Hospitality in the Classroom
Meaningful Communication
Classroom Management
Anticipate Needs
Cater Curriculum
Goal Setting
Determine Rules and Consequences Together
Morning Meetings
Specific Praise
Good News Calls
Be prepared to meet physical needs
What is it?
Hebrews 13:2
"Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it."
How to navigate this Coogle
All light grey boxes are links to my resources used to create this diagram! While there is overlap in my headings, I placed them under the section that fits them best. You can expect these to be articles and videos.
Colors have meaning! Consider the psychological effects...
Why blue with communication?
Why green with management?
Why purple with curriculum?
Why orange with anticipating needs?
TUMS at the door
I wish my teacher knew and the best of us
MEES 2: You need to know your students well!
When my students come in the room do my eyes light up?
pennies in my pocket
Million Dollar Question
Mindful Minutes and Energizers
The love languages
Social Emotional Learning/ Hidden Curriculum
Our very first classroom decoration! As we read in our article, EVERYTHING communicates. Our decorations, our body language, our tone of voice, our facial expressions, our classroom arrangement, our written and electronical communication, and more. Each and everything thing we do sends a message to our students. This is something to be mindful of throughout the day. Sensitivity to carefully crafting your classroom creates safety for students.
Having a good partnership with the guardians of your student is wildly important. Parents are giving you their most loved little person. They want to know that their student is successful. (If you wait to contact parents until its a bad news call, you have damaged a relationship beyond repair.) Conversely, students need to know that you see the good in them; each student has a deep desire to feel known and cared for. Once you have established this relationship with students the learning and growth they are capable of is limitless. This creates safety and meets emotional needs.
This is such a simple investment of time that will gain a lot of buy in from students. This is the perfect time to foster community (a culture of trust and belonging) and let good things run wild in the classroom. Morning meetings are the perfect opportunity for students to share about themselves in a safe environment and gain excellent soft skills. Teachers can use this time to build rapport with their pupils clearly share what lies ahead. This creates safety and meets students emotional needs.
Utilizing the million dollar question strategy once a day allows for each students voice to be heard before the learning ever begins. This ensures safety, engages the limbic system, and can even stimulate the cortex.
Look for the last sentence of descriptions to see the connection to the neurosequencial model.
Letters Home: Meet the Teacher
TUMS: Touch, Use their name, Make eye contact, Smile. Start the day of right foot by taking the time to let each student feel seen. Allow students the choice of touch. This could be a secret handshake, a high five, a hug and more. There is so much power in the use of someone's name. A persons name is their favorite word, and it is a quick way to say "I notice you." Eye contact is nonverbal communication that shows interest and care. Finally, your smile carries great power as well. It alleviates stress and is an easy way to show genuine kindness. This covers safety, movement, and emotional in the NSM.
Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, ‘I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
Words of Wisdom and Things I Have Learned in PD.
“Names are the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
Warm-Tough
“Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. “To know all is to forgive all.”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People
Offering specific positive praise to students with sentence stems like, "I noticed..." are quick and powerful ways to communicate to students. You can praise the students effort, behavior, and more with this sentence stem. This creates safety and connects to students emotional brain.
Letters home is the first connection you can make with your students. You can write a personalize note welcoming students to your class and ask for a response back. This will create safety and elimate stress (emotion/limbic) for them to come in on day one because students will know that you already care about them!
Warm-tough is exactly the teacher I want to be. In my personal experience, students are ostracized and set away from the room when disciple occurs. This sends the message that students don't belong - the opposite of hospitality. So, when I think of being warm tough, I will hold my students to high expectations while caring deeply for them. My attitude toward them during moments of undesirable behavior will affect their sense of belonging to the classroom. I want all students to feel safe, so I need classroom management.
Goal setting and the creation of rules and consequences go hand in hand. Both of these should be co-created with students. When they make these, not only is there more buy in, but your classroom is personalize to the people in it. There is no better way to be hospitable than making people feel at home. You do this by setting norms that fit their schema and goals that are relevant to them. This creates safety, soothes the limbic system, and engages the cortex.
“A person without discipline is in a prison without bars.”
