SPREADING LOVE

I almost forgot to post this! I found these cute notes online and thought the students would enjoy them as much as I did. I cut them out and put one on every locker in our HS/MS the morning of Valentine's Day. I'm sharing a link where the actual notes can be found. They're free, which is even better. http://assets.skiptomylou.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/kindness-notes.pdf

She has several other free downloadable notes, too. Our tables were filled with lots of candy, stuffed animals, pop and flowers on this day as I'm sure your offices, hallways, and/or classrooms were as well. However, there were some students who received nothing. To them, I believe, this little locker note meant a lot. I received quite a bit of feedback from the students. There are three hallways in our building. One hallway decided that one or two students needed more love than the rest and they collected their notes and placed them all together on one locker. I didn't get a picture of it, but I thought it was really cute when I walked down that hallway and saw it for the first time. It is now a week since I did this and two hallways still have their notes on the lockers. By the way, I signed every single one of them myself, too. Enjoy!

Today was great. Not only was it Friday AND Valentine's Day, but I was able to do something that will impact our students in a huge way. I got our pantry set up for our MS/HS students! I worked with our Regional Food Bank, filled out many forms, asked lots of questions, sent many emails and phone calls went back and forth. I surveyed nearly every student, teacher and cafeteria

worker in the school to find out who might be going hungry or who might be going without food at various times each month (between parents' pay days, etc.). I went to an amazing training, submitted my order and stood outside, unsheltered on the coldest day of the year (wind chill -4) for over an hour to unload and load our food last week. Today, I had time to break open boxes and get the food to students! It may not look like much, but our school, MS/HS, serves less than 250 students. This is our first shipment. I'm thrilled to be able to serve the students in our school this way!

NBC process

I don't know if this came through on my Facebook feed or my Twitter feed. But, I read a post from another blog about future changes in the NBC process. I thought about becoming a NBC special education teacher while I was still teaching in that field and then I became a counselor. I've thought about going through the process as a school counselor. I've printed out some information from the official website and some blogs that I follow, but I've not been serious enough about it to take even another step in this direction. After reading the information contained in the blog that came across my social media page today though, I thought others might find it interesting, beneficial and even motivational to start the process. For that reason I'm choosing to post a link to the blog. Changes in the process are on the horizon. The process will go from taking one year to taking three. That is significant when you think about various portions having to be approved or passed and reworked if they're not. That takes time in and of itself. Then taking the final test and potentially retaking it if it isn't passed. So, something that originally took 1-1 1/2 years might now take 4-5! Here is the link: http://happyschoolcounselor.blogspot.com/. The blog is a great one to follow as well!

Door Decorating

I'm a little late in getting this post together. At the beginning of December the STUCO (which I am in charge of) sponsored a Christmas Door Decorating Contest. I mentioned it earlier. The school I was previously at did this every year and they really got in to it with some elaborate and creative doors. It was the first year to do such a th

ing with this staff and students. I think they did a job!

The doors were so cute and it was fun to walk down the hallways for the remainder of the month and see them! The winning door (Grinch), with lights on every point of the star at the top and an actual recording of the song, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch." It had a Christmas tree made from students' hands. The Grinch was "inside" the tree with only his legs poking out (lime green tights). A leg lamp door, of course, from the movie "A Christmas Story." It was all three dimensional with real fishnets! A brown box top on the bottom said, "Fragile." There was a snowman door which was made of cups and was created by a freshman class. There was a santa door, just the mid-section including belt, white fur and buttons. the door said, "It's a Claus-on Christmas." the teacher's name in that room is Clawson, so she made a play on that with the Santa Clause theme. I didn't show a door decorated with Rudolph. It was made with a light up nose, nor the Griswold door with a ton of lights. There was also a redneck door with an actual deer mount w/rope on it and shot gun shell lights on a tree with muddy boots sitting next to it. The winning class received a pizza/pop lunch.

To This Day Project - Shane Koyczan

I had forgotten about this video until today when it came up on my FB feed from the counseling group. It is intense without being graphic or using inappropriate words. It is a great video for students (I believe) 7th through 12th grade.

Christmas Break

Christmas break is almost over. It has been a very restful break for me. Most of my shopping was done online (Amazon prime is a wonderful thing) ahead of time. It was so nice coming home to a package waiting on the front porch nearly every day in the weeks leading up to break. The first Monday out of school I did have to make a trip to the local Wal Mart. It was also my only trip for the entire holiday season. I made a trip to the mall the weekend before this, and it, too, was my only trip there for the entire season. Can you tell I loved shopping online from my recliner or couch, in my pjs? We put our Christmas decorations up a little late this year since we were out of town for Thanksgiving and that was a little later than usual. Because of this we left a few things tucked away until next year. Since everything was put up later, we left it up a little longer. I often start taking the decorations down Christmas night or the day after. It is past January 1st and everything just came down today. Today was a pajamas day. I stayed in them literally all day. Days like today are rare. Christmas breaks like this one are unusual, too, so much time at home to rest, reflect, and rejuvenate. I had many days at home, though they weren't pajama days. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas our garage broke, nearly falling off the track onto my car inside the garage. Our kitchen range also gave out. So, my husband and I bought each other a new garage door, complete with new tracks and springs and also a new kitchen range for Christmas.

