5/18 Pay It Forward!!!!!

Have I talked about how morning meetings bring people together? They are filled with love and friendship. I beleive my own morning meeting that was held in my college class as a practice session was a fine example of this particular concept. I shall tell you about how it went. 

FIRST! We set up the chairs in a circular shape! 
ALSO! We had a poster on the board that said "Secret Acts of Kindness" and we had five people sign up to share a time where they had either given or received an act of kindness. We also had everyone in the class anonymously write something nice or that they liked about another in the class. 
GREET! Then we had a greeting that is similar to the games "Signs" We each went around the circle and picked our own sign, repeating each persons sign after they did to try to ingrain it in our brains. Then one person starts by doing their sign and then doing someone else's sign. That someone else accept their sign and does a third persons sign. The second person sits down then because they have been greeted. We continued in this manner until everyone had been greeted silently. It was lots of fun picking signs and then giving the signs.
SHARE! We then had five people share the time they had an involvement with a SAK. It was very touching. Some of the things were personal adn others were like someone bought their groceries at the store for them. For each sharing, they were asked about three ish questions or comments about it. It was very touching.
ACTIVITY! Secret Elf. (from the book "99 Activities and Greetings: Great for Morning Meeting" by Melissa Correa-Conolly) We sent one person to the corner, then as a group we said "Elf, elf, there's an elf on my shelf and the elf is..." Then someone would volunteer to be the elf and they would say ina disquised voice "I'm the elf!" the person in the corner would then have three guess as to who is was. It was really fun!
DISCUSSion type thing! Lastly we pulled down the poster and read all of the different things people had said about each other. It was very touching and heart-warming. We talked about paying it forward, where you pass on acts of kindness done to you. We encouraged our class to do so. 

I really had a lot of fun and I felt like everyone in the class also had fun. I learned a lot about my classmates adn felt like it built our community and vocabulary and ideas. I love morning meetings. :)