 This is the church of the open mind. This is the church of the loving heart. This is the church of the lovingness. Together we care for our earth and we're for peace and friendship in our world. Great. Thank you very much. So, welcome everyone. I'm so glad to have a full house here this morning. I'm so glad to have so many great people inside. I decided not to teach this year. Some of you have done this before. Some of you are new. I'd love them to have that one with people because the veterans can tell the coach the new people. And they have a lot of little sites. Since you guys have been on the front lines, you guys have got some insights in the ministry of drums. So it's great to have your expertise here. For the most part, I think we have new posts. This is with great teachers. So we have countless children. Children are cleaning, food is relieved and exploring our origins, represented here. There are seven trainings for all of you at Texas. And maybe we could just kind of go over how quickly and do a really brief introduction. Are you willing to teach them one more time? I think that would be great because we get a sense of, well, some of you can spot out and you can teach them. And you have a sense of what classes are represented in those today. So, Cindy, do you think you could go first? Sure. I'm Cindy Gehring and I'm teaching Jordan Monday and on Saturdays. Stephanie Simon and Jordan Monday on Saturday. Lou Vanerly. I'm Jordan Monday on Sundays. No, I'm not. There's one other car. I'm Kelly Rack and I'm teaching child's children on Saturdays. I'm Hannah, and today I'm teaching chalice on Sunday at 11. I'm Kessie Pincardine and I'm teaching chalice on Sunday at 11. Please, why not order these nine on Sundays? And I'm Jordan Monday teaching chalice children on Sundays at 11. I'm Karen Timberlake. I'm teaching free-to-believe on Saturdays. First question, free-to-free, free-to-free on Saturdays. Hi, I'm Brian Statham and I'm teaching free-to-free on Sunday at 11. Well, what about free-to-free on Sunday? We took her exam and we're teaching child's children on Saturdays. Lou Vanerly, the chalice owner, I am on Sunday. John Shield, I'm exploring our origins on Saturdays. Jen is an headquarters chalice children on Sunday. I'm standing chalice children on Saturday. Sharon Simmons, free-to-believe on Sunday at 11. I know you want to take a nap on Sunday? Or to the sun on Sunday at 9. I'm Karen Statham and I'm teaching free-to-free on Sunday at 11. I'm L.A. and I teach free-to-believe on Sunday at 11. Paula Hall, chalice children on Sunday at 9. Fred Stern, free-to-believe on Sunday at 11. Sarah Feldman, free-to-believe on Sunday at 11. Lori Schwartz, free-to-believe on Sunday at 11. So you want to just look and introduce yourself? You did it for me. Do you want to sit up here for whatever you want to do? Whatever you want to do. We'll break. And then we're going to have these three groups with one other spot to focus on classroom rituals and just orient you to the space that you will be teaching in. And then we'll come back here and talk about next steps. There's some questions and answers. And date. So your program is a communal experience because it's an amazing group of adults and kids that make up our program. And I think that both be off of each other and learn from each other. I certainly hope that would be your experience this year. We use the term industry around here fairly loosely but intentionally, if that makes sense. We see it a lot of the work that we do here as an administrator classification, which is different than being a minister, per se. But when we talk about ministering to our congregation, we're just talking about caring for each other, the people who are part of this community. And so I think of you all as our educational ministry. You're the ones who are in charge of bringing our education to life and bringing care and harm to our educational program. So thank you for your educational ministry. It's a big part of what we do in our community here. We could have best curriculum in the world and I think we have pretty good curriculum. It's not perfect, it's always a work in progress. But really without the commitment and caring and engagement of our educational ministers, it's just a project we see in the future. So you're going to be bringing life to the program. Our goal, in part, is a lot of knowledge that our faith can then revert to take to us as a school school, is that we go out of our way, I think, to make it very different than being in school. Our goal is really to nurture a sense of faith and spiritual development and very caring and positive living. And so that is the focus. We want that to be the essence of our program, not so much the content, but the community piece of what we do here. And I think if you ask any minister if their task is all about giving, giving, giving, they'll say, oh, I get so much out of the community ministry just as much as I get if not more. I certainly hope that that would be your experience as well as educational ministers here that in doing that work with our kids that I hope you will learn and grow and your life will be enriched by that as well. And we're kind of on a mission. I'm kind of on a mission to make that a really rich experience for you this year. So we're going to be focusing more on that piece for our teachers on how to make this a really rich immersion experience because we know that a little bit about it. So let's start a bit talking about focus here today. And I'm going to start out by talking about the program and then talking about your purpose or your role in that program. So we're going to do kind of a quick brainstorming here. Given that we are a religious institution, a union institution, a large children's RE program, we've just brainstormed some ideas about what you think we might hope to accomplish with the Children's Religious Education Program here at U.S. to discuss ideas about what you think we're here for. We want to keep friends with one another, meaningful relations with each other. Do you mean like outside of here? Yeah. Can you elaborate this for me? