Into the rippling fountain water they go — all the burdens Marsha Phelps carries from another day in her sixth-grade classroom.
Gone with a toss of her hand are the bouts of disrespect, the eye rolls of a defiant child, the fatigue in helping so many children with so many needs.
She’ll want to help them as best she can tomorrow. And a budding movement of “trauma-sensitive” schools in Kansas City wants to instill a message they are sending in all directions, to adults and children, in schools and in our communities:
Know yourself. Calm and prepare yourself.
The symbolic release at the fountain on Vivion Road as Phelps nears home represents just one piece of her personal “power plan.”
She keeps the handwritten plan tucked in a plastic pouch on a lanyard she wears around her neck while in class.
All of her children at Garfield Elementary School, 436 Prospect Ave., have a power plan. Other teachers have one. Her principal has one.
They decorate them. Add to them.
Adults and children throughout the school name the stresses in their lives, the things that set them off, the affirmations that help them, the strategies that calm and guide them.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
[For more of this story, written by Joe Robertson, go to http://www.kansascity.com/news.../article3332913.html]
Comments (0)