ashley cooper

2009-02-24T06:58:00.000-08:00

This site has moved. Please visit Ashley's new site. Thank you!

2005-10-22T23:34:00.000-07:00

This site has moved. Please visit Ashley Cooper's new site. Thank you!

Parenting Groups

2005-06-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

Enhancing and strengthening the child-parent bond by teaching parents effective ways to respond to their child’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviors

This course offers techniques proven highly effective for helping parents successfully communicate with and discipline their child. By expanding awareness of communication and discipline skills, parents contribute to their child’s success in school and in life.

This course provides you with tools to better understand your child’s world and to communicate that understanding to them. Open and effective communication is essential for healthy relationships to flourish. Establishing healthy family communication patterns in early childhood will serve lifelong development and success. In this group you learn to recognize your child’s emotional needs, helping them feel safe, understood, accepted, valued, and confident. Another important component of the group is a focus on effective means of setting limits. Through this process the parent-child relationship is enhanced and strengthened, thus facilitating personal growth and change for both.

Quotes from previous participants:

"This has been a very good experience because you learn that you are not alone when you confront your child's discipline problems and it's nice to get feedback from other parents."

"I felt a sense of sadness in that the way I was parenting my children was the way I wanted things to be. In this group, I became a lot more patient, considerate of my children's needs, more in control of my own feelings and that gave me a chance to be more understanding and loving to my kids."

"For whatever reason, during each and every workshop session I felt myself flooded with appreciation and love and acceptance for my kids. As they are! That was a lovely side benefit and one that motivated me to try to get back to that level of acceptance even in the midst of everyday frustrations..."

Heart to Heart Parenting Workshop Series (with descriptions)

Events

2005-05-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

This site has moved. Please visit Ashley Cooper's new site. Thank you!

Past Events

Heart to Heart Parenting
Deepening Connections
With Yourself and Your Child

A series of 7 Workshops
October 15 – December 17, 2008
6:30 – 8:30 pm in The Evergreen School Cabin

For caregivers of children 9 and under

This series of 7 workshops is grounded in the Positive Discipline approach and integrates various philosophies and current research from parent education programs and child development theory. It draws from elements of Emotion Coaching, Tuning in to Kids, Filial Therapy, Nonviolent Communication and Mindfulness Practices. These interactive and hands-on workshops will be facilitated by Ashley Cooper, The Evergreen School’s Primary Division counselor. Each group will be a combination of experiential learning activities and opportunities for participants to learn from the experiences of one another. The workshops are meant to be taken sequentially, but family members may register for individual workshops as desired. Please note that some workshops do have pre-requisites. Workshops are free for Evergreen Families and cost $25 per person per workshop for other members of the community.

Workshop Series

October 15
Creating a Foundation:
Core principles of Positive Discipline
and this Approach to Parenting

October 22 & October 29
Reflective Communication and Emotion Coaching
Highly recommended but not required that you register
for both of these workshops and not just one.

November 5
Boundaries, Limits and Choices
In order to register for this workshop, you must have attended
one of the workshops on October 22nd or October 29th.

November 19
Inviting Cooperation:
Positive Time-out, Routines, Agreements
In order to register for this workshop, you must have attended
one of the workshops on October 22nd or October 29th.

December 3
Family Meetings & Self-care

December 17
Tools, Tools, Tools & Follow-up Discussions
In order to register for this workshop, you must have attended
at least 2 other workshops in this series.

For more information and to read workshop descriptions, click on the images below
To register contact Ashley Cooper by October 8th
acooper@evergreenschool.org

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Community Event, July 19, 2008

Seeds of Compassion is about a "collective heart"
working together to change our world.

Saturday, July 19th from 1-5 pm
The Evergreen School, Shoreline, WA

You are invited to join with others to engage our "collective heart"
and work together towards creating a caring community.

Please click on the full invitation below to learn more.

Registration is necessary as space is limited. Please do so by July 16th.

At this event we will explore such questions as: How do we nurture kindness and compassion in children, families and communities? Are you already involved in efforts that invite people to live together compassionately? What can you dream of doing with others? What steps are you willing to take to help yourself and your community live in more compassionate ways?

Contact Ashley Cooper, openingspace@gmail.com with questions.

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I facilitated an Open Space with 42 Third Graders -

The theme was: What can we do to make our school a better place? What can we do to make our world a better place?

The children created the topics that they would discuss in two 20 minutes sessions. They generated 18 topics including, New Rules for the Playground, How we should be nice and kind to each other, Learning from history's mistakes, Children's Voting Rights, Try to help the environment! Not polluting any more!, and Not excluding people from anything.

We ended with a once around reflection circle in which everyone had a chance to share. Here are some of their comments.

What I liked in my group was that there were no debates. We were all united. There were differences about how it is, but we were all united.

We decided to start a fund to save the rainforest.

Our group went well. Kids voting rights. It was a good opportunity for discussion.

In history's biggest mistakes, it started as being silly with just girls there. Then the boys came in and made it better. In the second session I bonded with someone I didn't know that well.

Everyone agreed with saving the rainforest. It wasn't silly. We were serious.

I think we talked about an important issue: not excluding.

One little touch that I think helped a lot with this age group was to provide a basket of objects that hosts could choose to use for a talking stick. I saw a few kids struggling with everyone talking at once and then one of them running to grab a talking stick. I also provided a generic form for them to use for note taking.

Aside from the opportunity for their voices to be heard, to connect with one another around things that matter to them, and to experience themselves self-organizing, I greatly appreciated that students who have a tendency to wander and not participate in assigned topics (students that can often be labeled as challenges) that at the OS they actually had names and roles for their ways of being, butterflies and bumble bees. I loved that they were doing what they were 'supposed to be doing' by wandering around and trying to figure out where they belong and where they want to participate.

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Relationship Coaching

2005-03-01T18:33:00.000-08:00

A witness present with you as you look into the quality of your relationship, strengthening communication, enhancing intimacy, honoring individuality and celebrating unity.

Open Space with Third Graders

2004-11-20T08:03:00.000-08:00

I facilitated an Open Space with 42 Third Graders -

The theme was: What can we do to make our school a better place? What can we do to make our world a better place?

The children created the topics that they would discuss in two 20 minutes sessions. They generated 18 topics including, New Rules for the Playground, How we should be nice and kind to each other, Learning from history's mistakes, Children's Voting Rights, Try to help the environment! Not polluting any more!, and Not excluding people from anything.

We ended with a once around reflection circle in which everyone had a chance to share. Here are some of their comments.

What I liked in my group was that there were no debates. We were all united. There were differences about how it is, but we were all united.

We decided to start a fund to save the rainforest.

Our group went well. Kids voting rights. It was a good opportunity for discussion.

In history's biggest mistakes, it started as being silly with just girls there. Then the boys came in and made it better. In the second session I bonded with someone I didn't know that well.

Everyone agreed with saving the rainforest. It wasn't silly. We were serious.

I think we talked about an important issue: not excluding.

One little touch that I think helped a lot with this age group was to provide a basket of objects that hosts could choose to use for a talking stick. I saw a few kids struggling with everyone talking at once and then one of them running to grab a talking stick. I also provided a generic form for them to use for note taking.

Aside from the opportunity for their voices to be heard, to connect with one another around things that matter to them, and to experience themselves self-organizing, I greatly appreciated that students who have a tendency to wander and not participate in assigned topics (students that can often be labeled as challenges) that at the OS they actually had names and roles for their ways of being, butterflies and bumble bees. I loved that they were doing what they were 'supposed to be doing' by wandering around and trying to figure out where they belong and where they want to participate.