President's Letter Summer 2024

Dear Friends,

We here at AHE wish you all a restful and restorative summertime. We have had an inspiring and rewarding year through our online consulting program ( see below), monthly Pop-Up sessions featuring many of our ESP grads, and our final year of work with Cycle 13 of our ESP program. We thank our enthusiastic participants.

As we near the deadline date in October, The Educational Support Program is now accepting applications for the “Cycle 14” session. More information can be found regarding this multi-faceted and well-rounded Student Support Training Program at: ESP Training Program Info

We would like to honor and congratulate the members of Cycle 13 as they work to complete the last few steps of their training, and become certified Extra Lesson providers!

L to R front row: Mea Hilton, Luiza Kwiatkowska, Jenna Muñiz Lieberman, Uxune Hernandez Zuazua, Kelly Larsen, Ellen Kraft McCune, Miriam Greiser. L to R back row: Elyce Perico (co-director), Polly Saltet (Eurythmy), Julia King, Cate Decker, Naomi Nocera, Bonnie Sheehan Singleton, Molly Urich, Christina Chirdon-Jones, Tasha England, Dawn Zebolis-Sekella, Connie Helms (co-director)

This newsletter contains three articles: one by Mary Jo Oresti showing ways we can cultivate resilience in our students, another by Jada D'Angelo explaining how she uses a service dog in a school setting, and a third I wrote describing the manifold benefits of having an early childhood classroom rabbit. We hope you find them helpful.

Underlining the theme of the article on resilience, I often practice the Three-Fold Spiral, which is found in Audrey McAllen's book The Extra Lesson. Mary Jo Oresti offers guidance and an explanation of this exercise in an excellent video on the AHE website (scroll to the bottom of the home page). The exercises in Audrey’s book can often be helpful for adults, too– not only the children we work with-- particularly in times of stress.

We send our best wishes for a successful beginning of the school year.

Warm regards,

Betty Jane Enno

President, Association for a Healing Education