Welcome

Good Morning MRE Staff

I am thrilled to have the opportunity to join the MRE family as your school counselor. My hope is that I can use my experiences as an elementary and high school teacher and a school counselor to enhance the dedication and commitment that you show to our students’ learning.  

My goal is to work together with teachers and administration for students’ success. I look forward to working closely with students in areas of their personal, social and academic growth and to assist students with overcoming barriers that may prevent them from achieving academic success. Working closely with teachers, I would like to include individual, small group and large group counseling as activities to help students build positive social skills, develop confidence in their ability to interact with their peers and others and learn ways to deal with problems and conflicts in a constructive manner.

I am looking forward to forming healthy and professional relationships with students, parents, faculty and staff, and the community. I have an open door policy and would be very flexible in adjusting my schedule to be supportive. As your school counselor, I am here to help.

Happy Monday!

Marie Gibson

From Chaos to Coherence: Managing Stress While Teaching

We feel it more than we should...stress. It's all around us, home, work etc. No matter how hard we try to remain calm and stress free it's almost impossible. The article below reminds us how important it is that we take care of ourselves first.  At the end of the article they share how educators can cope with stress.

Please take a second to click the link below and read the article. We are a team, we work together to create less stressful environment. We are happy that we have a team that we can rely on daily. Our team is our second family. Our second family is dependable, reliable, and supportive. We hope you had a stress free week and enjoy time with your students. As always, please let us know if you need anything. 

Coping With Stress:
Tips for Educators
Before educators can help students cope with their problems and be ready to learn, they must first take time to care for themselves, says Dr. Leah Davis. The following are ways educators can take control of their lives and manage their own stress so that they will be available to assist their students.

Make a list of things that you enjoy doing that are good for you. Arrange to do one a day.

Write down how you see yourself a year, five years, or ten years from now. Share your ideas and goals with someone you trust.

Write down at least five of your worries. Rank order your list by their importance in your life. By each worry write Accept, Change, or Reject. For each worry decide what your first step will be toward accepting, changing or rejecting it. Carry out the steps you listed.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin413.shtml

Principles of Effective Differentiation

Before I begin, I know this post is long, but it's valuable and important. Please take a few extra minutes to thoroughly read the information below.

New year, new students, new needs...These first few weeks you spent getting to know your students. You took notes, gave assessments, started planning...all what GREAT teachers do. Now how do we make sure we are constantly meeting every students needs? Some require more than others, we all know that. There is no black and white model. Every students is different, no two people are the same. It's our job to differentiation instruction....all in the hands of us! Remember, we are a TEAM...you have the support! 

You may be using various aspects of differentiation right now in your classrooms, but are you being explicit about the ways in which you differentiate? In others words:

• Are you conscious of the efforts you make to meet the needs of all your students?
• Do you keep track of the ways you address individual learning styles and preferences?
• Do you arrange classrooms and structure lessons to increase student motivation?
• Whenever possible, do you provide students with options and choices regarding how they
• are going to learn and how they are going to show their learning?
• Do you vary the ways in which you assess student learning?
• Do you use cooperative learning and grouping strategies to increase student participation?

Although additional work and effort are required up front, the payoff comes later in the lesson of study or even in the school year. The payoff comes when students achieve more in your classrooms, become more involved in classroom discussions, smile more during their school days, and, yes, even score higher on various assessments.

Teachers can create differentiated, personalized, or responsive classrooms in a number of ways. Figure 1.1 presents a concept map for thinking about and planning for effectively differentiated classrooms.

Figure 1.1. A Concept Map for Differentiating Instruction

A Definition of Differentiation

In the context of education, we define differentiation as a teacher's reacting responsively to a learner's needs. A teacher who is differentiating understands a student's needs to express humor, or work with a group, or have additional teaching on a particular skill, or delve more deeply into a particular topic, or have guided help with a reading passage—and the teacher responds actively and positively to that need. Differentiation is simply attending to the learning needs of a particular student or small group of students rather than the more typical pattern of teaching the class as though all individuals in it were basically alike.

