Appreciations during Covid-19 closures

So, I am in a mood.  I am winey, grumpy, tried of some people, want to be around people, and all over the map.  I choose to work in education because I like kids and people.  This “working from home” sucks and, to be honest, I am terrible at it.

One of the things I miss is showing appreciation for my staff.  I can’t leave little notes int he staff room for them.  I can’t surprise them with bubble water in the staff refrigerator randomly.  I can’t put supplies with a cheesy saying on them in their boxes.  I love that stuff.  It allows me to say “thank you” and be creative.

So, I have been trying to do things in the mail and emails to them.  For the emails:  I have found cute, inspiring memes to send with words of encouragement about 2 times a week.  I get feedback that they come at the right moment or it says what they need to hear.  This makes me feel like it is working.

I have also mailed 2 items so far to their homes.  The first was a magnet.  I had ordered them in February from Stickermule and I “lost” them in my office.  While packing up my office (another story for a different day) I “found” them in a very safe place…I am getting old.   I received lots of positive feedback about putting it on their home refrigerators.  The second mailing was flower seeds (ordered from Amazon) and a cute little piece of paper.  I figured they were working in the garden and that this would help.  I also got lots of positive responses.  

Now, I am working on hand written postcards to each person.  It takes a while, but I want it to be heartfelt.  I found the template on TPT and ordered postcard paper from amazon.  Tip: order the stamps at the same time.  Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!!!

Thank you Twitter!!!

In this day and age where we are learning our new “normal” of education, I have found myself going to Twitter more and more for help.  Searching for "how tos","support for teachers" and "easy curriculum ideas."  It has renewed by love.  However, the story below has cemented the #Twitterlove!

My district has decided to do a virtual promotion from 6th to 7th grade.  The other principals and myself were brainstorming how to do this.  I was thinking "How am I going to show all of their faces???"  

I reached out, via twitter, to @slidemaniaSM this:

Within minutes, I go this:

Then, over the weekend I get this:

 And respond with this:

In the middle of this storm, it was so great how everyone help and I could get support so quickly.  Educators has built a beautiful platform on Twitter and this is just one example of how powerful it is.  Thank you Twitter!!!

Trauma-informed Principaling- the new normal??

1. Who would have thought it would happen again?  In 2017, our city was hit by the Tubbs Fire. My school’s attendance area was destroyed.  We are in the middle of rebuilding and, on, October 27, 2019, the Kincade Fire caused the area to be evacuated.  All of my students were evacuated from their homes for 5 days. The school was closed for 9 days. Everyone was feeling everything: Happiness, sadness, anger, nervousness, gratitude, love. 
   We knew we had a big job. We had 450 students coming back to school with all the emotions.  During the 2018-19 school year, we, as a staff, had spent most of the year learning about how trauma affects the brain.  We drove into learning about how to help students with calming and mindfulness activities. We read articles, attended conferences, and did research on Trauma-informed classrooms.  This came in handy today.
   Yesterday was the first day back for staff.  I needed to support them and remind them of the learning from last year.  In researching how to begin this staff meeting, I came across Stephanie McConnell’s blog about We are stronger together.  In this post, she talks about the paracord and that “When soldiers landed in the battlefields, they would cut the cord off their parachutes and pack it up for later use.  The cord would come in handy for the soldiers during battle.” This spoke to me. I went on amazon and order enough for all staff (side note, bad idea when you are evacuated: no amazon delivery...duh) In Stephanie’s post, there were also two quotes that stood out for me.  One: "I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me." and Two: “Things don’t always go ac”cord”ing to plan.” I made a little sheet with these on it and personalize the note with the paracord bracelet for staff.
   I also wanted to have the staff, classified and certificated, interact during the meeting.  I decided to do a jigsaw reading activity with four different articles. The groups read, discuss and then share the “ah ha”s with all of us.  The articles I picked were:
   1. 
      

      1. How Teachers Can Use Trauma-Informed Mindfulness Practices to Support their Students
      2. Teaching With Trauma
      3. 7 Ways to Calm a Young Brain in Trauma
      4. When Students Are Traumatized, Teachers are too

• Here are pictures of their posters:

• I also spend quite a bit of time talking about Teacher/staff self-care.  I had each person fill out the “Self-care Plan”. I copied it on bright Yellow paper so they could find it quickly if they needed it during the school day. Teachers also spend some time writing thank you notes to others that had helped them over the past week.  
  We spent time talking about how to support our students.  I showed the “Flipping your lid” video (in the presentation below) and remind staff that we need to build in movement and calming breaks for students.  Teachers shared different activities they already do in their normal day. One teacher shared about the “Caring Circle” from our Toolbox Curriculum. Another teacher shared about the MIndfulness videos in Class Dojo.  A third teacher shared about Calm.com activities. Another Teacher shared about an emoji “weather” activity. This activity is so cool. Students make an emoji for themselves and place it on a weather map daily to reflect how they were feeling.  
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  My Presentation for the meeting is here.
  
