Powering Down

Academic Dean Denise Savidge

Academic Dean Denise Savidge

“You aren’t depressed; our brains just aren’t equipped for 21st-century life.” This quote comes from esteemed health expert Andrew Weil, M.D. from his new book Spontaneous Happiness. And since we really have no choice in which century we’re destined to exist, that statement sounds like it could be a major bummer … sending us all into a tailspin spiral of, well, DEPRESSION.

But wait, there’s more. “In my experience, the more people have the less likely they are to be contented. Indeed there is abundant evidence that depression is a ‘disease of affluence’,” he adds.  To which I breathe a huge sigh of relief, because everybody knows teachers don’t typically drive Maseratis and earn salaries in six-figure range. However, the population that does still has an out … specifically the outdoors.

Dr. Weil goes on to discuss the overload of information and stimulation present in the age of the Internet. Very few of us these days are far removed from our email, mobile phones, texts, televisions or tweets [information surfeit]. Meanwhile we’re missing out on very important time spent outdoors [Richard Louv has coined it “nature deficit”]. The combination is causing us problems. He further explains, “This kind life simply was not an option throughout most of human history,” and therefore the brains we’ve developed just aren’t equipped to handle all this chaos we’ve created.

Weil’s solution? Since throwing away the communication links would make it difficult for most of us to keep our jobs, he offers five Tips for Modern Life. Paraphrased, they are:

1) Bring more of your awareness to the present moment and train your mind and concentration on one thing.

2) Sleep in complete darkness. Try to be out in bright light during the day.

3) Reach out to others. Be social.

4) Avoid disturbing sounds. Try to cultivate silence.

5) Set limits on the amount of time you spend with modern technology.

His advice reminds me of the Cherokee Creek Medicine Wheel and many of our underlying philosophies for helping boys reach a state of good health. On campus one will often hear, “Be present in the moment.” We arrange outdoor activity for our boys numerous times during the day, including PE before class to prepare our learners to learn and even off campus wilderness Treks on the weekends. We live in social “packs” and advocate community-cooperation. And we severely limit television, video games, and internet usage. Using Weil’s standards, our therapeutic program is the perfect storm toward curing depression.

As adults, it’s important to remember that modern technology is a little like, “too much of a good thing,” kind of like a goose laying a golden egg every minute and a half instead of once a day. Soon we will be spending our time gathering the eggs and find we have no time left to enjoy the rest of our life! And that’s depressing.

In what area could you let go of a few eggs? And might there be platinum or rare jewels awaiting you in the outdoors?

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posted by jleslie in Discovering What is Real and True and have Comments (4)

Save Money This Holiday Season!

David LePere

David LePere

How many times have you heard this recently:

Save money this holiday season!

Really, it is possible. Let’s push the pause button on the rush of the season for a few minutes and think about what kind of toys our kids would do well to have.

As we prepare for the holidays and gift-giving for our children, our current culture would have us believe that more is better or that electronics lead to happiness. But I recently read an article that reminds me that it isn’t always glitz and glamor and bells and whistles that capture the attention of our children.  Imagination and interaction are the most fun part of toys.  And that what brings happiness is the thoughtfulness of the gift, not the price tag.

I was struck by the simplicity of the wisdom in this article from “WIRED” magazine about the top 5 toys of all time. When you read the article, I hope you smile as you remember all of the fun you’ve had playing with these toys yourself!

So, what are the top 5 toys of all time?? My children are 10, 7 and 5 years old and If I were to get all 5 of these toys for each my sons, I could probably spend less than 10 dollars on my entire Christmas and create hours of family fun! I’ll give you a hint…much of it can be found in your backyard or in the garage.

Enjoy the article, it’s great fun! What would you add to the list that would help us “discover what is real and true?”

The 5 Best Toys of All Time

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The Best Thanksgiving Anywhere…Ever

Phil gets the bird's ready for roasting.

Phil gets the birds ready for roasting.

“Wow, that was the best Thanksgiving dinner anywhere…ever.”

That comment was overheard and much appreciated by the students and staff who started the preparation 14 hours earlier; and reflects on a tradition that started when Cherokee Creek Boys School opened eight years earlier.

From its first year, Cherokee Creek Boys School was committed to celebrating the traditional Thanksgiving feast with our own special flare. We wanted our students to feel the joy and excitement that comes with this holiday and to be able to create rich memories that they could take with them when they graduated.

