You can access the complete curriculum (and download a copy) here!
Ingredient One aims at building empathy for each other, so kids can look across the aisle at each other and see a little bit of themselves. It’s not easy being human. The human nervous systems are wired with a certain amount of anxiety. All of us have built in insecurities, worries and fears that are often not rational.
If you’re grappling with negative thoughts and emotions that you’re having trouble understanding, that is also normal. Dealing with irrational fears, anger and frustration that builds up at times in all of us, as a result of difficult life circumstances, is the single greatest challenge we face as a society to keep people well enough to do the work of citizenship.
The slide we take away from our higher gifts is gradual and mostly invisible. It happens for a number of reasons, and it’s very hard to notice when it’s happening to us. We slowly lose virtues like courage and patience.
Our natural-born affection for others starts to decline. We can quickly attach to an identity which is counter to our natural born identity. Our minds close (slowly) but once it does, the result is ugly. As it does, we lose sight of the impact our sliding away from our true nature has on others. Welcome to being human! “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle that you know nothing about!” To help them understand how powerful their natural born goodness is, so they can avoid the slide, even in the face of life’s difficult challenges.
Our goal is to teach kids that there are no bad people, only people who take the slide from remarkable to “ordinary”. Our unremarkable state is not natural. We have a true nature - and it is to be good. Hate is us in our most unnatural form. It is also insufficient for the work of citizenship.
Graphs utilized in Ingredient One:
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