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Easy appreciation…gamify your appreciation! #leadership

June 25, 2019 by Amber 2 Comments

One of my favorite things to do is to reward our staff. We’re going to give away birthday books this year, and thanks to our Staff Appreciation and Morale group on Facebook, there’s no end to the clever ideas shared. Leaders from all over share how they treat, appreciate, reward their teams throughout the year.

One popular way to show appreciation was the prize wheel, where the slots are filled with jeans passes, sonic drinks and early release passes. These are fun but I worry about trying to fill up the slots. That’s quite a few sonic drinks! I loved the idea of gamifying my gift giving. And then tada…I discovered this!

This year…drum roll please…we’re going to introduce STAFF PRIZE PLINKO! Look at the cuteness!!

That’s only 4 slots! I can easily think of four ways to reward/celebrate our people!

 

If you haven’t seen the wheel, it’s also fun. It’s just more than I can be creative for, ha!

Would love to see what you put on your wheel o’ appreciation!

 

Spinningly &

 

Filed Under: Leadership, Staff Development Tagged With: #admin, #beintentional, #cpchat, AmberTeamann

Introducing Wen-Zen-day! A day of “zen” for students and staff…

August 17, 2018 by Amber Leave a Comment

I’ve mentioned the greatness of my principal peer, Dr. Helm, before. She is the elementary principal at George W. Bush Elementary…she and GWB are practically besties! Not only that, she has really great ideas that she frequently shares with me…and you know how I love that! One of them that I am completely stealing is her way of bringing ZEN to her students and staff.

When we met to go over a couple of different things in the summer, one of the ideas she mentioned that she did at her school was “Wen-ZEN-days”. This caught my attention because last year for our staff book study, the overwhelming choice by teachers was “Unshakeable” by Angela Watson. Balance and self-care for our teachers is SO important. They work so hard, they always get stuff ADDED to their plate and very rarely do we give them permission to take things off. As conscious of this as I try to be, I still feel like there are teachers who are doing things that were expected of them many years ago that don’t know how to NOT do them.  “Wen-zen-day” is a day we’ll start this year as an effort to strategically build in a time weekly for reinforcing mindful practices on the campuses for both teachers and students.

She initially shared the concept with teachers in her weekly newsletter, with an easy way they could try as well.

What is Zen

Finding a moment of Zen you are fully present and are experiencing life in a way that the rest of the world- in its insane marathon of haste, chaos, and busyness-typically ignores. Tuned into the actuality of the present moment you are living life. As it happens.

Right now.

Practicing mindfulness is one of the single most powerful things you can do for your wellbeing. Want to give it a try? Visit http://www.happify.com for guided meditations and other mindfulness-building activities designed by experts.

Then she shared a “zen” idea they could practice with students…

Recently in the news we have heard more and more about the benefits of mindfulness and purposeful breathing in the classroom. So I want to share how I incorporated a 30 second breathing activity into my classroom last year, and how it made all the difference for me and my students.

First, when students entered my room, there was a “Do Now” on the board for them to get started on. This allowed them to come in and quietly get to work instead of sitting down and talking to friends and then having to call the room to order. During this time, I greeted them all individually. I was building relationships by checking in on each of them and giving them each a personal greeting. If a student had a bad day yesterday, I could ask if he was doing better today. If a student seemed sad, I would walk over to his desk and crouch at his level and check in to see if anything was going on.

After everyone had finished the “Do Now” activity, we did a really quick breathing exercise. It’s so simple. Ready?

Breathe in for four seconds.

Breathe out for eight seconds.

Repeat three times.

That’s it. Quick, easy and FREE!

To set it up, I told the students that we were going to take 30 seconds every day to breathe. I asked them to sit up tall, like their spine was made of a stack of pennies, and have both feet on the floor. They could close their eyes or look down. I asked them to imagine breathing in like they were smelling a flower, and breathing out like blowing on a bowl of hot soup – carefully so as not to splash soup everywhere!

