1.Meeting Location: Cochran Library
-Time with Mr. Fyer, Technology Director: Google glasses, and Digital Citizenship,
*Viewing the Syrian Refugees video.
Hannah is leading the project that will result from the viewing.
Continue to make pinwheels for Bezos Foundation or any other need she will bring to our attention
If you want to use Google Glasses, please download this app in your phones
Mr. Fryer explained the 3-D aspect of the glasses and everyone at a previous meeting decided we need to try them at the next possible meeting.
Android version:
After downloading the app, students should download the movie "Clouds of Sidra." It is a large download so many take a bit depending on their Internet connection speed. The video "Clouds over Sidra" is also viewable in a web browser, but you can't move around to look at different parts of the scene as you can with the VR version: http://vrse.com/watch/id/21/ . If you download the application and the movie, you will be able to watch it with Google Glasses. Mr. Fryer has 20 available
* Letter to Mothers for Audiovisual equipment: Dylan, Hannah, and Sahanya will update letter status. Letter should be ready by the end of February. Mrs. Clay bullet points from her perspective below.
Writing Points
- Harper is used for many kinds of meetings. The technology requested will help those meetings run more efficiently
- YAC has very little time to do the amazing job they do of getting our teens to be active in the community. Change the location of meetings in order to view videos and skype or do google hangouts with non-profit organizations without having to request a location for that purpose will make their job easier
- The overflow of chapel goes to Harper. If the chapel experiences are videotaped, people in Harper will not only hear it, but will be able to be part of the experience via video screen.
- Daily agendas and service opportunities will be made available on the screen daily. It will be a reliable, current account of the service and youth board opportunities available.
*Digital Citizenship
*Projects with Homeless Alliance: Elli's update. She is taking Classroom with a Cause with SoFTH Project
2. Project Warm:
RAK Positive Tomorrow with Reading Blankets and Books
Please consider taking a blanket to make home this week so we can deliver the Project Warm reading Blankets to Positive Tomorrows at the end of the week with books from the Come and Read with Me Program
3. Bodine Elementary RAK with 200 Books
Come and Read with Me books need to be delivered to Bodine Elementary...Any volunteers
4. Athena Cares: April 7th A morning of Service: Advisors and Cyclones not attending ISAS
YAC Strategic Planning: Saturday, April 30, 10-12 lunch catered by Grand House at 11:30
National Volunteer Service Week April 10-16 Global Youth Service Day: April 15-17
Possible Projects
Stuco's Walk-A-Thon during a week day
Friday, April 15th: Mentors and Tutors at Boys and Girls Club: Pinwheels for Syrian Refuguees, tennis clinic
Saturday, April 16th: Rebuilding Together and/or Habitat for Humanity Project
Sunday, April 9th or 17th: Pinwheels for Syrian Refugees-Senior send off at Grand House????
April 10-16
Presidential Awards at Chapel, Monday, April 11th, Guest speaker: Mr. Josh Bottomly
Tea Time Presidential Awards Reception during Activities on Tuesday @ the Chapel transept if available or Harper. Catered by Sage (sweets and finger foods and hot and cold tea)
Lunch time: Senior Send Off with participation of non-profits or evening event at Grand House
Lunch time: Senior Send Off with participation of non-profits or evening event at Grand House
April 16-18 Global Youth Service Days
Pinwheels for Syrian Refugees at Boys and Girls Club and Independent Living Facilities
Pinwheels for Syrian Refugees at Boys and Girls Club and Independent Living Facilities
Service Project with local non-profit Date and Time TBA
May 7th: YLOKC Autism Walk at Bricktown Ball Park
4. Strategic Planning for 2016-2017:
April 30th, Saturday, from 9-12, lunch from Grand House provided. Sign-up this month. Agenda: Planning school year 2016-2017. Creating a description of officers duties, expectations, and ownership in creation of agendas.
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Are you a giver or a Grinch?
Tis the season for generosity. But how important is it to you to help others? To find out—and get tips for becoming more altruistic—take this quiz, which is based on a scale developed by psychologist Gary S. Nickell of Moorhead State University.Please answer the below questions as honestly as possible; there are no right or wrong answers. For the first 20 questions, please indicate how much you agree or disagree with each statement.
The last five questions are about you, and they'll be used by our research team to better understand how altruism relates to factors like age and gender. We'll report next month on what the scores suggest about the Greater Good community.
When you're done, you'll get your score, learn more about the benefits of altruism, and find resources for boosting your habits of helping.
LITERACY RAKs Bodine Elementary On parking lot
Come and Read with Me Program: Books for Bodine Elementary- 200 books were delivered. We need to sort them and count them. Place them in bags with hearts for RAK month (MD Service Club made February Kindness Month at Casady School)
Faculty RAKs YAC
https://playingforchange.com
Why give?
Why give?