The central ingredient of any Thanksgiving is the turkey. At CCBS we decided to create a ritual around the preparation by pit-roasting the turkeys.  This is a fabulous ritual that is present in cultures all over the world.  At CCBS we start with selecting student volunteers for a special “turkey team” who prepare the pit in advance of cooking the turkeys. Then at 1:00am early Thanksgiving morning these boys wake to build a bonfire over the pit and continue to feed a roaring fire for the next four hours. At the end of that time the pit is full of red hot glowing embers.

Once we have this bed of coals, we bury the turkeys (this year we had 5 turkeys) surrounded on all sides and top and bottom by at least 6 inches of coals. Then the pit is covered with dirt which seals in the heat and allows the turkeys to slow roast. Just before dawn, the turkeys safely roasting in the pit, the boys head back to bed, tired, a little smokey, and full of satisfaction for a job well done.

Six hours later, the “turkey team” is back to carefully uncover the turkeys. This is no time for a stray shovel blade to pierce the wrappings, so the students proceed with archeology-type precision. Once uncovered, the turkeys are brought to the kitchen where they are carved and presented as the central piece of a grand feast.

It is remarkable to watch the transformation as these boys take ownership and pride in this monumental task. They spent the night growing in friendships and memories, they see the spectacle of the feast and the shining eyes of those gathered to help celebrate, and they take pride in hearing the words of praise and knowing of their part in this meaningful tradition.

For more  about the process of pit roasting turkeys at Cherokee Creek Boys School, click on  Bear Tracks Newsroom for photos of this year’s Thanksgiving holiday celebration.

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Plan Q Ain’t So Bad

Oconee State Park is one of my sacred spaces. There is nothing fancy about it, in fact, quite the contrary. It is plain and purposeful with living history at every bend in the trail. Perhaps it is the history that feels like a warm blanket and serves as a reminder that this special place has seen generations of families pass through its gates.

A few Saturdays ago I walked into the meeting room at Oconee to prep our most recent Family Trek. I took a moment to inhale the scent of wood smoke, antiques and Murphy’s Oil Soap. I thought about the Family Trek 2 years ago that challenged every fiber of my Type A being over the course of 4 days, taking my “Plan A” on a journey to “Plan Q.” In November 2009, our Family Trek was intersected with the remnants of Hurricane Ida and the Swine Flu. The rain came down unabated, the river rose to flood stages and a few folks found themselves isolated in their 80 year old cabins sans internet, TV or phone connection to the outside world.

Plan A was quickly discarded for Plan B, and so on, as our team of staff adapted to the changes in weather and circumstances. Plans B through G were out too and continued problem solving down the alphabet until we arrived at a very creative Plan Q!

Personally, few experiences have offered more growth in such a limited amount of time. The lesson? “Be open to outcome,” the same lesson we study every fall in our Learning Community at Cherokee Creek. Learning how to let go of the things you cannot control and becoming more flexible, trusting and resilient. Our Family Trek is designed to offer opportunities for these lessons to be experienced.

I can’t deny that it feels great to end on Plan A, because it feels awesome! There is an incredible sense of power when it all comes together exactly the way you envisioned it. However, being faced with adversity and meeting it with resilience is different – it is empowerment. And it is through resilience and empowerment (and quite a bit of flexibility) that we learn about equanimity and balance to grow the strong roots that see us through the storms.

It is my most sincere hope that each of our participating families discover the real and true depth of their resilience, their flexibility and feel empowered as they discover the new plan.

I look forward to seeing some of you in May! Until then, enjoy the slideshow below of the last Family Trek at the beginning of this month:

httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=tZFIDP2N3Zc

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Serendipity Part 2

As promised, here is the video students wrote and helped produce during the first nine weeks. For the first installment of this blog click: Where Serendipity Meets Design.

As I said before, it’s a wonderful thing when serendipity and design come together to create beautiful and meaningful outcome.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SwVI0LZSFg

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Where Serendipity Meets Design

Jimmy on the front porch with B-Shoc

Jimmy on the front porch with B-Shoc

Serendipity is one of those great words in life: five beautiful syllables to say “luck,” “chance,” “fate,” “fortune,” kismet.” It makes you sound really smart when you use it. Lots of people have to go look it up after hearing it used. And I personally enjoy making people look up definitions — it’s the Language Arts Diva within me!

