(Leader Opening statement - It is suggested that the facilitator prepare for piloting this workshop by becoming an Ambassador of the Getting Along America platform, and that he or she provide contextual background as to how they prepared. Also explain the length of the curriculum/workshop consistent with their own purposes) 

Start: The first thing we are going to do this morning is to go outside and look at the sky. This program we are embarking on today asks us to consider drawing knowledge from mother nature and to consider if mother nature plays any role in our lives.

This should be Fun!

First exercise:  While observing our natural surroundings please consider the following question - What does it mean to be the “Bigger” person” as opposed to a “Smaller” person? Also when we think of a person who is "Responsible” rather than “Ordinary” what words come into your minds? 

While outside make a list. Then chart results. Bring inside and hang up on the wall for the remainder of the curriculum. (See sample results chart below).

(Return indoors- hang the chart, discuss results) 

Now play the short documentary film “The Fantastic Truths” by Glenn Cort.

At the conclusion of the movie, a discussion. What are the contentions being made in this film?

What is the film saying? Do you agree that we have a strong sense of what is right and wrong when we are born? Do we know what “virtue” looks and feels like? Do you agree with the film’s main contentions? 

Leaders- the course is geared to encourage participants to do independent research, to try to disprove any of the following statements. Throughout this course, we are going to make a series of contentions; it is up to you, students, to decide and choose if you agree or not.

Discuss The Three Main Course Contentions:

1. When we are born, we have more good traits than bad ones. 

2. Loss of our good traits is learned, and is therefore preventable.

3. Humility, balance, and responsibility are a framework that has proven over thousands of years to create a positive reality for ourselves and the world around us. 

Discuss these contentions:

• Is it true or false that for the most part, we will do better in our lives, and have more success and happiness both individually and collectively,  when we are humble or rather arrogant?  

• What about modesty and moderation, rather than being extreme? Do we do better in life, both as individuals and collectively as a society, when we seek the middle between two opposite extremes?

• What proof or examples from our lives can we offer in support, or to counter the contentions being made?

Discussion quotations: 

• “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”  Nelson Mandela (1994)

Recommended readings for this section: Letters to Mikey,  Chapters 1-3. Substack article, entitled, “People are Good; we can prove it” substack/gettingalongacademy

Segway to next section:  

(Participant Cards)

• If we are born so good, with so much virtue and potential, and we know what right and wrong look like.

• Then why do we have so much unhappiness, division, hostility, and problems in our world? 

Teacher: There are a number of very powerful and confusing forces that cause us to detach from our true nature, become untethered from the natural laws, and not live our lives according to the fantastic truths. The ingredients that follow are each complex. However, it’s the unique way in which they work all together and feed off each other, which gives them the power they wield over us.

The ingredients bring out the worst in us. They blind us. They are very much like a perfect storm. Discuss the concept of the perfect storm.

We have never been able to overcome these ingredients. Until Now!

Now, let’s turn to the Top Ten Ingredients to why we detach from our natural born goodness, and unknowingly begin to contribute to living in a destructively divided and chaotic world, one which resembles our living according to a distorted reality.