All you need is Love

Charlotte Tervit - Vice Principal 

If you live on planet Earth (or at least South Africa) you would spent the past few weeks with a barrage of red hearts, love songs and mountains of chocolates - every shop selling heart shaped goodies, radio stations blurting out love songs and all tv channels airing rom coms. Even schools are on board with friendship days and anonymous cards and roses handed out by the dozen.

This has made me think a lot about the "love" our kids experience when at school and at activities such as drama.

In this context love equates, for me, to kindness, respect, acceptance and compassion. These are all principles we hold very dear at Helen O'Grady Drama Academy. One of our overarching rules is that you never hurt someone, their feelings or their bodies. We respect each other and always choose to be kind, rather than cruel, regardless. We embrace our differences and similarities and celebrate the wonderful diversity of our students.

As one mom recently told me, part of her attraction to Helen O'Grady as a drama option for her son is the great diversity in cultures and backgrounds of the children in his class.

But in order for the diversity of our students to work and be a positive aspect of our classes there needs to be a whole lot of kindness, respect, acceptance and compassion. In other words, LOVE.

Interestingly we have spoken about love and kindness quite a lot since the start of the year with our Kindy students (ages 3-6), first about loving our pets and currently we are talking about loving ourselves. We read a wonderful book called  "I Like Myself” by Karen Beaumont in our theme called "All about Me"

I've often written about how drama classes must be a sanctuary for our students, a place where they feel completely comfortable being themselves, and it all starts with liking yourself, nay, LOVING yourself. And by not letting what other people might think or say about you get you down. Now, this is not easy for anyone, not even for adults, let alone tweens and teens! But drama is the perfect space to do exactly that!

In "I like Myself" my favourite lines are:

"And I don't care in any way what someone else might think or say."


"I may be called a silly nut or crazy cuckoo bird - so what?
I'm having too much fun, you see, for anything to bother me!"
"No matter if they stop and stare,
no person
ever
anywhere
can make me feel that what they see is all there really is to me."












What an amazing opportunity and privilege we have to make kids feel comfortable in their own skins, feel confident in their own "silly nuttiness" or "crazy cuckoo birdyness" and know that their true value lies in what is inside and not on the outside.

If that is how you see yourself you can't help but see and treat others in the same way - look past what is on the outside and really care about who people are on the inside. Respect them and show true kindness and compassion.

So, in the end, all you really need is love 😊
                  ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️



Article by Charlotte Tervit