Conversations on Corona Virus Impact and How to Support Self Care

Yesterday, I was able to hop on a virtual meeting with other coaches from around the US.  We talked about ways instructional coaches can support teachers.

I know self-care is critical at this time.  There are feelings of stress, pressure and sadness as we witness the warpath of the virus and how it's wrestling people for their lives.  It's tough to take.

Teachers are holding their own learning, doing and trying to stay positive for families and students.  I witnessed a tearful moment today as I watched my daughter's school teachers drive through the neighborhood beeping horns and showing signs that said, "we love you" and "we miss you".  Well, we love you and miss you too...my heart was in my throat! I choked back the tears but they came anyway.

I worry about teachers.  I want to help but how?  What's the best way?  Dr. Brad Johnson shared a wonderful meme earlier in the week.

 

I thought about how I could help teachers with a focus on self-care.  So, I created a self care bingo board.  I wanted to add this cheerful message:

 

and create a video to introduce the self care board along with incentives for completion without it feeling like one more thing to do.

Here is the board I created:

header created using Canva

I hope it's seen as a way to support teachers.  What do you think?  Helpful or harmful?

Living in the Time of Corona Virus-Pioneers Blazing the Virtual Learning Trail

I can't believe the way of the world...

A Pandemic...

A Super-spreader virus...

I never thought...

None the less, the journey's begun.  We are living in quarantine and have been for the almost three weeks.  It feels like an endless Saturday or Groundhog day where it's become cycle, rinse, repeat.

It's all over the place.  Our governor and the state director of health have shut it down.  Thank goodness because many more people would be infected if it weren't for them sounding the alarm about how we can fight the virus through the use of "social distance" planning.  We're doing it. 

Now, school has become a  virtual learning experience too.  I am experiencing it as a teacher, a coach, and a parent.  It's not easy.  I worry about the equity of it all.  Many families don't have internet access but students are suppose to learn "online".  This is likely how it will be through the end of the school year.

Yet, every day I am a witness to absolute dedication and living out of the habits of promise by our teachers and students.  I see the smiles on their faces, the digital determination alive in our tiny humans.  I have joined in our promise circles to hear the dear things our kiddos are saying.  I am so proud of their commitment to learning as they share their thinking with their classmates.

So here we are crossing the bridge together to blaze a trail on the other side where no one has gone before.  We are virtual learning pioneers.  And-we've got this!

How Breathe, 2020 OLW, Found Me!

One of the blessings of this winter break has been the time to work on projects around the house without interruption.  There are so many of these projects just waiting for me to embrace them.  I love that they are calling out to me to try and get my attention! "Pick me!"  "No, pick me!"  "Choose me!"  "I need your attention!"

It just so happens that the one most inspiring project has been the cleaning and keeping of my crafting room.  It's become a "catch all" over the last ten years.  Around the house when no one knew what to do with something, its new home became the crafting room.  One of the things that landed in there was my dad's bag of coloring books which got passed back and forth between him and my mom as they were in separate nursing homes the last two years of their lives as they both had extreme health issues that were incompatible with cohabitation.  My dad passed in 2017 and my mom passed a year ago on New Years Eve.  Touching the coloring books felt off limits.  I just couldn't look.  I couldn't handle thinking about how much time they spent in the last moments of their lives with the books and colored pencils.  It calmed them, passed their time when we couldn't be there.

Finally a few days ago, I was  clearing the crafting room, going through the stack of books (one by one)-this is how my one little word for 2020 found me.  I opened the book to this page as it was marked by two pencils left in the book.  My dad colored the picture a few months before he died.  My mom got the books from him but her dementia didn't allow for remembering that he had passed.  She wrote him a note on the back of the page...she loved him and missed him so much.

Just Breathe

Steve Senior, Always think outside the box and embrace opportunities that appear, wherever they might be.   Good job!

After reading the adoring message she wrote to him, I flipped back to the colored design and seeing it, burst into tears...ironically, not being able to breathe is what brought my dad's life to an end.

After my tears subsided, I reflected and felt like my parents were angels just then, talking to me, whispering a reminder to take things slowly, calmly.  Then, consider things but remember to breathe, just breathe...embracing opportunities when they appear!

So that is how my #OLW2020 found me and I chose Breathe...