Teaching To Give Back...

A big part of what I believe students need to learn is how to give back... give back to their class, their school, their community, and to individuals they don't even know. I do this by participating in the Polar Plunge.

So what is the Polar Plunge and how does it work?Basically, individuals raise money to help support the Special Olympics of Indiana and then to show our dedication, everyone jumps into the City's pool one-by-one. Sounds nice, right? A dip in the pool, mid August, with some iced tea... Well that would be nice. Except the Polar Plunge is February 15th!

Now, as many of you know, Indiana and parts of the Mid-west are being hit with some cooler weather... i.e. -9 degrees. I thoroughly enjoy the winter MUCH more than the summer (the coolness in the air, the snow, scarves, sweaters, red noses, etc.), but do I love it enough to go swimming in it... YOU BETCHA!

But... I need your help. The main purpose is not to just jump into some water. But to raise money! And you can't jump for free! So here is an opportunity to give back to individuals less fortunate than us. Isn't that what we're always trying to teach our students?? 

If you would like to contribute:

1). I need your prayers! Seriously, the water is COLD!
2). If you would like to give monetarily, you can click here and donate to Special Olympics Indiana via my fundraising page:

http://bit.ly/2014PolarPlunge

I am also proud of my little girl for also wanting to give back to others. Her school is raising money for the American Heart Association and Jump Rope For Heart. 

It makes my heart swell at her caring for others and her drive to give to others. She is 5 and asked me if I would tell everyone on the Internet to donate to her school for "the little boy with a bad heart". If you would like to donate to her page, you can do so here:

http://bit.ly/AmHrtAssocKAllen

Maybe you want to give in memory of a friend, family member, or student who has a Disability or Special Needs. Maybe your grandpa or aunt has heart disease or passed from heart failure. Maybe you and your partner want to forgo the roses and cheesy cards for Valentines Day and donate to a better cause :) Maybe you want to donate anonymously... Either way, would you help out and give back for a better cause? I hope you do!

-JW

Spoon Full Of Sweetness is... SWEET

Sometimes, as an Elementary School Counselor, I see students and I think "yea, it's a little too late for them". When we have 6th graders shoving and yelling in the halls, it's hard to tell the 1st graders "hey, walk in a straight line quietly". We do what we learn and we learn what we see.

So how amazing is it when you're contacted by an author and asked to review a book targeted at young kids focused on... MANNERS!

Seriously, manners. It's term that we don't focus enough on! 

Bullying= check

Study Skills= check

Manners= ???

So, the fantastic Maria Dismondy has written a new book called "Spoon Full Of Sweetness" and it is truly sweet! 

Now Maria Dismondy will sound familiar because she wrote "Pink Tiara Cookies For Three", "Spaghetti In A Hot Dog Bun", "The Juice Box Bully" and "The Potato Chip Champ". If you have not read these... Please do yourself a favor and DO IT! :) 

One of my Elementary schools has a Pre-School built in and I was lucky enough to get to read the book to them and do a mini lesson (*spoilers*)... As well as my own 5 year old daughter (who is in Kindergarten) and my 3 year old son (who is also in Pre-School).

Here is what I loved:

- The Size: it's handheld... Not too small for little kids to see but not to big where it makes it awkward to hold. It is sturdy for little hands to hold and won't tear due to the materials.

- The Illustrations: Ronnie Rooney did a great job illustrating the book and really focusing on the manner being discussed. The bright pictures really kept my kiddos' attention and they seemed to understand what was going on in the picture.

- The Additional Resources: Maria's website offers a worksheet and additional Parent/ Teacher resources for her book.

Here's what I don't love:

- That EVERY Counselor doesn't have a copy to read and share!

But just wait... I am excited to announce I am lucky enough to get to GIVE AWAY A FREE COPY!

Here's what I want you to do:

~ Comment on THIS POST about how YOU could use this book in your school, home, or church.

     Then

~ Go my Facebook page and LIKE it and/or my Twitter and FOLLOW ME. You have to do one of these two things plus COMMENT to be entered to win the drawing!

Super easy!  I will be checking and announcing the winner on Monday, January 27th 2014.

What are you waiting for- GO AND COMMENT/ LIKE/ FOLLOW!

-JW

How my Mother-In-Law helped brand my blog!

