Teachers Archives - Sound Discipline

Auburn School District’s All-Staff Wellness Day Lays Foundation for a Culture of Care

“SEL is about preparing students and staff for quality instruction, quality learning, and quality interaction, because that’s where we are spending all of our time.”

– Assistant Superintendent Rhonda Larson, Family Engagement & Student Success Dept

On September 1, Auburn School District provided a day of wellness training for all 2600 of their staff!

Thursday, September 1, we were thrilled to spend the ENTIRE day with Auburn School District Staff during their first All-Staff Wellness training day!

This district-wide day of wellness and staff training was planned and executed by a collaborative team at the district level. In the Family …

Classroom Routines Help Everyone

The start of the school year is a perfect time to co-create routines with your students! Routines help everyone get back into the swing of a structured school day. Investing thought, time, and energy into establishing routines creates a less stressful classroom for educators and students.

Involve students in developing, practicing, and improving classroom routines.

When you involve students in developing, practicing, and improving classroom routines, it helps ensure they feel a sense of belonging and contribution to their class community. Classroom routines and procedures also help increase engagement and minimize opportunities for misbehavior. This article from Head Start explains …

19Aug 2022 by Mary Power

Centered in Belonging: In-Person & Online Professional Development for Teachers

Connection, In the News, School Partners, Teachers

I love owls. I even collect them. Hence, when Sound Discipline launched our hybrid professional development program for educators in August, featuring Rooty Hooty, I got pretty excited.

Our ‘Rooty Hooty’ webcam

What is Rooty Hooty?

Rooty got its name from the first workshop where it was used — Rooted Relationships: Growing Equitable Classroom Communities. It’s a Meeting Owl, aka a fancy web cam made by Owl Labs. With a swivel-head, 360-degree camera and microphone, participants can see, hear, and engage easily with one another, even in group discussion.

Making community and connection accessible for all …

Focusing on Connection and Belonging this New School Year

Take the time to root down in your purpose and ground yourself before students come into your classroom, and you will be set up for a regulated and connected new school year.

We are all feeling a variety of emotions, from anxiety to fear to joy, as we gear up for the start of this new school year. Transitions are always challenging. But we may be feeling it even more given that the last three years were extremely unpredictable for school communities.

We invite educators to focus on connection and belonging as you are getting ready to welcome students back …

14Jun 2022 by Mary Power

Graduation – Sound Discipline’s Identity and Values

In the News, Resilience, School Partners, Teachers

It’s June – graduation season: These times are so precious and vital. Graduations mark the unfolding of our stories.

What is the story of the 2021/2022 school year? Heads nod when I sum it up this way; This was a year like no other. The return to in-person learning as the pandemic raged on meant doing the best we could under constant stress, strain, and uncertainty. Teachers and administrators worked harder than ever. Community partners showed up in creative and responsive ways. Families leaned in to support their school communities.

Our students showed the effects of isolation and …

Student-centered Ideas for Wrapping Up the School Year

As this school year comes to an end, you are probably feeling a range of emotions! Your students are certainly also feeling a range of emotions, from excitement to anxiety. You and your students worked hard all year building community, getting to know one another’s strengths and areas of growth, and centering student voice and agency. The end of the school year provides a meaningful opportunity to celebrate the community you have co-created with students.

So, as we transition to summer break, here are a few student-centered ideas to celebrate your classroom community to wrap up the year.

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It’s Teacher Appreciation Month and We See You

Teacher Appreciation messages from Sound Discipline Facilitators!

What a school year this has been! By many accounts, this year proved even more challenging than the previous two years, leaving many educators exhausted and discouraged. And yet, you keep showing up. You continue to be present and attentive to the needs of your students. Even though you may feel depleted, you keep dipping into a deep well of patience and commitment.

At Sound Discipline, we see you! We are grateful for all that you do. For Teacher Appreciation Month, we celebrate you for the heroes that you are!

Hopefully, your …

5 Simple Ways to Show Appreciation for Teachers (Anytime, Not Just the First Week of May!)

The first week of May is Teacher Appreciation week. It’s a great reminder to take a moment and show support for educators. They have such a profound impact on our kids and our world!

Ask any teacher and they will tell you that simple, heartfelt gestures go a long way. Here are several ways to show your appreciation, during Teacher Appreciation Week, or anytime:

1) Give them a handwritten a letter. In this difficult year, put your heart-felt thoughts in writing. What about your child’s teacher stands out? What does their work mean to your child and your family? Ask …

20Apr 2022 by Mary Power

Rooted Relationships

Connection, In the News, Relationships, Teachers

Everywhere I turn, now, I see the topics of trauma, restorative practice, and liberatory pedagogy, like mushrooms springing up in the deadwood and the decay of the factory model of education. I also see fear – of culturally responsive teaching, critical race theory, and even social emotional learning. The most neutral way to describe it is as a conversation about values. At Sound Discipline, we are in that conversation, about values, and about how to go deeper and be braver, how to show up with a vision that is big and powerful enough to meet this moment and accelerate change.…

07Apr 2022 by Mary Power

Orcas in the C’s at Lakeridge Elementary

Inspiring Stories, School Partners, Teachers

Lakeridge Elementary 1st grade Orcas who participate in the ‘Orcas in the Cs’ program.

For so many schools, it has been a tumultuous two years from school-on-a-screen to in-person learning. This is definitely the case for Lakeridge Elementary in the Renton (Washington) School District. For new 1st graders, school was in constant transition. Starting kindergarten on Zoom, they learned what it meant to be part of a classroom community through a screen. Later, when welcomed back into the school building as 1st graders for the first time in the fall of 2021, they began learning how to be part of …