Workshops

20 Gandhis

Background: Each year when I greeted a new class for World History, I explained that I would teach Social Studies through the prism of nonviolence.

And… each year, students greeted me with skepticism—“Nonviolence will never work,” I was told again and again. But every year, when we got to the study of India, I showed the film Gandhi.

One year, about halfway through the movie, a student named Ken slapped his hands on the desk and exclaimed, “Mrs. Gradyon, this could work!”

I turned to him and said, “Ken… it did.”

He laughed, then asserted seriously, “But Mrs. Graydon, there are six billion people on the planet and you will never get six billion people to be nonviolent.”

At that point, one of those wonderful facts we teachers keep in our heads popped up. I turned to the chalkboard and told the class that the population of India at the time Gandhi led it to independence was roughly 300,000,000.

I did the math for them at the board: 6,000,000,000 divided by 300,000,000.

Even the most math-challenged student could see the answer: 20. I concluded that we don’t need 6 billion Gandhis.

We only need 20 Gandhis.

It is in the spirit of creating those “20 Gandhis” that we offer this workshop.

Workshop: This workshop stems from my deep conviction that nonviolence training for community and world leaders is the key to What Better Looks Like.

This course is built around two main ideas:

The What Better Looks Like campaign is founded on the principle that our motivation for change matters, so this course is based on Gandhian and Kingian non-violence.
Nonviolence is a skill-set that is teachable, learnable and applicable. It’s not just for solving problems of violence, but for making effective change in our relationships, communities and world.

This four hour course can be delivered as a one-day, in-person interactive workshop, or as a 4 week teleseminar.

Hour One: We will explore basic principles of Gandhian and Kingian nonviolence. What do we mean by nonviolent action and how can it be used to create effective change?

Hour Two: We will explore King’s idea of the Beloved Community. Participants will consider the various communities in which they wish to focus their influence: family, business, local community, and world.

Hour Three: Using the What Better Looks Like questions and process, we will work together to identify situations and areas in which we, as participants, can take a leadership role in effecting nonviolent change in the community area we discussed in hour two.

Hour Four: We will analyze successful examples of nonviolent direct action, and create action plans of our own to bring back as leaders in our community—collectively using our power as “20 Gandhis.”

Pursuit of Happiness

Background: The What Better Looks Like Campaign is excited to offer an upcoming 4--week teleseminar called PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

This workshop grew from a seed that was planted during my years as a middle school teacher. For years I taught 6^th, 7^th and 8^th grade Social Studies. I loved teaching 6^th Grade World History--Greece, Rome, India and China. I also loved teaching 8^th Grade—World Wars I and II, Women’s Rights, Civil Rights. For some reason, however, I was not as inspired teaching the Colonial American Period.

One year as I was planning the upcoming semester, I was rereading our founding documents: The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.

As I was reading the words I had read so many times, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” I was thunderstruck by an idea. In all my years of learning and teaching, I had studied life and liberty, but I had never studied Pursuit of Happiness in a Social Studies class.

I began to view Jefferson’s words as a prescient understanding of the unfolding of our purpose on the planet. For the first third of our history as a nation (1607-1760s) we established life, for better and worse, in the colonies.

From the 1770’s to the mid-1900’s we worked toward liberty—American Independence, Abolition, Women’s Suffrage and Liberation, Labor, Children’ rights, Civil Rights.

I asked myself, what if we have arrived at the time of Pursuit of Happiness, not only as a personal pursuit, but as a social imperative as important as earlier movements for liberty in the previous era.

Teleseminar: I developed this course on Pursuit of Happiness with the following ideas in mind:

We are here to pursue our happiness, not just as an individual pursuit, but as a social imperative.
At some point as we pursue our road to happiness, we will reach an intersection where we meet a need in the world. It is at that intersection, where our passion and excellence meet a need in the world, that our life’s work emerges with potential for us to make our greatest impact.

Using myth, story and the What Better Looks Like process we will explore:

What do we mean by Pursuit of Happiness? How can the examination of our individual Pursuit of Happiness help us to find the most meaningful work we are here to do in the world?
What is your specific path to happiness? Using the What Better Looks Like process and questions, by the end of this session, you will know your answer to the question, “What happiness should I pursue?”
How will you recognize the intersection where your work begins?
Many around the world are guaranteed neither life nor liberty. Because we have these gifts, we are free to pursue our happiness. In our final week, we explore Pursuit of Happiness, not as a personal path, but as our obligation—a social imperative as urgent today as the Abolition, Suffrage and Civil Rights movements were to earlier generations. In this final session we will create a specific plan of action for each participant.