The Latest from VEA

RELATIONSHIPS

• Connect with students individually and through advisories.
• 15-minute daily huddle for leaders and teachers.
• Consider a two-by-ten: Make a specific goal of talking one-on-one with a struggling student for two minutes for a 10-day stretch. These quick, focused interactions can build relationships and provide emotional boosts.
• Check in with families—ask about schoolwork, well-being, and how COVID is affecting them. A set of prepared questions can help offer insight into how students and families are coping with issues like homework, organization, and keeping up with the daily routine of online classes.
• Group activities —games, cooking, etc. One New York teacher organized “Tasty Tuesdays,” in which second-graders share breakfast via Zoom.

ROUTINES

• Establish daily times for lessons, reading, storytelling, and homework; Our brains, writes Cantor, are “prediction machines that like order, and when our environments are orderly, the brain is calmer.”
• Encourage routines like healthy family meals, daily exercise, and mindfulness practices such as deep breathing and journaling.
• Learn a reflective, mindful practice, such as journaling, yourself.
• Hold class meetings.
• Set achievable goals for learning and wellness each day.

RESILIENCE

• Resilience “begins with learning how to regulate emotions and behaviors from role models through a process called co-regulation,” Cantor says.
• Guiding young people as they develop the ability to recognize their emotions and strengthen their resilience during distance learning will help prepare them for the return to school buildings.
• Encourage students and families to limit media.
• Solve problems together with children and celebrate successes.
• Create things for students to look forward to.

Keeping these 3 R’s in mind, says Cantor, can help us “inoculate” ourselves and our students against the stress and uncertainty of the COVID-dominated world we’re living in.