Making School Year 2024-2025 the Best Year Ever

Create an Intentional year

What can we do to get off to a great start and create the conditions necessary for a new beginning?  There’s a lot!

Five Strategies for a Magical and Intentional Year

• Set an intention–-Not to get all woo-woo on you here but this is a useful technique for whatever you are doing that is new.  Athletes, entertainers and CEO’s use this technique successfully to create optimum performance.  It can work equally well for educators.
  • Begin with the end in mind.  Picture or visualize how you want your school year to be as we start a new school year.  The tendency is to be so busy doing (managing student behavior, putting up bulletin boards, making lessons plans) that we expend all of our energy and don’t take the time to be.  Imagine how you want it to feel;  excited, enthusiastic, focused, curious, etc. Focus on your presence as much as your actions.
• Revisit your teaching method–Look at your materials and curriculum with a renewed fresh look.  Imagine that you are seeing it for the first time.  How will you engage students, pique their curiosity, personalize the message?  Then make sure your positive vibes reflects your new vision.
• Stay positive–-It is really easy to let the negative drag you down.  There are always too many things to do, too many students to adequately serve, too few resources, too many meetings to attend and not enough time.  Change your perspective. Where is the opportunity in the new school year? What did you learn from the past?  Expect the unexpected and see it as a learning experience.  Choose to be a positivity role model for your students and you will find your enthusiasm is contagious.
• Focus on and process the experience as much as the material.  It’s easy to  bemoan the fact that it’s hard to teach or counsel students because of all the extenuating factors in their lives as well as the uncertainty around us.  Instead view those circumstances as teachable moments.  Sometimes the biggest lesson you can teach is how to handle disappointment and adversity.
• Take care of yourself–there will never be enough time to do it all.  One reason you became a counselor was because of your creative, heart-centered giving spirit. Make sure sure that you direct that energy toward yourself as well as the students you serve. When you take care of yourself, you are modeling for students how they can take care of themselves and that is an invaluable lesson.

By following a plan, you will be able to not only meet the expectations of parents and students, but also to enjoy the fruits of your efforts.

 

Wyatt the Wonder Dog Learns about Mindset

Do you know a child who struggles with failure and feels like a loser?

Do you know a child who needs the confidence to try new things?

Mindset is key and in this Story to Learn By, Wyatt helps kids learn that failure is a part of growing and trying new things. Practice and persistence are necessary keys to success.

Wyatt the Wonder Dog didn’t make it on the All Star baseball team and he feels like a loser.  All  his friends will be playing baseball this summer, while he and his pesky sister, Callie, visit grandparents at the beach.  How Wyatt learns to handle disappointment and failure will be an important lesson for the future.  Will he give up trying new things?  Will he have the confidence to try again?  Are there some things that take more practice and persistence to learn than others?

This book is funny! Its dogs doing things that only people do! I learned to try new things. ~Samuel Traub, Age 6

Wyatt the Wonder Dog Learns about Mindset(Wyatt the Wonder Dog Books) (Volume 5)