Welcome to the first edition of The Problem Solving Teacher. This newsletter will hit your inbox every Thursday and each edition will provide you with a solution—curated from the best resources out there—for a common classroom problem. Let’s dive in to this week’s timely conundrum.

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The Problem: It’s the week before winter break and your students’ energy is…chaotic.

A Solution: Angela Watson lays out 7 tips for surviving the week before holiday break in this Truth for Teachers article. All 7 of her tips are useful, but I want to highlight a few points she makes:

• Maintain your routines. When student energy is rambunctious, your routines will be calming. Since your students know your routines well, it won’t take extra energy to follow them. Their brains know what to do. Once they fall back into the routines, their energy will transition into an academic mindset and learning will continue.
• Choose active learning activities. This period of high energy means that students will talk and they will move their bodies. It’s up to you if that talking and moving is part of the learning or disrupting the learning. For example, instead of independently writing responses to questions, can they verbally share answers through Concentric Circles? Or is this time to try an Escape Room? Your students will appreciate that you have set them up for success.

Remember that as excited as students are, they still want to learn. They just won’t have their typical ability to focus deeply on tasks. Your challenge is to recognize this and embrace it. Know that this energy won’t last forever. When students return from break, they will be ready to return to normalcy.

A final note: Not all students are excited about break. Some students and their families face food and housing insecurity and students may be anxious about going hungry over break. Some students (no matter their socio-economic status) feel more comfortable at school then at home. Even as energy runs high, tell your students over and over again that you care about them, that they matter, and that you can’t wait to see them when you all return.

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For your classroom library: Add The Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander to your middle and high school classrooms. In the acknowledgments, Alexander writes: "I wanted to speak the truth about the history of African Americans, because while most of us are aware of the American part, it's time for us to know more about the African part, right?"

A resource to check out: Save yourself some planning time and use our no prep Story Elements Escape Room. Can your students escape the Voice of the Vortex?

Have a good one and learn everything you can!

Hannah

PS: Did you enjoy this? Hit reply and let me know what you think, then encourage your colleagues to sign up here.

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