For the first couple of weeks, I asked them to jot down a few words that described how they were feeling before breathing, and then immediately after breathing. The point of writing it down was to call attention to the way our body and mind shifted when we focused on breathing.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. What about the kids who would use 30 seconds of silence to make inappropriate noises? Good question. Of COURSE this happened. My advice is to not give up. It took several weeks to normalize this in my classroom. Some students WILL struggle with it or use the opportunity to do something silly or crazy. I placed some tape on the floor right outside the doorway of my class, and if any students didn’t participate appropriately, I would simply ask them to breathe out in the hallway the next day. I didn’t make a big deal of it, I just asked that they do their breathing out there to avoid being a distraction to those who were breathing in the class. Eventually, these students would learn to come in the class and focus and participate.

It’s easy to give up at first. It may seem like they’ll never get on board. But they will! Just hang in there. I also modeled breathing by calling attention to times when I needed to take a breath. I would say, “Hey guys, I’m feeling a bit anxious right now. I’m going to take a few breaths in the hallway.” Or if the whole class was dysregulated, I would stop and everyone could do a quick reset by taking a few breaths together.

Here’s the deal. You are the leader of your classroom. You have a choice. You can be frustrated about all of the pressure, mandates, and items that are out of our control… or you can do something about it. Something that is free. Something that just takes 30 seconds!

The benefits have been researched and discussed time and time again, but for my class, I can say that my students were able to sit in their desks and focus, even with the chaos right outside of our non-existent door. They were able to use breathing to help calm them down before a big test or before they had to give a speech. I believe that it gave them a tool that they can call on throughout their lives when they start to feel stressed or overwhelmed. Teachers – I can tell you this. It just takes 30 seconds, it is free, and it will help bring a sense of calm into your classroom!

How great is this??

We’re going to implement this here with our Wolves. My counselor is going to lead the charge each Wen-zen-day on the announcements.  I love the idea of a vertical language, K-4, all dedicated to our well being. The momentous Institute also has some incredible resources!

If you’re looking for buy-in, let your team dress comfortably on those days! The mental health of our people is SO important…important enough to be strategic about the taking care of them!

 

Zen seeking &

 

Filed Under: Staff Development Tagged With: #beintentional, #zen, AmberTeamann

Easter Appreciation, an easy way to celebrate your EGGcellent team!

March 22, 2018 by Amber Leave a Comment

My principal bestie, Melinda Miller and I have this Facebook group dedicated to Staff Appreciation and Celebration. It’s an entire page for administrators to share and creatively copy all sorts of great ideas, all meat to encourage, motivate and celebrate your teachers/staff. While it can be overwhelming, it does make me feel SO much better to see that everyone’s year has an ebb and flow…and how rarely anyone does #allthethings. There’s such a Pinterest pressure, even as an administrator, to get it all right, all colorful, and all the time…this group has shown that we all have seasons where we need someone else to be a spark in our world!

In light of that, someone shared this seasonally appropriate activity this week, that can be adapted to fit your campus or even your classroom, or office team! You’ll need to purchase some tiny trinkets, think dollar spot erasers, or candy, and some plastic Easter eggs.  (Or jeans passes! or leave early passes!) I’m going to set this up in the lounge next Monday and allow teachers to celebrate each other as they see fit!

 

 

Pages 2 & 3 are generic that you can just print out and use! Thank you, Mandy Ellis, for your version that I used for ours! Spring days can be a trying, “testing” time for most educators. These little treats & tricks can help brighten your staffs days…which in turn, trickles down to our students. 

A happy teacher makes for happy students!

Click To Tweet

 

Seasonally &

Filed Under: Principal, Staff Development Tagged With: AmberTeamann

Leading Out of Your Comfort Zone

February 25, 2018 by Amber Leave a Comment

This weekend I’m at an SDE conference with my kinder team.

Kindergarten is its own beast, ya’ll.

I taught fourth grade. Big tall fourth graders who relatively could control their emotions, tie their shoes, and regular complete multistep tasks.

