Inclusive Schools Week: Morning Mantras

Happy Inclusive Schools Week!

This week is celebrated annually the first full week in December by families, schools, and organizations across the world to highlight and celebrate the progress schools have made in implementing inclusive practices to ensure a quality education for an increasingly diverse student population.

This year, we’re celebrating #ISW2020 by sharing resources from inclusive educators across the nation and giving a shoutout to those who have found creative, innovative teaching strategies to ensure a fully-inclusive environment.

Morning Mantras: A ‘Beautiful’ Addition to the School Day

By Michelle Bibby, Maria Cygan, and Courtney MacDonald
Co-Teachers at Von E. Mauger School
Middlesex School District

We feel we are a great team because we share similar teaching philosophies. We believe that the environment in our classrooms should enable all our students to feel like they are important, valuable, and accepting of each other's differences.

By developing this kind of atmosphere, our students are confident in taking charge of their educational growth and are willing to freely share their thoughts.

Creating this kind of environment requires careful preparation and patience for their relationships to grow organically. Collectively, we feel that developing a solid rapport with our students is a vital component of our classroom environment, ensuring that students feel safe, comfortable, and uninhibited when it comes to sharing their individual thoughts/ideas.

One specific way that we do this is through a daily activity called “Morning Mantras.”

At the start of each day, after greeting the children, we display that day’s individual “Morning Mantra.” Students are given a few minutes to formulate their responses and explain their reasoning for that response.

Individual responses are written down on Post-it notes and/or “virtual” Post-its (via a Jamboard). Once time is up, students are encouraged to verbally share their responses aloud to the class. They may “Pass” if they’d like, however, the majority of the time, we have found that the students want to express their thoughts to the class.

Individual responses are written down on Post-it notes and/or “virtual” Post-its (via a Jamboard).

The “sharing” portion of the “Mantras” has been nothing less than a beautiful addition to our school day. The responses that the children come up with have helped us to get to know the students on a more personal level, while at the same time, showcasing commonalities amongst them. These “Mantras” have helped jump-start so many valuable conversations and “mindfulness” teachable moments.

We each have different students on our rosters. However, we do not operate this way. We consider each student—whether they are on our roster or not—a part of our classroom family. We do a lot of things together behind the scenes as well, such as parent-teacher conferences and even class pictures. Our goal is to show our students and their families how we work as a team and portray a united front.