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'm going to hear from you. I'm just going to say good things about big things. Okay, good. We're going to talk a little bit about that period where the parents are then able to go talk and have a coffee. Oh, yeah, we're going to make sure that you're building up a coffee company as well. That's what happens right in town. Yeah. The service is usually done about 30 minutes a week before the class is over. So that means the parents are then able to talk and have a coffee before. So we're supporting the adults. We're supporting the adults that's a really good point. And also I would say that a lot of adults who teach together develop really great relationships too. We've had teams that decide to teach together for year after year after year, which is just so wonderful to see because they make, you know, some of the substantive connections as well. Laura. The reason I brought my mother is self-worth. Self-worth? Self-worth. That we treat children here as individuals worthy of being heard. Yes. Great. Love it. I was going to say it was pretty similar to that, is that they experience FUS as a loving, nurturing, accepting community. Yeah. FUS as a loving, nurturing, accepting community, and instead use a heart for short-term care. Okay. Yeah, this has to be quite open-minded. We're becoming aware of the world. Excellent. We're becoming aware of the world beyond ourselves and compassion. So, yes, in the sense of service. Great. Any others? Having fun. Having fun. Wow. So, friends and relationships, community engagement, thinking about big things, building adult community, developing self-worth, seeing FUS as a loving community, becoming aware of the world around us, developing compassion and service to that world, having fun. I think maybe the one thing that I'll add to that is focusing on our set of principle. Yes. The stewards of FUS, a film industry, what that means exactly, I mean, I want to try to fill the layers of that by giving you kids. So, the foundation for an interest to a term. When I was teaching, I could do the same thing with two different groups, and it would be great if one group and the total would be possible with the other group. So, it's so important to have that flexibility to take advantage of that so that you're a community. We talked a little bit about the fact that we wanted to be sure that the classroom addressed in this context of the importance of race in our society and our classroom and our troops so that that is kind of unfolded all the time in a sense of exception. We wanted the classroom to be the safe place. We're reading up some down here. Safe place. We wanted to be sure that you were using the different styles of reaching out to the children so that they would encompass different ways that children would have an experience. We wanted to have a sense of home, acceptance, meaningful, civil conversations, encouraging kids to be expressive, supporting the expected behavior and other environment. And we'd like to work equanimity for ourselves and for our students. Great. Thank you. Our baseline is that Franky was thinking, man, my parents made me come to class. We accepted. I want to make good friends. I want to be comfortable, not scared. Snacks are a bonus and we're officially not allowed to. I want to have fun. I want to play on the playground at the same time. I'd like to do fun activities, make cool crafty things, and I thought this would be as a... I want my voice to be heard. I want my input to be considered. So as teachers, we want to make this a place that's different from school and other parts of life. So to help with that, we can be on time and be prepared because we're a really good baseline. We want to create a couple of great ways so that, again, you know, his input is considered. And we can create that space, that environment where they know they can... where they know they're going to get. For their input, they're going to get back this of creating the environment. That's what we got. Keep it interesting. Change up the pace. Adjust as necessary, like I said, you know, with the crypto alone. Welcome the kids by name. Thank them for coming today. Look them in the eye and say, wow, it's great to see you here. And acknowledge their participation. We actually do participate because that's what we want them to do, is to engage. Great. Thank you. Do you have some? Yeah. A lot of the ideas that we just talked about is curiosity, creativity. I mean, the welcoming piece. They're mature, they're playful, and they're relaxed. Because it's doing some of that. So I'm not going to miss you guys. Thank you. Can you speak up a little louder before I explain everything? Absolutely. I especially think that children come in with some sense of ambition or purpose. So if you get busy right away, it's nice to help. And that sense of stewardship for the earth. That is key. A lot would be a part of the community and belonging, not just to them in the classroom, but sometimes they get so excited about coming they'd write their parents. You know, they're already writing an alphabet on the phone. So some of the things that we're hoping to bring is a sense of openness, being truthful, being honest with them, a sense of stability, playfulness, accountability, humor, enthusiasm, reliability, compassion, calm, knowledge, warmth, and patience. Great. I'm