Nurse Amy

This is a new adventure for me.  I have never read a blog, or even considered writing one.  I am honored with this, and I look forward to sharing information and ideas for supporting our families.

There are so many health related topics that I could share.  Upcoming Influenza vaccine clinics, immunization requirements, how to stay healthy in the upcoming winter months, concussions, eating disorders, I could go on forever.  I am hoping through collaboration, this blog will evolve into something helpful for families.   

So for starters, I thought I would start with our District word of the year: INSPIRE.  To me, the word inspire means many things. It makes me think about all that we do, that we say, how we act/react, how we influence others.   I think about my own children as well as the children at KRMS, how they influence me, and I influence them.   

Exercising and running are two activities I enjoy.  I have a few favorite running routes, but they usually involve a short drive from school to start the run.  Mostly because I did not want people to see me, running.  Then one day, a colleague said, ‘you should run from school.  Be happy that students and staff members might see you’.  ‘Seeing you run, may spark something in them’.  What a great way to motivate me, and possibly another person.  I was so focused on my actions while in school, it didn’t dawn on me, that I could be equally influential OUTSIDE of school.    

Being a part of a school district, I realize how front and center we can be.  I want to live my life in a way that might encourage my children, my students or my fellow staff to make a positive change in their life.  It might be as simple as smiling, and spreading some joy to someone who might need it.

My goal as the nurse of KRMS is not only to keep kids healthy while at school, but encourage them to embrace healthy habits out of school, giving them the foundation to grow up with a strong sense of themselves and their wellness.  I try daily to help kids assess their situation, use their resources and see what they can do for themselves before resorting to a “medical” intervention.  How much rest are kids getting, how much hydration?  Healthy food choices with a few fun ones?  How much social media exposure/screen time are they getting?  Any exercise?  I find so often, children are not eating well, they have a lot of down time, on some sort of device, and they don’t sleep. 

As an adult, I need to check in from time to time to rebalance my life.  I don’t always get enough sleep, I love Swedish Fish and buttery movie popcorn, and I spend a lot of time on my smartphone!  Growing, impressionable children, need us. As parents, teachers, school support staff, we are natural mentors.  Willing to inspire, by demonstrating a well balanced life, that sometimes needs to be tweeked in order to regain balance again.  Its ok to make adjustments, that’s life! 

So that was my opener.  Nothing too earth shattering, but hopefully some insight into who I am as a person. Hopefully this blog will be looked at as a way for you as parents to communicate with me, what you want to see for your kids.  Any health issue that is important enough for you to mention, is important to me.  This is a process we will tackle together.  Learning, collaborating and inspiring along the way!

Yah, But Why?

Remember when your child was about four years old and everything was a puzzle to them? Combined with this puzzle was an irrepressible need to know why, hence the “yah, but why?” refrain. Somewhere along the line, students stopped wondering, or maybe they still wonder, but no longer ask. There is also the possibility that your child still asks many questions. Either way, I would ask that you foster this type of thinking, it’s wonderful. Unfortunately for educators, some students seem quite rusty at wondering, and we as educators know that the Inquiry Model of instruction is a valuable strategy. Inquiry Model is a form of active learning that starts by posing questions, problems or scenarios—rather than simply presenting established facts or portraying a smooth path to knowledge. The process is often assisted by a facilitator. (wikipedia)

What we now benefit from in the 21st century is the ability to look things up in an instant. I know with my friends and family if there is ever a second that we can’t remember, who sings this song, what year did that movie come out, etc. we can check immediately with a “phone.” I know my phone is barely used for calling, and really is a hand-held computer. Teaching has hopefully evolved with the technology, and as such teaching students ways to navigate so much information successfully is our task.

Some middle school students would prefer to do work that doesn’t require a deeper level of thinking. Middle school teachers obviously ask students to do some surface thinking, recall what they learned last year, or show us the different features of a map. When the thinking gets more complicated and sometimes abstract some students are out of practice, don’t trust their ability, or simply do not know how, to hypothesize, draw conclusions, investigate, or revise. As educators we refer to these levels of thinking as Depth of Knowledge. The connection for me when it comes to inquiry based instruction is about the thinking needed to be inquisitive, and then to understand what to ask to know about something as fully as possible.

