Wildlife Rescue Series!

The Delta Kappa Gamma Society International (DKG) is a group of several thousand key women educators from all over Canada, the United States and Europe. This weekend, the Northwest Region held its annual conference at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, with about 400 women in attendance.

After presenting to a couple of the local chapters back in February, I was encouraged to create a workshop for the conference. I applied and was accepted (see workshop outline below, or click on Educators in the right nav bar) and since then have been stuffing ideas into a file. I pulled the file out two weeks ago, and spent a good thirty to forty hours crafting my presentation, keen to make a powerful impression on these women who have so much influence with so many other educators and students all over the continent.

Five women attended my workshop.

Five. Six, if you count my mom.
As I stood in the hallway outside the conference room, checking my watch and wondering if maybe the rest of my participants were just in line for the washroom and would be arriving any minute now, I steeled myself for the truth by thinking of Anton Chekhov.

Or rather, of a play of his called The Three Sisters in which I played the role of Olga back in 1996. It was an execrable, two-hour-long amateur production, but the theatre company itself had a strong following, so we blamed the weather that one night when, by curtain time, only 10 kind souls had purchased tickets. The show must go on, we decided, and buoyed, I think, by the faith of our teeny tiny audience, we gave our best performance. As the curtain came down, we received a 10-person standing ovation.

My five stalwart DKG-ers — six, if you count my mom — took chairs along the center aisle, and we began. I was speaking of the heroism of children and the burden they all carry knowingly now, of the need to save the world. Children don’t have the same freedom we did, to play at being SuperHeroes. This generation is all too aware that the planet really needs them, needs all they have to give, as soon as they can give it. I spoke of the myth of the hero — elucidated so clearly by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With A Thousand Faces — and how this myth is born inside all of us to tell, and to live. And I showed the participants some simple ways to help children get in touch with the heroic part of themselves; to bring their unique gifts into awareness; and to use those gifts to take meaningful action.

If you’re a DKG member reading this, and you’re wishing you’d made it to workshop, write me at janeraybooks@gmail.com. I’d love to give this presentation again; it’s got lots more mileage in it!

And if you’re one of the five who did attend, thank you … for choosing to spend your time with me Friday afternoon, for having the courage to experiment with some new ideas, and for your support of my books.

Special thanks to Oregon for your enthusiasm to bring me down to tour; I hope we can work that out! And to Ohio, a writer herself who is teaching others to write: may your daughter’s delivery be safe, swift and joyful.
Oh, and thank you, Anton.