Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) for Everyone!

  "One day . . . or day one.” -- Anonymous   Cherokee Month of the Windy Moon   SEL:   #1 Self-Awareness           #4 Relationship Skills Digital Learner:   #4 Creative Communicator   A friend of mine asked me if I was listening to the “whispers of diminishment” inside my head. I was discouraged, disappointed, deeply upset, agitated, and distraught. Yes. This was “energy-confetti” because it caused me to pause building my business -- in a negative way. If I pause to reflect and re-plan, fine. If I am numb and quit working, that is something else. Also, being funny doesn’t happen for me when I am low-minded. And, a critical part of my work is humor. Now what? Some people in my life were part of the “whispers of diminishment” campaign: “You’ll never write anything.” “People don’t make a living by writing.” This is hilarious to me in hindsight. This person subscribed to magazines, bought books, and rea...

"One day . . . or day one.” -- Anonymous Cherokee Month of the Windy Moon   SEL:  #1 Self-Awareness           #5 Responsible Decision-Making Digital Learner:  #1 Empowered Learner Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.” We cannot live vicariously through someone else’s learning, recovery, training, etc. Each of us is responsible for the thoroughness of our own lives. I was quite careless with time in my twenties. Now, many decades later, I wish I had some of it back. I chose to build a new business three years ago, when my husband died. I took start-up business classes from my local small business development center. Guess what? I was nowhere near the effective time-manager I thought I was. I began to log my time and mentally put my life through a big funnel. Drip. Drip. Drip. I reconfigured my work plan. I decided who would h...

  “One day . . . or day one.” Anonymous   Cherokee month of the Windy Moon. SEL:   #3 Self-Management              #5 Responsible Decision Making Digital Learner:  #5 Knowledge Constructor                               #6 Computational Thinker My husband taught me a technique and I have found it profoundly valuable in social, family, and business settings. Working on a team can be complicated, even if it is a team of two in a marriage. We had an intense discussion for about seven minutes until one of us asked, “Hey, is this a blow-it-off?”   As a drummer, for my husband, a blow-it-off could have been about driving in bad weather, other musicians in the band, the truck, the gear, the trailer, the venue, or the attendees at the venue. For me, school and my students can be festive, but a drive to school in poor weather, bad d...