Ashoka
Eastwood Elementary School
Eastwood uses the Responsive Classroom approach to create a trusting school community in which students feel safe to learn and take risks. They are working on implementing The Nurtured Heart Approach®, which is a relational methodology for building Inner Wealth® in children. They have a school wide theme that includes a book and word-of-the-month created to build community and support children growing strong on the inside. Eastwood Elementary believes in teaching the whole child – academic, social, emotional and physical.
Laura Pladson
Laura is the school counselor at Eastwood Elementary. She received a M.Ed. in Counseling & Guidance in 1994 and spent over 15 of the last 20 years working at Rape & Abuse Crisis Center in Fargo, ND. Laura’s “transformative moment” was her time there working with victims of domestic and sexual violence as she became well acquainted with the terrible way people can choose to treat each other. Laura needed and wanted to make a change to working with children in a more proactive and preventative manner. She wants to instill in children a sense of personal power, a strong set of coping and problem solving skills, and the knowledge that they are an amazing human being who has a right to be treated with respect everywhere they go. Laura also wants children to understand the responsibility they have to treat others respectfully. Laura recently applied for and received a $700 grant from North Dakota United to purchase “tools” to help students stay in or return to the Green Zone (calm, focused, and ready to learn). These may include hand fidgets to keep their body still while at their desk, a chair that allows their body quiet movement while working, a pencil tip they can chew on, and/or calming items next to the take-a-break chair.