Team Training Helps Us Be the Best We Can Be

At Apple Montessori, we take our teachers’ continuing education very seriously. We are proud to provide our teachers with opportunities to be the very best role models and teachers they can be, strengthen important skills and learn the latest techniques.

Our teachers recently attended a training session covering topics like being an effective leader, powerful praise, classroom management, school safety procedures, and team-building.

• Being an Effective Leader in the Classroom: Being a good model. Communicating effectively. Setting goals for your team. Providing helpful feedback
• Effective Praise: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Acts of Service, Tangible Gifts
• Holding A Meeting That Matters: Encouraging all participants to being ideas to weekly staff meetings. Creating agendas. Presenting ideas (e.g., start off on the right foot POSITIVELY with a story, silly question, quick ice breaker, small moment. Be clear and concise; give examples). Always summarize key discussion points and next steps.

How to create an organized environment and control the classroom effectively. The objectives are to apply the following techniques:

• Eye Contact: An eye contact lesson is the lightest interaction you can have with children, perhaps involving nothing more than a quick glance with a child from a corner of the room.
• Proximity: The technique is usually the first physical action you take in gently resolving misbehavior.
• Distraction: Redirecting a child to shift attention off misbehavior.
• Clear Direction: The use of safe words/phrases when instructing a child will help you avoid negative words/phrases.
• Repetition: Doing some techniques over and over again. Repetition helps strengthen and reinforce the impact of the prior technique.
• Patient waiting: Patient waiting combines well with other, more active techniques. It helps build self-control. When this technique, is not sufficient, you may need a verbal technique, such as reflective language.
• Reflective Language: Responding to a child’s question, behavior or statement by repeating the same language or action back to a child. It is a safe response because it adds nothing to the child’s own expression. This can be particularly effective in resolving social conflict between children, keepin, you strictly neutral and detached from the positions taken by each child.
• Questioning: Asking the question, “What are you doing?” can often stimulate constructive thinking in children. You can use the technique to begin to resolve the fantasy misbehavior. Usually, questioning begins a verbal dialogue, which continues with reflective strength, further questioning and clear direction, to gently return the child to present-moment reality.
• Cooperative Touching: This technique involves doing something with the child in a cooperative physical manner. This is particularly useful with very young children who lack coordination, control, and precise skill in their hand and finger movements.
• Imaginative: Previsioning-Dr. Montessori recognized the power and value of the imagination, faith and inner preparation in applying her approach with children. The IP technique is an exercise of quiet meditation that focuses on some real-life problem by previsioning yourself acting in a different way than you did before. Later, you experiment with the new idea in the real-life situation to see if it resolves the problem.

The purpose of this class is to review recent policies and procedures. The objectives are to review policies and updates and how they affect one’s job.

• General Outline of safety Procedures
• Ratio Policy
• Documenting An Incident
• Line-Up Procedures
• Playground Procedures
• Pre-school Lunch Procedures
• Field Trip Policy
• Administering Medications
• First Aid Quick Sheet
• Diaper Changing
• Naptime Policies and Procedures
• Attendance Policy
• School Visitors Policy and Procedures

The purpose of this class is how to teach Fastracks and review the Creativity Curriculum for January and February covering topics such as preparation, presentation, utilizing the newest worksheets, parent communications, and ideas for extra curriculum activities.

By exploring the creativity and imagination of others, children learn to open their minds to new ideas, opinions, and ways of viewing the world. Stimulating the imagination opens new doors for a child’s curiosity and exploration. Your child further enriched his/her knowledge by discussing and appreciating the feelings they imagined the different artists had while creating their art forms. They also examined different art examples closely to appreciate their complexity, use of color and uniqueness. The arts-sculpture, paintings, music, dance or simple coloring can help broaden horizons for a child while creating enjoyment, encouraging creativity and furthering the development of their overall learning skills.

Students have explored different ways that people of other cultures express themselves and communicate through creative art. They also explored diverse architectural designs and the materials used in the designs. By exploring different cultures and environments around the world, students are exposed to different ways people use creativity and inventiveness to solve problems and make their lives easier. When children explore architecture around the world, they have the opportunity to learn how creativity and imagination play an important role in practical applications. It is never too early to start developing problem solving skills that will serve students throughout their lives. Exploring different ways to solve problems, large and small requires imagination and creative thinking. The students realized that everyone has strengths that can often go unnoticed or unappreciated. They learned to look at different perspectives and understanding how a large problem can be solved using teamwork.

To learn more about Apple Montessori Schools in New Jersey, schedule a tour with one of our 14 schools today. You can also connect with one of our schools here.