Chicago flag

The days pass by and we get closer to the inauguration of Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s first teacher to become mayor! As his transition announcements continue, we want to ensure Chicago parents and community members have a voice, too.

I urge you to add your name to our virtual welcome card and tell Mayor-elect Johnson your education priorities. We plan to deliver the card to him soon after he takes office, so your feedback will make it to the Fifth Floor of City Hall.

As a parent of a current CPS student, I understand many of the issues facing the city and CPS. Many challenges lay ahead, along with a number of great opportunities. I want to see more equitable investment in our schools and to ensure that each child has access to high-quality literacy instruction. What issues do you want to see addressed by our new mayor?

Mayor-elect Johnson’s quest to unify the City continues. Let’s all work together to support our City, our families, our schools, and our future!

Chicago Public School slogo

The next step on CPS’s journey to an elected 21-member school board is the drawing of district maps. The Illinois Senate has its last hearing tonight at 6pm – and it’s virtual! I hope you can tune in, share your perspective, and hear community input.

As a Chicagoan and CPS parent, it’s important to me that the elected school board structure works to support safe, equitable, stable, high-quality schools for our children. I testified last week at an earlier community hearing to share my perspective supporting:

  • A Functional Board Size. A 21-member board – the largest elected governing body for any school district in the country – makes it more likely that messy politics and factions will overshadow good stewardship of our schools.
  • Compensation to Enhance Representation. The new map must reflect the diversity of CPS and the voices of parents. Compensating members for their service on the board will enable everyday Chicagoans to serve.

I hope you’ll tune in this evening to watch the virtual Senate committee hearing or even weigh in with your own input. We’ll be in touch soon with ways to stay involved as this issue progresses in the General Assembly.

Chicago flag

For the first time, students in Chicago will see a teacher represent their City as its mayor – that is historic and exciting! We congratulate Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson on a hard-fought victory!

As a parent of CPS students, I’d like to invite you to join me in signing our card to welcome the new mayor! Tell him congratulations and add a note about your vision for Chicago schools – your priority issues and what you care about most.

Now that the election is over, Mayor-elect Johnson is on a quest to unify the City and bring people together. I whole-heartedly agree! Now is the time to come together to support Chicago, our families, our schools, and the future of our world-class City!

Before you get your weekend started, I wanted to get a quick note out to share an opportunity for you to lend your voice to the discussion of Chicago’s elected school board. The State Senate’s Special Committee on the Chicago Elected Representative School Board has added dates for five upcoming hearings:

  • April 5, 4PM – George Westinghouse College Prep (3223W. Franklin Blvd.)
  • April 6, 11AM – Imani Village (901 E. 95th St.)
  • April 12, 4PM – Copernicus Center (5216 W. Lawrence)
  • April 13, 4PM – National Museum of Mexican Art (1852 W. 19th St.)
  • April 17, 6PM (Virtual)

The first step in the process to transition to an elected board is to create boundaries for the new subdistricts. These hearings seek public input on the drawing of these new areas.

Are you interested in sharing your ideas with legislators about the elected board? Or in attending a hearing to learn more? How can I help support you to get involved?

Many parents and teachers I’ve talked to are hungry for more information about this monumental change in CPS’s structure. They have questions like: How will this impact the role of LSCs? Is a 21-member board too big? How can we ensure equitable representation on the board?

Here is a great chance for us to add our voices to this conversation and be the change we seek.

Reply here if there is anything I can do to support you as you raise your voice for our students.

Father reading to his son

The New Year brings with it a sense of new things to accomplish and new places to engage. I hope you’ll take this time to engage with an important survey from CPS.

The district continues gathering community feedback on how they measure school quality. They need to hear from you today!

This survey is voluntary and responses are all anonymous. Not only that, but it should take you less than 10 minutes to complete. CPS recently extended the deadline to complete the survey, but act fast – the survey closes on Tuesday, January 18.

Parents and community members have important insights to share, so I hope you’ll take a few minutes from your busy day and add your voice to the discussion. Let’s take this opportunity to engage in a meaningful way!

As a little girl, my mother and grandmother taught me to treat people how I wanted to be treated. I think most of us have someone special in our lives who taught us that lesson.

As a teacher at Carver Elementary School in Chicago, I try to model that lesson and pass it down to my students. Kindness and empathy are skills to be taught like anything else.

The Teach Kindness program allowed us to focus on an impactful way to show kindness, through a Gratitude Jar. If a student does something nice for someone or someone does something nice for them, we add a note to the jar, hoping to fill it with small acts of kindness.

Even during the pandemic when we couldn’t be together in person, we started each day with a focus on kindness. The students had time and space to talk with each other, act out scenarios to show kindness to others, or talk about kindness in their own lives.

Students felt a sense of community, even online. They felt like they belonged.

Teach Kindness worked then, and it continues to work for us now. It’s become an expectation at Carver, something we’ve all agreed to do. It is a part of our school’s culture. And that kind culture has been honored with the 2020-2021 Kind School Award, a recognition we are so proud to have!

Teach Kindness allowed us to double-down on our school’s dedication to social-emotional learning and our students and staff have benefited from that commitment.

