The school year finishes in 8 days and you can tell that the children are eager for summer and the teachers are ready for a break.
When we arrived at the school today for the teacher training, many of the teachers had just been told 2 hours before of the meeting. I knew we had some work ahead of us!!
We gave a brief review of how our coping channel is just like our favorite radio station. When events and stress happen, things get all static and we hit the scan button looking for a clear channel.
So it is with coping, our core channel gets lost sometimes in all the emotional and physical stress of an event. Gradually we began to see teachers let down a bit, nod their heads and become engaged in what resiliency is.
Then the FUN began. As the teachers squirted the paint, some started laughing, some sighing and few said “I am so glad we can play!”
In 2005 Hurricane Katrina wiped out the Bay Bridge. For those not from here, we had little ability to understand the significance of the catastrophe.
Yes it was inconvenient to travel out on I-10, but we had never known another life as disaster relief workers. When the bridge reopened on May 17th, 2007, shouts of joy as the community felt like it was coming back.
TODAY IT DID! The Bridgefest Festival was the first since Katrina to be held on Main Street.
The overwhelming spirit and vibe in the air was "we are coming BACK!" Reverberated everywhere, two bandstands were set up, over 80 vendor booths and of course lots of great southern food ;-)
Children played on water slides and painted murals with their hands, artists painted pictures, candidates for office kissed babies and the memories of Katrina faded yet again.
Our mission for the 2nd Annual Crawfish Boil was to provide the children with fun things to do during the event.
Not sure who had more fun, the children or us!
A beautiful sunny warm day with low humidity and a great sea breeze! Everyone was ready to play.
One of our activities we learned from the Resiliency Training is to have the children create a "Yes I Can" poster.
We sat and talked with each child about what they Can Do! At first they were a bit reluctant, however after a brief time, posters were filled with positive fun goals, such as; have a great summer, do good in school and go to college.