There were two opportunities I had to cover some kinder classes this year and my’lanta. I’ve never been more thankful to see those teachers show back up in my life! It was such a reminder that our teacher work hard and are EXPERTS at what they do! When this team asked if they could attend this kinder specific conference, I was all about it.

Why did I come?

Because I have never taught kindergarten,

Because their content is important.

Because rarely are you as the admin able to provide grade-level specific content to EVERYone, but especially kindergarten. (Think about your specials teachers, your experts, the odd specialists…how do you move them from point A to their point B?)

Because I had the opportunity to eat, text with, laugh and grow as this team got stronger together.

Because I get to hear what they are hearing. When they ask me to buy those heavy-duty fancy paper plates to build sand individual sand trays, I now know the reason why.

Because dear lord, I don’t know everything and can ALWAYS find a takeaway to make me a stronger leader.

Take advantage of moments to step outside of your comfort zone. Model what it means to genuinely be a lifelong learner. 

Don’t just talk the talk, walk the walk…but most importantly, walk WITH them.

Click To Tweet

 

Kinder caring &

 

(Also, important to note, I’m here today, Sunday, only…will be back with the rest of my Wolves for school tomorrow! #allthethings)

Filed Under: Principal, Staff Development Tagged With: #admin, #beintentional, #cpchat, AmberTeamann

Get the most out of your conference/professional development!

February 19, 2018 by Amber Leave a Comment

How do you as an administrator (or teacher!) feel about conferences? Professional learning? Empowering your teachers?Here are the things we did to maximize sending our team of teachers to #TCEA! Make the most out of your next conference!

Often our budgets and #allthethings (subs! testing! schedules! teaching!), make it impossible to send every teacher we have to attend any conference. I am a very big believer in growing and empowering the team I have with me, so I allocate a substantial amount of money in my budget towards teacher development. We did an individualized book study as a campus, my kinder team is attending the SDE Kinder conference this month, and my first-grade literacy leaders went to see the guided reading guru Janet Richardson when she was close. We had the awesome opportunity to send a team of teachers to TCEA last week. In meeting with these risk takers, I wanted to make sure that we maximized their benefit, as well as our staff, to learn all that we could from the conference!

We had a PD today where each TCEA tripper will share something they learned. They’ve staggered their sessions throughout the day. For a couple of teachers, this was REALLY out of their comfort zone, so they are presenting the same tool/session three times. For some, they have three different things to share. As our Wolves attend sessions throughout the day, I’ve asked them to tweet out their gems of greatness with #wearewhitt. (GO check it out!!) We’ll pull that thread up in PLC on Wednesday and explore all that was shared. Ala George Couros, I didn’t go over the “how to’s” of twitter today, I just gave them their expectations and off they went! It was a GREAT day of learning!

Asking for those three tweets will help each teacher not only have “notes” for what was shared but also allow them to experience all of the sessions that were offered today. Many went over the 20 minutes allowed, which will just make your principal heart so happy! This also solidified for the teachers that went that there were expectations on their experience. Preparing and presenting will help keep what they learned in focus…everyone knows that tired head feeling after you’ve returned from a conference, the one where you are so overwhelmed you don’t know where to start? My people have a plan!

As a last attempt to ensure we could get everything possible out of the conference, I’ve asked teachers to implement ONE strategy, tip, trick, or tool that they learned about today into their lesson plans for next week. It didn’t have to be something that all 22 students had to be able to do, but maybe it could be used as an opportunity for those who need enrichment. (I shared the Discovery Education Spotlight on Strategies and was AMAZED that it was all new to them!!)

 

As an admittedly techie administrator, there aren’t a whole lot of “things” that I haven’t heard of or been exposed to in my 15+ years of teaching, techN, etc. BUT until ALL of my teachers are as comfortable and confident as I am…then I am not done learning either! My goal is to never walk away from any session and think I’ve learned nothing…even with a tool my district pays for, I was able to glean useful strategies to help build up my Wolves. 

Be that kinda administrator…the one who always wants their people to be better.

Click To Tweet

Filed Under: Conferences, Principal, Staff Development Tagged With: #admin, #beintentional, #cpchat, AmberTeamann

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