  
  I also gave each teacher a book, “In My Heart”.  I purchased a TPT curriculum for each of them as well.  I don’t give many directives, but I did with this one. Everyone is to read this book to your students.  What I love about this book is it talks about feelings. Therefore, it opened up conversations if they needed them.  Otherwise, we were just teaching about feelings. Many teachers did it as a buddy activity. That worked really well.  They read the book together and different activities. The teachers had great things to say about the book and how it went.  Some pictures are below of the book activities. 

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  I am sharing because I know this will not be the last time I have to do this.  I also know this is becoming the new “normal” for us principals. Please, use my ideas.  Share with me yours. Ask me or others for help. We were not trained for this, but this is our job now. I have also started a “Disaster book bin”.  For teachers to check out books to read to their students as these events keep happening. I have added the following titles to it:

Ruby Finds a Worry (Big Bright Feelings)

The Ant Hill Disaster

A Terrible Thing Happened: A Story for Children Who Have Witnessed Violence or Traum

A Flicker of Hope

Once I Was Very Very Scared

After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again)

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ICE CREAM!

I am terrible about blogging.  I really need to get better about it.  It helps me reflect so much about my own process.  #goals

Our community is still recovering from the Tubbs Fire in 2017.  My attendance area was destroyed by this fire.  The only thing left standing was the school. The past 2ish years have been about rebuilding.

Now, many students are back in their homes.  Due to the increase in students "coming home", I wanted to do a lot community events to bring us together.  In working with PTA, we have planned at least one community event each month.  Our first event was a FREE Ice Cream Social.  A group of parents secured donations for Ice Cream and Whipped cream.  The PTA purchased the rest of the items. 

A few amazing parents pre-scooped the ice cream.  We opened the doors at 6:30pm and this amazing thing happened, people came!  We had over 200 people come to the night.  I had 10 of my teachers come and help me serve.  Everyone ate ice cream, kids played on the playground, and the adults were able to relax and talk with each other.

Lots of awesome things came out of the night, but I want to tell you about two of them. 

First, one of my fifth-grade teachers came up to me about a week after the event and said "All of these younger students keep coming up to me and says 'Hi, Ms XX'.  It is so cool they know my name now.  It is all because I served them whipped cream at the ice cream social, but I'll take it."  I love that she feels more connected to the community.  It's all because of Ice Cream!


The second was a parent came up to me a few days after the event.  She told me how she loved seeing all the teachers are the event.  It really made it feel like a community.  She was able to talk with teachers outside of the classroom.  She told me how she learned about an interested she didn't know her child's teacher had. 

Our theme this year is #bettertogether and I really think this shows how important those "little moments" are to bring us together.  As we rebuild our community, these are the moments that are going to bring us together.  I am so proud of the work we have started this year.  In the world of test scores, benchmarks, and data, we always need to remember that without relationships, culture, and teamwork, we will not achieve any of our goals.

The anniversary....

One year ago on October 9, 2017, the entire attendance area of my school was burned by the Tubbs Fire. Over 200 students and staff lost everything. 

And I choose this school to be the principal of this year.  

When I was hired in April 2018, I asked my superintendent, "Do we have kids for next year?"  He laughed and said "We are over full.  We thought we would have some declining enrollment, so we took some outside of district kids, but they all came back."

I knew the first anniversary of the fire was going to be a difficult day, week and month.  I knew I needed to change the day for students.  I knew I needed to make it fun.  I knew that this would define the beginning of my principal-ship.  I knew that I would be exhausted at the end of the anniversary day.  

Planning started 6 weeks before the event. It began with a donation, 450 backpacks and schools supplies from the San Francisco Jr. Giants that I found.  The donation was made in the right after the fires and was forgotten about.  This sparked an idea.  But, I needed to include my stakeholders.   I met with individual teachers and got ideas of what the staff needed from that day.  I also had teachers talk with their kids and ask 'What would you want to do at school on the anniversary day."  We gathered a lots of ideas and information.  In hindsight, I should have surveyed parents as well.  They may have thought of something different/easier.

The day had many different activities.  They were:

• Students will plant flowers to take home.
• Students will write cards to Hurricane Florence affected schools to pass on their kindness.
• Community poster:  Each student will paint their hand and make a handprint on a poster that says “#Rieblisoars.”
• Cut out a feather and write their name on it.  Each grade level will have a different color feather.  We will make a school set of wings to hang inside the MPR that states “Together We Soar”
• We invited Heroes (Police, fire, nurses, doctors, PG&E) to come and read the book “After the fall” to students while they enjoy a healthy treat.
• Kindness Wreath was made in each classroom
• Book Reading
• Primary: Read Wemberly Worried and make Guatemalan worry dolls
• Upper: Read A terrible thing Happened and did a writing activity
• Counselors on hand
• Therapy dogs on campus

All of these activities were done with their buddies. So, cross age support was also provided.

