Newcomer Families and Winters in the Midwest

 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 aren't concerned with basic state compliance (like regulating heat, for example), families may be utilizing space heaters to help maintain a comfortable living space. If they are, please remind them to not plug space heaters into power strips. You might also also give them friendly reminders to double check their smoke detectors (again, I know landlords are not always compliant here - that's a whole separate issue!!!). See if your local fire department, or perhaps your town or village or city government would partner with the school and hand out free batteries or smoke detectors at your next family event. If one apartment unit experiences a fire, it can put an entire complex (of many, many families and human beings) in danger as well. 

Again, my apologies if this sounds obvious. I also want to acknowledge that no one teacher should be carrying any of this (or anything really) alone - so please enlist partners and teammates in these efforts. 

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Linked below are a few of my most-shared resources for newcomer students: 

            Before a newcomer begins school, share this with your classroom teachers to help monolingual students be great welcomers.

            Print these "I Need" cards in multiple languages.

            Print these 5-W cards in multiple languages.

            Print this tipsheet and resource for your school nurses.

More to come - but thank you for all that you do to welcome our newcomer students and their families.