Hygiene News

01/15/21

One teacher from each St. Vrain Valley School will receive the Teacher of the Year recognition for their school. Two other teachers from each school will be honored as Teacher of the Year finalists. The Teacher of the Year for each school will receive a $100 gift card for classroom use. The recipients and finalists all receive a certificate of recognition during the Tribute to Teachers event in April 2021. From the school Teacher of the Year recipients, a district wide Teacher of the Year and finalists will be chosen. All St. Vrain Valley Schools are eligible for these awards!

Please click here to nominate a teacher.

All of this is so much easier said than done, but understanding the brain and the needs of our children (as well as our own!) further supports us all in doing what we need to be safe, seen and soothed!  A Happy and Peaceful 2021 to you all! Thanks to our generous PTO, we are able to get the Safe Touch program back at school this year, the week of January 25-28.  Students will receive this presentation in their classrooms, with the presenter joining via web-ex.  A letter giving parents the option to opt out will be sent home on Tuesday the 19th with students. If you want to opt out, please return that letter to your child's teacher by Thursday, January 21st.

We are so grateful for this kid-friendly, age appropriate education helping our students to learn about keeping themselves safe in different circumstances such as getting lost, or with strangers (“If you don’t know, you don’t go!”), about safe and unsafe touches, “stop, walk, and talk,” safe and unsafe secrets (the difference between a surprise, which is a safe secret, and an unsafe secret), and that they are the boss of their bodies!  

This wonderful presentation normalizes “emotions” (we all feel angry, sad, etc. even parents) but helps convey the need for us all to deal with our emotions in a safe way.  At school, in our work with the kids, we use the ZONES OF REGULATION to help kids understand their emotions:  

BLUE Zone = low energy- could be sad, lazy, bored, sick;  

GREEN Zone = “in control”  could be focused, happy, calm, peaceful, ready to learn; YELLOW Zone = “losing some control”- could be frustrated, nervous, scared, hyper, silly, excited; 

RED Zone = “lost control” - could be anger, fear, excitement.  

We work hard, school wide, to help our students learn to recognize what zone they are in (and how they know, physical sensations, cues, etc.) so that they can initiate some strategies to calm and stay in control, in order to make a conscious, clear decision about what they need to deal with the emotions or the  issue.  You can follow up and support this learning by helping to role model with your child how you know what zone you are in and what strategies you use to take your calming breaks.  We want our students to understand that feelings are universal- they are not good or bad.  But, what we do with those feelings is our personal responsibility.  Recognizing and calming before acting can help us all.

On this note, we have many resources in our new counseling website.  Additionally, here is a great resource for kids to take a “time in” in this link:

https://genmindful.com/products/time-in-toolkit

It is equally effective and fun to help kids create their own time in/calming plan and space.  

Another great concept from Dr. Tina Bryson, who co-wrote the wonderful book, THE WHOLE BRAIN CHILD with Dr. Dan Siegel, is the 3 S’s that kids need.  “To be SAFE, to be SEEN, to be SOOTHED.”  They need to know that it is SAFE to feel their feelings and that they are safe, that they are SEEN (validating their emotions by naming them to tame them), and that they will be SOOTHED and comforted.  This short podcast discusses this.

https://drhyman.com/blog/2019/12/26/bb-ep86/