― John C. Maxwell, The 17 Essential Qualities of A Team Player
Mindful minutes and energizers are tools that teachers should always have in their back pocket. Students will be at different energy levels through out the course of a day and teachers need to be prepared to set the tone of the room. You never know when you need one, but the time will certainly come so I will anticipate the need for this. These can engaged all four parts of the NSM.
Calm Down Toolbox
It has been said that you must take care of Maslow's before Blooms. One way to do this is by being prepared with clothing, tooth paste, snacks, and more for students to take care of their physical needs. When you do this, students will feel safe.
BEFORE
A calm down tool box is an effective tool for helping a student who has "flipped their lid." It is something that you need to put together before the event occurs when a student would need it. A well rounded tool box will have things that meet all five sense and stimulate each portion of the NSM. Mine will include a calming book, a fuzzy blanket, snacks, scented markers and coloring sheets, music with earphones, and more.
Pennies in my pocket is also known at the 5 x 5 strategy. You put five pennies in your pocket a day, and each of those represents 5 students. You then spend 5 minutes a day to be intentional with those students. When the next day comes, you then restart the process with 5 new students. When you do this, you begin to build rapport with each student and will not have any "outliers." The key is to be proactive in creating relationships with students so that you know their idiosyncrasies. When you know your students you can anticipate their needs. This creates safety and engages their limbic system because they feel noticed.
Prayer
The most powerful tool a teacher has is the power of prayer! You can pray for your students before you ever meet them and invite God's presence into your classroom. God knows the trajectories for our students lives, He knows them to their very being, and He cares for them so deeply. So it is your duty as a teacher to lift up your students in prayer. The students you see every year are a gift and the time you have to influence them is numbered, so it is critical that you take full advantage of this and rely on the wisdom and strength of God.
Luke 12:48
“You are the spark that sets others on fire when you initiate.”
― Mark Sanborn, The Fred Factor: How passion in your work and life can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary
“Every child has a special way of perceiving love. There are five ways children (indeed, all people) speak and understand emotional love. They are physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, and acts of service.”
― Gary Chapman, The 5 Love Languages of Children
“To be effective in discipline, parents must keep the child’s emotional love tank filled with love. In fact, disciplining without love is like trying to run a machine without oil. It may appear to be working for a while, but will end in disaster.”
― Gary Chapman, The 5 Love Languages of Children
“There is no separation of mind and emotions; emotions, thinking, and learning is all linked.” - Eric Jensen.
You can cater your curriculum to your students by incorporating the five love languages into your lessons and daily norms. Some examples are eating lunch with students or going to their extra curricular activities for quality time. You could have a prize box or make a song list for students who like gifts. For actives of service, you could tie students shoes or clean up their area. One idea for words of affirmation is to write a note on a sticky and leave it on their desk. Finally, for physical touch you could give high fives or simply be close to the student. There are so many simple ways to meet students needs, along with some that require more commitment, but at the end of the day you are giving students exactly what they need. These ideas meet the safety, movement, and limbic components of the NSM.
Why does it matter?
I wish my teacher knew is the perfect avenue for your students to reveal surprising information about themselves. It could be that they have a cat that's named Oliver, or sometimes more serious things like what is written above. Oliver could start to appear in math problems to make the content more authentic. You could reach out to home and partner with parents to problem solve the reading log. You never know what your students might tell you if you never ask. The best of us is just as effective as I wish my teacher knew because it gathers similar data that is more focused on the person specifically. Doing this meets all of the NSM.
Hidden curriculum is something that almost all schools will require you to teach. There is great value in teaching students soft skills and how to be aware of their emotions. You should equip them with the necessary means to be a successful adult, coursework aside.
Window and a Mirror
Students need to be able to see themselves being reflected in the learning through accurate representation of their culture in history, mentor texts that showcase children just like them, and more. Students also need to be able to explore the world and discover what is outside of just their schema. When a teacher meets both of these needs, students learn best. This meets each aspect of the NSM.
Hospitality is often thought of in the context of a hotel or a welcoming guests into your home. When in the context of the classroom, hospitality is fostering a positive environment where students needs are anticipated, management and communication is clear, and curriculum is catered to the students who are welcomed in.
Hospitality is so important because it directly correlates to the NSM. If a students needs are not being met, they will never learn.