Issue 5

The Herkimer-Fulton-Hamilton-Otsego BOCES Instructional Support Services Newsletter is a platform that we use to provide you with curated resources, things to know, tools to use, and ideas to explore.

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Dr. Jamie Marich's friends and colleagues describe her as a renaissance woman. A dancer, musician, performer, writer and clinical counselor, Marich unites these elements of her experience to achieve an ultimate mission: bringing the art and joy of healing to others. Based in Ohio, Marich is the founder of the Dancing Mindfulness practice, and she actively trains facilitators on using this practice in both clinical and community settings. She is the author of Trauma Made Simple (2014), Creative Mindfulness (2013), Trauma and the Twelve Steps (2012), and EMDR Made Simple (2011). Marich began her career in human services while working as an English teacher in post-war Bosnia; she is fast becoming respected as a voice to listen to in the mental health and addiction recovery communities because of her candidness. Says Marich, “I really just see myself as someone who is calling for a back-to-basics approach, which means carrying ourselves with person-centered common sense and not being afraid to help people work with their own sense of creativity.”

Management in the Active Classroom

Rich Richardson's eighth-grade students at the Expeditionary Learning Middle School in Syracuse, New York, use an interactive word wall to demonstrate their conceptual understanding of words in context. A word wall in the classroom is a powerful instructional tool to strengthen content vocabulary or concepts. A word wall can be an organized collection of words (and sometimes phrases) displayed on a wall or other space in the classroom. In this example, however, the "wall" moves to the floor to allow students to easily connect to one other's ideas and show their collective understanding. It allows both the students and the teacher to see how their knowledge has grown or perhaps where gaps may still exist.

In this video, students and teachers are engaged with a protocol/engagement strategy from EL Education's grades 3-8 ELA curriculum.

The standards aligned investigations for the Elementary and Middle-Level Science Tests are hands-on and 3-dimensional learning tasks. These tasks are designed to be embedded into the curriculum. The learning tasks in the investigations serve as a performance-based strategy to assess science in NYS. To learn more register for the Science Investigation overview for grades 3-5 on March 22nd or the overview for grades 6-8 on March 2nd.

The February Focus for the mentoring program is twofold: the path toward certification and strategies to avoid burnout. In the past year, NYSUT published the fact sheet linked above on the different pathways to certification and their requirements in New York State. This document is especially helpful as the emergency COVID certification option sunsetted in September and those certifications will be expiring soon. Diana Cassidy at Herkimer BOCES' German Street location is also a valuable resource to assist teachers and TAs on their certification journey.

To read more about avoiding teacher burnout, visit this Edutopia article: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/positive-strategies-avoid-stress-burnout-donna-wilson-marcus-conyers.