Calm Parenting Podcast - Teachers: 10 Back-to-School Tips & COVID Ideas

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

Visit CelebrateCalm.com/Teachers to watch Kirk’s 30-minute video showing teachers 10 ways to handle meltdowns, blurting out, disruptive behavior, sensory issues, and unmotivated/entitled students. Email [e-mail] or call 888-506-1871 to schedule a training for your school!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Calm Parenting Podcast listeners get an exclusive 20% off an IXL membership when you sign up today at ixl.com slash kirk. Visit ixl.com slash kirk to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. Most of us have a hard time getting like one or two kids to actually listen to us. Now imagine having a classroom filled with 20 or 25 kids, half of whom are addicted to Fortnite, and trying to get them to listen. That's what it's like to be a teacher. And now we're taking an already difficult job and we're making it even harder because this coming school year is going to be odd. It's going to be weird because some school districts, it may be totally online learning.

Some are going to be like kids come once every two weeks. Locally, they're thinking about kids come once every three weeks. So how are you going to keep those kids engaged, right? That's going to be a tough thing to do when you've got kids who already struggle with anxiety, who need a lot of order and consistency, and now they're coming to school once every three weeks. I mean, remember when we were kids and you'd have a snow day, it would kind of ruin the whole week, right? So that's what teachers are up against. That's what we're all going to be up against because we all have these kids. So how do you handle that? That's what we're going to talk about today. And I'm

going to try to make this a very brief Calm Parenting podcast, but welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. I'm hoping that a lot of parents will share this with their school, with their teachers, because I want to give you some practical tips for teachers. And so if you don't mind, share this because we also have created a special web page. It's celebrate calm.com. That's our website. And then you do that forward slash thing, teachers, T E A C H E R S. And on that page, I recorded, we took a 35 minutes of our professional development program video in which I lay out, I don't know, 10 or 15 ideas in that clip of things you can do to help with behavior in class, in the classroom,

motivating kids, all kinds of different things. It's free. It's right there on the website. And I hope that it helps some teachers. And then also, if it looks interesting or if this is interesting, then definitely reach out to my son. His name is Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, CelebrateCalm.com. And schedule. We're doing professional development training. We're doing it in person, but most of it now is going to be via Zoom or prerecorded sessions. And we can work with you on budget.

We want to help as many teachers and prepare as many schools as possible for this school year. So let me give you three or four ideas very, very quickly of how to help these kids. So we talked about kids who have a lot of anxiety, kids who struggle on a normal basis, and now it's going to be even kind of weirder. So a couple big ideas. One is, teachers, I encourage you to give these kids jobs to do. And you're going to have, you know, a class of 20, 25 kids. You're going to have 5, 6, 7, 8, maybe 10 kids who are really, really challenging, who struggle in school for a variety of reasons. And so giving them a job to do so that when I see my teacher, okay, once every two weeks when we go back to school, I've got my job to do. Because my teacher said, hey, man, you are really good at doing X because I like using kids' gifts and talents. Use a strengths-based approach.

Say, look, when you come in every morning, here's what I need your help with. Just make up jobs. They don't care what you ask them to do. These are kids who love helping other adults. They like feeling like an adult. And if you use the word, hey, I could really use your help, extremely effective for these kids. And what I want them to know is when I get up in the morning, I'm not going to be anxious about social skills and about making friends and about that test I have and about being called on to read in front of everybody else.

I've got my job to do. And I know that when I do my job, I do it really well and I feel special. And my teacher always says, hey, that's a good job. And I don't care if this is everything from preschool up to high school, give them jobs to do. Teachers, I encourage you also develop some traditions. We talk about this in our curriculum. Rules are fine. Rules are good. But rules tell you what not to do. Traditions have the advantage of telling you what to do. And traditions are very grounding, right? Because we all have traditions in our life that we like a lot. And I would encourage you to have a tradition. So every Monday morning when those kids come back, either from a weekend, a long weekend, or from being at home for a week or two, there's a tradition that you have.

So that they have something to look forward to, something that's grounding, something that's the same every single time. Now, for little kids, it can be a little bit more fun, right? You may do some kind of treasure hunt. You may have the kids even do a thing where they come into the class and you say, okay, I'm going to step outside for a minute. You guys have to hide whatever it is you want to hide in the classroom. And then I have three and a half minutes to find it. And they have to yell like getting hot or cold. Little kids love that stuff because they love stumping adults and it makes it kind of fun for them. And there are other

traditions you can have in your classroom, right? You can do everything from like, hey, I know you may not like this one, but it's an idea. And I like to throw out ideas of for older kids when they come back, maybe they do a little TikTok contest and you give them five minutes to reintegrate back into the class environment. You may hide something for little kids in their desks so when they get back, they have to look forward. They have to look for it. And you're just creating some kind of tradition.

It could be that you just go outside and you walk and you let the kids talk to each other and talk to you. With older kids, you may just give them seven minutes to just talk and share what's going on and get their anxiety out. And you can be that calm, reassuring leader. The idea is it's consistency, something to look forward to. Now, getting kids to stay connected, because here's the hard part. You're going to have a certain amount of kids. Let's say 80% of the kids, I'm being generous, are going to be really conscientious. And they're just kids who will do their online schooling. You don't have to follow up. You don't have to ever follow up

because they're just conscientious kids by nature and they like school and they're good at it. And so they're going to do all of their work and you don't have to worry about them because they're kind of self-motivated and it's not that hard. But then you have a few kids in your class who struggle with school for various reasons. And in that video that's free, CelebrateCalm.com forward slash teachers, and in all of our programs, ADHD University, the Strong Willed Child, and the other ones, we give you lots and lots and lots of tools to how to jumpstart their brains, right? And how to get them to learn more effectively and process information more effectively and remember to turn in their homework and focus and attention.