About 10 years ago, my then-soon-to-be-mother-in-law bought me a Mr. Potato Head as a joke. And it sat on our baker's rack in our Kitchen for the longest time. 
I really liked it!
So she bought me another... and another... and another. Soon I had over 20 Mr. Potato Heads in varying sizes, holiday garb, boys, girls, etc. And then I became a School Counselor. And I use these things ALL the time! Kindergarten through 6th LOVE to take them apart, put them together, make them Picasso, upside down, all arms, etc. 
And all of a sudden, after reading the SCCHATs, looking at ALL the fantastic School Counselor blogs, and looking at my own blog, I realized I had nothing that made my blog me. Nothing that branded it or made people realize what I am all about. 
So this week I really focused on what I do, what I utilize, and what I believe it.
And it's Mr. Potato Heads!
My entire "Intro Lesson" this year focused around Mr. Potato Heads. They're in both office, on shelves, in baskets, etc. 
I realized they're all different, with different features and different problems and all can go different ways. JUST LIKE OUR STUDENTS! 
If you don't have some, I encourage you to get a couple and try them out. Your kiddos with LOVE them. Even our Youth Pastor at our church has a TON of them in his office.
So, I hope you enjoy the new look :)

-JW

BINDERS! ... but maybe too many?

So, I love binders. When I started in my career at the beginning of last year, there were papers and lessons and worksheets ALL OVER THE PLACE. Plus with having two buildings, I had some stuff at one school and other stuff at the other school. I made it my mission to, by the end of the year, have a binder at each building labeled for each topic (Bullying, Harmony, Excellence, etc.). Whenever I get something new, I make two copies, put one at each building, and I am set.

This bottom shelf has my binders for lessons, character education, etc.

I also have others binders that were maybe a better idea when I first started... I have several binders at each building with tabs for different committee meetings, faculty meetings, Elementary counselor meetings, all-district counselor meetings, etc. And now what I have is a stack of papers at each building because I don't feel like finding the right tab and filing all these things. 

So, in my attempt to become more paper-less, I have found this:

Now, maybe you've heard of Evernote, maybe not. I had but had never looked into what it is. In a nutshell, Evernote is a note-taking program. 
Did I just lose you? Hang in there, seriously this can help you! Here's how...

- Go to Evernote 
- Create a FREE Account (now, you can make a Premium account, but come on, we work in Public Education- who has $$ for that? Go get it free!)
- After that and after you log in, you will find this screen

I just started using it, so yours will look a lot like mine!

Now, if you're anything like me, you will have a LOT of different "hats" you wear... Luckily, Evernote can let you make as many "Notebooks" as you need to file your notes in.

These are just a few of the meetings/ committees I attend

So you have all these Notebooks, now what.
Well, on that main screen, it said "+ New Note"
Click it...

Then you just start typing. I am making the "title" as the date. I don't need to put what the meeting is since I can select what Notebook it goes in. 

So you've taken some notes, GREAT! But then tomorrow, the meeting "recorder" emails or hard-copies the actual minutes from the meeting to you. Now you have to print those off and file them. Or make a special folder in your email which is already bogged down enough...

With Evernote, all you have to do is Attach that file to the note and delete it from your email/ computer. Evernote stores it!

The good thing is also that the note automatically saves so you don't really have to worry about losing it. 

I was lucky enough before Christmas Break to get to order an iPad Air and guess what... THERE'S AN APP! So you don't have to lug your laptop into a meeting. It's just as easy from the app.

So maybe this will work for you and maybe it won't. Maybe you have a better way of keeping notes. One of my New Year SMART Goals (coming in a later post) is to do a better job of keeping track of meeting notes/ data. Either way, do what works for you but please don't be afraid to try something new!

I'd love to hear how YOU do minutes/ meeting notes.

-JW

Merry Christmas

From AFellowSchoolCounselor to all my fellow school counselors, friends, cohorts, and readers- I would like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. I pray you all have a GLORIOUS New Year full of blessings and achievement! 

-JW

Where to put all these Board Games?!

I'm not sure if any of you have this same problem... but I am acquiring a large amount of board games and only have so much space to put them. At my Wildcat's school it's especially bad- I have one small bookshelf for student to pick off of and one large bookshelf with doors (that I keep all my counseling books, lessons, workbooks, etc.). I have asked for a bigger bookshelf to keep student activities on but have heard nothing... *chirp chirp*.

So I determined if I can't make the bookshelf bigger, I'll make the stuff smaller... Here's how:

I took a second to see where my games are.

Here are the majority of them (the ones students use most)

Here are some more tucked away in my bench seat.

Plus I have ordered four more and have some at my parents' house I was going to bring in. But I am running out of room. So here's what I did during my lunch today... I first assessed which games needed kept in boxes (Don't Break The Ice, Topple, Mancala, etc.) and set them aside. With the remaining games, I took ALL the pieces, boards, and instructions out of the boxes and cut the boxes down. I felt so wrong cutting a game's box :) But I knew it was for a good cause. I kept the top of the box (minus all the sides cut off) and one of the sides. I threw the bottoms and the scraps away.

Here are some of the edge pieces I cut and kept.

