Moving Beyond for Multilingual Learners: The Blog

 Please, please forgive me if this sounds obvious but I just want to say it and share it.  In the Chicagoland area and across Illinois really, we are experiencing larger influxes of newcomer students and families. Our winters here are BRUTAL. I know a lot of us spend time ensuring that our students have access to coats, snow pants, snow boots, mittens, hats, and scarves- and I THANK YOU for this. This is so important!!  A gentle note here to please be sure you are not the only one in your school checking these things out. You need a network - a team of allies and supporters. This may come in the form of social workers, the math teacher down the hall, teammates in the fine arts department, a PTA member, your student services administrator - possible allies are everywhere!  Please also check to ensure that if families need shovels and salt (they may have no idea why we salt the ice), they know where to find them. If families you serve live in apartment complexes where their landlords are

 During winter months ( December Chaos , Testing Season , Seasonal Affective Disorder ), there's a big need to unwind and co-regulate with students. During these months, I turn to fun and relaxing videos, various noise frequencies, and coloring pages (for both myself, and for those I serve!). Did you know you can create customized coloring pages from images you take? Crayola does the work for you, and it's actually quite easy. Just go here . You don't have to set up an account or anything (thank goodness), and you just upload an image and then have Crayola turn it into a printable coloring page for you!  For example, here's a photo I took of Mrs. Spina reminding students of one of their mantras - I CAN DO HARD THINGS! I just did a Word Art insert on a Google Doc , made the borders of the words super thick, printed it out, snapped a pic, and it's ready to upload!  Here's the original image of me (simplest backgrounds work best):  And here's what good ole'

 I keep seeing variations of the post on my social media feeds about the pure CHAOS that is teaching between Fall/Winter breaks (some schools still call these Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, even though not all in our communities celebrate these- so it may be cool to consider a more inclusive language shift here!). I appreciate the humor and the VERY CLOSE TIE to reality! December is hard! A lot of us educators, leaders, caregivers, family members, and school personnel are walking around especially dysregulated - and so are our students.  There are concerts, parties, shows, social gatherings, and more - all packed into a tight 3-week span. Our to-do lists multiply, and if you are also doing preparations for ACCESS testing upon returning, this can feel really overwhelming. What are some small moves that we can do to support ourselves and our students?  Planned Rest is an intentional move where we dedicate time (5 minutes here, 7 minutes there - or a full 30 minutes - do we have a ful