The goal of a differentiated classroom is maximum student growth and individual success. As schools now exist, our goal is often to bring everyone to “grade level” or to ensure that everyone masters a prescribed set of skills in a specified length of time. We then measure everyone's progress only against a predetermined standard. Such a goal is sometimes appropriate, and understanding where a child's learning is relative to a benchmark can be useful. However, when an entire class moves forward to study new skills and concepts without any individual adjustments in time or support, some students are doomed to fail. Similarly, classrooms typically contain some students who can demonstrate mastery of grade-level skills and material to be understood before the school year begins—or who could do so in a fraction of the time we would spend “teaching” them. These learners often receive an A, but that mark is more an acknowledgment of their advanced starting point relative to grade-level expectations than a reflection of serious personal growth. In a differentiated classroom, the teacher uses grade-level benchmarks as one tool for charting a child's learning path. However, the teacher also carefully charts individual growth. Personal success is measured, at least in part, on individual growth from the learner's starting point—whatever that might be. Put another way, success and personal growth are positively correlated.

The remainder of Figure 1.1 expands on our definition of differentiation, providing a handy framework for thinking about, planning for, and evaluating the success of differentiation.

Principles That Govern Effective Differentiation

As Figure 1.1 suggests, some key principles guide differentiation. Understanding and adhering to these principles facilitate the work of the teacher and the success of the learner in a responsive classroom. Among the fundamental principles that support differentiation (not all of them shown on the concept map) are the following:

• A differentiated classroom is flexible. Demonstrating clarity about learning goals, both teachers and students understand that time, materials, modes of teaching, ways of grouping students, ways of expressing learning, ways of assessing learning, and other classroom elements are tools that can be used in a variety of ways to promote individual and whole-class success.
• Differentiation of instruction stems from effective and ongoing assessment of learner needs. In a differentiated classroom, student differences are expected, appreciated, and studied as a basis for instructional planning. This principle also reminds us of the tight bond that should exist between assessment and instruction. As teachers, we know what to do next when we recognize where students are in relation to our teaching and learning goals. We are also primed to teach most effectively if we are aware of our students' learning needs and interests. In a differentiated classroom, a teacher sees everything a student says or creates as useful information both in understanding that particular learner and in crafting instruction to be effective for that learner.
• Flexible grouping helps ensure student access to a wide variety of learning opportunities and working arrangements. In a flexibly grouped classroom, a teacher plans student working arrangements that vary widely and purposefully over a relatively short period of time. Such classrooms utilize whole-class, small-group, and individual explorations.Sometimes students work in similar readiness groups with peers who manifest similar academic needs at a given time. At other points, the teacher ensures that students of mixed readiness work together in settings that draw upon the strengths of each student. Sometimes students work with classmates who have like interests. In other situations, students of varied interests cooperate toward completing a task that calls on all the interests. Students might work with those who have similar learning patterns (for example, a group of auditory learners listening to a taped explanation), and some tasks call for a grouping of students with varied learning patterns (for example, a student who learns best analytically with one who learns best through practical application). Sometimes working arrangements are simply random; students work with whoever is sitting beside them, or they count off into groups, or they draw a partner's name. Finally, in a flexibly grouped classroom, students themselves sometimes decide on their work groups and arrangements, and sometimes teachers make the call. Figure 1.2 shows the possible grouping combinations that can be achieved by mixing all the options between “levels” of the three-tiered diagram. Flexible grouping used consistently and purposefully has a variety of benefits: opportunity for carefully targeted teaching and learning, access to all materials and individuals in the classroom, a chance for students to see themselves in a variety of contexts, and rich assessment data for the teacher who “auditions” each learner in a wide range of contexts.

