Self-Care

This week, I purchased a book called "The Distance Learning Playbook" by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie.  Intuition told me this would be a much needed resource. Amazon Prime made good to their quick delivery promise and I was able to start reading it this week.  I realized this book was going to be our new best friend as the title of Chapter 1 was,  "Take Care of Yourself".   How did they know this school year was so stressful?!? 

In Chapter 1, the authors talk about the importance of self-care during this stressful time, reminding us if we burn out that we are no good to our students, family and friends. Fischer, Frey and Hatti suggests the following strategies to promoting a healthy work/life balance- even through distance learning: 

* Create a Routine- this helps us organize, plan and predict.  Establish morning and evening routines that allow you to spend time with your family and have some personal time to yourself.   Scheduling breaks and maintaining regular hours of work can be helpful!

 * Weekly check-ins with your colleagues are productive if you share common challenges and generate new ideas!  Take time to reach out to your teacher friends!  This is a great time to be innovative!

* Exercise - At least 40 minutes three days a week - take a walk, participate in yoga, jog, play with your kids!  

* Love Yourself - Do something for just you one day a week! 

* Demonstrate Thankfulness - Research shows that focusing on gratitude will help us keep our mindsets positive.  Find something you are grateful for daily and reflect on it! 

I have never been good at self-care, but I am starting to realize the importance of this work.  This year, I have committed to either walking or going out on the farm with my family for 40 minutes 3 days a week.  I am also working hard to create time for a daily devotional or gratefulness reflection.  It isn't easy to make this happen, but practicing self-care is imperative for everyone and must take priority!

It is no secret that this year is tough.  Self-Care will be an important first step to a successful and happy school year! 

Important Information: 

Floating Subs:  After doing some digging this weekend, we were able to find some individuals who are willing to be floating subs for us this week!  Yeah!  If you would like to sign up for an extra prep period this week to get caught up on your on-line instruction, please sign up on this link.    Thanks to Trista Sparks and Ryann Lynch for their willingness to help!  

Classroom Visits:  We hope to make it around the building this week to see your classrooms.  Please know that we are purely visiting right now to get an idea about how things are going!  We also love to see the awesome lessons you are preparing for your students.  We are going to hold off on our evaluative walk-through/evaluations, etc. until everyone gets into a better routine.  We are here to help!

Sub Folders - When school started this year, each of you had a red folder in your mailbox.  This is your substitute folder.  It is important that all teachers and assistants have a folder in the office in case you are out of the building.  Please get these to the office ladies by Wednesday this week.    Here is what is helpful to have in the folder:

         For Teachers:  An emergency lesson plan in case you have to miss and do not have time to leave any plans for your students for a day, class rosters, seating charts, other helpful notes for the substitute.

        For Assistants:  A schedule of when and where you are helping throughout the day, if you cover a lunch please provide the seating chart, and any other helpful notes.  

Readable English - Thanks to Melissa, Deann and Heidi for attending a Readable English workshop last week.  They are implementing this new reading program to our junior high and 9th grade students who consistently have data that shows they are a struggling reader.  Readable English is a program that is showing much promise to helping students build their word volume and find success in reading!  Thanks to the ladies for their work!

On-Line Attendance:  At our faculty meeting last week, we determined that on-line student attendance would need to be updated to the attendance sheet every Tuesday by the end of the day.   The office will be monitoring the entries every Wednesday morning, first thing!  If you need help with this process, please let us know.    Here is another link to the attendance sheet if you need it.  

Virtual Day:  Just a reminder that we will have a virtual day on Monday, August 31st!

On-Line Best Practices:  Few of you have shared some great ideas for how to manage your on-line classes.  I just thought I would share a few items I heard at our faculty meetings: 

      * One Google Classroom per class - teachers are not hosting a separate google classroom for on-line students.  If the on-line students have to have a separate activity it is just marked in the classroom.  

     * Video Tape Lessons - We do have two Swivl's in the building that can be checked out.  You can see Abbie and Bo if you have questions about them.  Also, there are several ipads in my office and we do have ipad stands if you are interested.  Debbie Dauby seems to be a pro at this! 

     * Live Lessons - If you would like to stream your class live, many are doing this.  You can ask students to log-in during their class time.  Many teachers are starting to use Google Meets.  It is a quick and easy way to add students and you can record the lesson.  Once you are finished recording, Google Meets will automatically send a link to your lesson to your Google Drive for easy access.