Had a hard time sleeping last night.

Today I was doing a custom made presentation for a school that likes to call me back every year and I always get nervous when I have to do a presentation outside my tried and true.

I was supposed to address the idea of reconciliation with grade ones and twos.

Reconciliation!

It’s a hot topic these days with the issue of Indigenous rights all the murdered and missing indigenous women. But with this age group I was only supposed to cover the topic of reconciliation in a broader way: culture, race, etc.

I had the perfect story. It’s a story of a falling out I went through with certain people who are very dear to me, where I really put my foot in my mouth.

Thing is though, I never got to tell the story.

All last night I tossed and turned wondering what I’d focus on. I had close to an hour to fill and with new presentations I often wonder how I’m going to fill the time.

But then this morning I woke up with the realization that BIG RED LOLLIPOP is perfect for themes of reconciliation!

And Voila!

I had my presentation basically set up.

I started with the definition of reconciliation that was easily accessible for grade one and twos.

I said:

RECONCILIATION is basically the process of taking a WRONG—-> and making it RIGHT.

Then I asked the kids to put up their hands if they’d ever done anything wrong.

Of course they all put up their hands (and so did I).

The rest of the presentation included a story workshop of Big Red Lollipop where we talked about beginning, middle and end.

I gave them time to discuss in groups what the ‘end’ (the reconciliation between Sana and Rubina) should be.

And I expanded the workshop to include the concepts of justice, empathy and peace. It was so easy because the themes of justice, empathy and peace are natural talking points to the story anyway!

Oh it was a good workshop! In fact I’m thinking of turning it into a regular presentation/workshop!

The kids, over two hundred of them, were totally engaged!

And afterwards the vice principal who’d helped man the microphone and got the kids to say their solutions raved about the workshop and the teachers came up to me with big smiles on their faces and also said how wonderful it had been.

So here, a day that began with trepidation ended with a feeling of triumph!

Oh, and on another note, just found out that Sophie Blackall who did the fabulous illustrations for BIG RED LOLLIPOP just won her SECOND Caldecott Award for her book HELLO LIGHTHOUSE! (It’s only the top award for illustrators of children’s books!) Yay Sophie!!!!!

So all in all a wonderful day!