Teaching Our Children About Their Cultures

My family celebrates Saint Patrick’s Day because we are primarily Irish. We wear green, enjoy a corned beef and cabbage dinner, and decorate the house with shamrocks, Leprechauns, and pots of god. We may listen to some Irish music and read Irish folklore. We also talk about what we value most about our family heritage.

Culturally Sensitive School Celebrations

During the winter months our students celebrate a variety of culturally sensitive holidays at school. These include Martin Luther King Junior Day, presidents’ holidays, and the Cesar Chavez holiday. Several also celebrate Chinese New Year, the Tet Festival, or Saint Patrick’s Day with their families. We write stories about favorite holidays and share details about how our families celebrate a specific holiday. Most students describe a special meal that was part of the celebration with culturally relevant foods and traditions. Many families typically invite relatives to these special meals and celebrations.

At the end of this cultural unit, students will write their version of their family’s bill of rights with a mission statement or the values of their family. When considering the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights protects the basic rights of community members. These include the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and worship. Here is an example of a family’s mission statement with some rights within a family:

Creating a Family Bill of Rights

Our family’s mission statement is to protect, respect, and support each other in our healthy development of individual family members. Our family’s bill of rights includes these 10 freedoms:

The right to be respected and supported by each family member
The right to have individual needs expressed and supported by family members
The right to express individual feelings and beliefs about a situation without threats of being ridiculed or punished for those beliefs
The right to attend school and participate in extra-curricular activities and team sports
The right to participate in age-appropriate social and physical fitness activities with friends
The right to participate in service learning, community services, community leadership activities
The right to go to church and participate in age-appropriate church sponsored social activities
The right to explore and plan for a career path and college preparation
The right to work in a job with school-supportive hours while also attending high school
The right to help family members with project-based learning activities

A Family’s Bill of Rights Impacts a Family’s Values

Whenever, we complete this project with parents and their children, families are able to focus on what their values, mission, and bill of rights are for their family. These provide guidance with goals of what they would like their family to achieve. Many families frame or post their family’s mission statement and bill of rights in a prominent place in their home. These become a motto for family harmony and a guide for family growth.

Much success as you celebrate your family heritage and identify your family’s values with a mission statement to support the development of your family’s bill of rights.

Mary Ann

Preparing Our Elementary Kids Return to School

It has been a year since many children in California and nationally have returned to a traditionally classroom since the COVID 19 pandemic. Many smaller elementary schools and school districts have successfully reopened their schools to students while enforcing clearly defined health and safety procedures.

Safe COVID Practices

Summarized below are best practices these schools use to ensure that their students are safe at school:

The school continues to share with families what the staff has done to ensure safe learning for students. Classroom teachers and the school’s administrative staff provide regular updates.
Students sit in socially distanced desks in classrooms.
They wear masks at school.
Students bring their own food and socially distance from others when eating lunch and snacks.
They bring their own hand sanitizer or soap for regular handwashing.
Many schools test students every two weeks to ensure they do not have COVID 19.
Most students continue attending school online two to three times a week as part of a hybrid learning model to limit the number of students at a school site each day.

How Are Kids Feel About Their Schools

As students return to school, they are:

Excited to visit with their teacher and classmates in person
Excel at school because they are so happy to be back in the classroom with other students and their teacher
Can receive added support more readily due to the many resources available to students at the school
Express more confidence about their computer literacy skills after logging into the online classroom daily, completing homework online, and learning to make a slide and take pictures of their work that they have emailed to their teacher
Appreciate the ability to work independently on the computer and in small classroom projects because of the training they received as distance learners
Are proud of the resiliency skills they have gained while sheltering at home and through distance learning
Are able to demonstrate various strategies they have learned online on how to reduce stress and anxiety while completing new computer applications.

Home Sheltering Successes

May your children celebrate the many computer literacy skills and self-resiliency skills they have acquired while sheltering in place for nearly a full school year.

Joyce

How We Help Our K-12 Children Manage Money

It is a new year with opportunities for growth and understanding for all. Many families redefine chore responsibilities with the start of each new year. Families also discuss the relevance of an allowance to help their children learn how to save for treasured purchases. Some families provide a weekly allowance for being a family member while others tie the allowance to a list of household chores. Many families also encourage their children to take on significant household responsibilities that may include weekly grocery shopping, yard work, painting, and housecleaning to earn extra money for specific needs they may include hobbies, sports camps, sporting equipment, school sponsored club trips, and clothing purchases. For example, some students start making crafts for crafts fairs or sell their products on online websites.

