Category Archives: Spiritual

Camp Unity

April 22, 2016 ams 1 Comment

April 19 – 22, 2016

“Camp Unity is a requirement for the social justice pathway since it is great camp that focuses on social injustice of all types that help students become leaders within the school. This goal ultimately aligns with the Social Justice Pathway’s (SPJ) goals for our students as it serves as foundational understanding for our students in terms of discussion, understanding of leadership, and our perspectives when considering social justice issues.

Furthermore, this camp will help unify the students within SJP as a shared experience. Ms. Evans and I find that this will be such valuable experience for Amelia because it will give her a platform to explore issues she is interested in as well as allow her to bond with other classmates beyond her immediate friend group.”

Day (Evening) 1:

We arrived at Camp around 7:00 PM after a long and windy trip through traffic to Boulder Creek, in which my friends and I pretty much just slept the entire way, as comfortable as we could get in the cramped bus seats, one torso piled on top of another.

First things first; bags out of the buses, and we entered into the main lodge with our duffles piled on a lunch table outside and newly made nametags secured around our necks.

“Rainbow!”, someone called, and we learned that “Rainbow” meant the whole room shuffled around seats, actively trying to sit with people not of the same race, gender, or friend group. One of the best traditions of camp, as I don’t believe all 60 of us would’ve gotten half as close if we hadn’t been forced to sit and eat and talk to everyone else we didn’t know.

It was here we first met Richard, the lead counselor and adult of Camp Unity. Not so tall, not so short, bone white hair and a grizzled, tanned face. I remember one of the first things he said to us, an order to enjoy the food of our first dinner, to clean our plates because of how good the pasta bake was. I jokingly replied, “we’ll try,” and he clapped me on the shoulder and chuckled.

After dinner, it was bunk assignments and I got to meet my cabin mates. Luckily, they put me in one closer to the main hall so I didn’t have so far to go in the morning.

Back at the main hall, we all sat in a huge circle and introduced ourselves and “built community”, until the main event of the evening; tackling racial stereotypes. No notice, just straight “hey kids while this particular ethnic/racial group steps out of the room, please come up with every derogatory term/slang/stereotype for them you can think of, and we’ll bring them back in and make them look at them.”

Peer Comments

“Ace Emelia Straight”

strong sense of self
not afraid to talk about it
educator & tolerance
fearless spirit
always looking out for others
a voice for those who can’t
voicing your opinion
you know who you are
strong and courageous
gorgeous
teach and educate
passionate
very unique
born leader

Conclusion

In the end the entire camp became friends and started talking about their shared experiences, triumphs, failures, successes, preconceptions. And the world moved forward one little step in one small way.

10th Grade, Aikido, Aikido, Spiritual

5th Kyu Aikido Test

March 24, 2016 baba 1 Comment

March 19, 2016 @ 2:00 PM

AMS takes the 5th kyu aikido test (highest level blue belt). She passed with flying colors! She’s now the highest ranking teen in the teen class.

With her teachers... — With her teachers…

Aikido, Aikido, Spiritual

Winter Retreat 2016 – Aikido Center of Mountain View

February 8, 2016 baba Leave a comment

February 12, 2016

Group Photo

Arrived at CYO, Occidental.

B: “Nice… how’s your ankle? How are you liking it so far?”

A: “Ankle is doing okay. Having allergic reaction to pollen. 6:30 am aikido is my next class”

February 13, 2016

B: “How’s that working out – being the only teen? How’s the food?”

A: “food is great. i have to eat a lot more since i’m doing 4 hours of aikido. kinda tweaked my sprained ankle today in the last class; sitting out of afternoon zazen. it’s alright, nobody is super talkative and we all just sort of sit and chill on our own, so there isn’t a lot of pressure on me.”

B: “Glad the food is good. So you’re not sitting zazen? Other women besides Emily? The retreat is for reflection and camaraderie. ”

A: “I’m gonna sit zazen in the morning. I didn’t this afternoon bcuz of ankle and cough. there are 3 other women besides me n emily”

February 14, 2016

Chris Sensei & AMS — Chris Sensei & Amelia

February 15, 2016

10th Grade, Aikido, School, Spiritual

Aikido

August 24, 2015 baba Leave a comment

August 20, 2015

AMS started training in Aikido by joining the Saturday Teen Class at the Aikido Center. After about a month she was invited to start attending the Beginning/Basic Aikido class on MWF. So she’s going to Aikido 4 times a week. Her progress has been meteoric due to the amount of time she’s spending on the mat and her 10 years of ballet training.

September 19, 2015

AMS is now attending the Adult program on Saturday. Soon she will join the other adult classes on Tuesday/Thursday. We’re still trying to balance her schedule between school work load and Aikido. She is also a founding member of the Paly Aikido Team. Her teacher for that is also a black belt at the Aikido Center. He has suggested she’s ready to test and because she’s training with the adults she will be able to skip two belts and go straight to BLUE.

November 21, 2015

Amelia has been accepted by the circle of black belts practitioners. Although she has enough practice time to rank, she will wait to test for 5th kyu in March 2016.

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