1. Friendship Skills Modules

• How to make friends and treat friends
• What to do when there are problems with friends
• Virtues in friendship
• How build trust with friends

2.  Caring for Yourself Modules

• Building Your Self Esteem
• Your Amazing Brain – How to Get it Working for You)
• Being a Detective on You – Understanding your feelings and learning how to work with them (this can be multiple modules)
• How to learn to be more peaceful inside and deal with the challenging emotions of anger, anxiety and jealousy

The focus is on building trusting relationships. With 50-60% of children age 9-12 feel they have a friend they can talk to and trust.  When does this happen and how can we learn to create better friendship and relationship skills?

Term 1:  Welcoming and Emotional Safety – foundation for great acting and friendships

1. Saying Yes to acting situations (and when to say no)
2. Welcoming circle and being inviting
3. Showing enthusiasm (takes imagination and creative risks) encouraging self and others
4. Taking responsibility for your own well being
5. Style of communication- passive, assertive, aggressive  -what works?
6. Getting your stress level down and helping others keep theirs down – stage fright and calm on stage (or before tests, new friends) incorporate into warm up with breathing exercises
7. Lying or truthful, building trust

Issues in module one we are working on addressing:
Cliques, remembering to welcome each other, giving them a personal sense of when they are welcoming, when they are not, how to assert themselves in healthy ways. how does this impact drama, friendships,

Term 2:  Awareness of Self and Others (empathy and this including caring behaviours)

1. Awareness and getting to know your emotions – labeling emotions well
2. Choices on how we express our more challenging feelings.
3. What to do with uncomfortable emotions  mad/frustrated/jealous
4. How we can change our feelings if we want to
5. How to tell if we are stressed and how to lower stress
6. Empathy – what it is (listening with warm curiousity), acceptance
7. Empathy stage 2 – resonance

Issues in module two we are working on addressing:
Helping children feel safe having emotions, the wisdom of emotions/body and knowing how to be with them in ways that are safe for themselves and others.  Also helping them understand their own choices/power.  Knowing what to do when a friend is struggling.

Module 3:  Communication (managing conflict) and Connection (building strong friendships)

1. Relationship model – what are the stages of a friendship
2. Working through conflict and getter closer afterwards (or not)
   • win/win, or taking turns with a win)
   • What do you do if you don’t like how someone is treating you or if you aren’t treating others well
3. Taking the communication lesson to the next level (assertive, passive, aggressive) to how to stay in connection and work things out when it isn’t easy
4. Going through changes in plans/friendships and how to make the best of it
5. Boundaries and speaking up respectfully and giving space
6. Trust – keeping trust breaking trust, recreating trust
7. Having fun together – how to build memories together even though bumps
8. Intention towards yourself and others – Positive speaking about friends, treating them well when you are with them and when you aren’t

Issues we are working on:
What to do when friendships are struggling and things change.  What is really happening underneath our relationships – making sense of this mystery and how to go deeper.