We just missed getting “snowed out” by a single day.
So it was EXTREMELY sweet and convenient that the “Monster Storm” passed through early enough in the week for the skies to clear and the roads to be plowed.
It was a wonderful group of kids, parents, administrators, teachers and PTO volunteers who gathered last Thursday night for what I was calling, “Abi Yo Yo and the Bullies of Boo-ga-rah” but it really ended up being the perfect combination of my Bully Proof Kid Assembly and my Beyond the Borders program.
This turned out to be the program I’ve been developing for several years now that I was thinking of calling “Together We Can Change The World.”
Well it turned out that the story of Abi Yo Yo by my childhood hero, Pete Seeger, (and the very story that actually turned ME into a storyteller, turned out to be the perfect metaphor, or archetype for a program about people worki
ng out their conflicts, owning their “stuff” and working together (in spite of all our human flaws and foibles) to make the world a little bit better place…
So I’m proud to announce the availability of “Together We Can Change The World!” Drums, Songs and Stories Celebrating Character, Compassion, Courage, and Conflict Resolution
For me, it was sheer joy to be able to revisit one of my favorite stories of all time as well as to combine it with ANOTHER one of my all time faves, “The Silkie.” The loud, upbeat humorous Abi Yo Yo found it’s perfect balance with the softer, quieter story about the magical seals from Ireland and the message of a young child making a courageous and significant positive difference in his mother’s life.
And a few boys in the front row came up with a wonderful choreography for “Walk In My Shoes” that will FOREVER be engraved on my mind. LOL. Awesome!
So it felt pretty darn good from this end…
As I started editing the videos on Saturday, it became clear that something that had been germinating for a while finally came together in a way that was as satisfying to me as a healer, teacher, storyteller, songwriter and human being as it seemed to be for the children AND adults present at the family concert.
But don’t take my word for it, here’s the full program (each part is a separate video set up in a play list so you can scroll through them or just watch the whole thing in order).
And now that it is SPRING! (technically anyway :o), please feel free to contact me about booking this program for YOUR school or organization for Spring and Fall of 2017!
COWABUNGAH!
– Mark Shepard
