Contributions in a short week that ends with pie!

Happy Thanksgiving, All!

This past week started off with a healing bouquet from Jordan’s (Dillon, WW) family Malibu home. She shared reminders of the life that thrives in the midst of the fires with bougainvillea and eucalyptus picked from their garden.

Then, Beto donated a frozen turkey to auction off for the staff! What a sweet surprise from the guy who fixes everything around here – now for the fixins…

And Evelyn won the turkey raffle!

Our Thanksgiving Feast was a great success with gratitude all around. Thanks to all of you who provided the children’s menu and to those who volunteered to help serve. It’s such a sweet, loving tradition.

Tamar was at last week’s WW team meeting and shared this reflection:

Last Thursday 11/16, I joined our WW teachers’ meeting in which teacher Jen shared her initiative at the Communication Center and asked for input. What seems to be another teacher meeting, procedural in the flow of the day, actually has a well thought out agenda, and what a team of dedicated and passionate professionals, aka our amazing teachers we have.

The meeting’s focus was the work done at the Communication Center which promotes connections and enables friendships. Their work is multi dimensional

– partner easel painting- kids relating to an emotion by answering specific question, ie: ‘what makes you happy?’ while a teacher documents the answers

– journals- the children express their feelings by choosing a color-coded emotion symbol and say why they chose it.

– Storytelling- Teacher Jen presented a video in which a group of 5-6 West Wingers working as a team, collaborated and created a story together using persona dolls and drew it, scene-by-scene, on a piece of paper. This exercise called, symbolic storytelling, aims to also support kids with expressing their emotions.

I was inspired as a witness to the process of a group of insightful ‘child whisperers׳ molding ideas together through a constructive, open minded, and respectful debate into strategies/methodologies. Truly teacher magic.

The learning is an on going, open ended process and I can see how that passion transcends to our kids. I love the kind of learners our kids are turning out to be: inquisitive, open minded, resilient, great teammates, collaborative, respectful and kind.

Thanks for letting me be a fly on the wall Jen, Flora, Cynthia, Astrid, Silvana, Cindy, and Kris. I really enjoyed being witness to the process.

And we are so thankful for you and all you do.

Happy Thanksgiving-

Tamar Levin

(Arnon, WW)

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