The day went great.  Students loved it, teachers loved it, First responders loved it and parents were able to participate.  

birthday books!

So, I have been trying to write this post for a while.  I stole the birthday book idea from Lead with Literacy, by Mandy Ellis. Mandy is someone I want to post new ideas on Twitter for me to "borrow".  When I saw her talking about her book, I was so excited, I rushed to get it. 

Starting at my thrid school as principal this year, I wanted to try this.  I went to target and got a cheap book shelf and some decorations.  I spent about 30 minutes setting it up and decorating it. I also ordered 300 books during the Scholastic 50 books for $50 sale.  I used Principal funds for the book purchase.

Then, it was trying to figure out how to get kids in.  On their birthday, once a month for the whole month, once a week for the week, etc.  The beginning of the new year got away from me and then I realized it was August 31.  I went around and gathered 40 plus students to give them a book. It was magical.  Books were spread out all over my floor.  There was reading, thinking, sharing, talking, and laughing happening.  It was priceless.

This month, I am going to try passing out the books a different way.  I am putting birthday bookmarks in the teacher boxes the night before the birthday. Then, the teacher knows to send the student down when they have a moment to get their book.  We will see how this works.

Each student went home with a book of their choosing.  There was a little boy, A, is 3rd grade. He really wanted this scary book.  I tried to talk him out of it because I was concerned that the content was too old for him.

About a week later it was Back to school night.  A's mom came up to me and told me who she was.  She shared that A has never wanted to read until I gave him a book.  The book is scary for him, so they read in the morning before school.  He loves it.  She also told me she hadn't read to/with him since 1st grade and it was something she enjoyed.

That conversation filled my heart!  I was floating in the stars the rest of the night.  Even on those days where is feels like all I did was put out fires, the book shelf is in my office reminding me of A's story and how many others need that love of books to be unlocked for them.

Training day!

I am all about leading a school through Culture and Craft (Thanks @jkloczko for that line).  I try to make all meetings a mix of community building activities and reinforcing great teaching.  Today was the first day back for all staff, and we had to do active shooter training.  I was like..."NO!!!!"  It is my first all staff meeting at this school.  My school has been through so much.  The attendance area was completely burned the October 2017 tubbs fire.  Only the school survived.  However, the school was displaced for 3 months while repairs were made. Over 200 students lost their home and over a dozen staff did as well.  I also know that is not the way I want to introduce myself to the staff.  But, I was told...do it!

So, I had to do it Emily's way.  I had the spotify going when people walked in.  I had the room set up in collaborative tables with toys and supplies on them.  The lunch buffet table was already set up, so they knew that was coming.  Then I started with my google slides I set up.  The first slide was a great ice breaker.  It was the picture on the left with the ladies on the roller coaster.  I told the staff this is how I work, I always choose to live in the front row, even if I don't know what is coming. 

Then I gave prizes to the first row folks!

Next was the 5 word activity.  I stole this from Lead Like a Pirate. It was an interview question the book suggested.  I totally used it while interviewing for new teachers this year.  What insight it gave me on their classroom culture and thought process.  I decided to use it with the whole staff to start them thinking on what they wanted kids to think about them.  Of course, I showed off my 5 words first.  They were able to work collaboratively in their choice of table groups to think of words and be creative.  The room was buzzing and the conversations about kids and culture were flowing.

Then it was time for Active Shooter training.  Such a heavy topic.  I used the slides in the show linked above to move through the run, hide, fight protocol.  I also had some videos to show staff what it would look like.  You will find slides in there as well with Scenarios.  I posted these around the room and had random groups made with Flippity. The groups spent 5 minutes at each scenario discussing what they would do.  They had the opportunity to work in collaborative mixed groups of classified and certificated folks.  After the activity, we went over the scenarios again and shared any ah-has that the small groups had. 

I had the staff do a "fist to five" for how things were going so far.  I had mostly 3-4s.  I feel like that was a win!

I needed to have a fun activity at the end.  Active shooter is a heavy topic, and I needed energize, excited staff for the first day of school.  I had set up an amazing race around the school.  I used Flippity again to make 6 teams.  I had stations set up already around the school with tasks for them to do.  They had a blast.  The feedback has been amazing.  They feel excited for the new year!  They want students to come.  They had fun together.  It was great.

Today, the next day, I am still hearing about the positive energy, fun and how they loved everyone being there.