Even during a regular year, the end of summer and beginning of fall marks a big change and transition for a lot of educators. Preparing your curriculum and classroom setting, as well as anticipating your new group of students, are enormous tasks that require a lot of time and energy. But this year, the back-to-school transition feels especially big, considering all of the changes, challenges, and uncharted waters you’ve navigated over the past 18 months! If you’re anticipating higher levels of school anxiety and first-day-of-school jitters in your students, we’ve got some new tools and resources to help you boost your social-emotional curriculum.
But First . . . You
Considering the past year you’ve had, we hope you’ll savor your summer days before you open your classroom doors this fall. In the weeks ahead, what’s one more thing you want to do before the end of summer? Whether it’s a walk in the woods, a dip in the pool, or something else entirely, we hope you can soak it in fully before heading back to the classroom.
Online teaching, hybrid teaching, technology snags, and more: we know you’ve been through a lot this past year and may have had moments of feeling confused, scared, angry, and defeated. So in addition to savoring the last of your summer days, we also hope you’ll make space to express your feelings about what you’ve survived and grieve what you’ve lost this past year. We find journaling, making art, and talking with fellow teachers to be helpful for processing.
As you look back at 2020 in the rearview mirror and look ahead at fall 2021, what are you looking forward to? What excites you about the upcoming school year, and how do you want to prepare your classroom? We know this is one of the fun parts of being an educator, but we also know it’s a lot of work! As fall approaches, you might be anticipating higher levels of school anxiety and first-day-of-school jitters in your students. We’ve got some tools and resources to help you prepare and strengthen your social-emotional curriculum.
New Tools to Tame School Anxiety
We’ve got some new tools and resources for you as you plan for the year ahead and set up your classroom. Our curriculum is built with a trauma-informed approach, uses a variety of instructional methods, and supports an array of social-emotional skills and topics offered across multiple domains of development. A snap to modify and easy to adapt for distance learning, the Slumberkins curriculum was developed by a team of teachers and educators with experience in Early, Special, and Elementary Education; School Psychology; Child and Family Therapy; and Children’s Mental Health. Our online store offers a variety of books, tools, activities and lessons, classroom supplies, and decor.
Slumberkins' Sloth teaches lessons that reinforce the importance of learning and practicing routines and taking care of oneself. Students who understand the classroom routines, procedures, and agreements feel more secure and confident taking on responsibilities and appropriate learning risks. Bigfoot’s lessons support students in building self-esteem, a crucial component in social-emotional wellness. Otter's lessons are all about how to build a classroom community and strengthen connections between community members. Hammerhead’s lessons are a vital part of any social-emotional curriculum, addressing the most urgent of classroom needs: conflict resolution. Slumberkins’s curriculum for conflict resolution draws from the most recent brain science of emotional regulation.
We know many teachers agree that school readiness is mostly based on social-emotional skills and less so on academic skills. When kids have the emotional support and skills to cope with big feelings and big changes, they are better prepared to learn in your classroom.
Let Sloth, Bigfoot, Otter, and Hammerhead help you create your ideal environment this fall and ease some of that back-to-school stress through the power of social-emotional wellness! Enjoy 20% off when you sign up for our Educator Membership now.
