School Involvement
Building relationships is my number one priority every school year and one of the ways that I accomplish this is to get involved in the school building and the community outside of my classroom. Below, you will find examples that show some of the ways that I have tried to become more involved in my school district and in my student's lives.
Chess Club
During my first year of teaching, I knew that I wanted to get involved, but I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to be involved with. I was new to the district and the building, so I felt like I had a lot to learn before taking on more. Within the first week of school, I had a student ask me if I would be willing to run an after school chess club in my classroom. Without knowing how to make this happen and without knowing anything about the game of chess, I said yes! I relied on my colleagues to help me figure out how to organize this club, how to get the word out to other students, and how to obtain multiple chess sets. Once Chess Club got going, it became one of my favorite weekly traditions. Week-to-week I learned more about chess, students built new friendships, and we all had a lot of fun together. I was also able to get parents involved by bringing in snacks for Chess Club time and getting to watch some of the competition. Below is a slideshow of some pictures taken during Chess Club.
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I always enjoyed how concentrated students became during Chess Club.
You can see how seriously students approached these games!
Some students had different ability levels, so they would work in teams and learn from each other.
I always enjoyed how concentrated students became during Chess Club.
All pictures posted with permission.
Peer-to-Peer
I have always had a passion for working with students who have special needs. Even before I was a teacher, I volunteered in classrooms after school and I was a part of my high school's peer-to-peer program. When I found out that our school social worker needed another staff member to help co-run our peer-to-peer program, I knew that I wanted to be involved. In order to help, I took on two meetings a week with our peer mentors. During these meetings, they would share how things were going with their peers, what they were having struggles with, what was going well, etc. We would also use these meetings to learn more about autism and to focus on specific strategies that they could implement to help their peer. Finally, once a month, we organized a "big group meeting' where all of the peer mentors and peers would come together for a fun, team-building activity. The images in the slideshow below were from our Halloween activity and our "Minute-to-Win-It" challenges.
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Students had to wrap their teammate in toilet paper like a mummy!
The goal was to get through a whole roll of toilet paper as fast as possible!
Many students were very good sports about these activities.
Students had to wrap their teammate in toilet paper like a mummy!
All pictures posted with permission.
Adopt-a-Family
One of my favorite things that I've been involved with at my school is our Adopt-a-Family program. This program was run entirely by my team members and myself and it involved several different events. To begin, we would plan two or three fundraisers to take place in the fall. We would always try and get kids involved in these fundraisers whenever possible. We held student-run bake sales, movie nights after school, cookie sales involving the local bakery, etc. After raising money, we were then able to create a budget and figure out how many families we could afford to help. After gathering this information, we would choose families from our district who we felt could use some extra help around the holidays. We got in touch with those families and made lists of Christmas gifts that they were in need of as well as basic necessities that they could use. Once we had these lists together, we would plan a night of shopping with student and parent volunteers at the local Walmart store. Kids would always be SO excited to be involved in this outing! Once we had all of our shopping completed, the final step was to get our gifts wrapped. Again, student and parents volunteers would come in after school and help us get all of these gifts wrapped for our families. This was always such a fun and rewarding experience for everyone.
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We had so many helping hands as we wrapped gifts.
The kids were so happy and excited to be a part of this!
What a great and supportive community!
We had so many helping hands as we wrapped gifts.
All pictures posted with permission