“Design” is its opposite. Things that happen “by design” are most definitely not serendipitous. It takes a process to make it happen. It needs a grand plan, a blueprint, or a complicated drawing. Like a house. The boys’ therapeutic work here at Cherokee Creek is a very good example of a well-designed plan. There is a “PATH” they must walk. There are processes they must go through. It is a long and sometimes arduous journey of self-discovery. They graduate with new skills, new self-concepts, and a new vision for their future.

Toward that end, this quarter in the classroom we have studied the Way of the Visionary. We have talked a lot about whether we make things happen or whether things happen to us. We studied people who made a difference in the world and discussed how to become a person who makes a difference. We talked about careers, college paths, and causes. And we talked about their personal plan.

In the same quarter, I had the good fortune (here’s the serendipity part) to meet two gentlemen with an inordinate amount of musical and technological talent. Neither is my forte, so these are indeed good people to know. One of the gentlemen, Shannon Chiles, offered to share his skills with our boys to help them voice their visions of themselves. The process went something like this:

First we came up with the “hook” to a song. One of our boys then took on the task of writing lyrics. Shannon next came to campus and taught a lesson on how to storyboard a video. The boys went to work filling 4.5 seconds with their personal stories.

Some music chords were then chosen as the backbone for the song. Shannon took these pieces to his friend, Bryan Edmonds – also known as B-Shoc– and the two mixed it all together to record it. Three trips back to the school with a camera, and there was enough footage for a music video.

It’s a wonderful thing when serendipity and design come together to create beautiful and meaningful outcome. We can’t wait to share the music video with our families next week at Family Seminar, and then with the world on our website.

Consider for a moment where serendipity and design come together in your life. Where does your plan meet up with chance or kismet? How does your vision for the future change when that occurs?

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Touch Down! – Me, Mom & Boundaries

Matt Carla Ben

Therapist Carla Shorts with recent alumni Ben

On a Monday, many years ago, I was instructed to complete the task of cleaning my room or I would not be allowed to go to a football game with my friends that Friday night. Like most 15 year olds, I thought the request was outrageous and that surely my mother would forget about it by the time Friday actually rolled around. Boy, did I misjudge the woman. As I hair sprayed my “mall bangs” (don’t judge, it was the 90’s), my mother came into my room to inspect my progress with the assigned task. She took one look around my discombobulated living space (which I’m fairly sure resembled Calcutta at that point) and proclaimed that I would be staying in for the evening. “Was she actually serious about cleaning my room?!” I wondered.

As fate would have it she was, indeed, very serious and wasn’t being swayed by my feeble attempts to bargain with her. “I swear I’ll do it as soon as I get home!” No dice. My mother made it very clear she would not be transporting me via minivan to my high school football game. There I stood in my carefully picked out outfit and perfectly teased bangs with all the hurt and anger an adolescent girl could muster. Deep in my own crisis, I threw out the biggest weapon in my arsenal, “You are the worst mother in the world and I hate you!” My mother proceeded to tell me she regretted the decision I had made and left me to deal with my sorrow and disappointment.

In the book Boundaries With Kids, Dr. John Townsend states that, “Basically, we change when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.” That day, I learned that it was going to be more painful to miss the football game than to clean my room. I also learned that my mother was a woman who was going to follow through on her word. By setting that boundary, my mother taught me she wasn’t going to be a woman who made idle threats or tolerated disrespect.

Many years later, when I was an adult, my mother confessed she had locked herself in her bathroom that day and cried over my hurtful words. Looking back, it would have been so much easier for my mother to throw her hands in the air and allow me to go to the football game with my friends. It would have been an infinitely more simple task for her to clean my room herself rather than endure our nasty confrontation. Fortunately for me, my mother wasn’t one to take the easy way out when making difficult parenting decisions. Because I had a mother who didn’t immediately jump in to save me from my pain as a child, I’ve grown to be an individual who can navigate the waters of adulthood in a healthy, independent manner with a sense of knowing that I am responsible for my actions. Because my mother set this seemingly small boundary with me, I learned that I, too, should be a woman who keeps my word and does not tolerate disrespect from others. And for that I am thankful.

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No Longer This Person

Ben heads to graduation, mask in hand

Ben heads to graduation, mask in hand

On Friday we celebrated Ben’s graduation. As always, it was a solemn, sweet, fun and meaningful experience filled with several rituals that intentionally fill this rite of passage. One of the early actions a graduate takes during his ceremony is the burning of his mask. The mask is symbolic of the person he used to be. Like a snake leaving behind its skin, he burns the mask to represent he is no longer this person.