teaching. I'm going to go back. We are extra committed in how to support you all in your next. So I want to talk a little bit about how we would like to help you focus on the hard piece of that. Hopefully ways to better support teachers. I think that a whole piece of how to visualize I think the importance of focusing on portraying your teaching team is really important and often gets overlooked. But I think it's very to say that strong teaching in each of our classes and in some of our experiences which are experiences for everyone involved. And it's also true that something in the most frustrating experience for teachers is behavior management. So that's what we're going to talk about on Teacher Tuesday. It's October 9th and we'll be here and we're going to feed you. We're going to have child care. We're going to start out the evening with all of us together and here focusing on that exact sure with creating a safe space for kids and really how do we speak to the heart of all of our kids in the context of our classes. That's what I'm leaning towards right now. And then we're going to break that by classes so all the treasure hunting people go in one place. And during that break out time you will be meeting with a professional teacher who can talk about behavior management skills and hopefully also someone who has taught that curriculum once or twice or five times and can talk a bit about pieces of that behavior. And then you will wake up into teaching teams and I'll have some activities for you to do with your team that will hopefully help strike that in your team. So the timing of it is strategic and that you will have already had a few weeks and you're about to see what might be some trouble spots either with your team or with your class and and it will put us early up here that you can address those things moving on whether it be with your team members or with your class. So I really hope strength of that night I think is going to be on having everyone here because please I know it's never going to happen and I'm going to put it up to you and it would be great to have everyone here that evening so October 9th 5.30 to 8 o'clock so that's one way that we hope to help you all. Another way is through that Facebook page that I send out that email about it. So many responses. So let me just clarify that that was just entirely meant to be a supplemental thing in that source kind of thing that I put on there is that we take pictures of all of these people that you have filled in and put that on Facebook or across the article that I think oh that would be beautiful for our teachers to read and I put that on there or you come across something that you think is great and you put it on there or you say wow this thing happened in class and I was fucking good I was doing a lot of what that letter might be and that's going to share that with other teachers so it's a way to bolster what you do and that so Facebook is one thing the ministry team was working on gathering links to videos that maybe might be helpful to you that maybe mildly became your management or could be a type of something that you think would help you in the work that you're doing this year so she's putting together a list of things so that we have a kind of video library and I'm going to share that with you all to use as you wish another one that I did was inspired by Kathy so we're talking about Kathy with us she's giving us great ideas and don't feel like you have to read everything that goes out there or watch every video link and I want to sit there thinking like holy cow I'm going to get myself into it's there for the taking you can take it away and then another thing that I'm going to start doing this year usually for at least the first three quarters of the year I send out almost always a weekly teacher news thing with information that I think would be helpful so starting in October I'm going to have a theme for each teacher news for that month and it could be something like teaching anti-racism to kids or creating sacred space for kids or facilitating discussion with kids addressing special needs with kids things like that and I will include information and I will send that out each week the same thing about that each week because I know teachers are going to be so they have a whole month to catch up on that information and they choose to and then the other thing that I'm going to do is the the review rate of the Unitarian Immersive Association probably about seven years ago or so came out with a whole series of curricula called Tapestry of Faith and in Tapestry of Faith we included four teachers for every lesson and a way for teachers to spiritually prepare for that lesson so I'm just going to steal from them and find nuggets that I think are vital for our teachers to spiritually prepare before they walk into the classroom so those will be a part of those teachers news emails as well as a way to hopefully support them so any questions about doing it that is there another way that we have to prove that we're doing it? Other than that Yes 15 minutes before I don't know there's not because your team will have an opportunity to meet as frequently as or as infrequently as we might for all of us and one doesn't have a lot of people to do because a lot of the time teachers are popular but there's an appreciation there's a teacher appreciation that are not to be met in January or if you do very nice to me and the opportunity is out of this and you can help your mind but other than that other than that Sunday school so you're saying that there's going to be one bigger newsletter or how do you do that? Teacher news October and then once you know take a look at that too is it one of the newsletters? No, it's just an email and