Musical Monday: I Love You Rituals

Let's face it: as teachers, we are pros at pre-season training... more so than those helmet-head NFL boys! We work so hard at getting the room, lesson plans, and various other things ready before the game begins, but there's a HUGE thing missing in our game plan... THE KIDS! Now, don't get me wrong, I wish I could've started in my room WEEKS ago and will certainly worry about what border I should use here and what basket to place there, but ultimately, those babies (and their parents) don't care about how your room looks. They care about if you will be caring.

I want to place a strong emphasis on developing a caring classroom this year. I was lucky enough to attend a workshop on Conscious Discipline and read this book over the summer:

Dr. Becky Bailey empowers her readers with an understanding of the brain so that we may be conscious of how our inner state influences our behavior and how our behavior serves as a model for the students in our classroom.
She speaks a lot about developing connections not only with our students but between the children themselves. She calls these "I Love You Rituals" because they are done everyday to build a sense of unity in your classroom.

I would love to show you a song I plan on using as an I Love You Ritual, but it's not available online. It's called "I Wish You Well" on this CD:

I was, however, able to find this video of Dr. Bailey and the song is in it! Here she is speaking about using I Love You Rituals with older children and explains her thinking on why it works. If you're interested in the song it's at 2:08.



So...
My heart to your heart, I wish you well!