Honoured to Record for Shalom Group

This was a memorable recording and I just had to write a blog about it. The Shalom Mountain Retreat and Study Center is a beautiful place in the Catskill Mountains and was established in 1976 as a home of Shalom Process. Shalom Process is based around a “hope structure” for passionate and compassionate living. The centre is run by staff, volunteers, and a network of retreat leaders. One of these groups is the Gender Outlaws Shalom Group run by process leader LJ Wooden ! These are retreats for gender outlaws who “break the culturally defined lines of gender.” The retreats are designed to offer self-exploration and healing to people who feel alienated along gender lines. Together after a recent retreat, LJ and two other member wanted to see some of their thoughts and ideas up in visual form, using graphic recording. The way they described their goals and progress with their work made me envisioned a river with shorelines and bridges. Their ideas rolled along very quickly but were very visually evocative. It was an honour to record for them and the final piece was loaded with colour and flow, just like their inspiring ideas.

Using Graphic Recording in ESL

Recently I was volunteering as an ESL teacher! It’s something I like to do on the side that makes me feel great. My students are brilliant and they learn incredibly quickly. I always get a kick out of how fast they learn. So, we were hanging out one day, and I decided to introduce Graphic Recording as a technique in language learning. As I taught, I drew this big chart explaining the ideas for the lesson. Maybe it seems just like regular teaching, but the idea was to make a chart explaining the lesson using Graphic Recording techniques. Only I was Graphically Recording myself as I went along. So the chart worked fine, and they were better able to grasp the concepts. I felt glad to have a visual reminder of the lesson planning that could remain after the day was done. We referred to it after that and made others. So I took a snapshot so that people could see Graphic Recording in an ESL context. Worked great!

Global Warming Reversal

Okay, I did it again! I sketchnoted a Ted talk, this time by Seth Itzkan on Global Warming, quite similar to the film I was excited about! I was so interested by it, my pen flowed freely and I created some nice line work I am proud of. I used a finer pen tip than usual, and it looks great!. Seth Itzkan describes cows as allies in halting Global Warming. He says a radical change in herding practices can save the planet from desertification. The talk describes grasslands as the largest terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. My fave line is: “overgrazing is a human invention.” So I listened carefully and I made this sketchnote to ensure that the story remained committed to my memory. It was also fun drawing cows. I hope that Seth Itzkan gets as wide an audience as possible. He is part of the change Gandhi told us to be.