Mansfield Township Weekly News
Week Ending November 17th
From Peg Traino:
- Thanks to Bobby Stinson for all of his help with the core value t shirts.
- Thanks to Donna G. for handling the billing for the core value t shirts.
Diversity Survey: Please complete to better MTSD!
Parent Corner
As we head into the holiday season, celebration can be marred by stress, especially for parents. Holiday stress can be triggered by increased spending, reminder of lost loved ones and increase in depression due to the seasonal affect.
- Maintain strong and healthy social connections. Interact with others who offer healthy and supportive interactions with you and your family. Try to avoid relationships that are problematic and induce stress levels. Set healthy limits with family.
- Take care of yourself. Caretaker fatigue is overwhelming during the holiday season. Make sure that you are planning ways to plan gifts for yourself that include relaxation, healthy living activities and mindfulness.
- Set reasonable expectations for yourself. Don’t overdo anything. Spending, planning and over committing to activities are the easiest ways to burn yourself out during the holidays. If you are going away to visit family, make sure that your plan does not include overextending yourself. This will give you more quality time with your loved one.
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Teacher Talk
Last Minute Thanksgiving Tips
When hosting Thanksgiving, last-minute tasks have a way of sneaking up on you, which is why it's important to get as much as you can done in advance. Follow these tips so that you can enjoy your guests and have a memorable turkey day.
1. Don't leave grocery shopping until the last minute. The day before Thanksgiving is usually chaos at supermarkets. Do your shopping as early as you can in order to save time. Many grocery stores are open on Thanksgiving day, but with proper planning, you should be able to avoid the market entirely.
2. Do an inventory of your cookware and kitchen tools. Having all the necessary cookware and tools is just as important as having the ingredients for a recipe. Make sure you have a roasting pan, pie dishes, meat thermometer, turkey baster and whatever else you might need to prepare your Thanksgiving feast well before you begin cooking.
3. Know when to start thawing your bird. If your turkey is still frozen, start thawing it now. A completely frozen turkey needs a day to thaw for every four pounds in weight. If you have a frozen bird on Thanksgiving morning, there's no way it will be ready to cook by dinner time.
3. Prep dishes ahead of time and freeze. Make your cranberry sauce ahead of time and freeze. You can also assemble dishes like green bean casserole the day before and put in the fridge to bake the following day. Dinner rolls can be made fully ahead. Gravy can also be made ahead of time and placed in the freezer until Thanksgiving morning. You can make your pie dough a day ahead and set in the fridge to chill until you roll it out to assemble your pie.
4. Make a schedule for Thanksgiving day. Even if you've done a lot of food prep in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, it's helpful to have a schedule of what needs to happen when, especially considering you will have a tight timeline for using the oven.
If your turkey cooking fails...read below article of solutions
And now the fun begins...
Shopping Insanity
Holiday Safety
How to have a successful holiday...
New Teachers Tips
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#ditchHW - 10pm-11pm Thursday Nights
#EdTherapy - The most Positive Education on Twitter Chat 9-10 PM Thursday Nights (BiWeekly) - Chat focuses on an array of Topics and educators connect to discuss solutions
#BFC530 - The breakfast club - 5:30 am daily - chat has one question for teachers and leaders to start the day positively
#ResilienceChat - Monday Nights 10-11 PM - Chat that focuses on resilience in schools and beyond
#TLAP - 9-10 PM Monday Nights (Innovative Teaching)
#satchat - 7:30 - 8:30 AM Saturday Mornings
#NJED - 8:30 - 9:30 PM Tuesday Nights (New Jersey Educators Chat)
Nov. 23 - Thanksgiving - No School
Nov. 24 - No School
Nov. 27 Diversity Committee Meeting 10am and 5:30pm in MTES
Nov. 28 - MTSD "Ditch that Homework" Book Club 7:30 am in JHES Library
Nov. 28 - MTSD "Ditch that Homework" Book Club 3:45 pm in MTES Library
Dec. 4 -10 - Week of Coding 2017
Dec. 18th - MTSD Staff Cookie Exchange
Exciting things coming...
