Dike Newell Guidance

Happy New Year to DN students and families!  I was so excited to get back to school and catch up with our students about how their holidays and vacations went.  Along with hearing about all their fun, I am also getting started with a new theme for this month in our guidance classes - safety!  I told the students that over the next few weeks, we will especially be focusing on keeping their bodies safe in lots of different ways.  Our first lesson has focused on how well, the students have learned to control their own bodies as they’ve gotten older.  We used beanbags to practice making our movements slow and controlled by balancing them on our heads while we tried to do different motions.  The goal is really just to build awareness for the kids around how they move their body and how safe they are as they share space with other people in the school.  We then learned a little about yoga and practiced some beginner yoga poses that also build awareness about controlling and focusing their bodies.  Yoga might be especially helpful to practice with those children who really struggle with being still and maintaining calm in their bodies.  However, this has been an very challenging week for many kids, as we get back to the routine of school especially during a cold spell when we weren’t always able to get outside to play!  Here are some photos of a few of our students playing “Frozen Beanbag” and practicing their yoga poses.

Welcome back to all of our Dike-Newell students and families!  We are so excited to be back for another exciting year with lots of wonderful learning and experiences for and with our students.  I am fortunate to be back at school here four days a week - Monday through Thursday, working with students in lots of ways.  My office is in a new location this year, and much easier to find than where it was before.  You walk in the front door and I am straight ahead (well a little to the right just past the “Beeing a Community” bulletin board), and my name is above my door.  Please feel free to stop in any time to talk, but because I am often in classrooms and with students, you might want to call and set up a time to get together as well.  I have begun my guidance classes in most classrooms, and plan on focusing on many of the topics we worked on together last year - as well as some new and different topics.  I hope to make many strong connections with what we will be learning and practicing to our “Bee” themes of being kind, safe and responsible.  I look forward to working with your children, and helping our Dike-Newell school community continue to be the wonderful place it is!

Well, first off I apologize for the long gap between posts…things have been very busy this spring with lots of different things and on top of that I forgot my password to log into my blog, so foolishly I could only read and not make posts for awhile!

For the past few months, I have been focusing our guidance classes on some core values which were developed through our the Positive Behavioral Interventions & Support project which a team from Dike Newellhas been working on all year long.  These values are “Being Safe, Being Kind & Being Responsible” and although they are not new concepts to our school, we have worked on developing ways to incorporate these themes in more consistent and visible ways around our school.  Through student discussion, the students are able to better understand how they see these 3 themes playing out in their lives both at home and school and especially what life can look like when safety, kindness and responsibility are not happening.  But even better than the conversations about these important topics, are being able to provide opportunities for the children to practice these values with one another.  We have taken part in numerous group initiatives this spring which allow for teamwork to happen in a structured and supportive environment.  Once the team challenge is over, both myself and the classroom teacher work together to then process these ideas with the students and share examples of the safety, the kindness and the responsibility that happened throughout the activity.  And perhaps one of the most teachable moments can be when students struggle with performing one of these concepts in the challenge, and we are able to discuss how we might be more safe, kind or responsible next time and why that is so important.

The students have really loved being so active and having so many opportunities for working together with the students from their classroom that they have gotten to know so well over the course of the year!  Once the rain finally stopped, we have been able to spend more time outside doing our group initiatives - which allows for even more movement and also more practice on being in control of their bodies and doing what is necessary to be a responsible member of the team!

These last few weeks of school will also be spent focusing on the transitions that students will be making as they say goodbye to their current classrooms and prepare for next year’s endeavor.  Our staff has spent the past months thinking about and planning for the best ways to support our students in those transitions.  In guidance, we talk a lot about some of the feelings they are having both about saying goodbye to this year’s experiences, classroom, and teacher as well as the feelings they may already be having about next year.  Change is an important theme to bring up with students, as many of them have dealt with numerous transitions already in their young lives.  We talk about and share the feelings - both good and bad - that change can bring about for us and how connecting with others who are feeling similar ways can help.

It has been a pleasure to work with the students here at Dike Newell for another year.  And although I am looking forward to time with my family this summer, I will miss my students this summer and will look forward to seeing all of their smiling faces in the fall!

