by Shelby Garrison, garris37

I looked around the WE site and found a few tools I found interesting and useful to teachers. One of my favorite and most interesting source I came across was about anti-racism. It was a powerpoint filled with information and even offers exercises to help educators.

I think this is a great tool for teachers, and this tool actually also helps with the SDG’s. Also in regards to our world at this point in time I believe this is a really important topic and teachers should get training on how to handle it. One of the exercises I found in this powerpoint I actually will save and use when I have my own classroom. It is very versatile and I can definitely make it my own, but it gives students terms and they need to piece together the definitions of these terms. It’s giving students the information they need, but doing it in a creative way, so it doesn’t seem as harsh.

Another plus to this tool is that there are exercises and information available for any age group of students. And some of these exercises even offer different scenarios to think about.

At the end of the slides, there is a list of other resources that can be used to support all kinds of other sensitive topics. This is awesome, especially for older teachers who might not know much about these more current issues (issues that have always been around that are now more commonly spoke about)

Mental Well-Being Module

This week, I decided to check out the “Mental Well-Being” module on we.org! This module focuses on mental health challenges that students face everyday and what teachers can do to help.

Tips in this module that I think will be helpful in my future classroom are to work with parents, reduce classroom stress, and to find the good and praise it. Working with parents is important because it will create consistency in working with students who struggle mentally. Reducing classroom stress is important because it won’t make the students feel so pressured. One way to do this is to assign homework due in two days rather than the following day. Lastly, finding the good and praising it is important because students struggling with mental and behavioral issues often suffer from low self-esteem, so it is important to make them feel confident about the good that they do.

I definitely want to take all of this into consideration in my future classroom. Many students have a stressful home life which can lead to mental health issues. I would want school to be their safe space and make the environment feel like a safe one for them. You can check out my screenshots of the module I viewed below!

Thanks for viewing! 🙂