Hooray for Monday is a weekly blog filled with questions, ideas, reflections, and actions we can all take to remodel the school experience for students. Prefer audio? Listen to the Hooray For Monday podcast! Available on your favorite platforms here.
January 1, 2024
By Jenna Fournel, Director of Teaching and Learning
January 1 always feels so full of promise and potential. Even if we’re approaching the midpoint of the school year, the flip of the calendar reminds us in a concrete way that we’ve completed 12 months and we’re starting 12 more. What will we do with our time in the days and weeks ahead? What will we learn? What will we teach? Who will we become?
These big questions push many of us to create resolutions for the year ahead and if that’s true for you this week’s Hooray for Monday issue is curated to support some of the most common goals we set for ourselves – ways to move more, ways to stress less, ways to try new things.
As you browse the collections we’ve put together below, we want to share some advice for keeping your resolutions.
This advice comes from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, a book about how “tiny changes can lead to remarkable results.” Clear explains that we set ourselves up better to make changes when we “reset the room” to decrease or increase friction around our goals: “The greater the friction, the less likely the habit.” The inverse is also true — reduce friction to build a habit.
This advice comes from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits a book about how “tiny changes can lead to remarkable results.” Clear explains that we set ourselves up better to make changes when we “reset the room” to decrease or increase friction around our goals. “The greater the friction, the less likely the habit.” The inverse is also true, reduce friction to build a habit.
In a lovely short article about this, Clear illustrates the changes you can make to a physical space to build or reduce friction to reduce or increase a habit. For example:
- Increase friction to reduce TV time by unplugging a TV after you’ve used it.
- Decrease friction to increase connection with old friends by putting cards sorted by occasion, stamps, and a pen all in one easy-to-find box that always stays in the same location.
We “reset the room” in our classrooms all the time when we reorient seating arrangements, set up learning stations, shift schedules, sort classroom libraries, etc. It’s interesting to think about how we might reset the room of our own lives. Where do we need more friction? Where do we need less?
If any of the below themes touch upon your New Year’s Resolutions — or even if they don’t — check them out for ideas that may either reduce or increase friction toward your goals.
Wishing you a wonderful year ahead filled with curiosity and opportunities to grow!
Getting More Active
Incorporating movement with learning is common in the early childhood classroom, but becomes less and less so as our students get older. But research shows that being active helps us all learn better — no matter our age! Inspired Teaching offers numerous activities that get students and teachers at all grade levels out of their seats.
Read these:
Rules of Inspired Teaching Improv
Reflections from a First-Year Inspired Teacher
Try these:
Random Walk
Warming Up with Mutual Respect
4 Ways to Start Class with Movement
10 Ways to Make a Walk a Learning Experience
Download this:
Creating Space for Reflection
Time is often at a premium for teachers. Our days are filled with classes, lesson planning, professional development, and unexpected detours in classrooms and hallways. Creating space for reflection may seem a tall task, but even sparing a few moments a day to gather revisit what’s been accomplished can go a long way in helping clarify what’s still to be done.
Read these:
Try these:
Do Just One Thing: The Power of Presence
What Would Make You Look Forward to Coming to School?
5 Closing Activities to Give You Feedback on Your Lessons
Download these:
Self-Care and Meeting Needs
“Self-care” may be a bit of a buzzword at this point, but the need to check in with and care for yourself is hardly a trend. “You can’t pour from an empty cup,” as the saying goes, and for teachers this means that addressing our core needs is vital to ensuring we are able to help our students address theirs.
Read these:
Professional Learning as Self-Care
Try these:
Do Just One Thing: The Power of Presence
4 Ways to Start Class with Breathing and Mindfulness
3 Ways to Check the Mood of the Room
Download these:
Building Connections
In early 2023, we learned how important building school connectedness is for our students’ mental health and well-being. A sense of community is vital for teachers, as well. In the wake of the upheaval from the pandemic, make 2024 a year of forging stronger relationships with your colleagues, your students, and yourself.
Read these:
We Learn Better When We are Known
Try these:
Warming Up with Mutual Respect
8 Closing Activities to Build Classroom Community
3 Closing Activities to Connect with Family
What Would You See in a Museum of Me?
Listening with Someone Else’s Ears
Interesting, Important, Useful
Download this:
Watch this:
Learning Something New
It can be easy to fall into routine with our teaching materials and techniques, especially with subject matter we’ve worked with for years. But challenging ourselves to expand what might be possible helps to reinvigorate our practice and model what lifelong learning looks like for our students!
Read these:
Professional Learning as Self-Care
Be Curious. Inquiry — the Second “I”
Try these:
5 Closing Activities to Reinforce Learning
4 Ways to Connect Warm-up to Content
Finding the Zone of Proximal Development
Download this:
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