I read an article recently that made me think about all our students. I know that kids are curious. My question is do they know what to do about satisfying that intellectual curiosity? Teachers plan instruction to guide students in this personalized active learning. It seems to some teachers that students don’t know what questions to ask. I gave a couple of these teachers this article, but then while thinking about it, I thought, why can’t parents help from home too? I talk with many parents who ask about helping their students from home. While not all the suggestions in the article apply to both school and home, I thought a few certainly do, and if nothing else the conversations at home could shift a bit to foster the “yah, but why?” effect.

Take a look at this one-page article Five Ways to Strengthen Student Questioning, and because this blog strives for a back and forth dialogue, add any strategies you may do at home, and of course any questions (pun intended) are welcome.

Works Cited

Ascd. “Road Tested / Five Ways to Strengthen Student Questioning.” Education Update:Does Homework Help?:Five Ways to Strengthen Student Questioning, www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education-update/jan17/vol59/num01/Five-Ways-to-Strengthen-Student-Questioning.aspx.

“Inquiry-Based Learning.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, June 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquiry-based_learning.

Welcome to the Symbiosis blog!

Purpose

This is a new blog that we hope will serve our KRMS community, specifically parents, but students and community members are encouraged to participate as well.

This blog is a long overdue promise made to parents during an activity night conversation on social media and students.  The parents in attendance asked questions and shared their fears, concerns and parental practices in navigating social media for middle school students.

We had discussed how having a platform such as this would serve as a way to offer timely and two-way conversations on issues and topics important to middle school parents.  

Often parents are not able to attend school meetings because of work schedules as well as hectic lives raising children and all that this entails.

Our goal is to get this blog up and running with weekly posts from a series of professionals (admin, tech, guidance, and nurse) as well as allow guest bloggers to share their expertise.  Each blog will have a comments section where readers can add to the conversation and pose questions that we hope to answer or address immediately or in future posts.

Name Choice

The four KRMS employees who are committing to managing this blog sat at a table brainstorming names to represent or symbolize our blog.  We wanted to make sure that it didn’t feel like a top-down approach where we do all the talking and the readers do all the listening.  We wanted it to feel open and collaborative.  

After dismissing many options, our nurse thought of symbiosis.  The dictionary defines symbiosis as:

“Interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both.

A mutually beneficial relationship between different people or groups.”

This is definitely the metaphor that we were seeking.

Why Blog?

Blogging is a communication platform that has become very popular because of the ability to generate immediate feedback from readers.  It allows the readers to share their perspective and directly question the blog author.  This allows both the blogger and the reader to engage in a conversation that might never have occurred without this medium.

Communication using social media and technology tools is a goal of ours at KRMS.  Our work is guided by ISTE and their student standards. We believe that our students should learn how to navigate social media and become proficient, respectful and savvy users of these tools. We begin blogging with students in 4th grade where students write a simple book review and receive comments from a peer.  There are discussions on how to be safe, respectful and helpful with the actual blog post and any comments made.

Resource: ISTE. Used with permission.

I’m sure you have read news articles and seen comments that are inappropriate, off-topic and show no respect for proper grammar, sentence structure or punctuation.  We are working with students to teach them that thoughtful comments using proper grammar will go a long way towards having their message be taken seriously versus a poorly worded response.

The Plan

The plan is to create a weekly post that will be available on Monday with the blog author on standby to respond to your comments and input.  We have a representative from KRMS administration, Paula Mercier will be posting from that lens.  I (Laurie Prewandowski) am the technology integrator for KRMS and will be posting on various technology topics.  One of our guidance counselors, Kara Byrne, will be posting from the guidance perspective on the middle school years and finally, our school nurse, Amy Holobowicz, will be posting on health-related topics for our students.

We hope you will comment, add your voice, seek clarification and suggest new topics for discussion as we move forward with our desire to communicate, inform, challenge, be challenged and open a healthy, respectful, two way dialogue all with the goal of serving our students as they spend 3 precious years with us.

Your Turn

On the blog, there is a tab called Future Post Topic.  There is a form that allows you to suggest the topic of a future post or offer your services as a guest blogger in an area of your expertise.

Thanks for reading this post.  We look forward to hearing from you, serving you, providing our insights to you and working with you to navigate the middle school years in a symbiotic way.