We know that the holidays are a time to remind us to be thankful for what we have. From all of us at Temescal Associates and the How Kids Learn Foundation, we wish you a peaceful and restful holiday! We are most grateful to all of you who work hard to support our youth in out of school time.
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| Source: WINGS for Kids |
By Guest Blogger Wings for Kids. To view this original publication, click here.
Many of us follow an established morning routine: wake up, shower, eat breakfast, and get ready for the day. It’s routines like these that serve our mental, physical, and psychological well-being. In the same way, adults benefit from a daily routine, children feel more secure and confident when their day-to-day activities are familiar and predictable.
In fact, they are essential to their development and health. Research suggests that parents with preschool-aged children who regularly practice family routines like singing, reading, playing, and eating together have greater social-emotional health. Children depend on rituals and routines to provide structure throughout their day. These repeated events provide a foundation for daily life and can help establish an understanding of rules, expectations, and accountability.
As an example, at WINGS the Program Director establishes a routine for each day, week, and program year. This predictable schedule of events remains consistent, providing a basic framework around all program activities. Specifically, kids start each day with group time called Community Unity. There is a weekly routine of giving each other Positive Feedback or Heys & Praise on Mondays, and every year our programs routinely host a WINGS Graduation for students. This familiarity helps kids know what to expect and when to expect it.
To illustrate, one daily WINGS routine is to say Words To Live By—seven kid-friendly verses that teach SEL skills—as a group. During this time, WINGS leaders can implement a ritual like a group chant, making up distinct hand motions to use during the Words, or ending the Words a certain way like making a unique face or hand gesture.
Imagine this: you walk into your office at work in the morning and no one looks up to greet you. No “Hello!” or even a “Hey.” How does that make you feel? Uncomfortable? Maybe bitter or confused? Now imagine someone looked up, made eye contact, greeted you with a genuine smile, said your name, and maybe even gave you a fist bump. How much more welcomed would you feel?
A morning ritual like being greeted each day in this way helps to communicate simple messages:
Even the simplest rituals and routines can have a remarkable impact. They help children feel supported, secure, and ready to learn.
“The impact of creating rituals and traditions is long-lasting. They build connections and provide an opportunity for everyone—children, families, and staff—to learn about themselves and others. They create a safe, warm, and secure environment where children are able to learn and grow. They offer learning experiences for children, staff, and families alike. They positively enhance both program and classroom environments.” - Jacky Howell & Kimberly Reinhard, Rituals and Traditions: Fostering a Sense of Community in Preschool, 2015
Make It Fun and Engaging
When teachers and staff develop creative routines and procedures, it’s a win-win. Adults provide kids with the necessary support structure to be successful and kids enjoy a fun and unique ritual or routine that helps them reduce stress or anxiety. These engaging environments provide excellent opportunities for positive interactions between children and adults, which are necessary for social emotional learning to be effective.
In addition, simple, repetitive activities can relieve stress on teachers and staff by taking the guesswork out of transitions between classrooms or gaps between lessons. Instead of making transitions feel like a chore, shake things up.
Make it fun! Here are a few ideas to make everyday tasks feel more like a game:
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| Source: Ever Forward Club |
Include kids in decision-making: As you develop a thoughtful plan of routine activities in all learning areas, be sure to include children in discussions and planning. Don’t be afraid to have your kids help you put rituals in place and switch them up throughout the year. You’ll be surprised how quickly the kids will catch on and appreciate the consistency. Children are more motivated to work hard and learn more during daily academic time if they feel that they’ve made a contribution to plans and are emotionally engaged.
Understand expectations: When approaching established or new routines, it’s important that students understand the expectations, which will save time managing any behavior challenges later. It’s important for adults to address both inappropriate AND appropriate behavior with kids. Both actions serve as models for what’s acceptable behavior, so focus on developing a plan that reinforces positive behavior for optimal success.
Build a sense of community: Rituals and routines can also be helpful in building a sense of community. Kids and adults alike crave a sense of belonging in and outside the classroom, and forming these bonds is the product of positive interactions over the course of time. Have a vision for what you want your community to stand for, what values it should have, and then authentically engage with your kids to build the foundation for your vision.
Be flexible: As with all activities, we know sometimes things don’t go according to plans. Life’s full of surprises, and when these surprises occur it’s important to be flexible. As significant as rituals and routines are, don’t exclude the opportunity to have a spontaneous experience once in a while or create a new ritual to keep things fresh and fun.
Ensure equity: Make sure your routines and rituals are equitable for all. An intentional design of routines and rituals—that value a range of student voices—will help to promote equitable and inclusive participation of students.
Flexibility and ingenuity are key when it comes to finding ways to support our kids and their social emotional health. Experiment with what you imagine might work for your students, observe the results, and make adjustments as needed. Continue to embrace the things that work, and gently let go of the things that don’t.
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| Source: CASEL - The Missing Piece (video) |
By Sam Piha
We live in a political climate where differences are not explored, they are weaponized. In recent months schools and educators have been attacked under the guise of critical race theory, parent rights and the call to ban certain books. And now political pushback against social-emotional learning (SEL) is growing.