1. Giving makes us feel happy. A 2008 study by Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton and colleagues found that giving money to someone else lifted participants’ happiness more that spending it on themselves (despite participants’ prediction that spending on themselves would make them happier). Happiness expert Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, saw similar results when she asked people to perform five acts of kindness each week for six weeks.
These good feelings are reflected in our biology. In a 2006 study, Jorge Moll and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health found that when people give to charities, it activates regions of the brain associated with pleasure, social connection, and trust, creating a “warm glow” effect. Scientists also believe that altruistic behavior releases endorphins in the brain, producing the positive feeling known as the “helper’s high.”
2. Giving is good for our health. A wide range of research has linked different forms of generosity to better health, even among the sick and elderly. In his book Why Good Things Happen to Good People, Stephen Post, a professor of preventative medicine at Stony Brook University, reports that giving to others has been shown to increase health benefits in people with chronic illness, including HIV and multiple sclerosis.
A 1999 study led by Doug Oman of the University of California, Berkeley, found that elderly people who volunteered for two or more organizations were 44 percent less likely to die over a five-year period than were non-volunteers, even after controlling for their age, exercise habits, general health, and negative health habits like smoking. Stephanie Brown, now a researcher at Stony Brook University, saw similar results in a 2003 study on elderly couples. She and her colleagues found that those individuals who provided practical help to friends, relatives, or neighbors, or gave emotional support to their spouses, had a lower risk of dying over a five-year period than those who didn’t. Interestingly, receiving help wasn’t linked to a reduced death risk.
Researchers suggest that one reason giving may improve physical health and longevity is that it helps decrease stress, which is associated with a variety of health problems. In a 2006 study by Rachel Piferi of Johns Hopkins University and Kathleen Lawler of the University of Tennessee, people who provided social support to others had lower blood pressure than participants who didn’t, suggesting a direct physiological benefit to those who give of themselves.
3. Giving promotes cooperation and social connection. When you give, you’re more likely to get back: Several studies, including work by sociologists Brent Simpson and Robb Willer, have suggested that when you give to others, your generosity is likely to be rewarded by others down the line—sometimes by the person you gave to, sometimes by someone else.
These exchanges promote a sense of trust and cooperation that strengthens our ties to others—and research has shown that having positive social interactions is central to good mental and physical health. As researcher John Cacioppo writes in his book Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, “The more extensive the reciprocal altruism born of social connection . . . the greater the advance toward health, wealth, and happiness.”
What’s more, when we give to others, we don’t only make them feel closer to us; we also feel closer to them. “Being kind and generous leads you to perceive others more positively and more charitably,” writes Lyubomirsky in her book The How of Happiness, and this “fosters a heightened sense of interdependence and cooperation in your social community.”
4. Giving evokes gratitude. Whether you’re on the giving or receiving end of a gift, that gift can elicit feelings of gratitude—it can be a way of expressing gratitude or instilling gratitude in the recipient. And research has found that gratitude is integral to happiness, health, and social bonds.
Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough, pioneers in the scientific study of gratitude, have found that teaching college students to “count their blessings” and cultivate gratitude caused them to exercise more, be more optimistic, and feel better about their lives overall. A recent study led by Nathaniel Lambert at Florida State University found that expressing gratitude to a close friend or romantic partner strengthens our sense of connection to that person.
Barbara Fredrickson, a leading happiness researcher, suggests that cultivating gratitude in everyday life is one of the keys to increasing personal happiness. “When you express your gratitude in words or actions, you not only boost your own positivity but [other people’s] as well,” she writes in her book Positivity. “And in the process you reinforce their kindness and strengthen your bond to one another.”
5. Giving is contagious. When we give, we don’t only help the immediate recipient of our gift. We also spur a ripple effect of generosity through our community.
A study by James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, shows that when one person behaves generously, it inspires observers to behave generously later, toward different people. In fact, the researchers found that altruism could spread by three degrees—from person to person to person to person. “As a result,” they write, “each person in a network can influence dozens or even hundreds of people, some of whom he or she does not know and has not met.”
Giving has also been linked to the release of oxytocin, a hormone (also released during sex and breast feeding) that induces feelings of warmth, euphoria, and connection to others. In laboratory studies, Paul Zak, the director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, has found that a dose of oxytocin will cause people to give more generously and to feel more empathy towards others, with “symptoms” lasting up to two hours. And those people on an “oxytocin high” can potentially jumpstart a “virtuous circle, where one person’s generous behavior triggers another’s,” says Zak.
So whether you buy gifts, volunteer your time, or donate money to charity, your giving may help you build stronger social connections and even jumpstart a cascade of generosity through your community. And don’t be surprised if you find yourself benefiting from a big dose of happiness in the process.
Jason Marsh is editor-in-chief and director of programs at the Greater Good Science Center and the course producer for "The Science of Happinesss." Jill Suttie, Psy.D., is Greater Good's book review editor and a frequent contributor to the magazine.
What is compassion and kindness? Why are we kind and generous?
Eleanor Collier / Stanford Happiness Collective
Eleanor Collier / Stanford Happiness Collective