Jayne checked the recycling boxes in school and emptied the papers. We discussed the benefits of recycling bottles and cans. We talked about what would be needed to add bottles and cans to the recycling program at school. Jayne spent some of the time working on her novel on the computer.

Leadership/Holiday Activity
Kaitlyn helped package candy bags and gathered supplies in preparation for Valentine’s Day. These will be distributed to each student in the school on Monday.

Jayne and I worked on her Green Project - ensuring that all student rooms have a recycling bin. We set up the bins to distribute in the rooms.

We studied the work of Chris Voss, who was an FBI Hostage Negotiator, and who knew councils internationally who worked on the Art of Negotiating. Empathy, active listening, and diplomacy were discussed, as were many practical tips for approaching interpersonal relations with a goal towards both parties leaving the interaction feeling fulfilled.

The early portion of this lesson on Wednesday 12/19 involved some challenges in communication between Henry and another student. I was able to present Henry with some reflections and wisdom regarding his approach and most of the negative thinking he was projecting into the situation. Henry was able to come sit next to me in the main student lobby, and he calmed himself as I played relaxing tones from my Bluetooth speaker. I was able to convince Henry to sit and drink some hot tea with me, so he went into the kitchen and made our cups to drink. During that portion of the lesson, Henry seemed to be completely balanced compared to the hour and thirty minutes prior. When Ms. Judie came to inform Henry that he would be going home early due to the incident at lunch, he immediately broke-down and became visibly upset and disappointed. This was a challenging moment for himself and I, but I sat by his side and encouraged him while holding him accountable to this actions and words during the incident, by reminding him that he could have chosen differently and the outcome would be different in that moment. After a relatively short period of time (approximately 20 minutes) Henry came around upon my request for another game of Chess, and within no time we were engaged in another match of Chess. Henry did end up being picked-up approximately 15 minutes early, however, he seemed quite calm and balanced despite the two prior emotional/behavioral setbacks no less than 2-hours early. Despite the negative nature of his communications and conduct at the very end of lunch and spilling over into our session, Henry made significant progress in my opinion, because he managed to overcome these challenges in communication to bring himself back to a state of calm in a quick and timely fashion. I sense that the connection and trust between him and I is progressing, because he showed signs of listening and heeding my words and advice, albeit at his own pace. Nonetheless, I was proud of Henry's perseverance in overcoming these challenges.

During this lesson, Henry and I played game of Chess, which I often have used to discuss the strategy embedded therein. Henry was excited as he has been anticipating this game since the prior week. It was interesting to see how many students at Batt were interested in the game as a small audience quickly assembled. Henry remained focused, and played with a lot of effort and fortitude in overcoming. Henry decided on an aggressive attack, but made an important mistake when he failed to see his exposed Queen mid-way through the match. At the end of the game, when asked what his most critical mistake was during the match, Henry quickly pointed to this error. I used it as an opportunity to discuss his strategy, as well as my counter defense to his attack. I noted that he must be willing to take steps backward in his attack when he uses his power pieces that have flexibility in their mobility, especially the Queen. Furthermore, I summarized for Henry that our reflection at the end of the Chess match, which is important for the development of any person, is perhaps the most vital aspect of any defeat. Henry performed quite well and seemed to understand the notions I was connecting between leadership and Chess.

Today's lesson wasn't productive or positive in the slightest. Henry refused to participate in any discussion, activity, or general dialogue which I attempted. Our interacts have deteriorated to the point of Henry speaking over me with "blahs", "borings", and "I-don't-want-to's." Seemingly, there is nothing I can do at this point to engage him in anything other than play or senseless discussions of an incoherent and childish nature. The end of today's lesson was particularly difficult as Henry began to strike me repeatedly with a wooden toy-broom; kicking me with his dirty sneakers, stepping on my shoes, and getting dirt and other markings on my suit and expensive dress shoes which was very disrespectful since I had requested him to stop more than a handful of times. I have tried to rationalize with Henry regarding his interactions with others, his speech toward others, and his approach toward learning, yet he simply refuses to listen or allow me to get a word in edge-wise. I'm struggling to find any common ground with Henry at this particular moment in time, which is the reason for my concern. His actions of striking me with the broom and attempting to put his dirty shoes on me without respect for my requests for him to stop nor respect for my personal property came out of nowhere. Needless to say, I am at a loss for how to move forward in this particular circumstance, and I am fully open to suggestions and assistance on this matter.

The first half of this 2-hour session included the Ornament Decorating Holiday Activity and outdoor fun playing baseball with other Batt School Scholars. Henry created a nifty-looking ornament, which he made into an elf. He was able to successfully overcome obstacles when constructing the elf ornament; however, this required me to pose questions regarding the goals he had for its appearance. I used a sort of Socratic questioning and gave him visuals I was able to access from Google Images. Following the ornament decorating, Henry and I began playing catch with a baseball outside in the playground area. Another Batt School Scholar joined us and it quickly became a fun game of batting practice, which ended with Henry hitting a home run on his first solid hit of the baseball. As a transition to the second half of the lesson, Henry and I sat in the main study area while he asked me a variety of questions regarding the symbolism of the Menorah comparatively to Christmas. We also discussed Yoga and Wellness, and I was able to help Henry perform an assisted Headstand after some modeling of the pose and a brief explanation of the physics of its execution. During the last portion of the lesson, Henry attempted to resist my efforts to engage him in a discussion on Leadership, particularly the characteristics of a leader. I was able to use examples from the day's lesson, my own character as a model of a good leader, and a Time magazine cover with the recently deceased former President George H.W. Bush to guide the discuss despite his unwillingness to participate and efforts to distract the course of our discussion. Toward the final fifteen-minutes of our session, Henry became completely disconnected from any efforts I made to attempt any instruction, so I used that time to provide suggestions for him to more effectively interact on a much more mature, scholarly, and healthy level during the less playful, hands-on, activities-based portions of our lesson in which he thrives. I discussed the need for balance in our session, proper forms of communication, and the types of behaviors and speech that would be beneficial to his success as well as the forms that would not be constructive nor generally tolerated by myself or others. I gave him direct examples to illustrate how I as a leader needed to work with him to succeed in our efforts, how I as an effectively leader needed to overcome obstacles while maintaining balance, appropriate communication, and accountability for the wellness of the sessions. Despite the struggle at the end of the session, Henry and I had a successful overall interaction today, and I look forward to helping Henry continue to grow in these capacities discussed herein.

Student was absent

In the previous lesson, we began to discuss leadership and the qualities of a good leader, I sought to tie this into our study of Civics. Today, we looked at the resource of Time. I had Elle take a quantitative look at her free time Monday through Friday each week. We reviewed all of the daily/weekly activities she participated willingly or by obligation. She began to see that her time was quickly distributed to those various tasks, and that, extra time for other fun activities was, in fact, scarce. I was building her understanding of the challenges that regular people have with managing scarce resources like time. Eventually, the goal is to have her understand how leaders make tough decisions under the same context of scarcity. We will continue this discussion next lesson.