According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) website, they define social and emotional learning (SEL) “as an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.” [i]
“The politics of social-emotional learning have shifted drastically in the past few years— especially in some conservative states—with critics claiming that SEL is a form of liberal indoctrination or a means for unqualified teachers to practice therapy. This shift has left many teachers and SEL practitioners in a tricky situation, trying to address parents’ concerns while continuing to teach SEL programs that may be required by the district and state.” - Arianna Prothero, Education Week
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| Source: CASEL - The Missing Piece (video) |
“The term social-emotional learning can be confusing and inaccessible. Even before social-emotional learning became politicized, there were criticisms that the practice or concept was too wonky and inaccessible for parents and other community members.” [ii]
“The first question they [parents] had was, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he said. I get math. I get reading. What the hell is social-emotional learning?’ When commissioners explained they wanted schools to nurture qualities such as discipline, self-management, and relationship skills, ‘they’d [parents] say, ‘Oh yeah, we’re for that.’” - John Bridgeland, CEO of Civic Enterprises
“Some school districts and afterschool programs are looking to reduce controversy and confusion by calling SEL something else. In the Ed Week Research Center survey, 27% of respondents said their schools use other terms to refer to SEL, but not specifically to limit controversy. The most popular alternative terms for SEL are ‘character education,’ followed by ‘life skills’ and ‘communication skills.’” [iii]
To learn more about this important topic, we recommend that you review the resources below.
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| Source: Ian Kapsalis/The Express |
Guest Blog by Laura E. Enriquez, Ed Source. This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter.
Back-to-school season should be a time of hope and excitement. This year in Southern California, however, it was shadowed by fear as immigration threats spilled into schools.
All summer, federal immigration agents besieged the streets of Southern California. In response, schools in impacted areas set up safety zones, coordinated school personnel and volunteers to monitor nearby areas for ICE activity. Still, violent raids and violated rights are ratcheting up fear across entire communities. Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that one’s race and related factors can be used to detain individuals, paving the way for immigration enforcement officers to make more frequent stops.
As I got my kids ready for school — picking out new shoes and stuffing supplies into backpacks — I was struck by the privilege that these are our biggest worries. For many other Latino families in Southern California, the first day back was overshadowed by anxiety: Will Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) be waiting outside? Will a parent not come home tonight?
As a professor who studies the impacts of exclusionary immigration policy on undocumented and mixed-status families, I anticipate the long-term effects of this moment. Detention and deportation of a family member destabilizes households and harms children’s mental health and academic success. Even for those who manage to avoid the deportation of loved ones, these raids will be core memories that shape how a whole generation understands legal vulnerability.
In my past research, I often listened to undocumented and U.S. citizen young adults recall a key moment: being in the car when a parent was pulled over, hearing late-night knocks on the door, or encountering police checkpoints. Those memories have shaped lifelong understandings of when and how deportation may threaten their families.
Because the students I studied grew up in California, these incidents were once occasional and isolated. Now, the threat is coordinated and constant. Students tell me their parents say it’s never been like this before. From now on, when their mom doesn’t answer the phone, the worst-case scenarios that flash through their heads will be the ones they see in the news: brutal detentions, disappearances into ICE custody, and possibly deadly outcomes.
Such fears compromise students’ educational engagement and mental health, weakening their academic performance. In our research on undocumented students and U.S. citizens with undocumented parents at the University of California, my colleagues and I found that immigration-related threats created clear disparities between these students and their peers with lawfully present parents. These fears fueled high rates of anxiety, depression and academic disengagement. The overall pattern is clear: Immigration policies harm whole families and communities, not just undocumented immigrants.
California legislators have passed two bills that seek to restrict immigration enforcement on school campuses and inform students and families of the presence of immigration officers on campuses. Signing these bills into law and implementing them will provide a critical sense of safety that can enhance student well-being.
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| Source: Mindsite News/ Linda Perales |
Administrators and educators — from elementary school through college — can further step in to help families navigate threats. Existing school mass notification systems can be used to inform families when ICE is active nearby. Just as schools prepare for earthquakes, they can support families in creating emergency reunification plans so that younger children are cared for and older students know what to do.
Teachers and staff at all levels must be prepared to talk with students in culturally competent and compassionate ways. This means staying current on immigration-related issues, sharing resources, and making clear that anti-immigrant language will not be tolerated. For high school and college students, recognizing immigration stress as a valid reason to request extensions can prevent them from falling further behind.
These measures may seem small in the face of the severe threat and fear that students are facing. However, they can offer a beacon of hope, letting families know they are not alone and bolstering their ability to cope with and navigate these threats.
The families in recent news stories could have easily been mine. My oldest child was born into a mixed-status family. Her father, my husband, was undocumented until he gained permanent residency when she was 2 months old. That change was the result of complex immigration policies that worked in our favor. Ten years later, my daughter’s biggest concern is which backpack fits with her style — not whether her dad will be there to meet her at the bus stop.
Outdated federal immigration policies block many undocumented and mixed-status families from achieving the security my family enjoys. To protect the next generation, we need immigration policies that do not disappear undocumented immigrants and traumatize U.S. citizens. State, local and institutional policies can help combat ongoing threats, but ultimately, we need federal action to create a humane and accessible pathway to legal status.
The next generation shouldn’t grow up fearing a knock on the door. It’s time for policies that keep families together and children safe.
MORE ABOUT...
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| Laura E. Enriquez |
We know that the holidays are a time to remind us to be thankful for what we have. From all of us at Temescal Associates and the How Kids Le...
