Yay for Y!

Yay for Y!

The letter Y amazes me. It allows us to ask a question while texting, saving a whole two letters (man, my thumbs love that break, don’t yours?); allows us to learn the 25^th letter of the English language while watching Dr. Donald ‘Ducky’ Mallard do his amazing work on NCIS; takes on the challenge of acting as a consonant or a vowel – impressive resume, right? – and lets me celebrate with my Yay! response to students!

As an educator, I keep hearing how I need to tell students what they can and can’t do…and, unfortunately, that often turns into more telling kids what they can’t do rather than what they can do. I think it ends up being a self-preservation thing and almost an easier way to help sent boundaries for students to be safe. I’ve never really liked it, though, and yesterday and today I got to experience a training that I think will help me and my coworkers turn the ‘you can’t do this’ response into ‘you can do this other thing’ – which makes  me incredibly happy. Yes, making changes, especially this late in the year, does lend to the possibility of more resistance than we’d expect otherwise, so we’re taking a slightly different approach. Instead of changing all the rules from random to common ones this year, we’re just going to add a couple new games this year, get the kids excited, and show us all – students, staff, and community – that this is going to rock!

I love being able to say yes to students when they want to do something. I know I can’t always do that, but when I can, the warm fuzzy that fills me when I see the student(s) smile – is amazing! I’m hoping that this new program will help us get more yeses going on, which will then lead to celebrations and my beloved ‘yays’ – this is going to work, I know it! I’m not going to say a massive amount about the program right now, since I’m new to it, and can’t really give a whole lot of information, but I will say that the program is called Playworks – and can be found at www.playworks.org. Our trainers were Michael and Lynn, and they were completely wonderful. They said I can spread the word, so I am. I have a lot of hope for this program merging into our school’s community and culture, which feels absolutely stupendous.

Students – especially the young ones like those I work with – need boundaries. These boundaries help students feel safe and secure, which leads them to feeling better about themselves and more likely to try new things with new friends. The fact that the program will help us feel more success with making game rules the same across the board will ease stresses over the years as different staff members work with different students as those students grow up through our grades and new members of our community come in – we hope this will help alleviate the fears that so often come with joining in on the playground at a new school.

If we can get students engaged, we can help them learn more and more – about themselves, others, and all kinds of other great areas – and become learners for Life. That alone is work the biggest Yay I can give.

YAY!

What makes you cheer – what’s your Yay today?

J