To help encourage dialogue and reflection about the importance of finding and making room for joy in our lives, our question of the week is: What brings you joy in your life? How can you make space for that this summer? Room for Joy (Week of 6/6/21) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
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Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
Our Mission: Blake Middle School believes in a living mission statement, based on the concept that our community seeks and respects knowledge, integrity, character, wisdom, and the willingness to adapt to a continually evolving world.
The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. - John Dewey
You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow. - John Dewey
The sunset on Friday evening and the beautiful light on Saturday morning felt like a ‘vitamin boost’ during these busy days. It was a very full weekend for us - baseball games, Rolling Rally and Party in the Park to celebrate the graduating MHS students, and trying to fit in a little time for ourselves - it’s that time of the year! I am hoping that the heat we have had these few days is short-lived.
Forget Learning Loss, Teens Need Joy Recovery
by Christine Lively in School Library Journal
The past year has been a pressure cooker of survival strategies, finding a reason to get up in the morning, doing whatever we can to survive, and overwhelming loneliness.
Summer break is coming, and it’s a great opportunity for us to help teens find joy again and recover the joy they’ve lost in the past fourteen months. Let’s not miss this opportunity.
I am always surprised by how much high school students love to revisit the joyful and no pressure activities of their Elementary school days. In our library, coloring, legos, and word find games are extremely popular. Tuning into color, building something just for the fun of it with no end goal, and finding words in an easy puzzle changel a teen who is usually huddled over a computer filled with anxiety and dread over completing an assignment. Instead of a serious, worried, and concerned young adult with the weight of the world on their shoulders, they become kids again. Their facial expressions, posture, and brains change. Their hearts open and joy fills them – even if just for a few moments. Our programming and our approach with teens can help them remember what it’s like to have fun and help them recover from a year with little joy or fun.
Dear Mandy, How do I heal this summer?
by Mandy Froehlich (@froehlichm)
This summer, most importantly, rest. The most crucial messages for healing will happen in the quiet moments. Pay attention to your mind and body.
To be completely healed is not a reasonable outcome. Whenever we heal from one thing another thing will pop up. Therefore, to look at healing as an event…let that go. You will only ever be at a point in your healing journey, and wherever you are is okay as long as you keep moving forward.
I know you are itching to do something to make yourself feel better. To feel like yourself again. You’re going to have to go slow to go fast, and that begins with taking time to heal and look within yourself for the answers instead of defining yourself by outside factors in which you have no control. There is no prescription. I’m sorry I can’t give you a step-by-step process. This isn’t a quick fix. It will take time. You can do this.
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What have you learned about yourself over the past year?
- That I can do anything!
- I learned that I learn better when I am visually shown instructions.
- That I truly love the new, and unexpected.
- That if I actually try hard and think things through I am way smarter than I think I am.
- That I’m a good learner
- I work better with music
- I learned that I am a good learner and leader.
- That you can finish lots of work if you put the time in.
- That I can be tested, and remain clear; that I can be rejected, and still believe in myself; that I can fail to get my message across, and be willing to keep trying.
- I can roll with changes, and I deeply value those willing to make sacrifices for the common good of humanity.
- I learned that I like in person school better
I hope we can collectively make the space over these last couple of weeks together to reflect, find joy, and allow ourselves #permissiontofeel - it’s important.
As always, let me know of any questions/concerns.
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Take care.
Nat