Introduction to Teaching Inside-Me Stories
Volume One, Teacher’s Edition for grades 3-5 and
Volume Two, Teacher’s Edition for grades 1-2
Combined Edition
Volumes one and two of the Inside-Me stories teach children how to listen and talk from a place inside themselves called the bodysense, their inner knowing and wisdom. Once they learn the essentials, they can proceed to develop the skills and talents of empathy and compassion, deal with conflict peacefully, resolve and heal conflictual relationships, form healthy and healing relationships, become aware of their emotional life, learn how to express inwardly felt experience and emotion, learn how to modulate their affect, as well as many more skills. This is part of the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs popularized by Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books, 1995).
Authors Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan (Meeting at the Crossroads, Ballantine Books, 1992) bemoan the fact that girls conform to societal pressures and lose their ability to have their own inner, embodied experience. They talk about a young girl, Neeti, who "struggles to hold on to her experience — to know what she knows and to speak in her own voice…." They conclude that the loss of this voice would lead to the loss of her greatest desire, "the possibility of authentic or genuine relationships." (P. 41).
The objective of the SEL programs is to produce human beings who have learned important social and emotional lessons in childhood which then allow them to grow forward into happier, more mature and productive adults. Goleman and others have identified how important it is to include the training and development of social and emotional skills in the school curriculum. The program we have developed, including the bodysense, compassionate, empathic communication and Inside-Me Teaching Stories, is unique among SEL programs. Being in touch with and operating from the bodysense promotes experiential growth which is addressed in no other way.
Please note that the stories for grades 1-2 and those for grades 3-5 are organized differently.
The Inside-Me teaching stories for grades 1-2 are most often read by the teacher. However, if your students have the reading skills to handle them, it is good to let them participate in the reading. They will have ample time to participate in the sharing around each story and in the various exercises they can perform. The "Exercises" which the teacher can refer to are the end of each story.
The Inside-Me teaching stories for grades 3-5 are intended to be read in the classroom in a play form. The part of the teacher, Ms Roy, is best played by the teacher. Before reading the story aloud, it is helpful to give the children time to read it silently — inside themselves. They can become familiar with the words and get a sense of the character they might want to play. This acts as a reading assignment, initially. When the play/stories are read aloud, it gives the children an opportunity to practice their public speaking skills. They get used to performing in front of an audience. After reading the stories aloud, there are many creative ways to utilize the stories.
We have provided many suggestions about carrying each story forward into some creative and healing exercise. The Inside-Me Teaching Stories lead to creative expressions from Inside-Them. Your students can write their own Inside-Me Stories, and more broadly, produce a variety of Inside-Me creative works, from inside themselves. There are study guides for the students in grades 3-5 which they can use to maximize their own learnings. With each story is a teacher’s guide containing ample suggestions for fully utilizing these teaching stories.
Most important, you teachers can use your own imaginations to generate other ways to help your students carry forward their experiences and help their delicate emerging shoots open to growth. Because you, yourselves, will receive training in this model, you will be able to teach from your own inner experiences. This program is most successful when it becomes a way of life in the classroom. There are many live situations where this material can be used.
Your students’ exploration of their inner-scape can lead to a wonderful collection of their own Inside-Me stories, journaling, drawings, poems, sculptings, songs, plays…. They will be able to notice the growth in their creativity and maturity as they review their beginning work and the work that follows. They may want to keep their own record which they can add to over the years.
For grades 3-5, in the very first lesson you present, you will be helping your students define the bodysense, experientially. You will lead them through a simple exercise that gives them this inside experience. This experience acts as their dictionary — they have lived the definition. They begin to have a common experiential lexicon from which to start sharing their experiences.
Perhaps, what will surprise you the most is how naturally your students take to this. Based on our own experience of teaching it, the students’ ability to identify and describe their own bodysense is immediate, strong and deep. This points to how natural this bodysense-based process is. You are not going against nature. You are joining with it, and this is a very strong teaching position. It is in these early years that children start veering away from using their naturally occurring bodysense as an inner path to wisdom and healthy growth. Utilizing the bodysense is, in fact, a most solid platform for social and emotional growth. We need ways to help us retain this special ability.
We can, fortunately, intervene with a method adults have been trained in for over a quarter of a century. After years of research, in 1978 Dr. Eugene Gendlin of the University of Chicago published his groundbreaking work, Focusing (Bantam Books). As adults used this method of Focusing, as Gendlin called it, to reclaim their knowing of their own bodily felt sense (referred to here as bodysense), they found themselves healing and growing. And they often were astounded at how familiar this felt — to be in touch with their own inner experience through their bodysense. Gendlin, a philosopher and psychologist, found that people who could Focus in therapy spoke from their experience, not about it. This made all the difference in their ability to heal and grow in therapy. They were reclaiming their experiences as they developed their ability to experience from deep within themselves.
With the publication of Gendlin’s book, not only therapists and therapy patients could use this seminal method, but lay persons could also avail themselves of it — and avail themselves it did. The book has sold nearly a half-million copies and thousands of people worldwide are using the method.
With the availability of this training program for children, we are bringing an enriched version of the bodysense-based practice to the age group that needs it most. For, if we teach the children, we will produce healthy adults — and we will produce a healthier world for all, child and adult alike, in which to grow.
Judith Rich Harris, in her book The Nurture Assumption (The Free Press, 1998) uses solid research to show the important influence peers exert on personality formation. We can’t overlook this key finding. It makes it even more necessary to provide the best of all environments at the peer level, in the schools.
The children who have been touched by Social and Emotional Learning programs such as ours have been shown to improve in the important social and emotional areas of their lives. And their academic performance has improved noticeably. As your school includes these programs over the wide range of age groups, it will become apparent that there is a different spirit in your school. This is what we must aim for…giving the students a good-enough growing environment inside and outside of themselves thereby allowing and stimulating healthy growth.
________________________________________________________
Your students are invited to submit their own Inside-Me stories, poems, drawings, photographs, journalings and anything else that can be printed to:
Janet Klein, Psy. D.
Inside-People Press
62 North Lakeshore Drive
Hypoluxo, FL 33462
You can write to us at the above address or e-mail us at:
janetklein@att.net
We have planned a special edition of Inside-Me Stories by Students.
This will be an important contribution to enrich other students’ experiences.
We will choose from among the submissions we receive from students.
We also welcome feedback from teachers. Let us know what works and what needs to be changed. Request additional stories about specific topics. Submit your own Inside-Me stories that you want printed in upcoming editions. Submit articles that describe your experiences in teaching your students and their experiences with the stories. We plan to create a newsletter so we can share our experiences in teaching social and emotional learning through the Inside-Me Stories.
Students and Teachers: If you want to be on our mailing list, please send us information about how we can contact you. Include your name, grade level, school name, address, phone number, fax number and e-mail address. Indicate whether you are a student or a teacher.
We look forward to hearing from both teachers and students.
Warmly,
The Folks at Inside-People Press
and
Janet Klein, Author