We go through all of that. And just so you know, if you go to our website, we're keeping the Christmas in July sale on all through July. We were going to do it for two weeks, but we decided let's just do it for a month because July lasts for a month and it's on sale. And so you can get all those tools if you want. If you need help, just contact Casey. But you've got these kids who really struggle. And so what happens with them if you're doing online learning is they're going to fall behind because they're not naturally conscientious with it. And what's going to happen is they're going to get overwhelmed.

And once, see, most of the defiance you get from your kids is not because they're defiant. It's because they get overwhelmed. They fall behind. And they're like, I'm already so far behind. Why would I even try anymore? So I encourage you with a couple things. One is create small wins. Break assignments, projects into smaller pieces for those kids. And is create small wins. Break assignments, projects into smaller pieces for

those kids and get a small win. Have them look even at the beginning of the school year if they have to read a book and do an essay, let them read a book they're interested in. Anything. Let them start with a win. It is very difficult to write an essay about something you're not interested in. And all I really want anyway is for kids to learn and to love, be curious and love learning and love to read and love to write. And so at the beginning of the year, let's let it be a success. I don't care what you write about. Just write about like three reasons. I'm I'm so good at at fortnight or at There are building with my Legos. I don't care what you write about as long as you're curious about it and you write well

create successes create wins and I'll show you in that video how we create successes quite a bit because Success breeds success And if kids feel like they're being successful, they'll keep going and they'll keep going and they won't fall behind. And then the other thing I would encourage you to do is connect with them personally. This may sound like kind of a no-duh kind of thing, but it's really, really important. Your strong-willed kids often feel like everybody's against them. They have a very defensive nature because they are different, and they feel different, and they don't always fit in with their peers. So they struggle. And at home, and I know there are parents listening, but at home

they're getting in trouble. They're kind of like the bad kids sometimes. And so they feel like people don't like them. And so you'll even notice the first day of school, if they think the teacher is being too harsh or too negative, they'll come home first day of school. My teacher doesn't like me. And then you kind of lost them. And so I encourage you be patient, but connect with them personally. And it's not that hard. Ask them, right? When you haven't seen them for a little while, ask them about their favorite pet, about their Lego project that they've built. Ask them about their favorite, what they're listening to in music.

That can be older kids. You can ask them about anything that they've mentioned that they care about. Because if you ask them something personal and take an interest in them personally, I promise you they will work harder for you if they think that you believe in them. And I know the instinct for us as parents and teachers with strong willed kids and kids who resist is just, you know, you need you know, you need to do your work. It's not my job to babysit you. It is your job to do your work. And if you would just apply yourself, you're more than capable of this young man. And those kind of talks will work for your more compliant kids, but they don't even need it. But that kind of talk and that attitude with the strong-willed kids

will actually cause them to shut down more and purposefully resist us as adults. I know it's our instinct to go that way, but I would encourage you, especially at the beginning of the year, form that positive personal connection because these are kids who do want to please people. Now, they are oppositional by nature, but they do want to please. They just don't often know how, and parents, this is for you, they often feel like no matter what I do, my parents or teachers are never happy with me. So they start to internalize, why would I even try because it's never good enough? And you compare me to my classmates and my peers and my siblings.

And so why would I even try? So I encourage. So let's wrap this up. Come up with a tradition or two so that when the kids come to your classroom, they know what to expect. And if you can make it something fun and something engaging, all the better.

Give these kids specific jobs to do. So when they wake up in the morning, they know, oh, my teacher needs some help with this and I'm actually good at that. So you're creating a success for them because they're not always good at doing regular school stuff, but they're usually really good

at doing other things in life. Find those other things. Find their gifts and passions. Use that. You will get them engaged. And I encourage you, connect with them over something personal. It can be anything.

When my son was little in second grade, he played ice hockey. He slept with his ice hockey stick in his bed. And so I told his second grade teacher, his name was John, I still remember, hey, if you just mention ice hockey and ask how his game was, you will own my son and he will love you and work hard for you. But if you don't, then you're gonna get the opposite. Connect with them, create the small wins. If we can help you, reach out to us. You can email our son, Casey, C-A-S-E-Y

at celebratecalm.com. Go to celebratecalm.com and then that forward slash teachers. In fact, we'll put that right in the banner, right in the main menu of the website. There's a free video there. It's 35 minutes, and I do a lot more examples that you can use in the classroom that are really helpful. And if we can help you, and if you want, for parents, I would forward the podcast, forward that webpage to your child's teachers, to the school, to the school district, to the principal and say, hey, take a look at this, listen to the podcast because we think these guys can help you with training of the teachers. We've done this for 20 years. Our

training is exceptional. Teachers actually really love it because it's very, very, very practical and we make it fun as well, which is very unlike professional development. Hey, we can work within your budget. We can help you. It's what we live to do. So just let us know if we can help you. But thank you all. Thanks for being good parents, engaged with your kids. Thank you to the teachers for giving your life to doing this to educate our children. If we can support you, let us know.