Past projects 2
Creative Writing and Art Skills
Funded Dec 1, 2020Thank you so much for donating to my classroom and my students. We have been able to create, journal and write about our creations during our different IB units. We have designed and created different fun art projects surrounding the weather, different jobs, MLK profiles and even quilt squares that we each made.
The children were so excited to open their bags of goodies that their parents had picked up the day before Christmas break. When we opened the goodie bags the children were asked to take everything out and they each were directed to make an ornament for their holiday tree which they loved doing.
We will continue to create new fun art activities when we start working on our next IB unit Sharing the Planet which the students will be learning about all different kinds of animals, insects, plants, etc. And when they finish creating their art work the children will be writing and describing their animals and plants. This will be an exciting IB unit and the children love learning and creating new different kinds of animals, insects, plants, etc.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Cahir
Teachers Teaching To The Whole Child!
Funded May 1, 2018I am so thankful for the ability to have attended the week long yoga trauma training this summer. This class taught me that we (teachers) are exposed to secondary trauma daily due to our students own trauma circumstances. Therefore, before I even started our new academic year with the students. I designed a slide show to present to my staff and teachers at our own professional first day. I explained and helped my fellow teachers recognize their own personnel triggers as well as some of their students triggers and how they can help themselves while helping their students deal with their trauma. I taught my staff some basic mindful movement and yoga poses that would not only help the teachers but their students.
I used the documentation, slide shows, and materials I received from the training to help me design my own slideshow to show and to educate my fellow teachers. It allowed the teachers to learn how to react to a child or to recognize the child's anxiety, anger, depression, etc moods. By recognizing the trauma and triggers, teachers could design some mindful movement with yoga poses to help the child handle the situation at hand. Also, I asked the teachers for constructive criticism after I taught the lesson I planned on using with my students the first month of school so they could help me design or improve it. The lesson I taught and used with my students was showing them an emoji chart that was in my slide show I presented to the teachers showing the different emotions. We went over the words, emotions, and emoji faces while I asked them to describe some of the words like stress, or worry, violent, and if they could give us an example what they were. It was great to hear these five, and six year olds explain to their classmates what worries, stresses, or causes violence. It was a great conversation and they are still learning about different emotions that they might encounter in their lives. One child said she did not know how she felt when we were discussing her emotions that day and I stated "its okay not to know and maybe she will come up with a way to describe that emotion or feeling later on". In the photos you can also see that our special needs class joined us and will continue to join my students every week to do yoga!
Thank you so much to all the donors that funded this training because it allowed me to not only recognize trauma in my students lives but in myself and other adults and more than anything it has allowed me to learn and give strategies to not only my students but my fellow co-workers. Namaste, Ms. Dianne Cahir”
With gratitude,
Ms. Cahir
This classroom project was brought to life by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and 15 other donors.