Reaching Out to Our Friends at LAUSD

Thank you for your participation in Girl Group Enterprises presents “Tool Box Training” at the LAUSD GATE Conference.

Girl Group began as a conversation between Wesley Stahler, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a specialty in pediatric and adolescent anxiety and award winning writer, Tanya Ward Goodman in the autumn of 2014. What if there were a way to let girls know they were okay? What if the definition of “normal” were expanded to include everyone? What if we could look at our differences as strengths? What would have helped us when we were kids?

Since that fortuitous lunch, we’ve created and conducted over 50 single-sex and co-ed workshops and ongoing Friday afternoon series. We’ve served hundreds of girls, boys and their parents. We’ve created programs for idependent and LAUSD schools, tailored our workshops for The Girl Scouts, and presented to parents and educators at numerous education conferences.

Our program is broken down into five components: THINK, TALK, WRITE, DO, BE. Each session incorporates conversation, writing, action-based play and mindfulness and explores the central idea of what it means to live “on purpose.” Girl Group, Boy Group and Tool Box Training build social-emotional skills, flexibility, compassion and provide concrete tools for managing anxiety.

We conduct ongoing groups and workshops for boys and girls in our Atwater Village headquarters as well as a two week-summer program. For more information about current groups and workshops, please visit us at www.girlgroup.us

Bring Girl Group Enterprises programming to your school or organization: “Tool Box Training” is a co-ed series that provides concrete tools for self-esteem building, empathy training and reflection. All sessions follow a set structure, which includes an opening ritual of tea and a reading (mindfulness training), attention to metaphor (taking personal responsibility), an action component (being) and a creative component centered around theater, writing or art (doing).
Teacher Training: A one day (90 minute) teacher training session can be scheduled at any time. We feel the best way to train is to do. Workshops on “Flexibility,” “Keeping a Notebook,” “Silence” and “Fairy Tales” would be a great introduction to our philosophy and methods of learning. Parent Education: One-hour parent education workshops can be tailored to fit community needs and interests. We offer concrete tools for managing anxiety, identifying emotions and reacting mindfully to the world. Parent Education sessions are action based and participatory. Workshops for students can be tailored to same sex or co-ed groups. With topics such as “Keeping a Notebook,” “Shrinking your Worries,” and “Behind the Mask,” our programming incorporates mindfulness, art, movement and social-emotional training. You can learn more about us at www.girlgroup.us

We offer a sliding scale for school groups as well as limited scholarships for weekly workshop and camp participation. We look forward to hearing from you!

All our best,

Tanya and Wesley www.girlgroup.us