encouragement – iLearn Technology

The Letter Project: Spreading good to girls through handwritten letters

January 30, 2017Kelly Tenkely2 Comments33403 views

The last week has been heartbreaking to watch unfold. My heart aches over the fear, the divisiveness, the “us” vs. “them” mentality. The stripping away of humanity. As an educator I know that when we take away all of the labels that we use to categorize each other, when we look each other in the eye and listen to each other’s stories, we find out that we are all human after all. When I feel despair over the state of how we treat others, I look for ways to combat that. I look for those doing the hard work of caring for others. The Letter Project is one such organization spreading good.

What it is: The Letter Project has one primary objective: to teach women and girls that they are enough. They are driven by the belief that we flourish by supporting each other, and seeing the good in each other first. How do they do this? by writing letters to girls and women around the world who need a little bit of extra encouragement.

How to encourage girls/women with The Letter Project: If you know a girl or young woman who is going through a tough time or needs some extra encouragement/confidence, you can request letters through the Letter Project. She’ll receive a bundle of letters from women around the US who want to build her up and support with words of encouragement.

Wondering what is considered a “tough time”? It could be girls having trouble finding friends at school, feeling lonely or sad, experiencing family turmoil, having trouble with how they look, feeling anxious/nervous. Really, the topics can be limitless. The letters are meant to encourage and show these girls (ages 6 to 20) that they are not alone. To request letters, just fill out a short survey about the girl you are requesting for. In about 4 weeks, the girl will receive 10 to 15 handwritten letters from women across the US.

We all know those girls who could use extra TLC. Maybe they are dealing with body-image issues, maybe a divorce in the family, perhaps they are nervous about moving on to [middle school/high school/college]. Maybe they are overwhelmed with school, or believing lies about themselves. The Letter Project is for these girls, all of them!

I love the heart behind this organization, empowering women and girls to believe in themselves. To remind them that they aren’t alone, we are all in this together!

Tips: The Letter Project is a Christian organization, although they will write to any girl (Christian or not). If you are requesting letters for one of your students, you might specify that the letters be faith-background neutral. If you are requesting letters for a student, please get permission from a parent/guardian first.

You can help: You can support the good work of The Letter Project by partnering with them to write letters, or through monetary donations that go toward stamps, envelopes, and stationary.

How to create an online Advent calendar

December 1, 2013Kelly Tenkely3 Comments16171 views

I love this time of year, it comes with such wonderful anticipation of things to come. A time to be mindful.

You can build some of that anticipation into your classroom with a digital advent calendar that reveals something each day in preparation for the holiday season. Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, “coming.” In Christian traditions, this refers to God’s coming into our midst. Anastasis is a faith-based school, so the advent calendar I created for our students and families is to be in celebration of this coming. Your classroom advent calendar doesn’t have to be faith-based.

Your advent calendar could be in anticipation of the coming new year, the coming break from school, or just a fun way to surprise your students with something they get to reveal each day. It would even be fun to reveal some sort of “Mission Impossible” task each day for your students. Be creative! This could be related to something they are learning/working on in your classroom, a kindness challenge, a video of the day, a writing prompt for the day, brain teaser, a book/poem/website for the day, a peek into your classroom for families, inquiry question of the day, song/podcast, 25 days of science experiments, etc. Even as adults we enjoy moments of anticipation, why not capitalize on that in your classroom?

I used Weebly to create our digital advent calendar. You can follow our calendar here. Weebly is an easy to use, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website builder. It makes it simple to quickly put together a site that you can easily edit in preparation for the next day of revealed surprise. Weebly also lets you include a nice variety of content so that it is flexible enough to meet your needs. I started December first with some text and an image. My plan is to take a video each day of our students sharing a verse, quote, thought, blessing, song, etc. and embed the video using the YouTube option. The only thing for me to do each day will be to take the video and upload it to our Anastasis YouTube channel and then copy the url into the Weebly image for the day. SO easy to keep up with each day!

How to build your own Weebly Advent Calendar:

Sign up for a free Weebly account
Choose a template to start with for your calendar. Any of the templates will work, choose the look you like best!
Start by dragging some text onto your page. This is a great place for a few sentences about your calendar and what students/families can expect to find each day.
Under the “Structure” section, select and drag over the “Columns” onto your page. I chose 5 columns. Repeat so that you have multiple rows of 5 columns. I have a total of 5 for 5 rows and 5 columns.
Into each row and column, drag over the “Image” option so that you have 25 image place holders.
I used Apple’s Pages software to create my daily images with the dates listed on them. I used some digital paper, layered a solid box of color, and two text boxes. I took a screenshot of each date (I just created one image and then changed the text for each screenshot).
Back in Weebly, click on the image placeholder to upload the images created (alternately, you can just use the search option to find images to use). Repeat for each image.
Create a new page (under the Pages tab a the top of the Weebly screen). Be sure to check the box so that the page is hidden from navigation. This is going to be your “come back on the appropriate day” page. Click “Save and Edit.”
On your new page, add some text and an image. Type a greeting message from those who are trying to sneak a peek early.
Navigate back to your home page. Click on each image, an edit box for the image will come up. Select “Link” and choose “Standard Page” and then the page you just created. Save.
Create other pages for your site if you would like to, I created an “About” page for those who are curious about Anastasis. It might be fun to include a “contact” page where students can submit ideas for the calendar (maybe original writing or other work?)
Publish your site.
Each day go back and click on the image for the appropriate day. From the edit box, go back to “Link” and change where the image links to. It can link to another page that you create on the Weebly site, a website or video, a file, or an email address (what if your students got a new email address each day to email an encouraging note to?). Alternatively, you can delete the image for that day all together and embed a video, html, flash, etc.
Don’t forget to re-publish after you’ve added/edited the site!

There is something truly wonderful about revealing a surprise each day. Don’t leave the families of your students out, it would be great to give families a glimpse of your classroom so that they can see what there kids are up to each day. This can be photos, original student writing, video, or fun activities to be completed as a family in lieu of homework.

Students can also be in charge of creating their own advent calendar. The possibilities for this are endless!

What great ideas do you have for using an advent calendar in your classroom? Share them below!

Auto Motivator

March 30, 2009Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2593 views

What it is: Auto Motivator is a site where you can create custom motivational posters for your classroom. You can choose a picture from the Auto Motivator site, upload a picture from your computer, or use a picture from the web. After you create your poster (in two easy steps) you can save it as the desktop for your computer, save it as a picture file that you can print out, or purchase a poster size print from the Auto Motivator website through Zazzle.com.

How to integrate Auto Motivator into the classroom: Motivational posters are perfect for the classroom setting but sometimes it is hard to find one that captures the motivation that you want to offer your students. Maybe you have a class saying, or a specific motivational need, Auto Motivator is a wonderful place for you to create a poster that fits your classroom needs. I love that you can use the motivational words as the desktop image on computers, these would make a fabulous background for classroom computers or computer lab computers. Because you can save the image to your computer, you could create motivational postcards to hand to your students when they are struggling as encouragement. The ability to get your custom poster printed by Auto Motivator through Zazzle.com is a nice option for those motivational posters you want to use year after year. Encourage students to make their own motivational posters, these would be nice to print out and create a wall of motivation out of. Students could also exchange motivational posters with peers as encouragement.

Tips: If you are using this site with students, please note that there are Google Adwords on the Auto Motivator website. Use this as an opportunity to teach your students to spot advertisements and discuss their purpose.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Auto Motivator in your classroom.