Chandler School

the necessity of emotional support in our schools through affinity groups and the need for culturally responsive professional development opportunities similar to ones offered at the NAIS People of Color Conference (PoCC).

In her book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Beverly Tatum outlines a familiar circumstance that many Black faculty face when working in PWIs. “Particularly in work settings, where people of color are isolated and often in the extreme minority, the opportunities to connect with peers of color are few and far between. White people are often unaware of how stressful such a situation can be.”

As confirmed in my research findings, affinity groups are one of the few places in PWIs where Black faculty and staff expressed a genuine sense of recognition and appreciation. Affinity groups provide teachers who share a common identity at our school the opportunity to meet, connect, and support each other. The Black affinity group gatherings at our school can range from informal check-ins to more structured and facilitated conversations about stress management and teaching practices. As important as these meetings are, they are unfortunately infrequent.    

Educators should strive to create supportive atmospheres and equip their students with tools to independently express their areas of EF need. Educators can use what we call the “Four Tiers of Support” to set up this system in the classroom and beyond. They include: Teaching common EF language Identifying strengths and areas of need Setting up a classroom to support all students Teaching self-advocacy skills

I recommend asking the parent to complete the Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale for a quick, reliable measure of anxiety in young children who can’t necessarily express their feelings.

To help determine whether anxiety is impairing or interfering in children’s lives, I ask the following questions using the acronym FISH. (This can be applied to children of all ages.) Frequency — What is the frequency of the child’s anxious behaviors? Is it every day? Once a week? Once a month? Intensity — How intense is the child’s anxiety on a scale of 1 to 10? Severity — How severe is the child’s anxiety on a scale of 1 to 10? How long — How long have anxious behaviors occurred?

The following tendencies among children should send up red flags: Overestimating a threat: “I’m going to get COVID. I’m going to die.” Difficulty tolerating uncertainty: “I don’t know what’s going to happen if I go to school. What’s going to be there? I don’t know that I can handle it.” Underestimating the ability to control a situation: “I never will be able to handle all this uncertainly. It is going make me really sick to my stomach or feel like I’m going to die.” Feeling increased responsibility: “If I get sick and I get my parents sick, it’s my fault. They will never forgive me.”

But if you’ve ever wondered whether you’re doing and intervening too much, you’re not alone.

Many parents of students with ADHD wonder how to strike the elusive balance that offers support and encourages independent self-advocacy skills.

Enabling is doing something for someone else, without a plan to help them do it for themselves. Supporting is providing guidance and encouragement to someone as they learn to manage the task on their own in time.

Math, history, science, and even art teachers often find themselves trying to work literacy instruction into their classrooms. After all, the ability to read, synthesize, and explain concepts and ideas in writing is essential in every subject.

Commonly used literacy strategies that ask students to pause and consider what they know about a given topic or concept can be easily modified to better suit your classroom

setting aside time to identify the skills students need to learn and use to be successful in their specific content areas.

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