More Notes From Nashville

More Notes From Nashville
These notes are from a psychologist who turned my knowledge of behavior on its head. 

These are some notable things she said:

• Before you deal with behavior you need to get the anxiety down
• The longer people have anxiety the more likely that will turn into depression
• When anxiety goes up then you no longer have working memory
• anxiety intellectually impairs us
• We have to shift students thoughts to things that don't require a working memory
• need to think- what skills is this kid missing
• what coping skills are missing and go from there
• what is the student trying to communicate to you
• If you don't know what to do- validate the student's feelings
• What's wrong , tell me more, go on
• Great story; Take a pop can and shake it for a while. then set it beside another pop can. Can you tell which one has been shaken- you can't!!! Kids are like pop cans, we need to be ready for the explosion. 
• Anxiety isn't consistent, it peaks and goes away- so kids need a fluctuating skill set
• When adults/kids think negatively it leads to anxiety, so we have to develop strategies to get people to think positively. 
• we need to catch kids and adults in negative thinking/ teach them to turn it around
• Students don't know when they are going to get positives, its pretty unpredictable but they sure realize that negatives are very predictable
• Don't ignore the positives need to acknowledge them often
• Instead of ignoring a kid make it positive attention
• Example: I will be back to check on you in five minutes so we can move ahead
• We must teach stress tolerance
• Kids need a break from their negative thoughts so do some adults- if we leave these people to be negative, their negativity festers and depression can set in. 
• We need to give them cognitive mind fillers, cognitive distractions- Suduko, mazes, puzzles,  computer games, EM wave
• With tests we help them start and have them finish on their own
• ask how hard do you think it is going to be on a scale of 1-5
• need to change that anxious/negative thinking pattern to a positive one
• if one doesn't argue then two don't. 
• Water my flowers not my rocks

Staffing

Anne
Monday High Level teaching
Tuesday- High Level meeting with Lorna Hewson CRM model.
Wednesday- La Crete- Presenting writing workshop for students at home education. Then parent teacher interviews 4:30 to 7:30
Thursday- Fort Vermilion until 2:00pm - PT interviews in pm in High Level 5:30 to 8:30
Friday High Level- preparing for the board presentation next week. Going to peace River pm to do the site visit for a student. 



How Cool!

Bonnie and her crew of Gaye, and Connie collected tons of money and toys  for Christmas hampers this weekend. Her/their efforts supply enough toys for up to 48 needy families each year. Thanks for all you do in our community Bonnie. There is lots of love wrapped in those toys each year. Those families feel the love! 

Hey What's Happening This week????????

Parent Teacher Interviews are happening in High Level and La Crete. Be sure to remind parents of this happening. 

CRM meeting with Lorna Hewson is taking place on Tuesday morning at 8:00. She will start talking to me and will then observe our High Level CRM. 

Board Presentation Next Week - We have a video to play for the board and then we have a group of students presenting to the board. They want Fort location to be open more often. 

Results Reviews- Kudos to all of you. At the results review we received thank yous from the high schools. They thanked us for assisting their kids and thanked us for assisting them when they needed help with a student. All around it felt very nice to be thanked so I must pass that on. Chad did a great job of outlining Northern Home educations successes. Thanks Chad. 

Student Contacts- Let's be clear, you have a list of students and it is your responsibility to make contact with those students weekly. I have a list of students and it is my job to make contact with those students weekly. There are weeks I suck, I will try harder, the kids need to know we care. 

RAP- we are to do site visits, we must keep up with these. I am going out today to catch up with some kids. Site visits are a requirement for work experience as well. We need to ensure our students are in safe situations. 

High Level Students do First Aide this Tuesday and Wednesday. 

Diploma accommodations- Do you have a student with anxiety who needs to write separately? Does your student need the test read to them from an MP3 file. If you have questions about students please talk to me. We want success for our kids. 

Diploma digital writers- ask the students if they are wanting to write digitally? Make note of it and we will arrange for that to happen. 

Diplomas- Teachers go through who your possible writers are and make sure their names are on that list to write. When we do that we ensure the student has a label and it is way easier if the student is registered. 

Evaluations- Next week I start evaluations for new employees and for three teachers. I will be dropping in more often that's all that means. Relax no worries here. 

Grade 9 PATs - are any kids ready to write in January? See me if they are.