Maya McFadden Photos
BOMUS second graders in cup-stacking competition.
Special education teacher Rebecca Smith shows off hula hooping skills.
Hula hooping, dance parties, coloring, and team cup-stacking competitions helped the students and staff of the Barack H. Obama Magnet University School (BOMUS) decompress mid-school year.
BOMUS hosted its first annual SEL (social and emotional learning) Day this past Friday to combat teacher and student fatigue just past the halfway point of the 2022 – 2023 school year.
The 69 Farnham Ave. school hosted a series of workshops for its PreK through fourth-grade students and staff to have a day of less intensive academic instruction in place of learning real-life skills like teamwork and socialization.
“We watch and could see that our scholars and teachers are drained,” said Principal Jamie Baker-Vilsaint. “We all needed a brain break.”
For one open-gym style workshop students and their teachers learned to hula hoop and jump rope together. Others played basketball or bean bag toss in the school’s cafeteria.
Before two second-grade classes and a third-grade class commenced with a half-hour fitness-focused block, they were reminded to use the open gym period to build new friendships with their peers.
The sports zone workshop was led by part-time support staffer Jaheim Rehardy and special education teacher Rebecca Smith. “I want you to focus in here on being a good friend and making sure that everyone has someone to play with,” Smith reminded the dozens of young students before the workshop began.
Smith, who also is the school’s Planning and Placement Team (PPT) chair, suggested the idea for the day-long SEL event. “I was just thinking it’d be a pajama party but they went above and beyond,” Smith said.
Smith added that the goal was also to have a day when educators and scholars could take screen breaks and instead focus on improving their interpersonal skills. “A lot of them are still trying to find friends and we’re in February. That’s the part that we lost from being online, even the teachers,” she said.
Rehardy is currently a junior at Albertus Magnus College with plans to get his teaching certification. He has worked as a substitute teacher and part-time staffer over the past two years at BOMUS.
“It’s important for our scholars to tap into their emotions,” he said. “It helps them learn themselves and we get to better understand them too.”
In between jumping rope and shooting hoops, students used their imaginations to create their own games from the gym equipment.
On the second floor students gathered for a dance party in one classroom. Music and dance tutorials played on the room projector for students and teachers to groove to.
Second-grade teacher Whitney Breland showed her students some dance moves while dancing to the “Dance Bop Shuffle.”
Throughout the day in the dance party station students free danced, sang, played limbo and musical chairs, or sat back and relaxed.
On the third floor, Chinese language teacher Zhanyun Chen led students in a team building activity requiring them to work in groups to stack plastic cups into as tall a tower as possible.
Many groups began the competition by working alone to each make their own small cup towers.
That was until Chen, who has taught at BOMUS for 9 years, pushed the students to work together to use all of their cups to make one big tower.
“If they don’t work as a team they will fail, so this is a lesson we need to teach them,” Chen said.
The small groups worked through differing opinions and the occasional power struggle during the Friday activity.
At the half way point for the school day, students and teachers took a half-hour break in their classrooms.
Second-grade teacher Whitney Breland provided her students with pages to color while playing more dance videos on the room projector.
Breland graduated from Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) last year and is now a certified second-grade classroom teacher. Before graduating, she was a student-teacher at BOMUS.
She described Friday as a day for her and her students to “let loose and be kids.”
The SEL Day gave Breland and her colleagues a break from planning classroom lessons for the day. “It feels good to just get to take a breath,” she said.
While Breland often incorporates “brain breaks” on a daily basis in her classroom she said Friday helped her to better learn what her students specially enjoy.
When asked if she sees a difference in her students when they take “brain breaks,” Breland said there is a huge difference when her class decompresses during coloring or music breaks.
On Friday Breland said her students were “excited because they got my attention all day instead of battling for it in-between lessons.”
“When we can do something as simple as dance together it just makes us all happier,” she added. “I’ve learned over time that teaching is much more than watching kids and teaching math, it’s connecting and bonding with them, or they just won’t care.”
Breland continued that “we can’t forget they’re kids” and need to have fun, can get overstimulated, and can’t sit still for seven or eight hours a day, she said.
Ideally, Breland said, she would want a SEL Day on a weekly basis.
“It should always be clear to the scholars that we respect them,” she said.
"A Good Break From The Daily Grind"
In an effort to help teachers to decompress throughout the day, educators got two half-hour breaks and a lunch.
Baker-Vilsaint said due to this year’s February break being shortened, the school aimed to still give its students and staff dedicated time to de-stress. “A break like today will help to motivate kids and families attendance because they see we’re looking at all aspects of the child and respect their need to rest,” she said.
On March 17 NHPS will host its third annual district-wide SEL Day known as its “Day of Hope and Healing.”
The school also designated a workshop room to a SEL-focused teacher lounge. Throughout the day educators stopped into the lounge for a brief rest, snacks, and coloring activities to de-stress.
The room’s lights stayed off as calming nature noises played from the room’s speaker system. In one corner an aromatherapy misting diffuser filled the room with the smell of lavender.
While taking a lunch break in the SEL teacher lounge preschool teacher Angelica Trapani said she could “see and feel the intention and purpose” of the Friday SEL break.
STEM teacher Jason Ward added that Friday was also a “celebration of all the learning happening that’s not just academic.”
Ward said he thinks it’s necessary that schooling be utilized, in addition to academics, as a system to help students and educators socially develop.
“This is a good break from the daily grind of teaching,” physical education teacher Suzanne Winoski said while taking a break in the SEL teacher lounge with her colleagues.
Winoski, who led the Zumba station Friday, got requests from several students throughout the day to continue doing Zumba during gym class.
“They’re more responsive and all it takes is being able to dance, race, or pass the ball with their teachers and friends,” Winoski said.
Around 11:30 a.m., kindergarten teacher Theresa Lomax took a brief break from the day to do some coloring in the SEL teacher lounge.
“Our number one goal is to be helpful in the child’s full development,” she said.
Lomax added that she enjoyed interacting with her scholars for the day instead of doing any formal instruction.
“We get to be silly and it’s nice for them to be able to see us as humans rather than just teachers,” Lomax said.
In her classroom Lomax said she plans to incorporate more body movement breaks with her students.
Whitney Breland, Jamie Baker-Vilsaint, Melanie Thomas, and Jaheim Rehardy.
The day of workshops were hosted by BOMUS educators and community partners including NHPS substitutes, Title 1 parent liaisons, SCSU students and members of the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc.
Around 1 p.m. Friday Baker-Vilsaint reported that the school had zero behavioral incidents with students and described the inaugural event as a success.
Contributed
Phi Beta Sigma members read aloud to BOMUS kindergarteners.
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