Figure 1.2. Flexible Grouping Options

• All students consistently work with “respectful” activities and learning arrangements. This important principle provides that every learner must have tasks that are equally interesting and equally engaging, and which provide equal access to essential understanding and skills. In differentiated classrooms, a teacher's goal is that each child feels challenged most of the time; each child finds his or her work appealing most of the time; and each child grapples squarely with the information, principles, and skills which give that learner power to understand, apply, and move on to the next learning stage, most of the time, in the discipline being studied. Differentiation does not presume different tasks for each learner, but rather just enough flexibility in task complexity, working arrangements, and modes of learning expression that varied students find learning a good fit much of the time.
• Students and teachers are collaborators in learning. While the teacher is clearly a professional who diagnoses and prescribes for learning needs, facilitates learning, and crafts effective curriculum, students in differentiated classrooms are critical partners in classroom success. Students hold pivotal information about what works and does not work for them at any given moment of the teaching-learning cycle, they know their likes and preferred ways of learning, they can contribute greatly to plans for a smoothly functioning classroom, and they can learn to make choices that enhance both their learning and their status as a learner. In differentiated classrooms, teachers study their students and continually involve them in decision-making about the classroom. As a result, students become more independent as learners.

Elements of Curriculum That Can Be Differentiated

Content. A teacher can differentiate content. Content consists of facts, concepts, generalizations or principles, attitudes, and skills related to the subject, as well as materials that represent those elements. Content includes both what the teacher plans for students to learn and how the student gains access to the desired knowledge, understanding, and skills. In many instances in a differentiated classroom, essential facts, material to be understood, and skills remain constant for all learners. (Exceptions might be, for example, varying spelling lists when some students in a class spell at a 2nd grade level while others test out at an 8th grade level, or having some students practice multiplying by two a little longer, while some others are ready to multiply by seven.) What is most likely to change in a differentiated classroom is how students gain access to core learning. Some of the ways a teacher might differentiate access to content include

• Using math manipulatives with some, but not all, learners to help students understand a new idea.
• Using texts or novels at more than one reading level.
• Presenting information through both whole-to-part and part-to-whole approaches.
• Using a variety of reading-buddy arrangements to support and challenge students working with text materials.
• Reteaching students who need another demonstration, or exempting students who already demonstrate mastery from reading a chapter or from sitting through a reteaching session.
• Using texts, computer programs, tape recorders, and videos as a way of conveying key concepts to varied learners.

Process. A teacher can differentiate process. Process is how the learner comes to make sense of, understand, and “own” the key facts, concepts, generalizations, and skills of the subject. A familiar synonym for process is activity. An effective activity or task generally involves students in using an es- sential skill to come to understand an essential idea, and is clearly focused on a learning goal. A teacher can differentiate an activity or process by, for example, providing varied options at differing levels of difficulty or based on differing student interests. He can offer different amounts of teacher and student support for a task. A teacher can give students choices about how they express what they learn during a research exercise—providing options, for example, of creating a political cartoon, writing a letter to the editor, or making a diagram as a way of expressing what they understand about relations between the British and colonists at the onset of the American Revolution.

Products. A teacher can also differentiate products. We use the term products to refer to the items a student can use to demonstrate what he or she has come to know, understand, and be able to do as the result of an extended period of study. A product can be, for example, a portfolio of student work; an exhibition of solutions to real-world problems that draw on knowledge, understanding, and skill achieved over the course of a semester; an end-of-unit project; or a complex and challenging paper-and-pencil test. A good product causes students to rethink what they have learned, apply what they can do, extend their understanding and skill, and become involved in both critical and creative thinking. Among the ways to differentiate products are to:

• Allow students to help design products around essential learning goals.
• Encourage students to express what they have learned in varied ways.
• Allow for varied working arrangements (for example, working alone or as part of a team to complete the product).
• Provide or encourage use of varied types of resources in preparing products.
• Provide product assignments at varying degrees of difficulty to match student readiness.
• Use a wide variety of kinds of assessments.
• Work with students to develop rubrics of quality that allow for demonstration of both whole-class and individual goals.

