So much Twitter love from my post about my walls this year. Y’all know how to make a girl feel good! I don’t have my lesson plans ready, and am not entirely sure what I’m doing on the first day (which is tomorrow) but hey, why not sit and write a blog.

So, for all who have asked, here are the pictures again, along with some files. Nothing is super-special, but it works for me, so maybe it will help you out too.

Be…not a new creation. It used to hang on the bulletin board on the wall on the way into my room. This year I moved it into the classroom into some “dead space” that isn’t good for much else–it’s too high to display student work and I don’t like to fill my walls with “helpful posters”. I added the Be You…But Be the Best Version of you to it this year. That is just adhesive vinyl I cut with my silhouette machine.  Sorry about the picture quality. I didn’t realize it was so bad.

Here is a pdf of the BE and adjectives. I just printed them onto white copy paper, trimmed the words down, and glued each one onto colored copy paper. Laminated, for durability and presto…a fancy little wall of inspiration.  BE

For the bulletin board in the hallway, I’ll be honest–I really was looking for something that I didn’t have to change. Ever. I strongly dislike making bulletin boards. So. Much. Work. So, I scoured Pinterest (don’t judge–there are some good ideas on there) and saw a picture of a bulletin board that said Take what you need…Give what you can. And had post-it notes all over it with positive traits or words of encouragement on them…stuff like “peace”, “patience”, “you’ve got this”, etc. The “Give what you can” side was for people to leave encouraging words for others. Last year, I did the “take” half and picked up post-its all year long. Every day. No kidding. They just didn’t stick. I really just did this on a whim, to get the board covered; I was quite surprised to see kids really take the words–I know some just did it to be cute, but several stopped me and said they really appreciated the extra encouragement.  I didn’t do the “give” half because, honestly, I wasn’t sure what kind of stuff the kids would leave behind and I didn’t want to have to police it.

So, this year I decided to “kick it up a notch”. Partly because a few kiddos really appreciated it and partly because I’m tired of picking up post-its.

take picture I selected a few traits that I thought the world could use more of and googled “quotes about…” each of those traits. I ended up at brainyquote.com and had tons to choose from. I picked some different quotes for each characteristic, copied them into a table, picked some fun fonts for each, and hit print. Cut those bad boys apart and stuck them in the appropriate envelope. So this year if you are in need of a little kindness you can just pick up a quote that will hopefully help you get through the day. If you want the quotes, here are links. Each word is a separate link. (Again, I used the silhouette and vinyl to make the purple letters).

confidence faith Hope humility kindness love patience peace self control

I really like the “Give what you can” idea, but again, am fearful of what some little darlings might want to leave behind so I combined that idea with another one I found–a Random Act of Kindness challenge.

Give picture

It’s pretty basic, and certainly not my original idea. But I’m hoping it gets the point across. We need to be kind to others. The challenge is to take a task, do it, then post to twitter using our school hash tag or send a picture for me to add to the board. I only used tasks that are free, just to keep it simple for my students.

Here are the “steps” to the challenge: Random Acts of Kindness

Here are the tasks I came up with: Random Acts

It’s pretty simple stuff–sit with someone new at lunch, clean up after someone in the cafeteria, give a shout-out to a lunch worker or a maintenance person or a secretary, stuff like that. I’m also hoping that kids will come up with other acts they can do and add to my list. That’s what the suggestion envelope is for.

I figure if even just a couple of kids get the message and spread kindness, or find the encouragement they need, it’s worth it.

Hope you all have a great school year. We start tomorrow with students!  And now I better go do some lesson plans.

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