DCSD Healthy Schools

December 2019

Thank you for being the messenger of how important the role health and wellness play in overall happiness, well-being, and productivity. We can't thank you enough for a fabulous 1st semester and we are already looking forward to a Healthier and Happier 2020!

Upcoming Trainings

SafeTalk: This free course can really help guide you through some difficult conversations. Suicide is a public health issue and is preventable! Learn how to talk about it and help create a suicide safer community! safeTalk is a training that prepares anyone over the age of 21 to identify persons with thoughts of suicide and connect them to suicide resources. Lots of choices on when and where to take the training. Go to InspirED to register, bring a colleague!

• Wednesday, January 15, 2020, 5 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. DCSD West Support Center, Mt. Evans B 
• Thursday, February 6, 2020, 5 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. | Sagewood Middle School Library 
• Tuesday, February 11, 5 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. | Highlands Ranch High School Library Conference Room 
• Wednesday, March 4, 2020, 4:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. | Rocky Heights Middle School Library 
• Monday, April 6, 2020, 4:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. | Castle Rock Middle School Library 
• Tuesday, May 5th, 2020, 4:45 p.m. - 8:15 p.m. | Mountain Ridge Middle School Library

Kim Bevill online classes

FREE PD: Free for all! John McKinney, a retired DCSD teacher, and brain wizard, recently published his own website about teaching and the brain.  It has some insightful information that may be helpful in planning PD days, topics for PLC, and overall professional discussions. 

Mindfulness

It may seem weird that a blog is recommending a blog, but Empowering Education has some fabulous articles.

                                    

Stop, Breathe, Think is looking for classrooms to participate in a free pilot of their "Classroom Product". The pilot would include web access for both educators and students at the individual account level (by utilizing their school email address).  The Stop, Breathe & Think team wants to make sure we are building a product for the future to help students with coping skills to last them for a lifetime. Their aim is to confirm all final pilot partnerships by December 18th, 2019. Please reach out to me sooner than later if interested!

5 Productivity Killing Habits (and How to Fix Them)

I loved this article! It gave a few great ideas on strategies that I can actually use, especially the one about email!

This podcast, #75, is really worth listening to. It's a bit on the long side, but if you want to learn more about creating an easy to implement morning routine, listen to the beginning of the podcast. Dr. Chatterjee brings mindfulness, movement, and mindset into his morning routines in as little of 5 minutes. These 5 minutes reduce the stress he encounters in the morning and lengthens his threshold for the day. He also gets into macro and micro stress, the power of human touch, and  looking at triggers 



Lending Library Highlighted Book of the Month!
Let us know if you'd like to borrow it or purchase it through SHIP funding. 

School Celebrations

World Kindness Day was November 13th this year.  We hope to make it a bigger and more acknowledged day here in DCSD in years to come. Here is a fun photo from Cresthill Middle School- thank you Megan Tran!! Please send us any of your celebrations (photos, stories, activities) to us this month for our January blog.

Physical Activity

Yoga poses help to build strength and concentration. Here are a few poses you can bring to your students the upcoming weeks as focus may be deteriorating. 

Hint: When teaching these poses, include breathing with it and have fun!! These cards are Yoga Pretzels.

Nutrition

Fooducate is a free app that has a health tracker, recipes, diet tips and more. My favorite part is the power to look up a product and get all the nutritional information one would need! You can use it yourself or incorporate its use into a classroom with students. 

5 Minute Healthy Chocolate Pudding Recipe

I had this over Thanksgiving and it was delicious!

Prep Time 5 minutesTotal Time 5 minutes

Serves 2     ADJUST SERVINGS

A healthy, no-cook chocolate pudding, naturally sweetened with honey.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 ripe banana
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup oats (I use old-fashioned oats)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• pinch of salt

• INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Put all of the ingredients into a blender or food processor (I used my hand blender, since it’s a small batch) and blend very well, scraping down the sides if necessary.
  2. Pour into a bowl and cover and chill. I'm not patient either but it's even better cold. The pudding thickens and sets up in 25-30 minutes.
  3. To make this recipe vegan, substitute maple syrup for the honey. Just as delicious!

  RECIPE NOTES

  You can easily double or triple this recipe to make more.
  You can sub almond butter or another nut butter for the peanut butter if you prefer.

That's all we have for this blog post. Enjoy!

With Gratitude, Laurie & Kimmy