what I mean is that the first weekend of the month you're really busy saving it to a new teacher news but the next week you catch up a bit and that's saying you need to read for that month Does that make sense? Which is basically reading the weekly teacher's news Yeah Yes Still focusing on big picture I like to think about the system interpersonal connections kids to kids kids to the adults and the adults to each other we emphasize community over content and I can tell you one of the stories that I've heard from teachers in the past where they would say that they ran into a kid at Target or something like that and they ran into them and they'd be able to hide them and that just falls to my heart I love that and then the soul he's able to create experiences for our kids that really touch into who they are by search for secrets and helps them to kind of transcend the sense of discovery Let's skip the next I think are really really important and we really emphasize that we want all our teachers to use consistently the opening and closing rituals Some of you many of you have different rituals that are written into your curriculum you'll notice when you go home this afternoon and start reading through your biochemistry section I bet we have a good information about opening and closing rituals that we want you to use in your classroom and I think that they're really important because each week things change for the classrooms, different teachers, different kids but the rituals really help make for the experience they've shared language and shared experience that I think is really an important grounding for them it also helps you all remember the importance of heart and soul in the class and not get too wrapped up in the context so I think it's important in that regard and the rituals just help us get to a different place you know, it helps us let go of how we rush to get there that morning or that afternoon of course we are not being asked and it helps us to just kind of get to different psychological aspects so I think rituals are really important we ask that people have a class covenant for the class since each year and to be told first grade is you don't really come up with a covenant we have images which I'll show you later that we're just sort of very, very loosely saying this is how we want to be in a relationship with each other second to fifth grade it's a little more detailed about how we want to be in a community together what behaviors do we want to share with each other what's important for us to feel safe in this space and feel like we have a voice you know, that kind of stuff so there is a handout also in your binder that talks about really a good class covenant and I recently came across another resource another resource that talks about building a covenant around the seven principles which is also a new curriculum it's not, I'm not saying you need to follow that but I think it's a really cool idea because in there so that's just too digital we divide our teaching world who's responsible for delivering content for that day so they kind of speak to the mind and to an extent apart of what happens in the class that day the community is the person that will just be opening and closing the tools and then also kind of focuses on what's happening in the dynamics of the group that day so that the curriculum we have to balance delivering the content of managing the class of the community that takes care of this behavior stuff and good stuff it's not just like dealing with behavioral problems it's also like wow I know the way you guys are sharing over there that kind of emphasizes the positive so there's those distinctions between the teaching world those have two teachers between the role that they're passing through those in the classroom it's part of communication and safety so you'll see when you fill out the calendar with your teaching team that somebody signs up for curriculum somebody signs up for community you don't have to choose one or the other for a whole year you're not going to do enough to do that ideally you're community-leaf ones per month and curriculum they have it sold into the classroom through whatever you do through that equation so I think it's important that you be authentic that you can be as willing to take a risk as you would hope the kids are in the classroom that you have curiosity in the middle of mind just as you would hope they would bring to the equation I have the hope that when you come here you're not just like out of the way that's not just something to check off your list that you bring something into that as an area it's not because I think it would be literature for you to do that I see it's important that this woman who used to be in charge of child and family development and she came up with this list of questions to kind of bring to the forefront for you your spiritual foundation how to make this how to make teaching a more meaningful experience so to what extent Kan or has this teaching experience misses to ask yourself each time you're in the classroom Kan or has this teaching experience deep in my relationship with one or more child to what extent Kan or has this teaching experience deep in my relationship with one or more other adults to what extent Kan or has this teaching experience deep in my sense of belonging to this community and to what extent experience giving me new knowledge or concepts about my faith. So I think there are good questions to ask and a good way to kind of keep it all meaningful for you because you're doing it and not making just an empty list of tasks. So you're not doing all of this alone, but they do until you want to talk about the bigger picture as well as involved in your classes. Each class, hopefully, I