With the new year upon us, it is a good time for our students to reflect on where they have been as learners as they look ahead to the new and hopeful possibilities the next 6 months will bring. Each ending brings with it a new beginning, a truth expressed so elegantly by David Whyte in his poem The Journey.
All students need to feel that there is a place reserved just for them in their school. In The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, Stephen Covey wrote of the need to find a voice and then to express this voice to the world. This voice is what we hear when students freely share the things they love to do. A school has its own voice as well, a voice that sings in celebration of the passion, the achievements, and the many joys of students and teachers. This voice-the voice of belonging-is a touchstone for many young people who need to feel the affirmation of a caring learning environment. The first step in creating such an environment is for you, the teacher, to realize how significant a role you can play in the lives of your students.
Many adults, when looking back on childhood and adolescence, point to a teacher or other significant adult who helped them recognize the unique talents they could offer the world. Literature on resilience often makes the point that when a teacher believes in a troubled child, that teacher invites the child to believe in herself at a time when the child may feel that no one does. A School of Belonging (TEI’s launch initiative) is staffed with significant adults who consciously pave the way for their students’ new life trajectories-and who help students learn how they can believe in each other and become equal members in a culture of caring.
Above the mountains the geese turn into the light again
painting their black silhouettes on an open sky.
Sometimes everything has to be enscribed across the heavens
so you can find the one line already written inside you.
Sometimes it takes a great sky to find that
small, bright and indescribable wedge of freedom in your own heart.
Sometimes with the bones of the black sticks left when the fire has gone out
someone has written something new in the ashes of your life.
You are not leaving you are arriving.
from
The House of Belonging by David Whyte. Copyright 1997 by Many Rivers Press (
www.Davidwhyte.com)
Little Talks that Make a Big Difference The TEI Podcast series
Little Talks focus on meeting the social and emotional needs of students, moving them toward healthy social decision-making and pro-social skills development. Subscribe to this newsletter to be notified of upcoming Little Talksreleases.
This Month's Podcast Topic: Resilience in Practice
A resilient child has hope and optimism for the future with the skills and perspective to manage difficult life situations. In this episode of the Little Talks series, we focus upon the significance relationships have, as we lay the groundwork for each child to have a resilient mindset.
Blueprints for Caring Hands-on Strategies for Educators
Try This: Survival File
We have the opportunity to teach the necessary social skills to help our students manage the challenging life situations they will surely face. The collection of social skills acquired throughout a person’s life can be referred to as the “survival file”
The survival file consists of practical life skills that a person will need throughout life, such as how to work and get along with others, how to express feelings in a healthy way, how to respond to rejection, and how to choose and make friends. Any cooperative activity, group dialogue or lesson in the vocabulary of feeling will help to fill the survival file.
