December 5, 2014, Prescott-  I’m a bit late with this one, but yesterday was full, and exhausting.  I actually slept until 8, this morning.

Anyway, after getting my car’s tires rotated and balanced, Friday morning, I headed to work, on a half-day assignment.  It was an afternoon with two sections of kindergarten:  30 five-year-olds.  There was little core academics, it being Friday afternoon, and all, but teaching social skills is still a large part of Kinder.   The big item of the day was cleaning up, after thirty minutes of play with manipulatives.  I basically had two rules for that playtime:  Share items and space; No running around in the classroom.  At clean-up time,  I called “High Five” and held up my hand.  There was complete silence, so I simply said, “See this mess; clean it up”.  Within five minutes, all items had been put away and the room was spotless.  Yes, there were thirty five-year-olds, and 16 of them were boys.  We will be in good hands, when I reach my nineties.

There are two ways of handling groups, as I noted yesterday.  Inner peace, reflected from the person facilitating a group, is essential. It touches all, even the most troubled and self-loathing person in the group.  Of course, such a person needs extra assistance and attention, and may need to be removed from the group, in extreme cases.  That was not necessary yesterday.

In the evening, there were two gatherings:  A Christmas dinner, in business attire, and a drum circle, to which I went, in my vest, shirt and tie.  The Christmas dinner found me listening, with rapt attention, to a person slightly older than I, who has led an amazing life- from studying Psychology,under the late Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, when he was an Army captain and teaching at USC, to leading Search and Rescue teams in the high desert and Rocky Mountains, alike.  The peace that comes from a wealth of experiences is indeed exemplary. The Drum Circle, held monthly, is always a soothing and centering occasion.

So, December, a rather expensive month, financially, is also a time of rich and peace-imparting events.  I will discuss another of these in the very next post.