Hello! Bonjour! Buenos Dias! Aloha!

Hello! Can you guess what today is all about? That's right greetings!

As I continue with summer prep I find myself super focused on building relationships. How important are relationships in this field? For one, I can't do my job without the people in my life supporting me. I can't do my job effectively without strong relationships with the teachers and staff I work with day in and day out. And on top of it all, I can't effectively work with students without relationships with them.

Have you ever heard a teacher say over and over and over "he's just going to do what he wants to do" or "he just doesn't listen to anything I say".  Those are two things I hear all the time. My first question is always "what's your relationship with this student?"

So this coming school year, I'm focusing on training teachers in building relationships. How to effectively  build relationships with their students to gain instructional control. And how to teach students how to build relationships with others. Friendships are hard. Conversations are hard.  Relationships are hard. You can't control the other person... and how many of our students just want control of their little world?

So how are we going to build relationships??? Simple. We're putting a strong focus on morning meetings.  Each and every morning we will greet our students. Our students will greet one another. And they will have a chance to have conversations. How to start them. How to continue them. How to end them. How to talk about things that bore them. How to answer questions. How to ask questions. I can go on and on and on but I'm sure you know where this is going :)

We'll start with greetings. Where are you when your students enter the room... by the door right? What a perfect natural opportunity to teach greetings. What about when other teachers walk in, teach greetings! I know as a teacher, and a self-proclaimed control freak, I hated when instruction was interrupted. But I loved the opportunity to teach such important skills. Social skills!

So to you I say, good morning! 

Here is part of our morning meeting binders (a post is coming on this... I'm very excited about it!).

Each morning our kiddos will have a chance to say good morning to two friends. They will be presented with a choice board of their classmates pictures. And they will have the opportunity to say hello based on their individual language and communication needs.

Examples:

1. Read the script "good morning Mickey" and shake hands

2. Walk to their friend and wave

3. Voice output device- I prefer to have a switch in my morning meeting area specific to greetings. However, if a student has a personal AAC device this would be a great opportunity to teach that as well.

How do your kiddos greet one another?

Morning Discussion Conversation Starters

Let's continue this social skills kick... for our behavior support classes the focus will be on morning discussions. Each student will have the opportunity to discuss, write, or draw the morning discussion question.  You know you always have some kiddos who don't like to share out loud. Sharing will come with building those relationships :)

So here comes the tough part for me... coming up with 180 conversation starters with a focus on social emotional learning for morning meetings.  Here are some of the one's I have so far...

How can we make today amazing?

What's the most important job of a student? And how can we help you be successful with your job?

What is being a GREAT citizen? How can you be a GREAT citizen today?

If a friend is making a poor choice, how can we help them?

Have you heard the word GRIT being talked about?  What do you think It means to have GRIT?

I have a passion for social skills. Early in my career I didn't even realize this was what I was teaching them, I just did what I thought we're crazy and fun things my kids would love. Now I know they were all building social skills. Have you had moments like that? You were told you were great at something and had absolutely no idea because it just happened to be a passion of yours?  When I was teaching I had a fabulous behavior analyst consult in my classroom weekly through the school division. She helped shape who I am as a behavior analyst now and who I was as a teacher. But one day she asked me to present to another school on how to implement social skills. I said "uhhhhh, me? why me? I don't know what I'm doing?" and she laughed at me. Apparently that was hilarious to her because she didn't realize I didn't do that stuff with a purpose. Now, I try to always have a purpose, to have an intention, but when you're new you don't know. Or at least I didn't.  So she started listing all the ways I had taught social skills even when I was clueless. I had a student run errands to the main office; when I needed to run errands around the building I always took a kiddo with me; one student earned to hang out with the secretary in the office (thanks Ms. Lauren!); I carved pumpkins;  decorated cookies; played games; danced; and the list goes on.... who knew I had such great ideas?? ;) Do you have ideas for me? I'm always looking for new fun things!

Until next time...

Kaylan :)