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Your go-to source for all things education, trauma-informed, leadership, and beyond!
Our experts share some of their favorite tools, strategies, resources, and suggestions.
Back to Basics Through Engaged Education
Kids find their school life boring. Don't believe me? Ask them. Go ahead. Ask a recent graduate to pick out one word that describes her schooling experience. More than likely that word will be boring.
Of course students will remember bright spots that usually surround a special event, their friends, or even memories that have to do with an elective or extracurricular interest.
The Kids are Alright
Few things chap my hide more than the classic grumbling "kids these days" complaint, especially from those who don’t work with these kids every day. There's a pervasive idea that today's youth are somehow inferior but how many of us remember the “old folks” telling us Gen X-ers what a great generation we were? It didn’t happen back then and it never will. But as an educator, these comments often prompt an eye roll that I perfected during my own teenage years.
Anchors: The Symphony of Healing
Life, with all its beautiful and challenging high notes and low notes, is a journey and experience that is unique to each individual. It is filled with moments of joy, obstacles to overcome, love, sadness, and a myriad of emotions that serenade our daily lives. While we often embrace and melodically cruise through the calm, relaxing moments, it is the doubt-filled, sad, angry, and stress inducing moments we find most challenging and disruptive.
Journey to Becoming Restorative Practitioners in Our Schools
Many schools find themselves on a path leading toward restorative practices and approaches. Our team has been diligently working on a framework that specifically addresses the aforementioned challenges, empowering staff to act as change-makers and undertake the demanding task of serving our most challenging students. Given the prevalent challenging behaviors in our schools, a balance of strong relationships and high accountability becomes imperative.
The Year to Dream: Building Possibilities, Partnerships, and Progress
As I kick off the sixth year of my annual tradition of choosing a word of focus, I have landed on "dream." This year is all about possibilities and opportunities that spark vitality and purpose. A pivotal moment occurred when I stumbled upon a 1998 radio interview (from the late 1900’s as the kids say these days), where the speaker shared four questions to test the authenticity of one's dreams. With these questions in hand, direction for the year becomes clearer.
Personalized Greetings with “Personality-Plus”
It’s a universal “inside joke” that the kid we’d really like to have a break from is the one who is never absent. Like EVER. And while it’s kind of a joke, it’s also kind of true. Those kids can really wear us out. Did I just break some unwritten “teacher code” by saying this out loud? I hope not.
But what if we flipped the script for a moment?