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Annie Stiasny

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thank you I recently acquired ghost now growing up in Parker Colorado I never really dreamed that I would hold the title of goat owner or huerter if we're being formal my husband and I we just recently bought our first home and we were finally able to move off of school property Anna's house comes with goats chickens and in one point Kevin Yax now my husband he was strongly opposed to the idea of being a goat herder from the beginning but I always thought they're kind of cute right stuff to make me feed and water and take care of them by myself so that eventually I get sick of it and we get rid of them unfortunately for him his plan kind of backfired I began to develop a relationship with and I cared about them now I know you all must be wondering what is this crazy lady doing up here talking about ghosts a b right I'm a bit crazy but what I do talk about is how we develop relationship and how we can use those to make our students that are people now like these darn goats that I inherited in Dove Creek you see every student every day I feel like I need to emphasize that a little bit more in Dove Creek we see every student every day some of them were here today we can't escape them no. Cricket can be a really tough place to live but it can also be a really great place it's a tight-knit community so when one of their owners in trouble everybody rally together and helps them and support them in whatever they need I guess you could say that's a bulldog blue and gold runs deep in their blood generations of families have grown up here so as you can imagine stepping in as an outsider is I always the easiest task but in 2013 we decided to move from our home in Colorado Springs population 450,000 to our new home of Creek population 800 or 802 now what I didn't realize at the time was just how accustomed I would grow to living in a small town like Dove Creek when I was first hired Elementary level I was nervous about the kind of impact that I could have in such a small place what I knew that I could do was talk to people so that's why I started doing talking to people and developing relationships 100 fun with our student and with the community I guess you can say that's what really ignited my passion for mental health building a relationship and incorporating education so naturally I've always been in and the counselor so I've always been interested in this idea of social emotional learning to talk a lot about it today I wanted to be part of anything and everything social-emotional in my school and in the region so when we introduced entire K-12 curriculum around social emotional learning called Discovery I was in heaven we had four days of training on how to fit this program into our school and anyone who had any when was students was invited so we began to work and learn about creating a culture that we wanted for our students and we practice with tools that we needed to get there I think this was our first big understanding of at the Eleanor is that we were working on helping students to get to this point but we didn't stop and think about ourselves and how we may be us working on these soft skills can help our students work on these soft skills pretty much we introduced at the El program Discovery and we've been perfect and dovecreek ever since okay not really use Educators know more than anyone that you can it seems like that's awesome weapon planned out in your head where you visualize students learning and laughing and high-fiving you probably and then when you actually do the lesson the end of something like this hiding under your desk rocking back and forth and saying his teaching really the right profession for me it's okay we've all been there and as much as I'd like to say it was perfect it wasn't and so what we went in with smiling faces and we talked and pleat counselor voices and the feedback we got was quit being so fake or we heard something along the lines of so this teacher never talks to me then all of a sudden you introduced this program and I'm supposed to believe that they care it's not going to happen the student they weren't the only ones struggling the teachers question these new methods because it wasn't the traditional way that they were taught how they teach High disciplining students without hurting feelings this is a huge shift in education for it but it was a shift that we knew had to be made we saw that National Data suggest that kicking kids out of the classroom summative discipline Chile leads to lower graduation rates and higher disciplinary referral higher behavioral issues so sending to the way without having any kind of conversation with them actually pushes them more towards failure than now I told you that Dove Creek blue and gold runs deep this is the case in the education system as well research and data can speak volumes to you as Educators but can they old-timer next door that okay we're not going to punish students anymore but we swear things are going to be better is a different story people in Dove Creek do not like change and again your going against tradition if you try to do things differently than the way they were done back when I was in school this is what I imagine it sounds like back when I was in school mr. SWA I see how to paddle will call him mr. Slaughter here mr. Slaughter had a paddle and it was this big which holding it like this and any time you were out of line he pulled you out of your desk and into the hallway and he gave you a good SWAT Harbor Freight event that's what we need in our school more discipline well I don't know about you guys and I don't know who mr. swatter is you may have similar stories in your District but I'm already afraid of him our students they come from a tough population what I mean by that is over 50% of our students are underprivileged or come from non-traditional households meaning they're raised by a single parent or the guardian with an even higher percentage of our students are on free and reduced lunch Mister swatters paddle may have worked back in the day because there is a dialogue between the students and the parents and most likely between the parents the educator today it's largely our job to have these conversations to facilitate those relationships and develop them on both ends and a paddle in the middle of that doesn't always work it's hard to hit that self-actualization piece when basic needs are not being met we all know this I hear that our students are sheltered or they lack a real-world perspective but when I think about it more I don't necessarily that's the case I think that our students are afraid to go out and do afraid to fail because that unconditional support is not always there where is educators are with our students as they journey through life and we have to be able to say it's okay to go out and do it's okay to fail because I have your back and I'm going to support you and encourage you no matter what and I think the best way to do that is by first developing relationship and using SEL from the ground up starting in the elementary school so we talked to the parents and we heard their concerns and we moved forward with our vision of making students that are people what we realized in our first year of Discovery is that we were trying too hard to for social emotional learning down people's throats instead of letting teachers fit and mold it to their own personalities once we understood that we saw that relationships is the key to making social emotional learning work in your building and I'll go back to goats here you don't have to try hard to have a good relationship as long as you support them and encourage them and they know that you have their back you're good to go so we replaced suspensions with conversations and weave shared relationships instead of punished student and what we saw that it was is that it was a lot easier to talk to a student about their conflicts if you could just talk to them individually we began to focus on relationships first and developing those help to push our students towards success they care more about their education okay so I bet everyone is wondering what's the difference add Dove Creek improved what I can speak to is as a district for working hard to implement social emotional learning and put it as the foundation of everything that we do we are empowering students building relationships with them first and encouraging them to use that and move on in their education at the middle school high school level isee social emotional learning when we're able to offer more personalized strategies for students simply because we know more about them personally and we have a lower disciplinary referrals and I developing that relationship between the student and the teacher the kid still more connected with their teachers and with their education at the elementary level isee social emotional learning when a kindergarteners will hold open the door for you or when I first grader can step up look you in shake your hand and introduce themselves these are things that are happening in my district as some of you who have been there can attest to it and so like I said we're empowering students by first building relationships with them Clemson 16 and work helping them to become better people and you know what happens when we help students become better people they have kids who are better people and then the parents get upset and start working on soft skills and fell because they are sick of their kid handling conflict better than them and then what happens there is the kneeling over and they say Grandma quit gossiping around town you're going to hurt someone's feelings and once this gets started it's easier for us to facilitate learning in the community in our quality of Education improves in our students going down streaks we have a checklist for developing great relationships and making students better people although it may not be exactly the same in your dish each staff is very important number one get yourself some goats number to approach social emotional learning with genuine open mind help students to start their Journey Don't let them be afraid to fail and number three listen and be receptive to those students and they will return the favor

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Annie Stiasny

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