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 to students

Being a new to the school, as the Principal, is hard.  Lots of new names and faces to learn.  Lots of new information to take in.  It has been super fun, but overwhelming at times.  I needed it to slow down.  I needed to focus on relationships and culture.  I needed to start with heart.

So, I stole!  Yes, my best ideas come from others.  I want to be @mandyellis when I grow up.  She has so many great ideas.  I stole "Popsicles with the Principal."  I hosted a play date at the school from 3-3:45pm for students and parents.  They arrived and got to meet some great kids, siblings and their parents.  It was neat to start putting names and faces together.  I was impressed that I had over 60 students come.  I just wish I had remembered to take pictures!

I also decided that a hand written note to all new students would be great.  I would be able to welcome them and their families.  I would be able to start building positive relationships with the families.  I also was able to start learning names of students too.  Over 80 cards later, I may have taken on more than I needed to.  But, I had a goal and did it.  They were mailed yesterday, 1 week before school starts.  I wanted to make sure they arrived in time.  I had them made on vistarprint and used our logo.  However, I stole a future post card from Amber Teamann (@8Amber8) and modified it.  Here is a link to my modified version that I will print on vistaprint soon.   I have also rewritten a message for next year so that in July I won't have to think as hard.

Lovin' this roller coaster ride...