Valour Circles in Schools

Valour Circles in Schools
Date: 14th November 2019/11:35 AM

It has been long since I had time to write a blog about something very interesting, useful  and important in our lives, our emotions and how they effect us at times and how we take them for granted both in kids and adults. Emotions give us very important data not about ourselves but even people around us, what they are going through. I think it's very important for educators no matter what age group of kids they are teaching to be aware of not only oneself but others too. It's a common observation that students are told be rigid, strong and firm, and leave their emotions behind while making decisions. I wonder parents or even educators ever think, in doing so they are ripping apart their kid of a very unique ability, strength, which is god gifted. Acknowledging emotions is the first step to handling them. Dr Susan David, a Harvard Psychologist in her Ted Talk talks about emotions as data and not directives. She further says emotions are like a chocolate cake in the fridge, the more you ignore it, the more you feel the urge to eat it. Thus, the emotions need to be addressed, by acknowledging them and  taking action aligned steps, she used the term emotionally agile to address the emotional issue. It's strange nor schools, nor colleges teach kids how to handle or address their emotional issues. These unaddressed issues over time wreck havoc on the lives of students. While skimming through HundrED innovations, I came across this unique innovation called Valour Circles, which could be used to address social emotional issues, it basically talks  about personal growth and development in all dimensions of life and how it is incorporated in schools. The blog basically looks at Valour Circles  in detail and how it can be introduced in schools and universities across Pakistan. 

So lets begin by exploring what is a Valour Circle. Valour Circle was basically the idea of Darren Dickson who is a therapist and Chief Cultural Officer at Valour. He learned the model from an innovative team at  the Family Life Center in Petaluma and then used the model at several schools at Seneca. He saw circle actively being used in different schools, where the children and adults come to life , they learned to trust each other, and tried to understand the power of growing together with a community and not being isolated. Since the impact was huge and apparent he thought of bringing in to Valour. Valour is a continuation and extension of the work seen in schools in Seneca. In Valour the educator firmly believes that growth happens when one feels safe and secure in the environment. A place where the child knows he/she would not be judged as being right or wrong, a place where the feelings and emotions are valued and validated without questioning. It's a community and individual development approach. Valour has currently extended to three schools and had impacted almost 1750 families and scholars.

Valour has a diverse and inclusive school community. The school model has four core anchors and the school function accordingly to the four anchors. The most important anchor is the Valour Compass. The Compass is at the heart of all human development, teachers are trained to deliver compass integrated content. All the academic content is integrated with the Campus framework. Children need to have a sense of their lives, of who they are and what is their purpose in life. The Valour Compass helps both teachers and students have a deeper insight about themselves. The Compass basically focuses on what it means to be human and the its basic elements surround the very concept. Compass integration means growing in heart, body, mind and spirit and how developing in each of these dimensions will help the  individuals grow as a human. For example the Sharp mind looks at growth in the mental dimension, sharp heart looks at growth in the emotional dimension, noble purpose looks at the spirit dimension, aligned action looks at the physical dimension, in the center is the True North where you focus all the four dimensions. Every community member develops their own compass which helps them guide smoothly through their own development process.

  

Schools have Valour Circles weekly where a group of individuals (can be either students or teachers)sit in  a circle , facing towards each other. This activity is done at least once or twice during the week for 30 to 60 minutes. The teacher takes a mentors role and provide kids the opportunities to develop social and emotional capacities within them. They place lots of emphasis on social emotional learning practices. They strongly believe that to be successful in life, kids need to be trained to learn from people who are not only similar to them but are different from them too. It's done in a structured manner. There is a true north activity, it can be a mindfulness activity, so every one feels relaxed and focused on each other and the people around them, students weather check in, share how they are feeling, and then begin their work, students share the phase work they have been doing. For example, the topic assigned to them was religion, and students were asked to write 3 opposing and 3 supporting opinions, and they are asked to share what did they learn from the experience. One of the students share they have to be kind to people with different perspectives. One of the teachers in the videos talks about how Valour circles has helped  girls grow in schools and how these girls are helping other girls grow. I loved the sentence which says, be good, do good, stay fierce and keep growing sounds, so motivating for students. The Valour staff meet every week and repeats the same activity. One of the teachers shared an activity he did in the Circle, which he called Taking Responsibility, which is used for repairing the relationship within the community, he does the same activity with the kids everyday.

