Students need positive relationships at school. I have witnessed firsthand as a parent, teacher, and administrator when this does and doesn’t happen. We had a year where our daughter’s teacher didn’t work to build a relationship. He went through the motions of being a teacher and we saw her effort wane as a result. She completed her work but you could tell she wasn’t as connected.

As many of our children have either started their school year or are preparing to return, we must be mindful of one big emotion…anxiety. You may observe tantrums or outbursts which appear to be out of the ordinary. Ultimately, it’s a manifestation of their anxiety and more than likely they are unaware they are feeling this way.

For context, resourceful would be defined as……. Resourcefulness can be a fine balance as many students choose not to ask for help because they don’t want to look stupid or they demand it which doesn’t always go over well with adults.

IEP meetings can be raw and emotional, especially when what a parent observes at home conflicts with what teachers see at school. It’s especially difficult to hear about your child’s deficits. It’s ok to disagree with the direction of the committee, therefore it’s critical to understand your rights and that of your child.

One of these responsibilities is ensuring your child is receiving the correct supports at schools. There usually comes a time when you have to reach out to the school with questions and concerns.

The year begins promising and you believe this is it and things are going to start clicking for your child. Then as predicted the concerns arise like a load of bricks falling from the sky.

Educators continue to be placed in an impossible position. As I have stated in previous posts, our education system is in massive need of an overhaul and should not solely lie on the shoulders of the educators. We are asking and requiring educators to meet an insurmountable task and have to acknowledge the stress and pressure that causes. This will and has led to burnout.

When a student continues to struggle with things like day-to-day readiness in the form of understanding their assignment notebook or assignments and homework within google classroom, have we assessed or reviewed why this keeps occurring?

Are you concerned about the progress of your child but do not know where to begin? The day to day grind of life presents us with different scenarios. For example, some parents get to the point of acceptance, becoming desensitized to the struggles and writing it off as part of life and learning. In other cases, every struggle is personalized, to the point of dreading their child’s homework because it has become such a battle. There is no right or wrong here, it’s understanding your reality in order to find a path forward.

It’s okay to acknowledge that life is hard and different right now and we are all trying to find our way through daily. Perhaps we could focus on grace and understanding instead of judgement. Maybe, instead of rushing to push our students back to what used to be, we embrace the different, focusing less on what we are missing out on and more on being change-makers.

All this talk across the country about “reopening schools” has me wondering, what does “reopen” really mean? Depending on where you live it means different things. Maybe it’s reopening schools to pre-pandemic standards or having students back full time but with the current safeguards in place?

Let’s commit to meeting our students where they are and not where we think they should be. We have to remember that not all children come to us with the same foundation and many will have significant gaps as a result of COVID-19 or were already experiencing significant gaps before the pandemic.

Parenting our children is one of the hardest “roles” I have ever had the honor to encounter. Having worked most of my career within schools, my experience had always been from the educator’s perspective. However, once we had children, I would join the other side of the table as a parent.

My area of expertise and pride point is focused around behaviors. I gravitate toward the students who exhibit the most outward of behaviors. It’s critical to understand that many students, regardless of having a disability or not, are communicating through how they behave. Really think on that for a moment and think of examples where you’ve seen that in your life.

We also need to recognize that some of our most vulnerable students have been “lost” during the pandemic. The United States has approximately 50 million students who attend public schools and of those, around 3 million continue to be unaccounted for since the pandemic began.