's" all around for this week's SEL podcast. Join us?

The rise in awareness of bullying and harassment against people in our community who identify as Asian American and Pacific Islander can stop, if we stop it. Today we look at understanding how we may have gotten here, choices we can do when facing unpleasant or challenging emotion information, and how we can make things different and better. Join us!

Who are the people in your neighborhood? What can you learn from them? Today we interview our very own Julia Detering to learn about how perseverance and resilience have supported her in her life. Join us!

The last part of perseverance we call adaptation. But adaptation is also part of what defines resilience. That's one way these skills are connected. You know where you're going and you know where there are obstacles. The way you adapt and come back is called resilience. Today we have a special guest, Attorney Dana Brown and we can learn from her how resilience can bring success. Join us!

This week we're working on furthering our understanding of perseverance and resilience by recognizing the roles that self-esteem and reflection play. Join us as we unpack these essential skills!

What are resources? How do resources shape our lives? An SEL lens helps us understand the relationship between things. Join us!

Women's History Month is a great time to focus our Social Emotional Learning on understanding Perseverance & Resilience. These words are not just singular skills but are representations of many skills. Those skills are very important and can be taught and can be learned. In fact, one great way to learn these skills is through the stories of women in our society. Join us!

Humans are capable of tremendous resilience and creativity and energy and effort. When we see others modeling for us the depths of human strength these actions become examples of the resource of human spirit. In this episode we name some folks who we think all Americans should know. And who we think all Americans can learn from. Join us!