The Campfire

Objectives

Closure at the end of a journey helps us successfully transition to what is next. Rest and recovery during breaks are essential for educators to live healthy, full lives, and to generate fresh energy for the next academic period. But without recognizing and celebrating achievements, and beginning to release secondary trauma, a break's healing and regeneration may take time to start. This activity is designed to bring a team together to let go of built-up negativity, celebrate successes, and smoothly transition away from the classroom toward other areas of life.

Materials

• Paper

• Writing utensils

• Drawing utensils

• Speaker (for pre-recorded sound/music)

• Optional: "campfire ambiance," (e.g., soundscape recording including a crackling fire and imagery evoking a campfire scene)

Facilitation Outline/Notes/Script

You may read parts of this verbatim or use this as a guide for personalizing the experience for the educators you are working with.

1. Starting in a circle, standing around something representing a campfire (preferably with campfire-themed ambiance in the room), take three grounding breaths. Take a moment to scan your body, feeling how your body is in the present moment. Are there any messages your body is telling you, after this whole school year?

2. Now, before we go into the activities, take a moment to acknowledge what you have brought with you into the room, the “baggage” you might have. Acknowledge that everyone else, regardless of their academic discipline, instruction level, experience, and so on, is carrying their own baggage too. Take a moment to just look around the circle and give everyone some kind of gesture of greeting, appreciation, or acknowledgment.

3. Guideline: before celebrating the highs from this school year, we are going to explore the lows, to help us recover from them and leave them behind. You have total control over your level of participation throughout this process. If you are feeling particularly worried about this part of the workshop, please feel free to sit back and observe the process. Or just follow along as it is comfortable for you, knowing that you can change the suggestions for the activity as much as you need. You may also leave the room and/or request a private meeting after.

4. At your individual workstations with basic art supplies, start to think about the baggage you might have from the year. Were there activities or initiatives you wanted to try, but did not come to fruition? Policy decisions that negatively impacted you and your students? Scheduling conflicts? Administrative bureaucracy? Challenging behaviors? Confrontations with guardians? Anything else—from national politicians’ decisions, to how a brief interaction may have made you feel?

5. With your art supplies, start to represent these challenges in some way. These can be marks on the page, or something else visual. You can also just list or cluster them. Or you can convey the feelings that are arising in you as you recall these challenges. Feel free to use the materials creatively—like a child experiencing a meltdown might. You can crumple the papers, cross things out, and get a little rough with holding the crayons and making your marks. Try to hold space and reserve judgment if someone makes noise or moves around while doing this. This time is for “letting it out.”

6. After completing your representations, take a moment to write about your experience.

7. Gather your representations and return to the circle. One by one, we will throw these into the campfire—and even if this is not a real fire, we will somehow destroy the papers (shredding, etc.). If you would like to name any of your challenges or say anything about them, your feelings, or the process of letting them out, feel free to say a few words before you throw your representation in. Perhaps your short story could begin with “once upon a time” (“once upon a time there was XYZ challenge, and the teacher released that challenge into the bonfire of change”). You can also make a gesture, sound, or movement, or say nothing at all. Simply tossing them in will be powerful.

8. Voluntary discussion about the challenges and/or process.

9. De-roling: affirmations for this include “I am more than those problems” and “I am more than that teacher’s problems.” Shake out your left arm as you repeat an affirmation, feeling those challenges and tensions leave your body. Repeat for your right arm, the middle of your body, and both legs.

10. —Break—

11. This part of the activity will probably be more enjoyable! Here we will fondly look back on all the great things we did this year. Big wins that may have already been celebrated and awarded, and all the other things that rarely receive external acknowledgments.

12. Starting in the circle, sitting as comfortably as possible, with eyes closed or with a soft gaze or otherwise, think of moments that were joyful, positive, or “wins.” These memories can be from any point in the school year. Big or small. When did you feel like a “good teacher,” that you were fulfilling your purpose, or making a difference? How did you impact your students? How did it physically feel in those moments, and how does it feel now to put yourself back in those memories? What were the sounds? Sights? Smells? Textures?

13. Bring these memories back to your workstation and start to represent them visually. Again, these can be pictures, simple marks, lists, or clusters, and you can represent individual memories, multiple memories, or feelings that are coming through now.

14. After visually representing your highs, take a moment to write in reflection, or sound or move your visual.

15. Now back in the circle, we are going to share and celebrate the wins that were likely held onto until this moment. Now we will all finally hear about all the wonderful things you accomplished this year! In the spirit of the campfire, try on starting with “once upon a time,” before sharing your story. If this gets in the way of sharing, leave this part out and just share how it feels right for you.

16. Time for sharing, discussion, and celebration.

17. At the end of our workshop, before we go away for the summer—whether you are staying, traveling, teaching in a summer program, or anything else—we are going to get ready to rest and recover in some way. Our de-roling affirmations before were “I am more than those problems” and “I am more than that teacher’s problems.” Now our affirmation is “I am more than a teacher.” Because being a teacher is great, but to help us relax before returning, we need to remind ourselves that it is ok to put that identity to the side for a moment. There might be other parts of us that need attention.

18. Shake out your left arm as you repeat the affirmation, feeling those challenges and tensions leave your body. Repeat for your right arm, the middle of your body, and both legs.

19. For a final time in the circle, give yourself some recognition/gesture of appreciation or gratitude. And look around the circle and give the same to your colleagues.