My Passion Project

-

Comments

  1. Steven GuerreraJuly 27, 2020 at 12:32 PM

    Hi Rebecca,
    I enjoyed watching your presentation and the focus on social-emotional learning. This upcoming school year is definitely going to be different then any type of school year that most of us as teachers or students will be able to remember. With the amount of uncertainty regarding the pandemic, I think it will be very essential to focus on how our students are feeling mentally. Mental health is very important and I believe that students who struggle with mental health and intrusive thoughts as you mentioned in your presentation will have a difficult time with school. I think one activity that would be great for students would just to have an open discussion at the end of the school day and just let out whatever is on the students minds. This will give students the opportunity to let off some stress. As a physical education student teacher, I will plan on utilizing activities such as yoga to try and calm the minds of my students and get them to relax if they are feeling stressed which I am sure they will be feeling. Great job on your elaboration social-emotional well being, it definitely helped me learn more about it.
    -Steven

    ReplyDelete
  2. Frances VitaliJuly 29, 2020 at 7:27 PM

    Thank you, Rebecca, for your beautiful presentation on SEL and Mindfulness as you anticipate the school year with your 5th graders.

    Steven's suggestion about making time at the end of the day to share could be cathartic for students to release. Simple breathing exercises inhale to count of 5, hold for 7 counts and exhale for 9 counts.

    Of interest also from Edutopia are:
    https://www.edutopia.org/article/7-ways-calm-young-brain-trauma-lori-desautels
    https://www.edutopia.org/empathy
    https://www.edutopia.org/blog/bring-listening-circles-to-class-shane-safir

    When you implement these strategies this year in your 5th grade classroom, please keep a journal of your reflection of the process, progress, anecdotes, concerns, quanadries. Your insights may contribute to an article that others may benefit from reading about your classroom practice.

    Appreciatively,
    Frances
    Appreciatively,
    Frances

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to My Blog!

-
Image
Hello everyone! My name is Rebecca Caabay and I am pursuing my Masters in Elementary Education alternative route to licensure at the University of New Mexico. I am going into my second year of teaching 5th grade at Jefferson Elementary in Gallup, New Mexico. I am originally from the small, desert-city of Imperial, CA and I moved to Gallup shortly after I accepted my offer to join the 2019 Teach For America corps.  I am a University of California Davis Alumni and graduated in 2018 with my BS in Biological Sciences. From the jump start of my undergraduate career, I worked for Undergraduate Admissions as a Public Advisor and had the opportunity to work closely with mostly BIPOC students on the path to attaining a higher education. My passion has always been about helping others find their passion, and I am fortunate to be able to do that through education. I have dedicated years of service as a member of the Rotary family to create a lasting change in communities, along with making fr...
Read more

Visualizing Understanding

-
Image
1) How did you select the images and digit platform for your project?      Canva has been a reliable design and graphics website for my visual creations. For my visual I wanted the setting to be in the classroom because that is where most mindfulness education takes place, however, can also be expanded to the outdoors. I chose students sitting in a circle because this displays unity and the value of each student. (I would have rather liked to find a picture with the teacher also integrated into the circle as an equal). The thought bubbles display students releasing their stress/anxieties to focus on the present. The larger thought bubble overhead includes mindful terms I found that keep us grounded.  2) In what ways did creating the visualization deepen your understanding of the topic in ways that reading alone might not have?     While creating the visual I realized how our minds are constantly active with positive and negative memories. Some students' can...
Read more

Final Reflection

-
Image
     The past few weeks have been unimaginable in every way possible. Instead of neglecting my continuous thoughts on the world's current state of protests and dealing with a fatal, infectious disease, I decided to use them as a motivator to look further into this situation for my Passion Project. As a biologist, I have always been interested in symbiotic relationships in nature, thus naturally gravitated towards learning about the relationship between viruses, specifically the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and humans living through a global pandemic. Besides learning about the immediate effects of COVID-19, I was mainly concerned about the long-term effects. Through more research I discovered studies around childhood trauma from disease outbreaks is very new considering we've only recently been experiencing epidemics such as those in 2003 and 2011 related to SARS. Thus, not much planning or preventative measures have been put in place to help with recovery from a pandem...
Read more