“I don’t want people to be unkind to anyone”

“Don’t be mean / Be kind/ Otherwise bad luck will/ come up from behind”

“Get people’s spirits up when they feel down”

“Believe that you and others can follow their dreams”

If you get a chance, take a close look at the kindness chain forming in the front hall that I stole these quotes from.  It is the culmination of our kindness unit that we have been working on since the start of school with the K-6 students.  It is full of good ideas and very specific requests for kindness.  Each link is by an individual student and has what they can do on the outside and what kindnesses they would like towards them on the inside.  I turned them loose if they wanted to do it their own way and stay on topic, so some may be a little different.  We used the book “How Full is your Bucket?” with the younger grades to illustrate this concept with them.  

We will be shifting into mindfulness starting next week and through November using a mix of Mindful Schools, Mind Up, Yoga Calm and some other curriculum.  Mindfulness is secular, non-religious meditation.  There has been a huge amount of recent research showing benefits in academics, mental health and reducing bullying and aggressive behaviors after mindfulness practice.  I’ll be encouraging you to take on this practice at home as well to support our kids here.  

Thanks to the 24 parents who filled out my Needs Assessment last week.  I’d appreciate all of you taking the time to fill it out as I do base my year off of what these needs are.  https://goo.gl/forms/2fKD9wKwekH4f1po1  I’ll publish the results in a couple weeks, the students will be done this week.  

And to our weekly discussion question:  “How have you reached out to someone different than you lately?  What was difficult about it?  How did it go?  What got in the way if you didn’t?  How can you overcome these obstacles?”  

Thanks again!  Cliff Shaw, cshaw1@pps.net