The past few weeks, we have continued to work on our theme of safety in guidance classes. Whether it is eating, drinking, or even breathing – we have been learning about different kinds of substances that are safe and unsafe for kids to put into their bodies. We do an activity where we have a bag with an assortment of items, and each student chooses one thing from the bag. They then need to sort the item into one of 3 categories – Safe, Unsafe, or in the middle (which is actually a line of caution tape). Each student places the item where they think it should be, and we discuss what makes it safe or unsafe – or whether it is something that is okay to be used by kids (or eaten or drank) but you must be careful with it. Although some of the items are things we hope students would never consider putting into their bodies (like alcohol or tobacco) – we think kids need to have the information about what things are and the danger they can pose to kids bodies. We hope kids who are informed will make better decisions and be able to keep themselves safe. Some of the other items used in the activity are: soda, vitamins, fruit, candy, prescription medicine, aerosol spray, cigarettes, an unlabeled bottle of liquid, fast food item, alcohol (beer and a fruity “innocent” looking bottle), video game, lighter, toothpaste, and a syringe (with no needle). We also focus on the symbol for poison, as well as a poster that the Center for Poison Control produces which represents how pills and different kinds of candies can look very similar.

Students often have a lot of information about all of these things, and by providing a forum for them to share what they know about safety – they are able to learn from one another. I try to make sure we cover specific pieces of information regarding each item, if the students haven’t already shared it themselves. I also encourage the students to go home and share what we learned with the adults that they live with in the hopes that the discussion and learning will continue about safety there!

The last few weeks we have been focusing on the important issue of personal safety in our guidance classes.  We are fortunate to have educators from SASSMM - Sexual Assault Support Services of Midcoast Maine, come to Dike Newell to deliver their interactive “Personal Body Safety” program.  It includes interactive class discussions and a puppet show in order to provide age-appropriate information about child sexual abuse awareness, risk reduction and response techniques. 

Information is framed in the context of all sorts of safety information that students receive at school: bicycle safety, fire safety, pedestrian safety, etc.  Students will learn about the three different kids of touches: comfortable, uncomfortable and confusing, as well as about how these touches may make people feel and what to do if we receive a touch we don’t like or that is confusing.  

The puppet show reinforces these seven safety rules of the program:
1. My body belongs to me.
2. Touches are supposed to feel comfortable.
3. Touches in private areas are to keep me clean and healthy.
4. Touches in private areas are never a secret.
5. If I am hurt or scared or confused, I will tell a grown-up I trust.
6. I will keep telling until I get the help that I need.
7. It’s never too late to tell.

Along with SASSMM’s presentation, we are also working on creating awareness of “Personal Space”.  We read one of our favorite stories, ‘Personal Space Camp’ by Julia Cook and did several challenges which gave the students a chance to practice being in control of their body.  Frozen Beanbags, is an activity in which the kids practice balancing an individual bean bag on their heads while doing different movements, and People to People is a game where the kids partner up and must connect different body parts with their partner - i.e. toe to toe, elbow to elbow, and keep them all connected while being careful of sharing space w/ their partner.  This week we will be doing a “Magic Carpet” challenge, where the students have to work together to share a carpet that magically shrinks - with the goal being to fit everyone’s feet on the carpet in each round.  It is usually a great opportunity to have the kids practice working together and building awareness around body control and personal space.

We have been working in all of the classrooms on “filling our buckets”, a concept which was shared through a book called “How Full is Your Bucket for Kids“.  It has helped the kids to think about what kinds of things help them to feel good about themselves, and what people can say or do for one another to fill other people’s buckets.  We practiced this concept with each other in different ways, as well as talked about what kinds of things cause our bucket to drip or make us feel bad inside.  I have been encouraging them to not only think about ways they can make their classmates and friends feel good about themselves, but also how they could go home and fill their family members’ buckets!  The students are also helping me to create several bulletin boards for our hallways, which will include some of the things that fill their bucket/make them feel good inside.  Look for them in the upcoming weeks!

Welcome to my brand new blog which I hope will help me share lots of information about the guidance program at Dike Newell Elementary school…

I love working directly with the students in all kinds of ways - classes, small groups, and individually.  One of my favorite parts is being able to deliver a guidance curriculum to each classroom on a weekly basis.  We cover all kinds of different topics which impact students and their learning - topics I hope to be able to share with parents through this blog.  It will be an opportunity to provide updates about what we are working on together in the classroom, as well as pass along more information and resources about the topics themselves.  I look forward to sharing and hope it will lead to even more conversations between parents and their children about many different important issues.  Thanks for visiting!