Mansfield Mindfulness
1. Do Less Every Morning
Wake, meditate, shower, dress, have breakfast with the family, go through your morning routine – all without blaring TVs, radios, or flickering phones and computers competing for attention. Sure, the kids will probably hate it at first (you might also), but by lowering the decibel and distraction levels, you’ll help tame the early morning chaos, enabling all to focus on getting out of the house on time. To start, try doing this one day a week – call it Mellow Mondays – and add more days incrementally as the family gets used to the new routine. Another tip: If you’re the one holding everyone up in the morning, save precious minutes by not checking email until you’re belted into the passenger seat in the car-pool, then you can officially start your workday.
2. Send Your Brain on an All-expense Paid Vacation
There are numerous ways to disconnect from technology, some short-form and others, a bit more hard-core, but all have one thing in common: silence. Commit to a daily meditation practice even if it’s just for 10 minutes, as soon as you get up. If you can take another mediation break in the middle of the day, even better. The more opportunity you give your brain to calm down and refresh itself, the more productive and creative it will be – you just need to give it a little free time! If you’re ready to make a longer commitment, consider trying a silent retreat, one where meditation and quiet contemplation are the main events. Among the more popular retreat weekend programs are those offered by IMS/Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA.
3. You are the Boss of Your Weekend
Sure, your boss-from-hell delights in spending his entire Sunday firing off non-stop emails, but unless you’re in charge of national security or make your living as a fire-fighter, chances are you don’t actually need to respond until “normal” business hours on Monday morning. Don’t respond Sunday night unless you want the boss to think you’re always on call. It’s about boundaries, people, and in the digital age, we all need to set them.
4. When You’re Off Duty, Mean It!
Make weekends and vacations true relaxation times, not just lighter versions of your weekday workdays. Use the-out-of-office notification setting on your office email and resist the urge to respond to emails until just a few hours before your scheduled return. If not checking your email makes you nervous or puts your livelihood at risk, politely inform colleagues that you’ll be checking emails at specific times, for example 10 am, 3 pm and 7 pm, and will be able to respond only to the most truly time sensitive ones. If you value your off-hours, so will they.
5. Go a Bit Off the Grid
While not always feasible for everyone, I like the idea of occasionally going “off the grid,” and leaving technology behind. For example, when I travel, I lighten my digital and mental load by traveling with just my phone and leaving my laptop in the States. I have several patients who dial-down their digital dependence by spending time in places or situations where Internet service isn’t necessarily guaranteed – and they love the retro feeling they get from being able to step back in time, if only for a few days. One exec has a remote cabin in Quebec where the wifi is subject to the amount of cloud cover on a given day, thus limiting his access. Another simply refuses to connect to wifi on long-haul flights so she arrives mentally and physically rested – and ready to hit the ground running.
6. Make Yourself Digitally Incompatible
The simplest way to disconnect? Add activities to your life that are all but impossible to do with a digital device in hand. Three of my all-time favorites are meditation, yoga and hiking. The beauty of all of these three calming activities is that they are wonderfully head-clearing, fantastic for your body and utterly incompatible with electronic devices.
7. Be Where You Are
When you are texting, emailing, Facebooking etc., in the presence of others, you are not being where you are; you’re only partially engaged with the real world. Your tapping away in the presence of others announces that your mind is elsewhere, and suggests that they’re not as interesting as whatever is happening in your virtual world. If it seems family and friends seem annoyed with your lack of attention, the screen between you and them might be contributing to the problem. Learn to put the smartphone down and start giving people your full attention, you know, just like we used to do in the old days.
8. Go On a Digital Diet
Control some of the mayhem by curbing your enthusiasm for social media. Go on a Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Snapchat diet. Cut down on the number of times a day you check in or are alerted to your friend’s status updates. Update your page every other day or so, instead of multiple times in a day. Are you brave enough to take it a few steps further? Then go rogue and shut down your Facebook account. You might be surprised by how much more time you’ll have to do the stuff you never used to have time for!
Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile.
Want something shared?
Email: tmoutis@mansfieldschool.com
Website: www.mansfieldschool.com
Location: 200 Mansfield Road East, NJ, United States
Phone: 609-298-2037
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mansfield-School-District-1645020699105396/
Twitter: @mtes_jhes