We can all learn something from this commitment to kindness. As we approach the holidays, I hope you have something to add to your own Gratitude Jar.

P.S.: Read more about each of the schools honored with the 2020-2021 Kind Schools award. Teach Kindness is open to all Illinois schools, so any educator looking to learn more should reach out to Brandi Watts at Stand for more information.

I often find that some of the best lessons for my students are the ones that build upon each other and are built into our daily lives.

That’s definitely the case with the lessons in Teach Kindness, a program we implemented at Fiske Elementary School in Chicago. As the school year progressed, the lessons on kindness and empathy did, too.

Our students jumped in with both feet, even taking some of the lessons home with them (during both remote and in-person learning). In many cases, that got their parents involved in the kindness curriculum as well.

In fact, after a recent parent meeting we hosted here, parents left refreshed and encouraged. They said they related to the kindness topic and the positive messages we had for them and their students.

This really served as a reminder of what we should be doing on a daily basis. COVID-19 has shown us, crystal clear, that SEL supports for students are vital. By bringing those supports into daily lessons, we meet students where they are and make kindness a part of our school’s culture. And by making kindness a part of our culture, we were lucky enough to be honored with the 2020-2021 Kind School Award!

The materials are right at teachers’ fingertips. All we have to do is teach it. We all should take the time to be kind, no matter how busy we are. By investing that time, we’ll see improvements across the school, the community, and the city.

I hope you’ll join us.

P.S.: Read more about Teach Kindness and the other schools honored with the 2020-2021 Kind Schools award. Teach Kindness is open to all Illinois schools, so any educator looking to learn more should reach out to Brandi Watts at Stand for more information.

Everyone loves a good shout out, right? Especially when it’s for something that makes our community a better place.

That’s why I love the special Kindness Shout Outs we have at Beard Elementary on Chicago’s Northwest Side.

When a student gets “caught being kind” we recognize them for that wonderful act and put it on a bulletin board for everyone to see. I can confirm that students LOVE these shout outs for being a good friend to their classmates.

At the end of the week, the student gets to take home their shout out. We also share images with parents so they can celebrate their child’s kindness too.

These acts of kindness and recognition have helped bring joy and positivity to our school community, a welcome sense of happiness given the pandemic and challenges of the past year.

The Teach Kindness program helped us elevate our work and make students feel loved and connected during this disjointed time. It has really motivated them to be better in the classroom, to each other, and as a community. And our school community was recently “caught being kind” and honored with the 2020-2021 Kind School Award, recognition we’re so proud of!

For other educators looking to make a difference at their school, I can honestly say that even though this has been a difficult year, participating in Teach Kindness is not adding more work to your plate, it’s adding more joy to your day. Bringing positivity and kindness to your school is totally doable – and it really does make school a happier place!

I hope you can make shout outs like this a part of your school’s culture. I’m so glad we have. And the students and staff here at Beard continue to make the days brighter and kinder for everyone – something we could all use a little more of these days.

P.S.: Learn more Teach Kindness and the other schools honored with the 2020-2021 Kind Schools award. Teach Kindness is open to all Illinois schools, so any educator looking to learn more should reach out to Brandi Watts at Stand for more information.

With all the news and the disruption we’ve experienced these past 20 months, one simple but powerful thing helped students at Palmer Elementary make it through remote learning and return safely to classrooms: kindness.

And while things are getting better, both in our school buildings and in many of our communities, the effects of the pandemic are still being felt by many students and staff.

During remote learning, we saw an increase in students exhibiting behaviors related to depression, anxiety, and even suicide ideation. Some of this behavior has even returned this school year.

Students as well as educators were hungry for connection and support. Teaching kindness made connecting easier. Students communicated better. Bickering and miscommunication decreased. They were kinder to each other and to school staff.

Kindness helped our students deal with the uncertainty and turmoil of the pandemic. The Teach Kindness lessons were essential to our school community. They gave us a common language for everyone to share. They made it easier for students to speak up if they or their classmates were not being treated properly.

The positive impact it has had on our school culture cannot be overstated. Not only that, our hard work and focus on kindness was recognized with the 2020-2021 Kind School Award!

Making the world a kinder place has helped in the classrooms, in the hallways, and in the community. It helped here and can help in any Illinois school.

P.S.: Read more about the other Illinois schools honored with the Teach Kindness 2020-2021 Kind Schools award. Teach Kindness is open to all Illinois schools, so any educator looking to learn more should reach out to Brandi Watts at Stand for more information.

I recently crossed off an item on my to-do list, and I hope you’ll join me by making sure your voice is heard as CPS gathers community feedback on how they measure school quality.

This helps the district know what’s working, find and fix things that aren’t, and be transparent with our Chicago community.

Add your voice by completing this short survey today.

The survey is voluntary, and responses are anonymous. It should take you less than 10 minutes to complete. The survey closes on Thursday, December 23.

After completing the survey, you can enter to win a $50 Amazon gift card!

Parents and community members have important insights to share, so I hope you’ll join me in speaking up as part of this important process.