Middle School Student Money Management

Middle school students can expand their financial literacy by:

Managing an annual clothes allowance with agreed budgetary items or requirements
Learning to manage a cell phone plan and allowance
Managing a savings account for college that may include learning about various savings investments (e.g. certificates of deposit, U.S. Savings Bonds, and mutual fund investments)
Supporting neighbors and friends by babysitting, dog walking, selling baked goods, and providing computer support services

High School Student Money Management

High school students can also support the family by:

Supporting the use of a family car by paying for gas, car maintenance expenses, and the increased premium for auto insurance
Getting a summer or after school job to save for college and pay for added clothing, entertainment, hobbies, and sporting activities
Research the cost for various college and career preparation programs and contribute to their college and career savings plan when earning money
Managing the family’s weekly food budget
Planning and budgeting for various family outings and trips
Learning how to write a grant and apply for funding for a school or community service need
Explore various investment options to contribute to the college and career fund
Working with their parents to understand the family daily, weekly, and monthly household budget to prepare for an independent college and career life after high school with clear expectations of what is costs to go to various colleges and live away from home

Self-Reliant Children

As we partner with our children to manage money and guide them in the process, they will become self-reliant and resilient when overcoming various financial setbacks and challenges. Our goal as parents can be to help our children become capable money managers by the time they are 18 years old. This means they have reasonable expectations of what daily life costs are and how they can manage and support their family with these costs when they start an independent college and career life away from home.

Much success teaching your kids about money management!

Mary Ann

How to Help Our Elementary Children Learn Online and Write Stories

Many parents and students continue to struggle with remote learning. As a substitute teacher/tutor for second grade students using the Google classroom platform, I provide literacy writing units for students and tutor them in reading and writing. I also help students understand how to use their preferred learning styles when tackling difficult subjects. For example, one of our students loves to sing her math solutions. Other students love to calculate math solutions. Still others write and describe the steps to solving math problems as they complete the computations. When teaching students how to write about a topic, we provide students with options on how they can complete their assignments.

Writing Tips for Students

Here is an example on how students can own their writing successes on learning about the Air Quality Index (AQI) based on our newly published Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies for All Learners book:

The teacher lists the reading and writing learning intentions and academic standards that are being used for a writing activity on how to use the Air Quality Index in their daily lives.
Students read and discuss a story about the assigned topic. They can learn about extreme weather and how thunder and lightening storms can create fires and smoky air that is hazardous to their health. They can also learn how to create an evacuation plan for their family and how to read the Air Quality Index each day before going outside to play.
Three options are provided on how students can create a reflective five sentence paragraph about the story. They can (1) draw a picture and then write a story, or (2) draw a series of pictures that illustrate the story and then write a sentence under each picture to complete their paragraph, or (3) use the voice dictation feature on their computer and then edit the story.
Students will write a reflective paragraph that can include the following sentences:
1. A sentence that introduces the topic
2. A sentence that describes how they can use the Air Quality Index in their daily life
3. An example of what they can do outside with the knowledge that the air is safe
4. A second example of how they can use the Air Quality Index for outside activities
5. A concluding sentence about they learned and the importance of the Air Quality Index in their daily lives
Students review an example paragraph or write as a class an example paragraph that includes the #4 sentence prompts.
After students write their own paragraphs, they can read them to the class and reflect on these questions:
1. What did you learn today?
2. What worked for you when completing this activity?
3. What did not work for you?
4. How will you use this activity for other learning assignments?
5. How can you use this activity in daily life?

Much success as you support your children’s writing successes!

Mary Ann

One Word Challenge

Recently, I’ve received a challenge to select one word to sum up how I’m feeling or to choose one word as my focus for the new year. This challenge was new to me and honestly, it’s a bit intriguing, too. Hmm…just one word, huh? When we reflect on 2020, there were many new words and phrases introduced, wasn’t there? Bear with me a bit while I list through some words that have frequently surfaced in news headlines or social media posts.

Pandemic.

Unprecedented. Over-abundance of caution. Social Distancing. Mask. Work from home. Toilet paper shortage. Hand sanitizer. Essential worker. COVID-19. Hoax. Chinese-virus. Vaccine.Public Health.

Frontline doctors and nurses. PPE. Flatten the curve. Quarantine. Stay at home. Shelter in place, lockdown, curfew, mental health, social bubble.

Distance Learning.

Learning Pod, hybrid learning, blended learning. Asynchronous and synchronous learning. Opportunity gap. Zoom, Zoom fatigue. Google Meet. WebEx. Google Classroom, hotspot.

Racial Injustice.

Justice for George Floyd. Justice for Breonna Taylor. Black lives matter. Protests, Rioters. Central Park birdwatcher. Karen.

Politics.

Census 2020, Elections, Voter fraud, Electoral College, Stimulus checks. Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Kamala Harris. First female, black, Asian American Vice President of the USA.

And yet, despite all that surrounds us, the human spirit continues to rise above adversity. Consider these powerful human descriptors and attributes:

Generosity

Yearning

Motivation

Integrity

Joyful

Courage

Zealous

Hopeful

Determination

Inspired

Blessed

And so, dear Reader, I pose the one word challenge to you: what is one word that sums up how you are feeling? Or one word that will be your focus for the new year? What is one word that you might add to my list?

Wishing you a wonderful new year,

Jaime