Last night I watched a good portion of the CNN celebration of Heroes in the world today. They were all ordinary individuals with a vision or idea of a way to help a single person or a group of individuals one at a time. None of them believed they were heroes. All of them were leaders.
There was one of them that really struck me with a comment she made in her acceptance speech after receiving an award. She said, “It is quite a comment on the world when showing respect for or doing an act of kindness for someone is deemed heroic.”
I would agree with that. For us to be leaders though there are skills and knowledge needed along with being able to look at situations and see what we can do to make a difference. Our acts of leadership do not need to be so large that they affect every human on the earth. In fact if we start with that goal in mind we are less likely to be affective. We can change the world of individuals and those around them. When we are willing to help one person soon we find that we are affecting so many more.
In our own community we have heroes. I will comment on some of them in the future. But I believe that our children have that ability too if we develop it. This is one of my goals for this year coming in 2009. You may want to follow my Leadership Blog and look for some training sessions we will be doing this year coming up. If you are interested in your child learning the skills and getting practice to be a leader, contact me at Balanced Life Skills and lets see how we can do this together.
Tolerance
Young students
Tolerance means: “Even though we’re different, we can all get along!”
Older students, teens, adults:
Tolerance means: An attitude of openness and respect for the differences that exist among people.
Shopping Safety Tips
More of us will be out shopping in the next few weeks than normal and so in our Be Safe Annapolis we have put together a few safety tips. More will be coming as we work on helping Annapolis and Anne Arundel County to be safe.
Be Safe Annapolis
Acts of Kindness
We reached our goal of 1000 Acts of Kindness and surpassed it. At the end of the day on last Saturday we had accumulated from our students, parents and friends.
1825 Acts of Kindness
Now the question is, Can we do more? I believe that as a community we could become known as one of the kndenst communities in the nation. It does us and our kids so much good to think about the act of being kind. I am going to leave our form up for you to fill in your act of kindness.
Just think if you did one act per week that would be 52 acts of kindness in a year. What if your family of 4 each did the same? In one year you would accumulate 208 acts of kindness. If you got 4 of your friends families to do the same that would be 1040 Acts in one year. If they each got 4 friends families to do the same we now have an additional 3328 acts and the numbers keep growing.
Would you do an act of kindness each week? each day? Lets do this together and have an impact on our community!
Help a Teacher new request
Hilltop Elementary School has a need for some art supplies. Now while the list is long, is it possible for us to fill a small part of the need? This would be a great act of kindness to this school and teacher. If you are able to fill a part of these needs please just let me know and we can up date the request.
Here is the link to find out what we can do.
Art supplies for Hilltop Elementary.
For more information about the Help a Teacher project please go to our website.
Rain Barrel awareness at Leadership AA
Yesterday afternoon I had the privilege of sharing a few minutes with Leadership Anne Arundel Flagship class of 2009 at their Environmental Day. It was being held at Arlington Echo with the wonderful staff there helping out and some great speakers. One of the artist who has participated in our Rain Barrel event from the very beginning had provided us with a beautiful painted barrel that we auctioned off.
We were able to announce the following:
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In 2009 we are expanding our program to involve more schools including Rolling Knolls Elementary.
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Our auction and awareness day will be held at Arlington Echo.
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All of the proceeds of the auction will benefit Arlington Echo and their education efforts.
One more note on this project. Recently we were able to assist the Children’s Museum of Washington DC to do some painted barrels that were part of the Green Expo on November 8,9 at the convention center in DC. They have offered to partner with us on creating barrels in 2009 and we will be working together on bringing this program to Prince George’s County Schools.