With heavy hearts, the Leadership Team of the New Teachers Retreat has made the difficult decision to cancel the 2020 Retreat.  We were holding on hope that we could hold this year’s Retreat, because we feel our Retreat is as important as ever with the challenges and trauma that the virus has caused for so many.  Unfortunately, we ultimately decided it was best to hold off until July 2021 with the continued uncertainty of this year and the COVID-19 situation.

We are working together to continue to remotely support new teachers with online resources to come out over the next few weeks and months and hope to be able to do more in the fall.  We look forward to the summer of 2021 when we will return to Keene State College for the New Teachers Retreat. Until then, we encourage you to follow our social media pages for updates on ways to help new teachers and other resources. 

To our new teachers out there, you’ve got this and you’re doing great.  Even for our more experienced teachers, this is very different from how we normally teach and reach kids.  This is hard and that’s okay. We would all love to be back in our classrooms and despite this, it’s awesome to see teachers of all experiences rise to this challenge.  We are still here for you. Please let us know how we can help support you from afar, and we look forward to seeing you in 2021.

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As we enter August, it's that time again.  Back to school supplies have been on the shelves for weeks and our Southern counterparts have already started posting first day of school photos on our feeds.  We start wondering:

• Where did the time go? 
  
• What do I need to do before my students arrive? 
  
• What do I still need to know before I set up my classroom?
• What does it mean to set up a welcoming classroom? 
  
• What do I need to buy?  (And just how much money will I have to spend?!)
  
• How can I possibly be ready for the first day?  
  

In New England we still have a few weeks before we start a new school year and welcome our fresh-faced students, but before then it's time to get our classrooms ready for them.  If you are new to teaching or switching schools, this task can seem daunting, which is why we have written an eBook to help you out.  

The First Years Guide to Setting Up Your Classroom is packed with tips, tricks, guiding questions, to-do lists, supplies lists, and much more in its 12 pages.  This eBook is written by an organized teacher who knows that many of us just need to know what's possible and some advice on how to approach the task of setting up our learning spaces for our students (& us!) to be successful.  We're so proud of this book and can't wait to share it with you.  

We promise to not email too much, but we do want to stay in touch occasionally with news and support.  We're full-time working teachers, so we get it.  You have enough in your inbox to worry about us too.

If you’re like me, choosing a read aloud can be a real struggle. You want your students to be engaged, but you also want to expose them to different genres of books. Some books are so meaningful to some classes, but are flops in others. If you’re looking to spice up your read aloud with some new tried and true recommendations, NTR has your back! All of the following books are fourth grader and fourth grade teacher approved!

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,Just a quick tip today.  I have been working to increase the books in my classroom library recently and have been lucky to receive a small literacy grant from our school's local Rotary Club.  I'm at a new school and inherited a lot of older books in my library, bur I've been working to bring in new titles along with the books I brought with me.  The collection is starting to make the library shelves in my room more and more interesting. 

However, I wanted to highlight books and make it look more inviting that simply the spines of the books that typically crowd my shelves.  Also, since I do have some space on my shelves, my new strategy hides the space by making the area look more vibrant and exciting.  Win-win.  

This tip may be rather obvious to others, but it was a revelation to me.  Librarians have always known that the front of the book, not its spine, is best for catching potential readers' eyes.  Which is why I've given up some real estate to displays, because books are better when they're noticed and read.  ​We've been lucky to have all these books, but what good do they do if they kids don't know what's there?  

My last new addition to my library is the other recommendation tags.  I created a template that you can use.  It's a simple document that allows you to write a sentence or two to entice your readers to pick up something new.  I print them on bright paper to catch their eyes and hang them off the edge of the shelves.  

Hope you enjoy!
​Ali

My students are working on a project in class this week and next.  We've bee reading Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief in my 7th grade English class and for our culminating project for the unit, students are choosing an original Greek myth to reinterpret for a modern audience as either a children's book, graphic novel, or an illustrated short story.  The artistic element is just another way to communicate ideas along with the written work and we've been doing some drawing basics as mini-lessons this week.  It's been a lot of fun.  

Part of the challenge, however, is managing materials and supplies that my students use in class.  Enter my supply boxes...

October is one of the toughest months of teaching.  March often gets the attention for being tough - and I won't lie, it is.  But October is often overlooked for how difficult it can be.  The honeymoon is over with the kids and there is a while before the well-deserved breaks start happening.  Now that we're into November, breaks occur more often. 

With Thanksgiving around the corner, there's more rest built into the weeks to come as we close out the calendar year.  These breaks are important.  Of course you love your students, but we need time apart from them too.  If you're a new teacher, late-October and early-November can surprise you with how tired you are, but it shouldn't, because you are hard at work.  

And so are we.  We are busy working to get ready for the 2019 New Teachers Retreat.  As our Board gets together, looking forward to the year ahead, I wanted to share some self-care resources that will help others as the year continues to ramp up. 

Smiling Mind - www.smilingmind.com.au - Australian guided meditation website.  There are loads of recordings that are geared for people of all ages and grouped by age groups so that their meditation for 7 year olds is different than for 17 year olds or 30 year olds.

Go Noodle - www.gonoodle.com - Great for brain breaks in class, particularly aimed at elementary school and younger middle school kids.

Headspace www.headspace.com - Guided meditation app/site that is great for kids and adults - $ app, but well worth it to hear Andy’s smooth voice.

Mind Yeti www.mindyeti.com - Another great meditation app/site  for kids.

EDIT TO ADD:
Relax Like a Boss https://relaxlikeaboss.com/the-art-of-mindfulness/ - A collection of blogs about relaxation, mindfulness, and meditation. Free!

Extra bonus - you can use these with your kids too!  Which is great, because as the holidays get closer, many of our kids get really antsy.  Between the excitement, candy, and, unfortunately, for some of them, the anxiety of the holidays, they will really benefit from some mindfulness as well. 

Enjoy!
​Ali

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