The whole Valour program happens in 8 phases spread over years, each phase has different sets of activities that are linked to the core anchors in the circle human development model. These phases are linked to initial commitment, commitment, taking responsibility, leadership etc. The students in a video shared a 60 day challenge, where they had to do ten random acts of kindness towards some one and then write their reflections about it.  The students shared that without these acts they would not have been able to write about them or think about them. The teachers do not force students to just fill in the sheets, they encourage and support them to write to the extent that makes them feel comfortable. Its an opportunity to know ones values, what matters to you the most and it takes time. While skimming through a grade 8 lesson plan, I am a legend, I came across content that links to the core content of the Compass model. Students have to read Paulo Coelho's novel The Alchemist, they will then work on one of the themes from the novel, which says, we are all on our path to become a personal legend. All questions given are related to the personal legend.  These are about ones personal legend, comparing with other peoples personal legends, looking at the role of the community in achieving the legend, analyzing how is pursuing your noble cause similar to finding your true north and son on. Through the activity students will realize that their personal legend is their noble cause or purpose of existence, they will find their true north. They will analyze their own journeys leading to a true north, compare their journeys to the journeys of the literary figures they have studied so far in their semester. This will be followed by writing an augmentative essay answering the questions shared about the personal legends, they will defend a claim, explain their personal legend and how it links to the noel cause and support it with citations from the Alchemist (reasons, evidences etc)

Now, lets move to how can we bring this system in schools and universities in Pakistan. Teachers need to be trained to use Circles in classrooms and integrate the core anchors of the compass model in their lesson plans. For example schools could introduce Circles , a weekly 30 - 45 minute meetup of students at the end of day (or may be during the day), where students do meditation, share how they are feeling, talk openly with what scares them, or bothers the, create an environment of trust among students and teachers, teachers take time to talk about their experiences to gain students confidence, then students can talk about the project they have been assigned and how they form links with the core dimensions of the compass model, the heart, mind, body and spirit. They could be assigned a project where they work in a community (for example start teaching kids in a near village or town, in an orphanage, street school etc), design small community service projects, talk and share about how they feel about those kids, how are their perspectives on life different then theirs, how knowing them better as helped them evolve as strong individuals, how has working with these kids changed their thinking, how has the experience help them evolve spiritually and emotionally. in every Circle, students share about their experience (make links with dimensions in the compass). Teachers could design reflective sheets which students take along when they visit these kids.

Even when students read different stories in the text books, novels in the course,teachers could design questions that link the content to the core dimensions of the Compass model. They could be asked to write essays in response to those questions. For example, during one of  the sessions in the MPhil program, the course instructor share a story from an Urdu textbook, the story was about a girl being constantly beaten by people who bought her. Students could be asked to explore similar case, analyze their findings, how this behavior effects the heart, mind, body and soul, and how this takes away one from their core values, purpose and north star in life. Students could think of alternatives and come up with solutions to help sharpen heart, mind, body and soul. They could then share with the whole school too. This might help parents and educators reflect on their behavior with kids and how it affects their learning.

Most people in Pakistan still read news papers instead of news outlets available online. These news papers end up in trash cans or bins end of the day or month etc. Students could do a project around these to help their community members. These could be used to make paper bag and sold in the market, the earnings could go to the needy children or the deserving children in the society forced to live in not so appropriate circumstances. Teachers could design questions around the use of these newspapers, how the effective use could result in the sharpening of the mind , heart, body and spirit, how does it help enhance compassion towards fellow beings, how does reading stories in newspapers impact feelings, views, opinions of a different part of a society? how do these stories impact them as individuals, does it help create a more tolerable society and so on.

The same practice could be adopted by the teachers in schools. They could hold Circles once a week, share and discuss in an open, non judgemental environment what stresses they go through, how they handle them, what are their expectations from people around them. Discuss and share the projects they have been doing with the students (integrating the Compass model), build each other up and accept each other as they exist in time and space students mirror teachers behavior, if they observe teachers being compassionate towards each other, they will adopt similar behavior.

This blog just introduces you to Valour Circles, to understand it deeply you might need to skim through the resources given below and available on their websites.

I hope you enjoy reading, find it helpful for you and your students and think of ways to bring Valour Circles to your school and community.

Signing off till my next blog post soon InShaaAllah.

Regards and prayers
Sheeba Ajmal


References:

1. Emotional Courage and Agility, Ted Talk, Retrieved from

2. Valour Circles, Retrieved from https://valorcollegiate.org/the-valor-compass/

3. Lesson plan, I Am a Legend, Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/document/d/13ZcGapz-9GzRitym_prQC-cjd-vxdAo2VIcyPXFUZZI/edit#

4. Tom Berger(2018) SEL as a foundation for Academics , Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/sel-foundation-academics