Dealing with the stresses and the pace of everyday life was the first of many topics on the agenda at the first-annual Saskatchewan School Community Council Conference in North Battleford.
Darren Lang, a motivational speaker, gave the opening address at the conference Friday night at the Light of Christ Learning Centre.
Darren’s background is human resources consulting and training. His wife, Darci Lang, is also a well-known trainer and speaker and the two have run their own corporate training company for the past several years.
His message to the various school Community Council representatives, School Board members, parents, and others in the audience was on the topic “Staying Up in an Upside-Down World.” It focused on tools and techniques to catch the “up spiral” to feel happier and productive.
In particular, he focused on two words: “chill and choose.” He made the point that people could be better prepared to deal with the stress in their daily lives by following those two words.
“We all deal with stress, and I think that even though we all deal with it, very few people do anything about it or are proactive in recovering from it,” Lang said.
“Having different ideas you can connect with, like the ‘chill and choose’ idea, I think helps you recover from stress or not flip your stress switch as far as you would have – not go down that ‘down spiral’ that we’ve talked about that a lot of people have been dealing with,” said Lang.
Dealing with stress is particularly relevant to this audience. Lang noted that he geared his remarks to his audience of school community councils.
“I sat on a community council back home and whatnot so it was a bit easier to relate to people and bring those stories in,” said Lang.
That was just the start of the two-day conference hosted by Light of Christ School Division, which was geared towards school community councils. These elected councils represent parents and community members when dealing with schools and the school divisions.
The schedule for Saturday featured a number of workshops and included a strong Indigenous component. A blessing and smudging ceremony was followed by a blanket exercise in the morning session.
The day included Dr. Sean Lessard, whose background included work with Indigenous youth, who was scheduled to present under the title “Red Worn Runners: Exploring the Possibilities of Curriculum Making Both In and Outside of School Places.”
There were also breakout sessions scheduled for the afternoon with those taking place across the street at Notre Dame School.
Those were on topics such as children’s mental health, the calls for action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, on Internet safety, digital citizenship and social media, drugs and gangs, and community safety.
