Report from the P.E.A.C.E. Retreat, June 2023
Last month, P.E.A.C.E. members met in person and via zoom, at the Mercy Center in Auburn, CA, for our annual Retreat. The agenda covered a variety of topics regarding our accomplished work and new, upcoming events. We discussed the 2024 NAEYC Conference, and to submit a proposal together with our allies Educators for Peaceful Classrooms and Communities (EPCC).
This year’s NAEYC Conference will be held in Nashville, November 15th through the 18th. Watch for the announcement of the date and timing of our annual meeting. We deliberated and chose our 2023 Peace Awardees: Angela Davis, Barbara Cooper, and Monica Moran. The awards will be presented at this annual meeting.
Fran Roznowski stepped down after several years of being PEACE’s Treasurer. Thank you Fran for your dedication and support. Our new Treasurer will be Donna Satterlee. We will meet again next year for the retreat at the Mercy Center, this time separately from E.P.C.C., on June 20th through the 23rd.
During our retreat, we had a special visitor, Kelly Bliss, who shared her own personal journey on discovering her Native American roots and who provided us with some valuable resources regarding customs and the appropriateness of children’s books that reflect Native Americans. We will provide you with an insightful article on her presentation in the August edition.
Also, the PEACE Mini-Grants program played an important role at this year’s retreat. The reports from each of the six Peace Projects were shared. They provided a fine window into the work that the programs had accomplished this spring. Susan Hopkins shared the following reflection regarding the projects:
As I listened with great interest and delight to the six Peace Projects for this year, funded by the PEACE Mini-Grants program, I heard several themes emerge. I will describe them in the order I heard them, without priority.
Several of this year’s projects extended those from previous mini-grants into new areas of building peace:
- books about connected topics, i.e., feelings, community, activism
- comfy chair with a heart pillow for creating a secure place
- yoga with children
- creating outdoor spaces (i.e., music and magnet wall)
- class fundraiser for a community organization such as Hospice
- feelings box to share personal feelings anonymously
It seems that repeating projects in ways that extend the learning beyond the first year of funding tends to yield bigger results as the projects are expanded. This time around, we also noticed that teachers worked to develop their own skills to benefit the children such as enrolling in yoga and gardening classes to learn more.
Projects reaching out into the local communities, with intentional goals such as caring for others and giving back to the community, have been very successful in terms of providing opportunities for children to engage in the wider world and give to others as they learn about differences, addressing needs, respect, and many other important life lessons.
Finally, many of the Peace Projects included family collaboration with the children as families participated together in creating gardens and meeting other classroom needs. Children benefit greatly when their families are partners.
Clearly, these small grants provide incredible opportunities for teachers to extend the learning possibilities in their programs. Their creativity seems to know no bounds as they use the funds to provide and extend their goals for building peaceable classroom communities for children.
We look forward to more inspiration from future projects and hope you will follow the future 2023 newsletter editions, as the Peace projects will appear month by month, starting with this month’s edition. Please also consider becoming a project leader or sponsor for the next round of awards coming this fall.
We encourage you to donate and contribute to the continuation of this good work!