think there's a couple of holes to get our volunteer list, but most classes have a classroom support coordinator. We have a couple of classes, so you may not have a new parent. If you have only six kids in the class, that's a lot of parents. Probably three of them are teaching. That class are not responsible for the classes. The first and second weeks probably, because we put your pictures outside of the classroom so that parents can identify their names and mention any of the faces, I guess. Mostly what they do though is they flag parent helpers. They schedule parent helpers to be here each week. So I think in the week of teaching, you should have yourself your co-teacher and a parent helper, which is really nice. And for some of those larger classes, we need incentives. So that's that's nice. And then you kind of look at the things we do here, but you don't need to know that. For the year, there are specific dates that we have designated. And those are an opportunity for our kids to get out into the community, become aware of the world, be beyond FUS. K-1, we tend to stay in here, but we still do the servicing. We're very fond of making peptides for the community and society. But other classes might get out and do other things. They might do clean up at the arena. People are planning activities for Salvation Army. They're the whole long list of things. So each of you, ideally, there's a couple holes in the volunteer list, but our faith and action coordinator is responsible for planning that. We ask that one teacher to present it for that, just because it's nice to have someone who's familiar with the kids. And it's usually pretty fun. So there's that. There's the parent helpers that I mentioned who show up each week to give you a hand. And I would have heard you to be really intentional and put some thought to how you can best utilize that parent helper. One easy way is to have them do attendance as people come into the classroom. But you know, as you're thinking about what the lesson is for that week, how can I best utilize this other individuality and then hope that they show up? Something different. Karen is over there. Karen Anderson, program assistant. And she is the person who's in charge of all the registrations. She is the woman who gets her supplies together for you every week, and she's home more soon. She makes sure you have the name tag you need, the technology, so she is the queen of lots of resources that you benefit from. We have religious education leaders on Saturdays. They're stationed at the entrance to the Lamar auditorium. And Sunday is stationed down all there. They are people who are signalling visitors. So people are allowed to just come and visit your classes. We ask that they visit them more than three times and then make a decision about registering or not. Some of you, maybe you have full classes and we will still allow visitors, but we let them know that they can't officially enroll in that class. So from the beginning they were thinking about other times that they could enroll. But they support you and that. They're dealing with the visitors. The visitors sign in again. Probably some of those were one of those parents that signed in. And are you doing that? And then they take them down to the classroom to show them where it is and if you're in the classroom they'll introduce the visitors to you. So they did support me. I focus more on the curriculum content, dealing with class issues, behavioral issues, special needs issues, teaching team issues, teacher's news, planning things like this. Planning the great future of creation. So that's my piece. And then there are the children's art ministry team that needs each week that's planning some of the minus things for you like the Facebook page, the field library. They plan the feature appreciation dinner. And they also this year, maybe for the next few years we'd like to feature our classes in our opening newsletter. There's so many people in our community that we don't know much about children's religious education. We think it's an awesome program and we want to brag about it. So each month we'll focus on a particular class. So someone from the CRE ministry team may be contacting you to ask you questions about how a class is going, what you like about that curriculum. They may kind of talk to the students in your class to put together a little article. And then the other piece of your support is your teaching team, to really lean on each other for inspiration, for camaraderie, for humor, for processing difficult situations. So that's your village, your CRE village. Lots of support to help you in the work that you do. It's okay. So I'm like really behind in that. Far behind in that. Do you want to interject here? And then I can come back to Nassau? Yeah, just basically. Get a good one. It's where you came in tonight. You've seen about, well, baby time. This is okay. Behavior problem. Keep that confidential. That's going to change as more families register or things shift around. Every time you go to the community support coordinator, and they support the teachers by arranging from their interpreters in the younger grades, they might gas. Okay. Would we have asked the CSC to help in the class? Correct. Yes. If you were a short teacher, you're going to ask the applying support coordinator to help you out that day. Good. Thank you. I've been learning a lot. Right. Right. So the CSC is really good. If somebody, if, you know, this is not a good example. What a sensitivity to sunscreen, and they didn't mention it when they go down their report. If I'm here, it's an e-mail or I'm here on Saturdays and Sundays. So I'm really keen about getting sure everybody's got all that information. If a person enrolls at a