Watching Our Garden Grow

Let me begin by saying, we love fruits and veggies at our house, but I was not blessed with a green thumb.  A gardener, I am not.  I can grow some fairly attractive flowers, but if I manage to grow a handful of cherry tomatoes, I am overjoyed.

When two staff members told me they wanted to put in a school garden, I knew I would be no help to them on the gardening front, but I thought a garden was a great idea.  Our students could learn about plants, see where their food actually comes from, and maybe develop a taste for some healthy fruits and veggies while they were at it.

The garden began with a set of grow lights in the front lobby.  The students watched the seeds sprout and were intrigued.  Now after lots of hard work digging and preparing the soil, the plants are in the ground and they look amazing!  I can take credit for none of this hard work, but I was very impressed watching it from the sidelines.

I am so proud of the staff members that took the initiative to get this started.  I have heard so many positive comments from staff, students, and community members.  I can't wait to see how the plants and this project will continue to grow.

Journal of Memories

This year my daughter and I started a very low tech form of communication . . . a mom and daughter journal.  I wanted to create a fun way to encourage her to write and a way to record some of our memories.

We started the journal about mid-way through her first grade year.  I let her purchase a special notebook at school - which she was SUPER excited about.  Something about putting quarters in that vending machine just makes her day!  We used the notebook to write letters back and forth to one another.  Nothing fancy.  Sometimes the letters are only a few sentences long, but she gets so excited when she gets a new letter from me.  We write about the events at the time, her thoughts, whatever.  It's just a fun way to communicate.  We don't write to each other everyday.  If we get to it once a week, that's great.  There was even an unfortunate period when I cleaned the house and put it in a "very safe place" that I couldn't remember.  Yikes!  Luckily I found it this week, so the letters have begun again.

It has been interesting to see how her handwriting and writing skills have changed over just the past few months.  I hope the journal is something we continue doing.  I know she probably won't want to write to me when she's a teenager, but I am going to cherish this time while I've got it!

February

June

I will remain calm, I will remain calm, I will remain calm ...

The past few days, I was able to attend trainings on two different crisis related topics.  Last week, our entire school district was trained in ALICE. The information we received was both informative and overwhelming.  It's not easy to think about how you would react in a dangerous situation.  

For two days this week, I also received training in CPI - Crisis Prevention.  This training dealt with how to prevent and/or de-escalate a crisis, as well as how to handle a student that poses a risk to themselves or others.  Once again this training was really informative but also hard to hear at times.

When I look back on these trainings, one of the biggest messages I received was the vital role that we as adults can play in a situation.  Our reactions can make a big difference.  In our CPI training, the instructor gave us the example of the child with the bloody knee.  If we as adults look at the bloody knee and start freaking out, then the child isn't going to react well either.  If we calmly clean the knee, bandage them up and get them ready to play again, then the child will be calmer too.  (I need to remember this when my daughter is riding her bike with no training wheels.)  We can be the example of calm and strength, or we can let our emotions take over and basically make the situation worse.  The thing I need to remember is to practice modeling this calmness on a daily basis, not just in potential crisis situations.  Whether it is the student that is being rude or my own daughter throwing a temper tantrum, I need to be calm.  If I get mad and yell it will usually just escalate the situation.  The crazy thing is I'm pretty good at this at school, but I need to work on it more at home.  Those temper tantrums can really put me over the edge!

Our roles as parents and educators mean that we are faced with difficult situations on a regular basis.  The important things for me to remember is that my role is to stay calm, and as my dad, the sailor, would say - steer us all to calmer waters.

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