Student Characteristics for Which Teachers Can Differentiate

Students vary in at least three ways that make modifying instruction a wise strategy for teachers: Students differ (1) in their readiness to work with a particular idea or skill at a given time, (2) in pursuits or topics that they find interesting, and (3) in learning profiles that may be shaped by gender, culture, learning style, or intelligence preference.

Readiness. To differentiate in response to student readiness, a teacher constructs tasks or provides learning choices at different levels of difficulty. Some ways in which teachers can adjust for readiness include

• Adjusting the degree of difficulty of a task to provide an appropriate level of challenge.
• Adding or removing teacher or peer coaching, use of manipulatives, or presence or absence of models for a task. Teacher and peer coaching are known as scaffolding because they provide a framework or a structure that supports student thought and work.
• Making the task more or less familiar based on the proficiency of the learner's experiences or skills for the task.
• Varying direct instruction by small-group need.

Interest. To differentiate in response to student interest, a teacher aligns key skills and material for understanding from a curriculum segment with topics or pursuits that intrigue students. For example, a student can learn much about a culture or time period by carefully analyzing its music. A social studies teacher may encourage one student to begin exploring the history, beliefs, and customs of medieval Europe by examining the music of the time. A study of science in the Middle Ages might engage another student more.

Some ways in which teachers can differentiate in response to student interest include

• Using adults or peers with prior knowledge to serve as mentors in an area of shared interest.
• Providing a variety of avenues for student exploration of a topic or expression of learning.
• Providing broad access to a wide range of materials and technologies.
• Giving students a choice of tasks and products, including student-designed options.
• Encouraging investigation or application of key concepts and principles in student interest areas.

Learning Profile. To differentiate in response to student learning profile, a teacher addresses learning styles, student talent, or intelligence profiles. Some ways in which teachers can differentiate in response to student learning profile include

• Creating a learning environment with flexible spaces and learning options.
• Presenting information through auditory, visual, and kinesthetic modes.
• Encouraging students to explore information and ideas through auditory, visual, and kinesthetic modes.
• Allowing students to work alone or with peers.
• Ensuring a choice of competitive, cooperative, and independent learning experiences.
• Balancing varied perspectives on an issue or topic.
• Providing authentic learning opportunities in various intelligence or talent areas.
• As you can see, differentiation of content, process, and products is achievable in each of the areas of student readiness, interest, and learning profile.

Instructional Strategies That Facilitate Differentiation

Instructional strategies are tools of the teacher's art. Like all tools, they can be used artfully or clumsily, appropriately or inappropriately. The person who uses them determines their worth. No instructional strategy can compensate for a teacher who lacks proficiency in his content area, is unclear about learning goals, plans an unfocused activity, or does not possess the leadership and management skills to orchestrate effective classroom functioning.

Nonetheless, a teacher who is comfortable and skilled with the use of multiple instructional strategies is more likely to reach out effectively to varied students than is the teacher who uses a single approach to teaching and learning. Teachers are particularly limited when the sole or primary instructional strategy is teacher-centered (such as lecture), or drill-and-practice (such as worksheets).

Numerous instructional strategies invite attention to student readiness, interest, and learning profile. Among these strategies are learning centers, interest groups, group investigation, complex instruction, compacting, learning contracts, tiered activities, tiered products, rubrics constructed jointly by teacher and student, use of alternative forms of assessment, and many others. (For more information on instructional strategies that support differentiation, see Tomlinson, 1999, The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, listed in the resource section at the end of this chapter.)

By sharing a common vocabulary and beginning with a common set of principles related to differentiation, school leaders have more tools to provide guidance and direction for all staff members as they begin the journey toward developing more academically responsive classrooms.