class of start, if somebody's name tag gets ripped off, or is it obscured in some way? I think so. I would encourage your children to put stickers on their names. This is a pocket card. Then I'm going to enroll some of them. So if they need to decorate them, they can just decorate the card card. That would be great. Supplies. Supplies. It can make things. You can either put a note in your supply bin. This is a supply bin. So every weekend, you've notes from me in your supply bin. Because I take them out. And if somebody needs to make them, you know because if there's like... My markers are dry. If you need markers, you can leave it over here. What you'll be seeing later is open. So these containers, stay where they are. They just stay there. These containers are kind of, this is Google the I's. What you want from the supply posters. And then put the box back on the shelf. And the reason why is because somebody else might have a great idea of Google the I's too. So, please know that I am looking at the weekly enrollment. And I am counting, counting three visitors. So I have a plus three. If you use, if you find something else, if you think of it, put a note for the next class. And you can't even put a note. And it's something special that you want me to get for you. I need to know by Tuesday. So I need to know by Tuesday, so I haven't been staying at home yet. I'm here by bus. So if I know Tuesday before I go home, then we have to do that. 14 years. And I also taught at Latin school. And so from there, I learned that there's a great site called Go Noodle. They've got a bunch of different channels and a bunch of them. That's just getting our, it's just kind of doing too much redirecting. It might do a great deal with them. Volunteer list. Who, you have our faith in action, so you've got your CS. They don't get too little to you not to do too serious projects. All the contact information with your teaching team. And it tells you for whom your class needs it. Just know that you have all that information in one place. A class list in your binder. Try to just go happy and excited about the summer each week. Let the parents know what they did. That week. And the reason we do that is to keep parents involved in the religious education process. So if you're saying, hey we talked about around that conversation during the week with their children. So it's a way we help supporting parents that tend to the conversations at home. So lots of times teaching teams will designate that the curriculum sends out the email or the community or sends out the email. That's entirely up to you how you present the data. But what we really do want to do is make sure that somehow we know what's been sent out each week. And I'm not talking like three paragraphs here. I'm talking about three paragraphs. This is what we did in class. We did this project. We did this subject. This is not a requirement of what we do. But sometimes teachers can take pictures and include those in the email which is really adorable and wonderful. You do that. Make sure you're checking your attendance sheet to see if there's a kid who isn't supposed to have that photo taken. So with the emails that's a good question. I wanted to welcome you to the email. I'm not a well-meaning email and that's a summary of the picture. I'm not a well-meaning email but a summary of the picture. Nice to hear it. That's how Karen knows what the class is. Can you switch that around? Yes, I can. It's really easy to do it because that first Karen's schedule off. And if everyone is doing that she will legitimately know. Sorry. A paper and action coordinator. I didn't think I'd have them. That was a big day. And we'll switch things around. But by and large stick to this schedule. That'd be great. I've designated. Thank you. Don't want to be busy setting up class when you're busy thinking. So, there's that. Can't work out so quickly. Well, I wanted you to see that. I'm telling you to be able to say this is... curriculum. People are asked these two weeks ahead of time to have the more time. The more time spent with me. Karen has made texts for everyone that she mentioned. Please learn them. I know like after a while you might think, oh, I know who you are. I don't have to bother wearing them. But the visitors don't know the teacher's name yet. They don't know who you are. So... And Karen and I had about 90 teacher names that we didn't know, unfortunately. We didn't know a lot of them. So, we can... Yeah. Oh, in the front of my mind. Oh, no. Okay. We're not going to have class. But we're not going to have rooms Okay. When a visitor is coming to your classroom, they'll put a paper that has their name, any special concerns that he would have. With that, Karen said, wait. Lisa. To do that, explore our origins. We have electronic copies of that curriculum that you can use if you want to put that on and write whatever notes you want. But the other ones... Well, none of the papers are going to be featured right on that because we really use these every year and it will cost us a lot of money to put these in that. So, first, it's hard to do what you want to write on yourself. And... I wrote on the intro pages. No, that's okay. Like the colorful ones? Yeah, the colorful ones before. I thought those were okay. Those are okay, right? It's definitely right. Good point. Yeah, that's right. We really need to encourage you to read through all of the introductory materials that you should handle. And violence, space development, stuff that's in there is intentional and we think it can be really helpful so we want to encourage you to do that. And we'll be the introductions to the curriculum in terms of their intent for that curriculum. So, that's definitely where we it's important