A Practical Guide to a Calming Classroom

Anxiety in the classroom is increasing in both students and teachers. This creates an added layer of complexity for educators as we continue to tackle mental health and its impacts. To help you out, we’ve put together a practical guide to creating a calming classroom to decrease anxious feelings and increase wellbeing. Take a look at our Do This/Don’t Do This list on lighting, clutter, visual schedules, and safe spaces. Feel free to share with colleagues! 

Course 5066: Growing Gifts: Stories, Supports and Strategies in Gifted Education 

Everyone likes a good story. 

When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All the Answers by Judith Galbraith and Jim Delisle, is filled with stories to help the reader understand how it feels to be identified and labeled “gifted.” 

Usain Bolt said, “It is important to set goals in life. I set mine to the highest standard I can achieve.”

Muhammad Ali said, “What keeps me going is goals.”

Venus Williams said, “I don’t focus on what I’m up against. I focus on my goals and ignore the rest.”

Any fitness trainer, physical education teacher, or coach will tell you that goal setting is key to improving athletic or sport performance. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) shares that goal setting is a component of self-management which is an essential skill for children to learn! The majority of educators understand that goal setting is imperative to academic growth and achievement.

There is only one problem, goal setting is just the beginning. 

Everybody Needs Somebody.

“Jolly came home bleeding and she doesn’t have folks.

‘Nobody doesn’t have folks,’ I said.

‘I’m Nobody, then,’ she said, ’‘Cause I don’t.’ Her whole face was scraped like it had a grater taken to it, like it was cheese.”

-Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff

In Make Lemonade, 14-year-old LaVaughn takes a job as a babysitter for 17-year-old Jolly, who has lived in foster care her whole life, and has two children from fathers who are not in the picture. As the story goes on, it’s clear that Jolly doesn’t really know how to do life – manage money, raise healthy children, even hold a job – because she has never really had what she calls “folks”: people who took a vested interest in showing her how to do things. LaVaughn helps Jolly to navigate through some of her issues and shows her resources to help her get on her feet, and to find resources for her to learn more about how to access a good life for her children and herself.

Using Play to Teach and Learn

When traveling, I find it captivating to learn how different cultures educate their children. While in Germany, I observed school kids carrying canvas bags with the phrase “spielend lernen” printed above a colorful picture. Because I don’t read German, I asked my friend to translate: 

“Play to learn.” 

Play to learn is the message author Lisa Murphy, in her book, Play: The Foundation of Children’s Learning, encourages us to embrace, recognize and understand, and it is the book you will receive when you register for our energizing new course 5057: Move, Grow, Play! Using Play to Teach and Learn. 

Developing the Social-Emotional Skill of Self-Efficacy

A teenage hockey goalie defending a shutout in the final period of a state championship game. A small child learning to decode big words. A freshly graduated Criminal Justice major headed into her first job interview. What do these three individuals have in common?

They must have self-efficacy to be successful. Let me explain…

Why it's important for you, and your students...

Turn on the television, listen to the radio, pick up a newspaper or log on to your favorite social media website. You, and students, will see opposing views and lively debates, some articulated respectfully and others...not so much. In a society fraught with disagreement, it is important that we teach our students about tough topics and how to engage in civic discourse. This may take place through planned activities or it may be more spontaneous, but if you are prepared, you will have great opportunities to teach skills that could last a lifetime.  

Do you or your students feel as though you have no where to escape to inside of the classroom? Like there are people everywhere and you can't get a second to yourself? An unorganized classroom environment can create anxious students. It's a good thing Keely is here to tell us all about how our classrooms can benefit from having 'Calm Boxes' personally designed to match each students' needs!

Cassetta and Sawyer, authors of the book Classroom Management Matters: The Social-Emotional Approach Students Deserve wrote, “We cannot and should not control our students’ behavior, but we are RESPONSIBLE for our students and their behavior.” This responsibility includes finding ways to increase the self-management skills of our learners.  

 I am the mom of a toddler, a typical toddler who has his share of tantrums and meltdowns (sometimes in public, sometimes at home). Although his receptive language skills are strong, his expressive language skills are still developing, causing frustration when trying to communicate his wants, needs, and feelings, hence the tantrums. When I can figure out what he is trying to tell me, we can work together to solve the problem. Determining the reasons (or functions) behind his behaviors is known as functional behavioral assessment.