debor016

The Happiness Project I attended a YWCA Women in Leadership Luncheon on Wed, (I am a past winner). The speaker was Gretchen Rubin, the author of The Happiness Project   or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun (Harper; 1 edition, December, 2009). She was kind enough to give each of us a copy of her new book, Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life ( Harmony;1 edition, September, 2012). I have been reading it and like it quite a bit. Of course, I was reminded of something I emphasize strongly in my teaching these days: what if our actual job is to help these kids to be happy? But aren’t we supposed to be making them behave better? Ms, Rubin speaks to that in her discussion of whether it is selfish to pay attention to one’s own happiness: “I sided with the ancient philosophers and modern scientists...

I thought I would let you know what we have been doing and what is coming next. This may also help explain why I have skipped some weeks writing in my blog. I have been doing quite a bit of training in California. In an agency outside of Los Angeles we trained RC Basic, the Restorative Approach, and Train-the-Trainer. We also did a Train-the-Trainer and a Recertification in Santa Rosa. Steve has been extremely busy working on a research project we are doing in the Yukon Territory in Canada. We are so lucky to have the continuing support of Courtney Baker from Tulane University. While Steve was in the Yukon he made presentations to several government leaders, hopefully leading to a wider adaptation of RC. I presented a webinar for NEARI press on the Restorative Approach, the topic of my book which they publish. In fact, we have become webinar pros. We have done several webinars for our trainers, on topics such as shame, supervision and neuro-feed back (coming soon). Of course ...