I took a break from thinking about or doing any work during this break. The time disconnected has been much needed. Today I posted a scholarship on the school's website, a notification on the Facebook page and will have something else posted on the school site tomorrow. I return to school Monday and that day brings many changes. Some I'm looking forward to and some I'm not.

Tomorrow we leave for a quick trip out of town. It's just a short trip to a place we enjoy going. Instead of just going over night in order to be back for church on Sunday, we're staying until Sunday this time and attending church there. We both just need this quick get away, the change of scenery, to disconnect a little more before we hit it hard next week. I have pictures from the door decorating contest to post. However, those will have to wait until next time.

So much positivity

Wow, time has gotten away from me. The first week of this (December) month, we had an assembly. It was recommended to me by two of my STUCO girls who had seen the group at a 4H conference. The assembly was put on by a group called Project Elevate. They were amazing! It is usually a group of five that put on each assembly. There are videos, dancing, crowd interaction, testimonials/speaking, loud music, dancing and lots of silliness all within an hour. The kids totally loved it. These young men completely reached out students, grades 7-12th. It was all about making positive decisions, treating others with kindness, anti-bullying, anti-drugs and many more things.

I can't believe I haven't posted anything since October! Afterward, some of our students hung around while the guys were tearing down to leave. Some were there to just take pictures. Others were there to talk. Students really opened up, felt comfortable talking to these guys! These guys had never been to our school and the students didn't know any of them. It was amazing. Through the talking/testimonials and video stories, things that these young men said really reached some of our students and they wanted to talk to these guys about it! This week has been almost as exciting! I attended a training at our state's Regional Food Bank. While there we also got to tour the facility and learn about it's operation. It's amazing to thing that a warehouse the size of a Sam's Club, stocked full of food is emptied every week to go throughout our state to feed hungry people. The Food Bank is run entirely by volunteers (other than the skeleton staff that are permanent and there on a daily basis.) The STUCO had mentioned conducting a food drive. However, after doing some research I found that those didn't go over well. After calling the food bank and looking at all our options we decided to open a food pantry for our school. The Regional Food Bank sponsors Backpacks for Kids for those elementary students who might not have enough food. Backpacks are filled and go home one Friday with food for the weekend since students won't be in school to eat breakfast and lunch there. The backpacks are meant for the individual student but, it is a known fact that the students share with their entire family. Once out of elementary our students don't have any assistance. A food pantry allows MS/HS students to receive the same food service for the weekend. It will be housed in our building in a secure location. Students will be identified or referred by staff and could be a permanent or temporary situation. Students are made aware of what is available and either are told when the pantry will be open to come choose their food or they choose what they'd like to have from a list and their supply is gathered and bagged for them to pick up. I am thrilled to be a part of the ground breaking on this! STUCO will still play a huge part in that they will help stock the pantry when the food comes in each month. Who is being served, as well as the pick up, will be confidential. What a wonderful feeling to know that students in our district will not be going hungry, no matter what their grade. The same day that I went to this training I returned to school for the remainder of the day. After school I took four girls from STUCO (that is all that could attend due to work, ball games and recitals), to our local Wal-Mart. One of our local youth services organizations gave us a debit card and 18 kids names (Angel cards as they were called). Each student and I took cards with kids ages, gender, sizes, likes and needs and shopped for them for Christmas. We had $80-90 to spend on each kiddo. The girls had a great time! They got so excited learning what their kids wanted and then trying to find things. It wasn't easy, many things were the needed size, but wrong color, or just too expensive! The girls stacked things in groups on the conveyor belt and bagged items with each Angel's assigned number on the outside. They got very excited to see the total we'd spent. They quickly whipped out their phones and took pictures of the grand total (over $1,600). We shopped for about 1 1/2 hours then went to eat. For some reason we ate at the slowest restaurant in our town (LOL). Afterward we got frozen yogurt. After it was all finished it was after 9 p.m. when I returned home! What a long, but amazing day! Though we shopped for 18 kids I wasn't sure we made even a dent in the number. We were told there were 63 kids to buy for. One of the STUCO girls game in to my office today to get the contact's name. She said she was going to call to see if she could go shop for some more kids. Amazing!