to know that the people who wrote some of this curriculum, like Tertiary Hunting and Childhood who's been in particular with the origins of the house here so it's kind of written to meet our structure in our lives. But the other ones are written with no particular church or structure in mind, you know, very generic. And so there are many things that you will see that it would make sense to skip, like an entering activity. You don't have to do an entering activity because our kids aren't staggered in at any time. They're nervous for 20 or 25 minutes and then they hunt to class. So, we don't have to bother with that. Also, Tertiary Hunting and Childhood's children a few years ago went through all those lessons and updated them and so there are notes for each lesson adaptations that we've made for those curriculum and there's like an introductory thing about that. So, with a lot of information I would really encourage you to read through your lessons while you advance for two reasons. One is that rules continue to loop really well and you can make some decisions about what's called what to do and what isn't. You may read through a lesson like if you read through a few days, have a ton of questions just a night before and then you might think oh, I saw something that I think would fit in really well with this and it gives you some time to hold that together and maybe most importantly is that it gives you time to make that content authentically like how can you deliver this in a way that's authentic to you where you're not just reading from the curriculum but you kind of absorbed what are we doing and where are we going what's this lesson about and then you can just deliver in a way that is you so that makes sense I want you to also know for those of you new to teaching that parents are always welcome to stay in class up until the later grades so that doesn't include the people who are here the parents are always welcome to stay in class this happens a lot in the preschool in K1 classes where the kids aren't quite ready to let their parents go and that's totally fine and just a couple more we're going to focus a lot on that October meeting but I just want to say that if you are having issues during those first few weeks don't hesitate to let me or Cari know we really want to address those issues early on because to everyone's benefit it's to the class of benefit it's certainly to your benefit so let us know Karen is going to be coming on Saturdays and Sundays I'm going to be there every other Saturday on Sunday the month and we will either read in the comments area out there so you can come find us if you're having any issues or come talk to us after class and let us know if there's anything some basic strategies to use we don't use physical restraint kids in our program but if you're having any issues maybe going down and talking to the eye level of them maybe removing that child from the group just to have a quiet conversation with them about concerns that you're having when we are having issues the first thing to do is talk to the parents and see if this issue is having other places and what are some strategies that are being needed at school for instance so that we can have an consistent plan of action and you know there are many years when someone at the end of the year says oh it was such a frustrating year because of this behavior that we have why do you suffer through the whole year you know I don't know if you can do that and I think part of what makes people hesitant to intervene in challenging behaviors is that that kid's parent for instance might be a teacher and might feel uncomfortable intervening with their parents there that's something that I don't think we'll talk about if you're two teens about how you want them to address that but if you are two teens there are some behaviors that's just not you don't have to respond to any little things but I think it's worth asking what is the consequence of ignoring a particular behavior if you're seeing a kid being destructive or disrespectful or disengaged or whatever what is the consequence of ignoring that behavior how does that affect the kid how does that affect the community if there is a disruptive behavior going on in the classroom how does that impact the feeling of safety in the near past how will that impact you as a teacher so I think lots of times it's really as educational ministers it's really important to help our kids learn how to be really with each other and hopefully we'll be providing a lot of tools for you in the next eight weeks or so for how to best do that but I just because I want to make the point that the importance of that as important service is helping them to manage behaviors in my classroom and so yeah would you be able to talk a little bit about kids with special needs autism selection and resources available yeah so we do have some kids who are on the spectrum we are sending a questionnaire out to the parents who have identified a special need to get more information about their child and I've received some of those back and maybe for others but once I get that information after this week I'll probably give people a few more days to get back to me I will, the information that I have I have a little word to you so that you have that information as well you are welcome to reach out to parents if you want to have a conversation about them about their child I've asked them to share some strategies that they have used with their children some of our kids will have an inclusion buddy and that person is an adult but we assign two inclusion buddies to one child who has a special need who's parents have asked for an inclusion buddy or it's possible that in 90's your child will actually really have a careful