Making Connections
department of prevention & Intervention VOL. V
Community Building Questions of the Week
- If you had your own talk show, who would your first three guests be?
- If you could have one superhuman power, what would it be?
- If you could travel anywhere right now, where would you go?
- Think of a time when you tried something new. What happened? Did you succeed? Did you struggle?
- When you were in elementary school, what was your favorite activity at recess?
Schools Must Have A Social Emotional Learning Plan Prior to Reopening
Here are four considerations to help schools begin crafting a social emotional learning plan for reopening schools:
1. Identify and plan to address the needs of staff.
2. A social emotional learning plan must include and prioritize a fully staffed school-based mental health team.
3. This plan must address the social emotional needs of students. At its core, this includes helping students (and staff) to identify, understand, and manage their emotions.
4. A social emotional learning plan must prioritize relationships and human connections.
How Educators can Increase Engagement During Remote LEarning
Grounded in the learning sciences, engagement is deepest in environments that support fostering relationships, productive instructional strategies, and social and emotional development. Researchers identified the three primary components of learner engagement for in-person and online settings as behavioral, cognitive and emotional. In other words, we know that learners are engaged if they exhibit behaviors, thinking processes or emotions that indicate they are connecting with course materials, with the teacher and with each other.
Click here to learn how teachers can:
- Increase Learner Engagement in a remote classroom
- Increase parent engagement in a remote classroom
- Facilitate connections between students in a remote classroom
Mindfulness ideas for kids and teens
2. Pause to take 3 deep breaths to reduce stress and invite calm.
3. Eat one bite of breakfast or lunch and pay close attention to what you’re eating. Is it crunchy or soft? Salty or sweet?
4. Before dinner take a moment to go around the table and have each person share one thing they appreciate. Avoid any judgment or criticism of what is said. Trust that this practice will likely become more meaningful to children and teens over time.
5. Do some mindful stretching together with a few simple yoga postures.
6. Before bed, name one thing that went well today, a pleasant moment or a time that felt happy. Again, avoid judgment or criticism when you invite your child to engage in this activity. Just listen to whatever they share.
Check out other mindfulness resources and ideas for children at mindup.org.
How to help Students Navigate This Social Emotional Rollercoaster
Many Parents Are Now Teachers. Let’s Also Appreciate and Care for Ourselves.
- Make your only goal to arrive on the other side.
- Understand that children are resilient.
- Build in micro moments for your own inquiry.
- Ask questions and instill boundaries.
- Breathe.
- Allow yourself to not be OK.
- Do you.
Have a Student in Need of Social Emotional Support?
Please visit the Social Emotional Wellness page. Support from a district provider can be requested via the online referral form. Additionally, we have a new partnership with Care Solace which provides timely connection for students and families to access community mental health and substance abuse services. Care Solace provides a concierge service, finding the best local provider based on the needs of the student/family.