8 Ideas to Bring Teacher Joy "Back to School"

If you haven't hear Dean Shareski speak, you are missing probably one of the most powerful experiences in your life. Not only is he hilarious, but he surpasses the educational warm fuzzies with a practical ideas and a meaningful challenge to all educators to bring Joy back to school.

Bringing joy to kids begins with bringing joy to the adults in the building. 

Here are a few questions to make you think about bringing joy to the adults in your school?

• How important is joy to the learning process?
• What are you doing to bring joy to your staff?  
• What are you doing to model joy as an essential part of professional development and adult learning?  
• Does your "back to school" message start with joy or even include it at all?

Joy Accelerates Learning! 

If we want students to grow, it starts with making learning a joyful process for our teachers first. If teachers don't view their learning as a fun, interactive and exhilarating experience, there is a strong chance that the kids won't either. It is important to remember that student growth will only come with teacher growth; thus student joy comes with teacher joy. Furthermore we must always remember the following.

No teacher joy = No student joy. 

No teacher learning = No student learning. 

Bring Joy back to your "Back to School"

Here are a few suggestions to bring fun back into your "back to school" routine. 

• Spice up your staff development with goofy competitions
• Roll out the Red Carpet at Registration and get lots of pictures of teachers interacting with parents and students. 
• Make music a part of your school. Pick positive and uplifting music and play it in the classrooms and in the hallways. 
• Make an effort to give every teacher several fist bumps every day. 
• Tweet out pictures of your teachers working together. 
• Periscope professional learning and collaboration. 
• Celebrate teachers who have gone above and beyond in their learning this summer. 
• Lift up educators who have overcome obstacles or difficult situations. 

If we want learning to be a joyful experience for our kids, then it starts by making learning and working together a joyful experience for our teachers and staff.  Let's do it for them and in turn we will do it for the kids when they come back in the following weeks.