Using the Enneagram as a Tool for Empathy

I’ve never had much interest in personality tests, until I was introduced to the Enneagram of Personality by a close friend (and former TREE facilitator!) around five years ago. Since then, it’s something that I reflect on often as a way to have a deeper understanding of myself and to have a stronger understanding of […]

Why We Should Actively Listen to Others

Actively listening to others is an essential skill that can benefit both the listener and the speaker. Active listening involves not only hearing what someone is saying but also paying attention to their body language, tone of voice, and overall message. Let’s explore some reasons why active listening is so important.  Firstly, active listening builds […]

Mindful Eating

Mindfulness is a large part of our TREE curriculum, where students are encouraged to practice various mindfulness techniques to manage their emotions.  In my experience, the toughest part about introducing the concept of mindfulness is the idea that it requires a lot of time or perfect stillness to reap the benefits. On the contrary, mindfulness […]

Connecting with Nature Mindfully

I took up gardening a couple of years ago in an attempt to eat healthier and circumvent the rising cost of fresh produce at the grocery store. What I gained through that experience has been a reconnection, not only with the natural environment, but with myself. The routine of watering, weeding, and harvesting the vegetables […]

The Rewards of Celebrating Differences

One of the TREE workshops that I facilitated in the last session was with a Grade 1/2 split class, using the TREE Grade 2 curriculum. I really enjoyed working with the students and their teacher, since they were nice students who listened quite well and had high participation in group activities. But of course, some […]

Building Empathy

In the fourth week of TREE’s Grade 3 Conflict Resolution curriculum, the focus is on Empathy. How to build empathy for another person, and how to show empathy to another person. At the beginning of the class, the students are asked to share some of the feelings that they have experienced before. Everything from sad, […]

Becoming an Active Bystander: Online Bystandership

When thinking about being an active bystander, we often think of examples from when we are at school, our workplaces, or in public. What is more difficult to think of, but just as prevalent for most of us, (if not more), is how we can be an active bystander in the online world. Having a […]

Becoming an Active Bystander: 5 D’s of Bystandership

When seeing harm happening in our communities, it can be difficult to know what we can do about it. It often takes time to know how to intervene, and can be difficult to think of in the moment. The 5 D’s are a few methods that can be used in different situations when we see […]

Becoming an Active Bystander: Positions and Terms

It is not uncommon to hear about harm of different kinds on the news. We hear stories of physical, mental, and emotional violence in different ways – both targeted and non-targeted. Among these stories, we might also see heroic acts from people who were nearby and what they did to stop the violence. I often […]

Reframing Self-Care

Lately, I’ve been holding so much appreciation for the ways in which we talk about self-care at TREE.  In the third week of our Grade Six curriculum, we discuss stressors in students’ lives that might cause messy emotions and impact how we can approach peace and conflict in healthy ways. Once we unpack our individual […]