Let’s Get Started with Morning Meeting Plans

Let’s Get Started: How to Teach Staying Alive in Morning Meetings or other times:

The 5 Needs in Life can be taught in any order. For the sake of consistency, they will be addressed in the following order in the materials:

1. Staying Alive
2. Love and Belonging
3. Freedom and Boundaries
4. Power
5. Fun

Each group is different, and sometimes you may feel a class or group you are working with needs to start with Power, or Love and Belonging, it is fine to start anywhere. One of the best things about The 5 Needs is that they also can be interconnected. We often meet one need at a time. Also, how we meet one of the needs can impact how we meet a different need.

Need a helping hand?

We have monthly guides and weekly guides to support your work with using The 5 Needs in your class or group. These are guides, you are free to use them, change them or rearrange the information to suit your situation. Flexibility is another aspect of The 5 Needs materials that make them valuable.

Let’s start with Staying Alive.

Staying Alive is a broad topic. For some students, this may seem like a “no-brainer,” but for others, we find it is harder than anyone knew. We have learned of families living in tents, some families living in cars, and even a teacher’s assistant once living in her car, and no one knew. It was not that no one cared or even that everyone was too busy. There just was not an opportunity, a space, or a platform open to talk about such things. These are not things we bring up, and there often needs to be an invitation of sorts.

Teaching about The 5 Needs, even a basic thing like Staying Alive, can allow people a space to talk about their personal needs. The is one reason having a little box, with a lock, if possible, for people to drop notes in about The 5 Needs, can be extremely helpful.

Looking specifically

Food can be an issue for many families today. Sometimes families have only thought they could afford junk food and have no idea about how to budget, how to shop for healthy food, how to garden, and how to compromise on other things to have more money for food. Then some absolutely do not have enough money to spend on food.

In some areas, there are free lunches and sometimes free breakfasts. Some schools use “book bags” to provide food for the children and their families. People care. People help whenever they are aware of the need, but how can the need to be heard?

Sometimes, we can watch and see. Sometimes as we listen, we learn. Sometimes a child will suffer in silence and not say a word, but if we talk about the basic needs of food, water, and sleep, we can provide a space again for the child to talk with you or add a note in the box that will also us the opportunity to get help for the child and their family.

How we talk about The Needs matters.

The ways we teach can take the shame and guilt away or drive it in deeper. We can talk about the difficulties some people have in ways that allow all children (or students of all ages) to learn to empathize, have compassion, be bold and ask for help, and hear one another too, without judgment. Using The 5 Needs materials, concepts, and language in our daily lives and our classes can open doors and windows into some dark and painful places.

Ideas of how to talk about Staying Alive in class meetings or groups:

We can start by asking what Staying Alive means to the group. The basics, like food, shelter, and clothing, will likely come up.

We can talk about hygiene with all ages. Discussing at length the following, including how to do  and why do it:

• Taking a shower or bath
• Washing hands
• Brushing our teeth
• Flossing our teeth
• Using deodorant
• Washing our hair
• How often to wash our clothes, underwear, and socks.
• Nail care for our tows and hands
• Hair care and haircuts

Food:

• How do we cook healthy meals?
• What is healthy to eat?
• Where can you get good food (even take a trip to the store or farmers market)?
• What about those who have special diets, what do they do to get the food?

Money, expenses, and Shelter:

• We can move into what does it cost to stay alive today?
• The prices of food, and gas to get the car to the store.
• What about paying for rent, water, and maybe trash pick-ups?
• We can have fun for free, but what if we want to do things, what does that cost?
• What about medication some people need to take, and why it matters?

 

What is NEEDED and what is WANTED?

• Understanding the differences in real life, what is a need and what is the difference in a need and a want?
• What if you cannot get your wants? How do you handle it?
• What if you cannot get what you really NEED? Where do you go? Who do you tell or call?

Make each need real and practical with the group you are working with and make it broader by showing the need worldwide. Both current-day examples of people meeting each need in other cultures or in situations in history. Using the current news or history, or reading to pull from, we can show how The 5 Needs are not new; they have been around and are in all cultures, maybe not identified, but still there.

Identify local supports

As you teach about The 5 Needs, you may be able to identify local places the class can help somehow. Food closets may need food to stock the shelves. They may need plastic bags. They may need volunteers to stock the shelves or do other tasks. There may be churches in the ear that could support the community with their hot meal service. They may need our help too.

We can explore what is happening in our local community with each need. This can become community outreach for some students. Even young children can learn to donate, color pictures to give as a thank you for these how to serve in “food closets,” or do other acts of service. in a variety of ways. Giving is so important. We can use The 5 Needs as an opportunity to learn to give to others.

You can do this. Please do.

Using The 5 Needs in our classes can open conversations, even about the basics in life, and allow conversations to begin. Who knows where it will take us? Who knows what ideas the students may come up with to help the homeless, to help the people who are sick, who need food, or any other way that Staying Alive is difficult. We are planting seeds, and who knows where they will go and how they will grow