If you have read my blog, my tweets, or watched my videos, you know I am passionate about education and I think that overall schools, administration, teachers, students, and parents have absolutely hung the moon! I am surrounded by real-life superheroes! So many in education are ROCKSTARS! There has been a theme the past month and I personally think it is a GREAT trend! Below are some of the amazing things taking place during the current situation: There has been an increased focus on well-being! This is teacher well-being, student well-being, parent well-being! We are checking on and worried about EVERYONE’S well-being! This is a phenomenal development! There has been an increased importance placed on relationships and supporting the whole child. There has been an increase in the buzz of SEL and making sure our stakeholders’ needs are taken care of. Making connections has come to the forefront of education! Providing grace for our students, our teachers, and our...
Photo by Pixabay from Pexels Last year my staff watched the viral video, “Know Your Why”, from comedian Michael Jr. If you haven’t watched it, I recommend you get on that! It is only a few minutes long and has a great message! If you don’t know how to work YouTube, live under a rock, or just don’t want to spend 3 minutes and 49 seconds of your life on it, the basic premise is that if you know your “Why”, your “What” becomes more impactful. How we applied this to education, was that our “What” is educating children, but we all have a different “Why”. We had each staff member take some time to reflect on their “Why”. We then took a strip of colored paper and wrote our “Why” in 1 or 2 words. These were placed on the wall right above where everyone signs in every morning with the phrase, “Remember your Why”. Every day, each staff member could find their word or even look at others’ words for motivation and to refocus before the day begins. This knowledge of your “Why” is imp...
May is mental health awareness month. Mental health has typically had a stigma attached to it, especially in my home state of Texas. Being real, this is a topic near and dear to my heart. Full transparency, three of my wife and I’s family members have committed suicide and I’m not talking some distant relatives. One was my cousin, who was my next-door neighbor growing up and more like a brother to me, and the other two were my wife’s uncles. As an educator, I also routinely encounter students struggling with mental illness and I have two former students that took their own lives. Just to be frank, those aren’t the only 5 that have struggled with mental health issues, those are just the five that ended it. In our family alone, we have addictions/substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, just to name a few. I personally struggled with an eating disorder from the ages of 16-19, talk about stigma, a teenage male with an eating disorder. The impact mental health has pers...
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