Additional Reflections about Differentiated Classrooms

Attending to learner variance and need historically has made common sense in a classroom. This approach also reflects decades of proliferating knowledge about the brain, learning styles and varieties of intelligence, the influence of gender and culture on how we learn, human motivation, and how individuals construct meaning. Teachers and school leaders who spend time in a classroom see the significant array of learner differences. People who study the scholarship of this field understand differences and the need to attend to them, if we are to serve properly the children and families who trust us.

Beyond the general framework and principles of differentiated instruction are at least three additional considerations for educators who desire to provide leadership in differentiation. These interrelated considerations provide a compass for our journey.

First, differentiation that is rooted in ineffective classroom practice cannot succeed. Trivial and fluffy curriculum remains trivial and fluffy even after differentiation. Varied versions of an ill-focused product are no more helpful. A pernicious classroom environment cannot invite learners to be comfortable with themselves and one another. A teacher who does not see assessment as a continual window into the needs of her students has little sound footing from which to differentiate instruction. A teacher who cannot learn to trust and share responsibility with her students would, at best, have students seated in rows and completing varied worksheets silently and alone. Perhaps the most singular truth about providing leadership for differentiated classrooms is that you should often feel as though you are moving backwards rather than forwards! You need to spend time reflecting on and providing leadership in the fundamentals of effective teaching when or before you provide leadership in the more sophisticated skills of differentiation.

Second, differentiation is more than a strategy or series of strategies—it is a way of thinking about teaching and learning. In other words, facilitating teacher growth in differentiation is not so much about introducing tiered lessons, independent study, alternative forms of assessment—or even moving to multitext adoption. Practicing quality differentiation is much more about knowing what matters to teach, realizing that learning happens in us rather than to us, continually reflecting on the “particularness” of each of our students, and pondering how to develop both the commonalities students share as humans and the singularities students bring as individuals. If we as teachers understood the nature of our art more fully and deeply, more differentiation would likely evolve from that understanding. Learning some new “tricks” with little sense of why they matter is less helpful.

Third, movement toward differentiation in teaching is movement toward expertise. Regarding differentiation, teachers can say, “I already do that.” Most teachers at some times and in some ways obviously adapt or adjust for students' learning needs. The truly expert teacher understands, however, that even after a dozen careers in the classroom, he could still learn more about his subject and his learners and how to link each learner and subject with power and joy. In truth, providing effective leadership for differentiation fosters the sort of continual growth teachers need throughout their classroom lives in order to help each learner build the best life possible. Effective leadership for differentiation comes from dogged, unremitting insistence on and support for the fact that expert teachers teach students the most important things in the most effective ways. The mission of effective leadership is to maximize the number of expert teachers in a school's or district's classrooms.

While reading this, I immediately thought of our WIN plans. We are using data and creating groups based on our student needs. The groups are lead by professional with skills and talents, YOU! They are standard focused with an end goal in mind, students success. We can do it and we WILL! I am very excited to see our WIN plans in action and I know the students are as well. Remember, teamwork makes the dream work. 

http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/100216/chapters/Understanding-Differentiated-Instruction@-Building-a-Foundation-for-Leadership.aspx

Limiting Teacher Talk

We have made it through our first full week!  I appreciate your patience and flexibility as we work out the kinks of our everyday procedures and routines.  Thank you for your feedback and suggestions on how to improve.

We have enjoyed getting into your classrooms through out the week.  Our goal is to try and hit every classroom every day.  We will provide feedback at least once every one to two weeks.  Some of the highlights from our walk-throughs include: Great problem solving math activities, awesome writing activities, guided reading groups, technology centers, cooperative learning activities, and journal writing.

Ashley Hickman shared an awesome article with us about limiting teacher talk.  It is a very easy read and is loaded with great information.  Please visit the following URL to read the article.

http://achievethecore.org/aligned/limiting-teacher-talk-increasing-student-work/

Have a wonderful week!

