SPRING HOLLOW EARLY LEARNING CENTER

NOTHING WITHOUT JOY!

The mission of Spring Hollow is to help nurture and raise loving, happy, and confident students in a safe, inviting and beautiful learning environment; through activities that encourage accepting, collaborative and creative expression.

                              4207 Arno Road, Franklin TN 37064  (MAP)                                                  615-794-9343

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THE GREEN CIRCLE

At the 2003 Annual NAEYC conference, Spring Hollow facilitated a workshop entitled: The Green Circle: A Tool to Help Children Develop Skills in Altruism. Information about Green Circle is integrated into workshops offered by Spring Hollow.

If you plan on attending a Spring Hollow workshop, the information in this section is for you. In order to assure a rich workshop experience, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with the Green Circle Curriculum before the workshop. Please print out all the material in this section and bring it with you to the workshop:

• Green Circle Workshop Agenda
• Green Circle Presentation Script
• Green Circle Song
• Green Circle Churkendoose
  
• Green Circle Follow-up Activity

The Green Circle is a curriculum to help children understand their feelings of inclusion and exclusion and therefore better understand themselves and others. The Green Circle gives children tools in order to enhance social skills. These tools are first introduced by an interactive presentation in which the child's world is symbolized by a circle and androgynous figures. Children are invited to discuss these feelings and explore social skills to enhance relationships. The messages from the presentation are then woven into the daily life of the classroom through follow-up activities and further discussions.

The Green Circle Presentation was written by Gladys Rawlins, a social worker in Philadelphia. She and others used it as a tool for social development with the goal of improving race relations among children. The Green Circle became a nonprofit organization and broadened its use and goals to foster acceptance of all human differences. No longer is Green Circle an organization but it still lives through those who feel passionate about its goals.

Green Circle has been a part of Katherine's life for most of her teaching career and a core of her curriculum. She has been part of the revisions it has undergone through its existence. She spent two years exploring the effects of its messages on young children through completing her doctoral dissertation entitled "The Green Circle Program: Its Effect on Altruism And Social Relations Among Kindergarten Children". 

Included in this section is Katherine's version of the Green Circle Presentation Script. She chose a simpler text than what had been created in more recent years. She based her choice on the feeling that going back to the original seed which inspired her love for Green Circle would be more effective when teaching people being first introduced to Green Circle. She feels that the strength and beauty of Green Circle was the original simplicity of the script and over the years with its many editions and additions became too complicated, losing its main message within too many auxiliary messages. Through many years of presenting the script to various diverse audiences, the script below is what Katherine feels is the most effective format for the script.

The first step in learning about Green Circle is to become familiar with the script and its messages. It is not unlike learning a script for a play. The magic of this play is that it is interactive and different each time you perform it because each group is different, as like individual diversity. It is a collaborative process between the interaction of you as a facilitator and the group of children. It is necessary that you follow the order and key concepts of the script to assure that children have a strong symbol in which to compare their evolving social skills. It is understood that you will use effective teaching skills of nonjudgmental active listening, open ended questioning and balancing level of discussion so it does not interfere with the script's format. Revisits to these effective facilitator skills will be part of our conference workshop.