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:
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      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)

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. 

Welcome gifts

Starting at a new school this year is overwhelming and exciting.  You get to change things because the staff doesn't know you any other way.  This year, my secretary is also new to the school as well.  I was not going to be there.  I wanted to make sure she felt welcomed and that we were excited to have her join the team.

I felt her a little gift bag with some goodies in it.  I went to target and got: water bottle is school colors, fun post its, pens, chocolate and more.

I love the note my new secretary texted me after getting this.


A little bit of kindness goes a long way!

The Principal's new clothes

This year I am trying to be in the classrooms more.  I am not just sitting in the classrooms watching, but being a part of the classroom.  In my #leadwild chat group, one of the members, Kathy Melton, (@kathyamelton)  talked about how she reads the book "The Principal's new clothes" to her students and then she had them draw "new clothes" on a picture of her.

So, this year my colleagues and I are trying something new.  We are reading books to our students about the monthly character trait.  The book we picked for the students was not really appropriate for the Kindergarten students.  So, I needed a book... and then I remembered Kathy's conversation.

I got the book that Kathy recommended.  It is so old that I took me looking for it online for a while before I found it.

I prepped for this reading like I did when I was a teacher.  I read the book, created the worksheet (Left), re-read the book, prepped questions to ask while reading, and then was ready.  I sent all my teachers a link to a google calendar sign up to me to come in and read.


My 1st grade teacher agreed to let me come in first.  The students came to the carpet and I began reading the story. The kids were interacting with the story.  They were predicting, noticing detail, reflecting, and seeing the moral of the story. We had a great time.



After the story, they got to color me a new outfit. That was so fun for them!

Apparently, I need more rainbow in my wardrobe based on the drawings.

After teaching all morning and running an assembly in the afternoon, I realized I was out of "teaching" shape.  

This is helping with my new goal from George Couros (@gcouros), get into every classroom, every day.

Spread kindness like confetti!!!

Glitter and confetti can drive me nuts.  It sticks to you, you find it everywhere and in the weirdest places. When I am around glitter, I always seem to find it on my face, in my shoes, on the steering wheel of my car.  It is crazy how it gets everywhere!

However, I love how shiny, sparkly and fun it is.  I love how kids' faces light up when they see confetti or glitter.   I have a colleague, @Mrsfadeji (Amy Fadeji) is the glitter/confetti queen.  When I see things that have glitter or confetti on them, I always think of her.  Amy's personality can be described by the word, Glitter!!  I wish I had a little more of this in me.

While scanning Pinterest the other night, I came across this picture.

My first thought was to share this with Amy.  Then, I got to thinking that it would be a great poster for my school's office.  I was so excited.

The next day I was directing traffic in front of the school.  A Mom with her 1st grader and Kindergartner pulled up.  I could tell that this Mom did not feel well and it had been a hard morning.  I opened the door and helped get the kids out of the car so she would not have to.  Her Kindergartner  was crying, he wanted to stay with mom.  I held his hand and we walked into the school,  waving goodbye.  As mom drove away, I saw tears coming down her cheek.

Of course, as soon as mom left, the kindergartner was fine.  So, I took a quick video of him reading and sent it to mom.  Here is the text stream. 

Unbeknownst to me, this mom had posted something on Facebook about the morning.  When a parent showed it to me, I started to tear up.  I am so grateful that parents share their students with us every day and that I get the opportunity to learn and grow from of these students.

A few days later, we had a PTA meet and greet.  One of the PTA Mom's came up to me and said she had seen me with the little kindergartner a few days ago.  PTA Mom said that she was watching me patiently walk with the crying student and my words were so sweet.  I was touched by her words.  The PTA mom went on to say that she thought it was so kind of me to send the Mom a video of her son.  I questioned how she knew that.  The PTA Mom said that the Kindergarten Mom posted on Facebook that I had sent her a video.  How sweet is that?

I guess kindness really is like confetti and glitter.  It lands up in the weirdest places, where you are not expecting to find it.  I also have some glitter in me, I just need to work on making it a little more shiny and bright!

When a staff meeting goes well...

Wednesday was our staff meeting.  I was so nervous that day.  I kept saying to my Assistant Principal, "This is either going to be amazing or it is going to suck!"

A lot of planning went into the 90 minute meeting.  I had three teachers come with me to attend a presentation by David Jakes (@djakes).  He walked us through a design thinking challenge around 21st century learning.

We came back from this experience jazzed!  I had this group meet many times and discuss how we wanted to work the staff through a similar activity to start thinking about what learning needs to look like and how the set-up of the classroom is important to make this happen. We planned, created, thought about and worked out all the details of the meeting.

We began the meeting with assigned groups.  We tried to mix up the staff to break them out of their department groups.  It was interesting watching the walk in and say, "Really?" or make a funny face when they saw the assigned seating. I responded with "Is this how our kids feel when you move them around?"  We had the AC/DC going on the speakers, snacks on the tables, post it notes and sharpies were everywhere.

We started off the meeting with a few slides about mindset for design.  We then presented the guiding question "What constitutes a 21st century learning experience?" Staff worked in pairs to dig deep into what the looks, sounds, feels like for students, staff, parents and community.  They wrote big ideas onto post it notes with sharpies.