"Put me in Coach"

We survived our first few days of the new school year.  It was terrific to see the team work and effort that went in to creating a successful start.  There was a lot of information that we shared with all of you during our pre-week.  Our team theme this year emphasizes the importance of recognizing us as your coaches. When we decided on our team theme, the song “Centerfield” by John Fogerty, continued to play in my head continuously.  Coaching is such a vital component of school improvement, but often schools miss the mark completely when it comes to improving practice (of all staff, including administrators). Why does this happen?

We found a blog this weekend that hits the nail on the head about the vision we have for coaching and school improvement.  It reads as follows:  (Cain’s Corner)

Student achievement and the continued improvement of instruction should be central to your mission as the school leader. As the school leader most of your time everyday should be spent observing classroom instruction. If you have a leadership team, perhaps made up of yourself, an assistant principal or instructional coaches --- you need to have a system in place at your school that prioritizes coaching and providing feedback to teachers. Feedback is what enables teachers and school administrators to grow and improve. Infrequent drive by's into classrooms and then reacting to what you see isn't going to cut it. Focusing on your state or district mandated formal observations a few times a year isn't going to be enough. Nor is having a practice where teachers can opt out of coaching. From a sports perspective, would a MLB player opt out of batting practice before a game? Would Tom Brady or Von Miller tell their coach, nah I'm good today, I'll pass on practice? The answer of course is no. Yet, in some schools and districts it's the practice that coaching is optional. Inherently, everyone who works in education from the Superintendent of your district at the top of the organizational chart on down to the building level staff can benefit from coaching.

Instructional coaching needs to happen at your school. It should not be an option, but rather a service that is provide to everyone, including the school leader from whomever supervises them. In "Leverage Leadership" Bambrick-Santoyo says "by receiving weekly observations and feedback, a teacher develops as much in one year as most teachers do in twenty." This notion is spot on. In athletic coaching, you would provide frequent opportunities for your players to receive feedback and opportunities to practice. Find a great PE teacher and you will see this happen regularly in their classroom throughout their instructional day. Similar, we need to provide our staff with frequent opportunities to receive feedback and practice. John Wooden once said, "the importance of repetition until automaticity cannot be overstated. Repetition is the key to learning." I'd add, effective feedback that's bite-sized and precise enables the teacher to make shifts in their practice creates small wins for them and their students. Just like we would intentionally plan to support a student's growth as a Reader through focused, targeted instruction, we should do the same throughout the school year to support the growth of our staff. If your school does not have an instructional coaching system or plan in place, make it happen. Your staff, your students, and your school community will be better because you are in it together to get better for all your kids.

Hargrove (2003) said, "A masterful coach is a leader who by nature is a vision builder and value shaper, not just a technical who manages people to reach their goals and plans through tips and techniques. To be able to do this requires that the coach discover his or her own humanness and humanity, while being a clearing for others to do the same." This quote is a great reminder of heart, soul, and service to others that comes with coaching. Great leaders know the importance of adding value to others. Coaching is a vehicle to add value to others and improve outcomes for everyone in your school community.

A coach, whether it be an Instructional Coach or Athletic Coach, is in fact a teacher. Whatever your coaching role is, be a role model for those you serve. There is great value and joy in bringing the best out of a group of individuals to create a unique team that successfully works together. Set the example for those you serve, love everyone, work hard, be patient, remain loyal, and put the needs of your school community ahead of your own. Doing so will take your school and you to new heights this year. 

We know that we will have a terrific year.  We hope that this will be a year of growth, one of service, and one that we make magic happen for our communities.  Have an awesome first full week of school with our students.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04KQydlJ-qc

5 Things You Need to Tell Your Students...

First off, welcome back! It is always hard to come back from summer break and get into the swing of things. As much as we look forward to a new year, new memories, and new challenges, it is tough to take the dive into room decorating, lesson planing, scheduling etc.(The list never ends ;). Even though we constantly hear the dreadful alarm clock noise each morning now, we are still very excited and eager to start the year together. We are embarking on this new year as a "team.". Teamwork makes the dream work- our moto! Together we will tackle obstacles, share new ideas, teach and inspire children, and lean on one another. We are looking forward to another successful year! 