conclusion and that person the buddy's responsibility is to just focus on using that child in the classroom so that the teachers can do their thing and look for ways to engage them as much as possible some of the kids have a limited engagement that's okay but we want a buddy who's there to meet them where they're after that means leaving the classroom after 15 minutes and just sitting out there so if you ever feel like you have a kid in your class who's limited from an inclusion buddy kids feel the cool sometimes the parent are coming to talk to you about the challenges that their child might have and just to help explain it because a lot of the kids we talked about how we want the kids to be accepting different people different situations and I found that these the graders the graders they have kids who have different challenges at school and most of them accept you as their buddy so just to put it on the table so it's not and so they can also help and get out of that that's a great point but I think it's option it's a great yeah we have had some parents who have come to talk and I think that's really helpful to the class and to the teachers and the support of the veterans and if you have a child who you think that would be a good fit to have a parent coming to talk just let me know what you're talking about okay, all right we're going to break into this minute and break up into grade and second to fifth grade I do want to mention that when you walk through the comments there's a couple tables that have a bunch of resources out on them and you should take a peek at that because those are things that you can use to help supplement what you're doing so for instance there's yoga cards, there's mindfulness activities there's books for just fun classroom community building things there's parachutes to play with the books and cards are things that we will keep them in the dissertation table because at the end of the comments the other materials are in various places you can just ask Karen or I if you would just like to know what you use them you might want to take a picture with your camera or your phone just to remind yourself what the resources are but you know just know that those things are available so when you can take a look at that and break or you know the one through like teachers into room 4 you can follow her are we taking a break or and then I'll give a second just to fifth grade teachers in part of your room to talk to your team about and to you and then to you about something so be sure to keep that confidential the welcome letter it looks just like it but it's a way for other families to know what to expect so if you can just attach that to these emails that would be great get actually you can all be here that would be great not so much there's more discussion different ideas and to just sort of be mindful of any biases that you're bringing into the classroom a lot of people land in unitary universalism because they have not had good experiences or other religions and so they carry that advantage with them so just kind of be mindful of how you might be unconsciously projected that this is particularly important in older classes talking about other religions but it can come out in lots of ways so be mindful of that is there anything that you want to add given our program discussions just take 30 seconds to talk to yourself see if you have any ideas if you want to add it's fine to not walking is way more fun than it seems like right now a couple weeks then it feels very, very loud here it's 10 but our children are gross there's a lot of people who have been in this room for about many years what does it mean you call us childless children I mentioned that to claim that you do training for that and so when you do a drink you have to do nice there's a lot of people a lot of civilized it's quite amazing we haven't covered it all so children bring up questions are you okay with answering them if you find them okay with more objection what they don't think is true if you're there if there was a problem if you see that something is so it's okay to respond to this obviously to be pretty grouchy but it depends on what you do for a talk I was simply interested and I was going to say we have a copy of the principles just look at those employee and say well how does what you talked about do you all have to express your personal feelings but I think for many of us the principles do answer very nicely pushing back on some kind of way so if you get a phone the church message that takes the pressure off of you and be mindful of how fresh you are so you feel like you've got that on so that doesn't matter yeah it's obvious you can know but I think more important when Dr. Churchman will say you are a new person you have sustained this for how many years 18 years I was doing one and six years ago I think that it's really important that we remember the sustainability piece of this is that I'm extremely grateful to you to have stayed with the force for so much and that as we engage I bring that to what Michael Schuler said is that we have next steps to go and I'm here because I've been welcomed for some of those challenges and I appreciate that we will go on that struggle together as teachers because it's better off that we do it together and you being the leader of that for 18 years means that we've sustained that for so long and the resolution that takes courage and a future movement to children and thinking turn that back to class anything else? Saturday morning to be here and to to see if it's such an important part of what you've been doing that you're willing to give a chunk of time on your weekend to get some insights like oh and to have a do-it-well and just know that Karen and I are