Ben’s graduation was filled with comments about his attention to detail. So, it is fitting that the process showcased here of creating (and destroying) a mask reflects Ben’s simple yet detailed reflection on the person he was and has grown out of. There are two short videos below. The first is of Therapist Carla Shorts applying the plaster casting to cast a mold of Ben’s face. The second is a quick slideshow of the complete journey from casting to burning.

Congratulations, Ben! We are proud of you and the hard work you have done on your journey of self-discovery!

Video of Ben’s mask being created (1:12):
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ebi2rXHd7w

Slides of the whole process (:29):
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IykzQF7bCk0

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Boys CAN Be Boys

Jackson leaps into the water

Jackson leaps into the water

An Educational Psychologist and Consultant recently wrote an article proclaiming that there is a crisis in the education of boys in this country and lamented the lack of solutions, or even movement in the direction to solve the problem system-wide. And while I agree with the strength of her facts and her solid ideas for improvement, she stumbled upon the root of her dilemma in her very last sentence: “Boys will be boys.”

The connotation behind that phrase isn’t pretty. It conjures up the idea that boys’ behavior is meant to cause eye rolling, be winked at, or, at its very best, be tolerated with patience. She hinted that boys are all action without purpose – missing out on their warrior DNA’s need to hunt wild game and provide for the family – and that with a few more recess breaks in their academic day, they might be able to make it through the system that is no longer designed for them. What an opportunity she has missed as the mother of just one little girl!

How fortunate I feel to head up the academics of a school whose foundation is based upon the one word that makes all the difference in the world: CAN. Cherokee Creek Boys School is a school where Boys CAN Be Boys. We excel in embracing their boy-ness, encouraging their growth to young adult men, and celebrating their many masculine qualities within. We believe their day should look a lot different simply because they ARE different – and we strive to give them opportunity to just BE boys. I have thus far enjoyed the opportunities to play in the creek, leap at tetherball, and dig in the dirt with my students. I’ve attended Tae Kwon Do class and heard about football, basketball and soccer practice. And I’ve just sent off for a class car model to do one day with them. Being a boy is tons of fun!

The author’s ideas included, “Simple changes to the pace and tempo of the school day,” such as brief recesses, devoting more time to physical education, and more hands-on activities. She pushed for, “Harnessing male energy in more positive ways.” It’s as if she read our schedule and made a wish list of a fantasy school to which she could send a boy. Simple changes since March – which included shortening class periods, having Physical Education BEFORE other classes begin (an idea we borrowed from the book Spark by John Raty and reviewed here by CCBS founder Beth Black), and rearranging classrooms to talk WITH rather than to be lectured AT – have given us a remarkable classroom behavior improvement.

It’s not enough to tell you these things  through my eyes as Academic Dean. But the story of a young man who was struggling mightily with his behavior prior to the changes is just one of our tales of success. In just a few months – despite an Aspergers Syndrome diagnosis and some very miserable years in other schools – he has become a leader for his group, interviewed at a very elite private school, and become one of our very best tour leaders here on campus. He has found success in the classroom and can be overheard mentoring other students. He will graduate in a few weeks  – off to attend the school where he nailed his interview with his head held high, shaking the Dean’s hand. We are so very proud of him and the light he shines upon our small school with a big heart…where boys CAN be boys!

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Ripples in the Water

May 2011 FT Group

Twice a year at Cherokee Creek Boys School, about 10 families get together for a very different experience. They come together for 4 days of adventure, fellowship, family time, peace, fun…and a little bit of chocolate mixed with marshmallow mixed with graham cracker.

The outomes of the experience are like ripples on the water. They pulse outward extending far beyond 4 days of activities. Our May Family Trek just wrapped up a couple of weeks ago and a couple of unexpected ripples have made their way back to us. One of our dads, Jack, sent a link to his blog post inspired by the event (provided below).  Jack gives a wonderful perspective as a parent navigating through the experience of parenting a son at a therapeutic boarding school. And Oconee State Park, where the event is based, sent a thank you note for food donated at the end of the trip. The note was signed by all of the members of the prison work crew the food helped to feed in the days following the Family Trek.

You can see from the video below that, most importantly, our Trek family had a great experience filled with Love, Courage, Truth and Wisdom.

Stay-at-Home Dad: Kudzu

Slideshow of highlights:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYlqXlqW4rQ

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