THIS IS HUGE! We have an anonymous donor who is challenging us to raise $15,000 towards our annual $30,000 goal, and they will donate $15,000 as well!
Shared from the website Zero to Three, I wanted to share these suggestions, which offer some starting points for parents who want their children to develop a just and inclusive worldview.
In this podcast, Steve Sachs, former co-director of Alaya Preschool, was interviewed on the Soul Path Parenting podcast about drawing on the wisdom of the Buddhist tradition to inspire Alaya’s approach to early childhood education.
My son Odin is in Alaya’s Snow Lion classroom, and a recent discussion at the community night led to me writing this post about food and young children. I work as a speech and feeding therapist in the community, and I love helping families create happier dynamics at home and in life.
We all seem to be experiencing- to one degree or another- an unusual weight of adversity right now. To have tremendous kindness towards ourselves and to model this for others and for our children might be the greatest gift we can offer. We may not feel our best much of the time or be on top of our game. Can we accept this and soften our self-expectations?
Over the next couple of years, and as a part of honoring Alaya Preschool’s 40th anniversary (!), we will be exploring our Principles of Practice. These are 15 different expressions of what happens here at Alaya; they provide a direction and purpose to our work, and perhaps even to our lives altogether.
With Thanksgiving and the holidays afoot, I find myself considering how to make time and space for more of what really matters. This time of year invites me to go inwards, to create more space for reflection, and to find time to connect more deeply. Its a time for creating or continuing traditions – and for celebrations rooted in what really matters: sharing, gratitude, creativity and joy.
A recent community night at Rowan’s preschool (which was founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master and lineage holder), reminded me how lucky I am to send my son to a school honoring the tradition of Shambhala Buddhism (the teachings of which are grounded in the premise that there is a basic human wisdom inherent in human experience, where bravery and fearlessness are cultivated and a ‘basic goodness’ in ourselves and one another is celebrated).
Genuine relationships are what inspires many parents to have their children here at Alaya, many teachers and staff to teach and work here, and is a guiding principle for many people. But what is it? What is the experience of being genuine? How is genuineness cultivated in ourselves and how is it taught, if it even can be taught?
