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The Magic of Morning Meeting

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                                One of the most important parts of the day in my classroom is Morning Meeting. It is one of those routines that if I forget to include it in my sub plans or we have a change in schedule, my students will give me an earful about not missing it! In fact, one parent told me that her kiddo would get onto her when they were running late because she COULD NOT miss Morning Meeting. Morning Meeting not only gives my classroom family a chance to start our day on the right foot, it directly supports my SEL and community building focus. In this post, I will lay out how I run my Morning Meeting and give out some ideas and suggestions that you can implement! Typically, my Morning Meeting takes about 10-15 minutes once we get the routines down. I find that dedicating this time out of our packed schedule saves me time in the long run since my classro...
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Taking Care of Teacher

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Taking Care of Teacher     Teachers are SO good at and prepared to take care of others. It's a huge part of our job and comes naturally to many of us. Oftentimes and especially in these crazy times, we take care of others before ourselves and sometimes at the expense of ourselves. Educators are in a profession where so much is expected - teach and guide our children, provide them an engaging classroom (at your own expense), know and use best practices and new innovative strategies for reaching ALL learners, protect your students at all costs, watch out for warning signs, stay late for meetings, answer parent emails.....the list could literally go on for pages.  We owe it to ourselves to put on our own oxygen mask FIRST.       How can we effectively teach students to take care of their own mental health while we disregard our own? We can't. How can we support our kids through life transitions if we ourselves are in crisis? We can't. How can we teach the...
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  How Social-Emotional Learning Benefits Everyone | Caige Jambor | TEDxBemidji February 12, 2019
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What is Social Emotional Learning and Why is it Important?

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  Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is very near and dear to my heart as a primary educator. I have seen how beneficial intentional SEL instruction can be in my own classroom and throughout the school community in which I am a part of. In the following post, I will explain SEL, why it is important, and how SEL instruction can benefit your classroom and students! Social Emotional Learning is "the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions" (CASEL, n.d). SEL instruction focuses on teaching your kiddos to identify, recognize, and evaluate their own emotions, building crucial age-appropriate social skills, and encouraging self-awareness and responsibility for every student.   Figure 1                                    ...
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