The Vital Force Archive

Mary Schapker's summary of Judy Hendricks' conference breakout session on teaching children, with tactics for grounding them, Tao symbols on the floor, small surprises and getting into after-school programs.

Amy Tyksinki's conference workshop notes on reaching high school students through counseling, history and language departments, and on teaching teens with concrete body cues, a soft cloth passed around, and recordings of Justin Stone.

Meg Costello, a Catholic Sister teaching with a physical disability, recounts five years of invitations: a stress management class at Georgian Court College where a student in a wheelchair wrote approving comments, monks at a New Jersey monastery, and a public school special needs class.

Carmen Brocklehurst describes two teenagers, 15-year-old Alex and 13-year-old Zak, in her adult beginners' classes, plus a student note from California State University Hayward and Kathy Grassel's praise for Joel Andrews' "Emblissening Movement."

Judy Hendrichs recounts teaching child-parent classes of six- to twelve-year-olds, using yin/yang floor markers, drawing breaks, surprise gifts and endless repetition of yinning and yanging.

Kathy Grassel introduces the prize-winning poem of Paul G., a painfully shy twelve-year-old in her juvenile detention T'ai Chi Chih class who was tried for manslaughter after an alleyway fight.

Five reader anecdotes, including Carol Houtkooper's grandson mishearing "aftermath" as a math class, Sher Dano's 99-year-old student Gerry explaining the Viagra benefits of T'ai Chi to a curious newcomer, and a Seijaku training quip about sitting in a square.

Kathy Grassel, teaching at a juvenile detention center, finds a warden performing flawless T'ai Chi Chih, learned from Ron, a quiet former student now serving time in adult prison.

Light-hearted anecdotes from teachers: a special needs student correcting a classmate's balance, Sharon Sirkis finding a Chicago bag as her sign to audit Ed's last teacher training, and a detention-home student renaming the Six Healing Sounds "Blessings Your Innards".

Roberta Taggart describes the six-week pro bono program she began in 1999 teaching twelve special needs children in a Newark public school, with guidelines, foot massage routines, and the speech pathologist's observations of calmer behavior.

Letters to editor Noel Altman include Sr. Mary Reynolds seeking ways to use TCC with New York Archdiocese schoolchildren affected by the World Trade Center disaster, and Mary Teetor Zablotny reporting measured gains in lung capacity despite asthma.

Lorraine Lepine volunteered at her son's Raleigh middle school and taught six students with attention and behavior difficulties in fifteen-minute homeroom sessions, quoting their own written reports on anger, stress and focus.

Four light-hearted items: Debbie Cole's class billed as "Moving Medication," Sharon Sirkis taking a message from a squirrel, Mary Pat George's student hearing "Around the Bladder," and Sher Dano's grandchildren critiquing a graceful conclusion.

Jean Katus taught weekly TCC classes at a residential drug and alcohol treatment center for Native American adolescents, structuring sessions in three parts and gathering honest anonymous drawings and written responses from residents.

Judith Rivera took a community center class with her husband in January 2000 and now uses the Six Healing Sounds with children who have ADHD, plus a daily meditation habit grown from two minutes to twenty.

Margery Erickson follows up on her efforts at a public school, describing how seven of her 15 special needs students learned all the movements and how one of them led the class.

Catherine Brieussel describes recruiting eight volunteers from a French secondary school, among them a shy boy whose father had just died and who asked to join her class the following day.

Carmen Brocklehurst describes presenting T'ai Chi Chih to 150 state employees at the New Mexico Governor's Conference and then to her granddaughter's junior high honors literature class, where students felt the chi immediately.

Newly accredited teacher Trish Winger writes to Justin Stone from a 41-foot sailboat, recounting how Joanna Foltz taught her in the Bahamas and asking about stance width, the title "Master," Chi Kung, and ADD children.

Margery Erickson signed up 70 support staff at her intermediate unit before administrators shut the class down, so she folded T'ai Chi Chih into the health curriculum for her life skills students instead.

Letters from readers, including Theda Gillespie's call for a teacher at a Napier high school, Tonya Setzke's request for menopause research, and Sr. Marie-Ann Main's schoolchildren asking for their morning tape.

Mark Moloney describes how an open, drop-in health club class in St. Louis led to workplace sessions for county health nurses, a school grant proposal, and a living-room lesson for a woman with breast cancer and her family.

Four anecdotes: Sharon Sirkis gets a message from a movie listing, Mark Moloney's student renames Around the Platter "Wiping the Counter," Jean Katus mishears "waste," and Ed Altman slips a quarter under a candidate's heel during Anchor Taffy.

Catherine Brieussel teaches three T'ai Chi Chih classes in her French state school, where teenagers follow an hour of practice with soft music and illustrated notebooks of the movement names.

Sr. Marie-Ann Main sends photographs of her South African pupils at various stages through the school year, some in their first lesson and others further along, captured whenever she remembered her camera.

Teacher notes from Shirley and Cheryl Hall's demonstration for a Cannon Beach children's China unit, Sister Marie-Ann Main's thanks before carrying TCC to South Africa, Paul Ciske on posture, Kaiser classes and Himalayan practice.

Aida Wilks describes three weeks of teaching T'ai Chi Chih in Manila in 1998, where children responded faster than adults and her two asthmatic nephews, aged 7 and 8, went attack-free.

Reprinted from the Dublin News, Jason Montiel's report on eleven Taiwanese exchange teens who joined a dozen seniors for half an hour of T'ai Chi Chih led by Virginia Lee Cepeda at the Dublin Senior Center.

Teacher news from four states: Don Fiore's fourth graders in Phoenix, Marianne Merritt's classes for prisoners and staff at a California prison, a Navajo elders falls prevention fair, and Ralph Garn's seated group.

Letters from teachers worldwide: Sister Francis Kay's African Fund to fly Sister Marie-Ann to the USA for accreditation, Gordon Wade's grade 6 and 7 class, Kassandra Jor rebuilding in Vancouver, and Karen Carrier's tea ceremony.