I put all the pieces in small Ziploc Bags and put a piece of the edge (from the box) in the Ziploc with it. This way I would know for definite which pieces went with which game.

Chess and Checkers

I only had Snack Sized Ziplocs so some of them had to be separated or clipped together.

The spinner was too big to go in the bag- I'm going to get some bigger Ziplocs to fix that.

Then I put all the Ziplocs in a basket I had sitting around empty in my office.

However, I may need a bigger basket at some point :)

So then I took all the boards and stood them in an empty thirty-one organizer my wife bought me. 

It's a little too narrow so I may look around a see if I can find an empty milk crate or something.

Since some of the boards were black and easily mixed up, I put the top of the original box in front of it. I have a label maker and may label the boards instead of relying on the box's top... not sure yet...

I want to play... um... Chutes and Ladders!

So now I have all my "board games" sitting my my trunk (which is handy, since that is where my kids like to sit anyways)...

Plus it freed up a TON of space on my bookshelf and in my trunk!

Some games stayed but a huge space is empty now!

All the instructions to the games are in the trunk in a file-folder in case we need them!

Useless trash and space I don't need!

So now I'm thinking I may do the same at my Falcons school... and maybe at home! 

Hope this helps some of you clear out a little more space in your offices! Don't be afraid to take games out of the boxes... A lot of them had SOOO much wasted space it was ridiculous. And I need all the space I can get!

Have a great Holiday and a very Merry Christmas!!!!

-JW

How To Teach Integrity??

When I started this career, I knew certain character traits would be more difficult to teach than others. How to Respect others, taking care of our Responsibilities, and Caring for others were some I knew would be easy. 

But Harmony- yea that one was harder. 

Excellence- hard to teach how to be Excellent.

But our Character Trait this month is Integrity- and one of the more difficult concepts to teach. It's really hard for students to understand the concept of doing the right thing for no specific reason other than it's the right thing to do. Why should I "do the right thing even when no one is looking". They can spout it off verbatim but do they really live it? It took a lot of searching but I found some awesome activities to use. Plus, since our district just finished with Math and Science Nights, I made my activities focus on Integrity through a science viewpoint... And two of my favorites (so far) are these:

My First graders got to read The Empty Pot by Demi. 

An AWESOME book that teaches the importance of telling the truth and doing the right thing even when no one else is.

After discussing key concepts from the book, students wrote a sentence about Integrity on a napkin, folded it and placed it in a small Ziploc. The kids then got to place a magic seed (a Pinto Bean) in their bag and we watered it. We talked about how the Integrity washes off the napkin and onto the bean and the kids get to watch other the next few days the bean sprout roots (and how we all grow with Integrity)! The kids love doing it and they think it's cool how the seeds germinate almost overnight!

Next, our Third Graders learned that when we do the right thing (even if no one is directly impacted), it changes the atmosphere, the composition, and the makeup of the entire school. We read The Principal's New Clothes by Stephanie Calmenson.

It's a funny school-related take on The Emperor's New Clothes and it's an older book but for some reason my Third Graders really like it. We talk about how the entire school learns to do the right thing no matter who sees or what others think. But then we talk about Invisible Cloth... and Invisible Ink. :)

"But Mr. Allen, there's no such thing!"

Oh yea?! Well I love science. So here's what we do. I give them all a piece of paper, have them write their name on it, and then flip it over to the blank side. Every student then gets a new writing tool...

Wax makes an awesome writing medium... :) EWWW

Students get so defensive that it's not a writing tool. So I ask for an example of a writing tool... and I get "a pencil!"

I ask them what a pencil is made of and they respond "wood". But does it write with the wood or need something else. Well duh, it needs something else- The lead graphite! So then they all get a small cup of liquid to write with (much like our Forefathers used quills and ink, my students used Q-Tips and an acidic liquid- either lemon juice, orange juice, or vinegar... whichever I have in my house).

I then ask them to dip their Q-Tip and write on their paper HOW they show Integrity in school (a specific example). And slowly students realize they can't se what's written. Neither can I. Neither can their neighbors. Neither can their teachers.

Their papers done and dried "blank"

However, we show Integrity everyday EVEN IF NO ONE CAN SEE IT! Why? Because it's still there and it still affects other students, teachers, parents, etc. And sometimes, a little change can reveal that Integrity and can show how much we care about others.

I take the papers home that night and place them four-at-a-time in my oven set to Low Broil.

And something amazing happens...

The writing burns quicker (because of the acid) and their little acts of Integrity show through!

The next day I hang them in the hall so EVERYONE can see how Third Grade is showing Integrity (even if they THINK no one can see!)

Science meets Counseling! New twist on an old concept. Gets them thinking and engaged. I LOVE IT!

-JW