Hawk Herald
News and Notes for Teachers- May 21
Dear Staff
Dear Staff
It's May Fete this week. You have much to celebrate with your students this year but we still have half the quarter left. Encourage students to keep working to improve their grades and finish strong.
Mary
"The more you praise and celebrate your life the more there is in life to celebrate." -Oprah Winfrey
May Fete all week
Conversations and evaluations
Meetings and Events
Monday-21 90s Day
- Advisory: PRIDE rubric https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1aAb_ibm9SqIgRKBAGYbSfiHclo2HHYwXQt3f65QUmAE/edit#slide=id.g1db02b384e_0_0
- ELD meeting 10:15
- AVID site team meeting 3:30 rm230
Tuesday-22 80s Day
- Team Meetings-Cooper hawks and Red-tails Pod 4(admin)
- OSU fied trip for AVID
- Advisory: Erins Law Lesson 5
- 7th: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1j7bGJIIde5Ttna6entm_v0pOfK2slvL
- 8th: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aLhOeG9fngCIG89wFPYgmgzklTpf92rh
- Schedule meeting 3:30-4:00
Wednesday-23 70s Day
- PLCs
- Attendance Meeting 10:10
- District Retirement Reception 3:30 SMMS Library
- Team Meetings-Sparrow hawks and Royal hawks pod 1(counselor)
- Advisory: Erin's Law Lesson 6
- 7th: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1j7bGJIIde5Ttna6entm_v0pOfK2slvLV 8th: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aLhOeG9fngCIG89wFPYgmgzklTpf92rh
- 6th grade visits
- coaches meeting 2:30
- schedule meeting 3:30-6:00
Friday-25 50s Day
- SST 8:00
- Dance 6:00-8:00
Twelve Ways Teachers Can Build Resilience
“When talking about a profession that loses 50 percent of its workforce in the first five years of their careers, it would be an understatement to say teaching is challenging,” says Jennifer Gonzalez in this Cult of Pedagogy article. “It traps us in small rooms with an unpredictable assortment of personalities, energies, and needs. It forces us to make hundreds of small, exhausting decisions every day. And over and over again, it puts us in predicaments that test our confidence, wear out our patience, and break our hearts. You can learn all the techniques, plan outstanding lessons, and set up a watertight classroom management system, but to do this work and stick with it long enough to get good at it, you need a level of emotional resilience most other jobs will never require.”
Fortunately, says Gonzalez, there is helpful advice in Elena Aguilar’s just-published book, Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators (Jossey-Bass, 2018). “The best way to make all twelve of these habits stick,” says Gonzalez, “is to work through them slowly, over the course of the year. Even better, do it with a group of committed colleagues.”
• Know yourself. “Being really anchored in your purpose, being really clear about what you want to be doing in life, helps you deal with challenges and setbacks,” says Aguilar.
• Understand emotions. It’s important to examine the way feelings influence our thinking (and vice-versa) and work with them instead of against them.
• Tell empowering stories to reframe classroom events. For example, when a student rolls her eyes at you, the story could be, “This student doesn’t respect me,” but it could also be, “This is very typical behavior from 12-year-olds, and I’m going to move on to the next part of the lesson.”
• Build community. Nurturing relationships with colleagues, students, parents, and administrators strengthens resilience. The beginning of the school year is an ideal time to focus on this.
• Be here now. Mindfulness – focusing on what is happening right now without judgment – can help prevent unhelpful “triggered” reactions to daily challenges. Daily meditation or brief moments of focusing on our breathing can help bring us to that place of calm.
• Take care of yourself. “I think people know what to do,” says Aguilar. “We know we should be eating more leafy greens and exercising more and so on, but why is it so hard?” Finding out why can help develop healthier habits.
• Focus on the bright spots. “Our brains have a negativity bias,” says Aguilar, “so everything that is challenging, that is potentially a threat, appears really vividly and clearly to us, because of the way our brains are wired, and so one of the skills that we need to hone is the ability to see all the things that are going well or even just okay.”
• Cultivate compassion. We can get out of the drama of the moment by empathizing with others’ points of view and seeing the big picture.
• Be a learner. “Resilient people experience a challenge and turn around and say, Wow. That was really hard. That pushed me to my limits. What can I learn from that?”
• Play and create. “I think it’s a human right to be creative, to create, enjoy, and appreciate art,” says Aguilar. “Playing and creating can unlock inner resources for dealing with stress, for solving problems… It can help us see different things and find different approaches to tackle problems.”
• Ride the waves of change. Slow down, face and deal with fear, and ask how we can direct our energy to the actions that make the biggest difference.
• Celebrate and appreciate. Savor our own accomplishments and those of our students and colleagues.
South Meadows Middle School
Email: mendezm@hsd.k12.or.us
Website: http://schools.hsd.k12.or.us/southmeadows
Location: 4690 Southeast Davis Road, Hillsboro, OR, United States
Phone: 503-844-1220
Facebook: facebook.com/SouthMeadowsMiddleSchool