Category: Connection

  • The Great Reset

    Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering, encourages us to enter into 2022 with conscious intention and in community. Recently, she discussed what she calls “the great reset” on Brené Brown’s podcast. What is the Great Reset? Parker describes it this way: “We are in a moment of creation. And that is something that few generations…

  • Specialists Find Special Time with Students

    Imagine you’re a librarian at an elementary school. You have the unique opportunity of getting to interact with EVERY student in your school community and hopefully instill in them a lifelong love of reading. Cool, right? Here’s the catch: unlike a classroom educator, your time with students is limited and spread out. So, how do…

  • Teachers Can Harness the Power of Ritual and Routine

    At this time of year, with heightened excitement and a looming break from school, the agreements you co-created with your class at the beginning of the school year and the everyday routines you have been establishing are things to lean on. Depend on that structure now, because it comforts them and helps them feel safe.…

  • Lunch time! How Bryn Mawr Elementary Creates Community in the Lunchroom

    We all have distant memories of a loud, chaotic lunchroom, where students often had their heads down for being too loud and left lunch a bit dysregulated and less ready to learn. At Bryn Mawr Elementary, the staff has creatively addressed one of the key sources of stress for all schools this year – how…

  • A Strong Start for Teachers

    Teachers: we sincerely hope you were able to take some well-deserved time off this summer. The past two school years have asked too much of you. And right around the corner is the beginning of something new…a new classroom of kids, new challenges, new successes.  Although we continue to face many unknowns this school year,…

  • A Smooth Transition to the School Year

    The new school year is fast approaching, and the sunlit days are growing a little shorter. It’s time to transition from summer to the more structured schedule of fall.  There are still a lot of unknowns this school year, so it will helpful for kids to feel as ready as they can. When we leave…

  • The COVID One-Year Mark: Let’s not go back

      We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate, and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits…

  • Rethinking Rewards: Focus on Finding Solutions

      During stressful times, when we are challenged by our kids’ behavior, it is easy to fall into a punishment-reward cycle.  We may lose our calm, flip our lids, and lay down a punishment. Then we feel bad and come back instead with ideas for incentives and rewards. Research tells us that neither work for…

  • Rethinking Rewards: Alternatives to Offering Incentives

    Teachers, you have been accomplishing incredible feats this year! It is mind-boggling how your job has changed because of the pandemic and online teaching. Though some of your students are thriving, you may be worried about many who do not seem engaged and who aren’t completing assignments. It is easy to think that rewards may…

  • Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity

    “Inclusion is not an intellectual thing. It has to be visceral. Words like diversity, equity, inclusion have no meaning at all unless we make it personal, unless we connect these themes to our life story and operationalize them in the actions of our daily lives.” – Jonathan Joseph, Sound Discipline Board of Directors.   Sound…