After working in pairs, the groups got back together and
looked at all of their post-its.  They found trends within all the data collected.  From there, the groups wrote up 5 statements that reflect the guiding questions.  They wrote these statements on large post-its. Each teacher was given 5 stickers.
 They were directed to move around the room, read their colleagues' ideas, and put a sticker next to their 5 favorite.

They came up with some great phrases that we will use as our guide for next year.

We decided to use post-its, sharpies and poster paper for this meeting and this was an intentional decision.  We did not want this experience to be about the technology.  We are not making these changes to our teaching and classroom environments because we are going 1:1 with iPads.  We are redoing how and what we teach because that is what is good for students.  The technology we are providing is only a tool to help with the learning.  There are lots of tools in our toolbox, and we need to create spaces where students and TEACHERS are inspired to learn and create and use all the tools we have.

Here are all 6 posters:

We ended the presentation with this video.  

Thanks to Eric Saibel (@ecsaibel) for telling me about it. It was the perfect end to our discussion.

I arrived at work today to an email from a teacher that said "By the way, great staff meeting.  Left with some great ideas.  I did create my first floor plan this afternoon and I would not mind sharing it with you. " Another staff member sent me a vox that said "A productive staff meeting!"  That's what you want to hear!

A successful district PD day

August 15, 2014,  I took 17, 819 steps before my fitbit died.  It was a long day!  Thank god I had my #petk12adminteam there to help me.  The plan was to have the afternoon of workshops at my school.  This turned into all elementary and half of the secondary on site all morning.  Then, all 400 teachers there all afternoon.

The schedule was key.  I worked with the district office to create a schedule for the day.  I learned a lot about how to put out the schedule and the changes I would make next time in the structure of the document.  I tried to take a lead from #gafesummit, but I ran out of time to pull it off.


The morning went well.  Teachers were in the classrooms working on one of the three district goals or the year. The internet seemed ok and there were no real complaints. Lunch came the district organized a BBQ for all the teachers.  This went well and then the Superintendent addressed all teachers in the gym.



The afternoon was full of workshops.  When we hosted #nbcue in the spring, I didn't attend or teach any workshops.  I wanted to be available to solve problems.  This time I decided I wanted to teach.  My sessions on Google Draw went well.  I need to practice to #gafesummitt Marin in October.  However, not being around for tech/facility support was a problem.


I realized I should have had some of my secondary admin folks help out a little more.  I need to remember to ask for help.  I also realized how united the elementary admin are in their efforts.  I feel so honored to be included with the group of admin.

I am going to add to my job description, Head of PR!

As I travel along this roller coaster ride of a job, I realized there is a lot I need to do that I am not "trained" to do.  In April, I had to learn really quick about spinning a message and PR.  Our school was one of the first schools to outlaw "leggings as pants" on campus and it was a media storm.  I spoke to ABC, NBC, the local papers, the TV stations, Time, and many more.  I was in Glamour Paris (which makes me laugh because I feel I have no fashion sense) all about leggings.  What I learned from this very trying experience is that we must create the message about our schools and get it out there.  The press only puts out the negative, we need to work harder (and smarter) to get the positive out to the public.

This year I have been on a "PR train".  We have Facebook, twitter, and instagram accounts for our school. We publish on them almost everyday (and usually more then one time per day) to get our message out. We blog weekly about events on campus and information to help parents navigate Middle School.  We are actively bringing community members, parents, and others onto the campus to show them what an awesome place school is.

Besides the social media sites, the other key item on the "PR train" has been using my iPhone.  It goes everywhere with me.  I can take a photo, post it to instagram and keep going.  I also have used ifttt.com to help with only having to post once.  I have set up recipes to have my instagram auto-post to Facebook and twitter.  Saving me more time. (Thanks @digitalroberto and #fallCUE for the tips)  I know there is so much more my phone could do to help me get the message out, I will be learning and experimenting more.

Today the PR train was on overkill!  @frontrowceo came to visit.  He saw our TV station, how we are using his products, helped out with a few issues, and gave us ideas.  Then a Professor from UOP came to tour classrooms and see what learning looks like in a middle school.  Finally, our city's Mayor came with the Public Access Channel crew and filmed a segment about the Woodshop making 175 Toys for Toys for Tots. I came back to my office after this third visit and told my secretary I was exhausted.  This was more exhausting then working with kids and teachers.

We get to do it all over again tomorrow when Chris Angotti, the director of the Young Writers Program of NaNoWriMo comes to visit our English classrooms as our 390 8th graders work on their novels.  I have let the local paper know this is happening.  Hopefully, they will send a reporter, but my iPhone will be with me to take lots of shoots and post them on social media.

The pearl of wisdom for the post is, get your message out there.  Show the world, one person at a time, how awesome schools are.  Use all the social media that is out there to put your message out, meet others who can help you and learn from others.  I went to a SCOE workshop last week by Matt O'Donnell and he share this Google Drive folder with helpful hints about Facebook and blogging. Remember to ask questions to those doing it already and learn from their mistakes too. Jump in feet first, it will be ok.