Feel the Love

Every 3-4 weeks at work, we hold a day of Professional Development.  Today's theme was Feel the Love.  We had heart stickers, Valentine's Day foam stickers, and Valentine's candy, and we wore red or pink. We also played "love" music.

In order to reach every teacher on campus, we repeat our session each period.  We start about 5 minutes into the period and try to finish a few minutes early.

Today, we began by having the teachers reflect on the activity they did since the last one (using a behavioral strategy). We discussed the Kisses and (Cupid's) Misses. (This was our create way of discussing Glows and Grows.)

We then asked the teachers to write as many ways to say or show praise with students. We kind of did Scattegories. One person read their list. If anyone had the same word/phrase, they marked it out. We went around a few times. The person with the most left was the winner.

We then had half the teachers read an excerpt from Fundamental Five by Sean Cain, and half read an article my Principal found that I retyped on positivity with students. To summarize their reading, they wrote a tweet and then some shared out.  A co-worker created this cute third of a page slip of paper with the Twitter symbol for the teachers to record their tweets.

We then did a Temperament Survey and let the teachers discuss their findings.

We then explained that depending on their temperament, it may or may not be easy to praise students.

Their homework is to use a list of 100+ statements to praise students and challenge themselves to say more and more praises as the days pass.  They are to journal about their process and outcomes.  We asked then to continue working on their behavioral strategy from last time and to continue journaling about it too.

We will meet again in 3-4 weeks to discuss how they did.