CONNECT WITH CHILDREN AND FAMILIES IN REAL TIME
Below are articles to help shape a teacher's connections with children or families.
If taking learning online, check out the chart in this article that matches learning goals with online resources:
- Maintaining Connections, Reducing Anxiety While School Is Closed, by Jessica Minahan
- What I've Learned about Teaching Preschool Virtually, by Mattie Schuler
If taking learning online, check out the chart in this article that matches learning goals with online resources:
- Successfully Taking Offline Classes Online, by Catlan R. Tucker
If using Zoom, Skype or another online virtual platform
- Call a couple of children each day to say hi and see how they and their families are doing.
- Set up an open "come say hi" time where a teacher is on Zoom, available for anyone who can jump on and connect.
- Send a "thinking of you" greeting card to each child or family.
- Engage children with synchronous (at-the-same-time) online events or meetings. For Yom Ha'atzma-ut, consider suggesting that the children wear blue and white!
- Schedule a virtual t’fillah
- For a weekday t’fillah, as you normally have with your children.
- For welcoming Shabbat at home (ritual blessings, including blessing children traditionally and from the heart)
- Schedule a morning meeting (free accounts through Zoom.us).
- Plan your agenda
- Consider ways to create conversation
- Will you share a visual prompt? [video, picture, story]
- Will you ask children to find something in their house to share with everyone? [“Bring your favorite PJ library book or other Jewish book to show the others,” “What can you share that shows what your family likes to do with each other?” “Find a Jewish-something (or a Pesah-something.”]
- Share a story
- WIth a good storyteller
- With a book (either live or recorded)
- Schedule a bedtime reading?
- Offer a couple of fun family follow-up activities including a way to for them to share photos of their “work”
- With a twist, for example, share a story followed up by a MadLibs-type group effort
- Share a movie or video “together”
- Offer the link to an age- and content-appropriate film
- Schedule a couple of times for all group conversations
- Schedule an ask-the-rabbi time
- Choose an appropriate Nefesh activity from the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland’s Nefesh curriculum - it provides a toolbox for helping with teen (and tween) stress and anxiety. Free download: http://www.jeccmarketplace.com/nefesh/
- Schedule a virtual t’fillah
- Be class-specific
- Send an “I’m thinking about you” email every few days. Feel free to include one of the Pesah videos linked in this document OR find something that more specifically matches the content.
- Set up all-class challenges, chosen from At-Home activities webpage. Encourage families to share their work to a closed Facebook page, Google Doc or via a video-connection.
Powered by the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland