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 […]
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 […]
Exploring Peace: Israeli/Palestinian Youth Navigate Conflict in Powerful Documentary
The world has united in many ways to support Ukraine and voice their concerns for the ongoing violence that Russia is imposing on them. It can be difficult to comprehend how peace skills can make a difference when such large conflicts are taking place around the world. However, I try to remind myself that the […]
“Calling In” Versus “Calling Out”
Whether it be at a family gathering, in a classroom, or out in public, we are all likely to experience that moment when someone around us says something that is problematic and reinforces oppression. As a transgender person, I am constantly faced with the dilemma of how to respond when I am misgendered, or asked […]
How Students Can Get Engaged with Online Learning
During the past two years, we have had to change our lifestyle to accommodate our health and those around us. We changed the way we socialized, the way we greet each other, our work environments, and most importantly the way we receive information. However, even though we shifted to virtual learning, the general teaching style […]
