World Wide Project of Peace & Hope “1000 Papercrane Challenge”
by Ninfa Laurenzo ECC
“Put a desire in your heart and let it fly with a paper crane.
It will come true when you count 1000 paper cranes”
The Japanese legend
This is the project for the StarT Project Contest in Finland, Europe. Crossing fingers!
With the Peace Project we intend to involve the parents so they develop consciousness of the values and take part in the formation and education of their children by participating in activities that will take part as family events. These events and projects will involve developing tolerance, solidarity and respect for other’s values. These qualities are the pillar for living in a just and peaceful society that extends from the school to community and from community to our society as a whole.
What is #1000papercrane project about?
Our Peace Project at Ninfa Laurenzo Early Childhood Center (Houston, TX, USA) was initiated with the desire to promote values of peace, respect, tolerance and love. These values represent the base of a free and just society and are the actions that come from the citizens. Our Education Center is located in a community that is made up of citizens from different nationalities, as are many of the communities in the United States. Generally the community is characterized as having a peaceful environment, yet on occasions there are situations lived which are not very positive or peaceful. The current climate worldwide has many instances which are taking us away from a Peaceful World. Educational Institutions are charged with the responsibility to teach values of peace and respect, thus supporting the initial teachings that come from the home so that we can live in a civilized, peaceful community. We are seeing the need to strengthen our teachings and plant the seed in the future generations beginning with the youngest ages.
Ninfa Laurenzo Early Childhood Center is a school where the curriculum includes variety of techniques for the development of emotions, feelings and behavior. All the teachers have been trained by Houston Independent School District with the program Conscious Discipline, which includes techniques and strategies for teachers to use to help children focus on negative emotions and practice self-control with the use of breathing and breathing. In addition we include other strategies such as mindfulness, yoga, Tai-Chi… Due to family circumstances and cultural behaviors there are some students that demonstrate aggressive behavior towards the teacher and peers when their ideas are not respected or tolerated. These students have poor capacity to manage their emotions in a positive manner.
Our story
Our journey began when we found that there was a need to promote values of peace, respect, tolerance and love. We mentioned before that these values represent the base of a free and just society and are the actions that come from the citizens. Our school is located in a very diverse community, like Houston and our entire country, United States of America. Our Education Center is located in a community that is made up of citizens from different nationalities, as are many of the communities in the United States. Our community suffers from several situations that are not very positive nor peaceful, plus the current climate worldwide is not an example of a peaceful world. This is why our school is really concerned and we have take responsibility to teach our students values of peace and respect, promoting a peaceful community.
We have implemented several initiatives the last two years that have impacted profoundly the lives of our students. Last year we implemented yoga classes in the classrooms which resulted in the reduction of office referrals and the overall improvement of students behavior. During the year school we also included in our daily schedule a guided meditation with the students, which combined with yoga resulted in better behavior and students more relaxed throughout the day. This year we lost our school counselor due to budget cuts, which was a great loss to our center due to the excellent rapport that our counselor had with our parents who needed helped. Combined our yoga, guided meditation and other mindfulness activities helped us address our loss of our counselor and encouraged us to keep looking for more ideas that can help us to improve and promote coexistence, tolerance and peace. This project help us broaden our current initiatives and we became more encouraged to transition our commitment from our classrooms and our center to our community, and the whole world.
The following information can be read in the wikispace page of this project: https://1000papercraneschallenge.wikispaces.com/World+Wide+Peace+Project.
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