I ran across a great article that I had to share. The article lists 5 things that every students needs to hear the first week-they are good, I promise. Each one plays a vital role in their first week of school. It's our duty to leave a lasting impact on our students hearts day in and day out. They are just as excited and eager as we are, if not more. Please take a few minutes to read over each "thing" listed below. Enjoy your first week getting to know your students. I can't wait to see everyone's smiling faces in two short days! :) 

Picture This: 
It’s the first day of school and you are standing at the front of the classroom, staring into the faces of a brand new bunch of kids. They are waiting patiently for you to begin the day, to impart knowledge, to encourage and challenge them. You open your mouth and say…what?

The first week of school is crucial for setting the tone in your classroom. You have a new group of students to get to know, to inspire, to invest in. What you say and do in those first few days will leave a lasting impact on those students – so it shouldn’t be taken lightly. 

What you say in those first few days of school will leave a lasting impact on your students. Here are five things every student needs to hear.

Here are 5 things that every student needs to hear the first week of school:

1. You are important.

Every student needs to know that they have been planned for and anticipated when they walk in your classroom. They were placed in your class on purpose – they need you and you need them. The first week of school, make sure you greet each student by name as they walk in the door. Put forth the effort to get to know them – memorize details about their families, their hobbies, their preferences. Keep a list if you need to. The students will feel valued – and that will go a long way towards giving them a successful school year.

2. You are listened to.

Make time in every day to give each student the opportunity to speak with you individually – it will take time, but it will be well worth the effort. Students today are searching for a safe place where they can find trusted adults that care enough about them to listen to them. To listen to their hopes, their fears, their commentary on daily life. You could be that person they are looking for.

3. You are responsible for your actions.

While students often clamor for freedom, they need consistent expectations and follow-through from their teachers. We need to set the bar high and hold our students accountable for their behavior. They need to learn now that choices have consequences. We do them no favors by “letting them slide” or “turning a blind eye” when they’ve done wrong. The successful teacher shows her students that she cares for them too much to let them slide. Each student can be a role model – we just need to give them the chance to own their actions.

4. Anything worth doing takes effort.

Laziness is a growing epidemic in our culture. We want shortcuts. We want immediate results. But in education (and honestly, in all of life), students need to learn that anything worth doing is worth doing well – and that requires effort. Give students the opportunity to work hard and then reward them for a job well-done. 

In my classroom, I had a huge sign above the whiteboard that said, “YET.” Whenever a student would feel defeated and say, “I don’t get it” or “I don’t know” I would point to the sign and say, “You don’t get it…YET.” It spoke volumes to them – It showed them that I believed in their potential to learn and master any topic. By the end of the second week, all I had to do was point to the sign and they would nod their head, understanding my point that they would come to grasp the concept if they put forth the effort.

5. We all make mistakes. Each day is fresh.

With all of the talk of responsibility and accountability, there also needs to be a discussion of grace. Truth: we all make mistakes. We need to own up to our mistakes and apologize, if necessary. But we also must remember that each day is a fresh start. Our students need to feel that they’re given the option of having a great day every time they enter your classroom door. As the teacher, you need to communicate the fact that the mistakes of yesterday may have consequences; it doesn’t mean that they can’t make better choices today. 

Remember:

Your students were placed in your classroom for a reason.

They aren’t there by accident.

You have a job to do.

Communicating these 5 things will help to set the tone for a successful year.

Tell them to your class the first week of school.

And every week after that too.

http://blog.teacherspayteachers.com/5-things-you-need-to-tell-your-students-the-first-week-of-school/