Lead with Love Weekly Newsletter 5.22.2022


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Lead with Love. Love to Lead.

May 22, 2022

Neema Avashia
@AvashiaNeema

I’ve been saying it. I’ll keep saying it. Normalcy is not the salve leaders in our state want it to be. We don’t ne… https://t.co/LBlgjagdtz

9:57 AM - May 16, 2022

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Neema Avashia writes:

"Our Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley says, “The people closest to the pain should be closest to the power,” but when it comes to public education in the state of Massachusetts, the opposite is true. The people furthest from the pain are in charge, and their fixation with normalcy is exacerbating the crisis in our schools." Neema always shows us a way forward if only we listen.

End of year circle for seniors

Christina McNicol (Math Teacher at Excel High School) and I wrote a closing circle for seniors, which supports young people in reflecting back on their time in high school and sharing worries and hopes for the future. You can adapt this for other transition grades (e.g., 8th to 9th).

Plan for a "Compassionate Closing"

Elena Aguilar's colleagues led a great webinar about how to design and facilitate compassionate closings for the end of the year with students or staff. I love their idea that closings could include the following: revisit intentions (did I meet my intention?); identify big takeaways; share feedback/learning; and offer appreciations. During the webinar, participants contributed ideas to this Padlet about ways to close the year. I like most of the ideas (except the confiscated student items one). For a few years, I have been using Padlets at the end of my Observation and Feedback Course and my Restorative Practices Course, so you can see how I use Padlet to engage participants in identifying big takeaways, sharing learning, and offering appreciations. I love the sentence stem: "I used to think ___ and now I think ___." You can also use these same ideas in a circle.

Increasing ELs’ Social Interaction and Oral Language Practice

In the May 16, 2022 Marshall Memo, Kim Marshall summarized an article about "Task-Based Language Teaching." "A TBLT task that maximizes academic talk time for English learners has these characteristics:

It focuses on meaning rather than linguistic form.
It includes a “gap” so students need to draw each other out to solve the problem.
It relies on the learner’s own nonlinguistic resources.
It has a clearly defined goal other than the use of language."

Mental health is a community concern

Learning for Justice has great resources to help us support our students' mental health.

"Grief, Anger, Fear: How Teachers Can Help Students Cope with the Buffalo Shooting"

Education Week shared ideas about how to support children with processing the shooting in Buffalo (google doc version). Last week, I shared a "Community Trauma" circle from Circle Forward.