Rock Climbing

We headed up to exit 38 in North Bend to do some rock climbing. WOW! We have some climbers in the group. Everyone had ample opportunity to try several different routes and everyone had success! It was especially cool to see how supportive people were while others were climbing. Check out the slideshow link on the left!

Week 2 Day 4: Handling a Problem

Word is out about the ELP group! We were recruited by our first work service project host to take part in another project. Bonnie from Magnuson Environmental Stewardship Alliance asked us to help with the Promontory Point Habitat Enhancement project. During the work, people checked in with others about their perspective on team efforts. We also used active listening and clear communication to understand how to do several new jobs. Way to go, team!

Family Follow-Up

Thanks for sharing this blog with your families! Three people reported sharing the blog with their families last night.

Today's focus was on handling a problem with another person. We identified four key components for handling these problems effectively.

Handling a problem-
1. Explain your perspective clearly.
2. Consider the other person's perspective.
3. Be assertive.
4. Avoid using blaming language.

To practice using these components, we broke into pairs and acted out 3 problem scenarios. During each scenario, we identified when and how these key components were being used.

Tonight: Help your teen practice identifying examples of perspective taking. This means that you need to show both good examples and "non-examples". After presenting your example, you can ask you teen, "was that an example of perspective taking?" We have found that our group needs practice noticing (discriminating between examples and non-examples)

Example 1 Parent: "John, I can understand why you are feeling tired, it sounds like you guys did a lot of work at Promontory Point." Parent the asks--"Did I do a good job taking your perspective?" Student: "Yes"

Non-example 1 Parent: "I am sorry I've been asking you to do so much around the house tonight?" (This is a non-example because you have not taken the perspective of the teen -- but it is really close because you are apologizing. We need to practice taking it one step further because one can apologize without acknowledging the other person's perspective).

Week 2 Day 3

We received quite the compliment from our conservation liasion about our work in the park. She said without our contributions they wouldn't have met their goals for maintaining the park.
During our service learning work, we each took turns offering support as project manager, by setting team and individual goals, offering encouragement and providing rewards for meeting our goals. Great job team!!!

Family Follow-Up

We reviewed concepts of empathy and perspective and then talked about the risks of making assumptions (making a decision about a person or situation w/out all the facts)

Tonight, have your teen describe a way in which they tried perspective-taking during the day. Did you make assumption? Then, describe a way that you use perspective taking with your family or how assumption have made perspective taking more challenging.

EXAMPLE for perspective taking: "Today, I tried to understand Jimmy's perspective when he wasn't working, by asking him questions. Sometimes, he was tired or he didn't know where to work."

NON-EXAMPLE for perspective-taking (making an assumption): "I knew that John wasn't working because he is lazy." What could you do to get more facts.

Week 2 Day 2: Offering Support

Since everybody has been doing such a great job identifying invasive species and working hard during service learning blocks, a new layer was added. Today we focused on specific ways to offer support.

Everybody took a turn as project leader during our work in the North Remnant Forest. As project leaders, we offered support by using clear communication, offering encouragement and tracking team goals. Teams Wildcats and Native Rescue each met their goals of 27 buckets of mulch per team in under 15 minutes!

To continue learning about how our work impacts the larger community we conducted interviews around Magnuson.
1. How long have you been coming to Magnuson Park?
2. In your opinion, what is the importance of a park like this to the community?

There were quite a few different answers to these question.

Family Follow-Up

Offering support to others.

Today we built on what we learned about perspective and empathy by focusing on offering support. Today we took turns as project managers while we were working which required, perspective taking, empathy, and support-offering strategies.
Afterwards, we reflected on specific ways we offered support during these activities and some of the challenges we faced.

How to offer support
1. Use empathy.
2. Be respectful.
3. Offer encouragement.
4. Use clear communication.
5. Use active listening.
6. Avoid taking-over.


Tonight: Ask your teen to describe how they were an ally and which strategies they used to offer support during ELP. How many different examples can they generate?

THEN… Share an example of how you have used the above strategies to offer support to your teen.
Examples: "Hey John, I heard you guys worked on being a project manager today—how did you support your work group today? You know I use some of those same strategies to offer you support.

Family Follow-Up

Today’s social skills centered on defining perspective and empathy.

Perspective- A person’s way of looking at things, their opinions, their point of view.

Empathy- Ability to identify, understand and respond thoughtfully to the feelings and perspectives of others.

As a demonstration of how we have different perspectives, two teens sat on opposite sides of a globe and described what they saw. Obviously, what they saw was quite different. We also identified and discussed how each others’ perspectives are the same and different.

Tonight’s activity: Ask your teen to tell you about their perspective on their service learning contributions in the park.

Sample questions: What contributions (jobs, projects) have you made to the park? Why do you think it’s important to have completed these projects?

Step beyond-Others’ perspectives: How do you think people who use the park feel about your contributions?

Day 6 - Empathy and Perspective-Taking

After clearing 16,000 square feet on Thursday, we were invited back to the North Remnant Forest for a new challenge. Today we created mulch barriers around small native species to keep the invasive species from impeding their growth. We broke into teams to create a competition and by breaktime, the teams dumped more than 50 buckets of much-needed mulch around Firs, Hemlocks, and Salmonberries!