Building Your Back-to-School Blueprint for Success
August 08, 2024
Ah, summer break. Lazy pool days, familiar book friends, relaxing getaways. The summer is an important time for all educators to refresh from a busy and impactful school year.
But soon, the days get shorter which means another exciting school year is on the horizon!
No Easing Into the School Year
Wouldn't it be great if you could just ease into the school year?
We know that busy educators like you have a billion things on your start of the school year plate, with a long to-do list. Add on the dreaded summer slide, and it's enough for even the most experienced educator to want to run screaming for the hills!
Thankfully, the start of the school brings something else - opportunity. It's a new year that is filled with ways to connect with your students and provide them with ways to connect with each other for a bigger purpose.
Build Your Community
The first few weeks back in school can feel like a blur. Everyone is trying to get back into the routine, and it can cause tears for teachers and students alike! One great way to help bring your class together during these hectic first weeks is by building a classroom community and culture fueled by philanthropy!
Philanthropy is not just about raising money (although that can be pretty darn cool, too). It's about creating connections, fostering empathy, and sparking a love for learning that goes way beyond textbooks.
But why is classroom community and culture important?
Classroom culture goes beyond bulletin boards and seating arrangements. It's the invisible thread that weaves together student behavior, academic engagement, and overall well-being. A positive classroom culture fosters kindness, respect, and a sense of belonging. Students feel safe to take risks, collaborate with peers, and approach challenges with a growth mindset. This translates to not only a more enjoyable learning environment but also improved academic performance and social-emotional development.
Your Classroom's Secret Sauce
Here's why philanthropy is your classroom's secret sauce for building community:
1. Connecting with Your Students:
Philanthropy projects allow you to peek into your students' worlds in a whole new way. What causes ignite their passion? What issues matter to them? This kind of connection builds trust and helps you tailor your teaching to their interests. Plus, you get to witness their compassion and their desire to make a difference – it's seriously inspiring!
2. Building Student Bonds:
Working together towards a common goal – helping others – is a powerful way for students to connect with each other. Sharing ideas, brainstorming solutions, and celebrating their collective impact fosters a sense of camaraderie and belonging. It's the perfect antidote to those first-day jitters!
3. Making Learning Meaningful:
Philanthropy projects weave real-world application into your curriculum. Students are no longer just memorizing facts – they're using their knowledge to make a positive impact. This creates a sense of purpose and relevance, that "aha!" moment when learning clicks.
Enter Project Heart
Philanthropy is a great way to connect to your students, encourage them to bond with each other, helps create a classroom culture and makes learning meaningful!
This all sounds great, you might be thinking to yourself, but I can't even think about where to start bringing these ideas to life.
We get it - and we're here to help.
Here are just a few ways to get started:
- Read Together: Check out our booklist with some of our favorite books about kindness and giving. Choose one (or three!) to read to your class or have them read in pairs, groups or independently. Discuss the book and how, collectively, you can breathe the same mindset of kindness, caring, helping, sharing and giving into your class every day.
- Creating a Giving Back Wall: Dedicate a bulletin board or wall space to showcase students' acts of kindness and giving. This can be a simple chart where students record their good deeds or a more artistic space filled with drawings and quotes. Seeing their contributions displayed reinforces positive behavior and inspires others.
- Classroom Bingo: Use this fun bingo card and have students get to know each other and learn more about their special talents and passions with this fun and interactive game. Who knows if you'll get some new besties in the making!
- Our Classroom Mission Statement MadLibs: Use our MadLibs activity to practice vocabulary and parts of a sentence while crafting an agreement that each student will be a part of, creating a sense of community and accountability to each other.
- "Getting to Know You" Philanthropy Project: Great for middle school students, this twist on the traditional "getting to know you" activities incorporates a service aspect. Have students research a cause they're passionate about and present it to the class. This fosters empathy, public speaking skills, and exposes students to different philanthropic opportunities.
Project Heart is our tried and true philanthropy education program and your one-stop shop for all of your classroom philanthropy resources. We have age-appropriate project ideas, lesson plans, and tons of teacher-tested goodies to make weaving philanthropy into your classroom a breeze.
The best part - all of the materials are absolutely free. Simply register to access all of the Project Heart materials, download the resources that you feel work best in your class with your students and adapt them to fit your needs.
So, this year, ditch the "summer slide" blues and embrace the joy of building a classroom community that cares. With a little philanthropy magic, you'll be creating a space where students learn, grow, and connect – and that's what makes your job truly amazing, right?
Let's get out there, make this the best school year ever and make a difference, one classroom at a time!