Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s hard to believe the holiday season starts next week! We’ll have one week of regular Learning Labs when we return and then final exams begin.

As Thanksgiving approaches, it’s a good time to consider the benefits of having an “attitude of gratitude.”

Researchers have linked maintaining a thankful attitude with:

• Improved mental health
• Buffers to stress and daily worries
• Better physical well-being

You can adopt an attitude of gratitude by starting a few simple habits.

Focus on others. This is the season for lots of service and charitable opportunities. Find one and engage in it as a family or group. When we focus on others, we often discover our problems aren’t so bad.

We’ll have another giving opportunity soon where we’ll collect gloves, mittens, and socks for folks of all ages.

Count your blessings. Concentrate on what you do have, rather than what you don’t have. For some, keeping a Gratitude Journal is a great way to consider what’s going well in your life daily. You can list big things such as a good report from a physical checkup to simple things like made all the green lights to campus today.

Keep your thoughts positive. Notice when your thoughts are negative or complaining. Reframe a negative thought into a positive one. For example: “I have so much school work to do.” A positive reframe for this thought could be, “I’m about to get an entire week off from school soon!” or “Ugh, I have to cook for all my relatives this Thanksgiving.” The positive reframe could be, “I get to give the gift of a meal to my family members this season and be a part of a special memory for everyone.”

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard” is a wonderful reframe on losing a loved one by A.A. Milne of Winnie-the-Pooh fame. 

Sure, it’s takes practice, especially if you lean more toward Eeyore than Tigger on the personality spectrum. But with practice, it’s certainly do-able. And beneficial!

If you’d like to tell us how you stay thankful, please comment below.

Have a great weekend, all!

(Source: http://www.healthline.com/health/depression/giving-thanks)

News for Parents

The Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology  has posted their 2020-2021 lottery information on their website. If you are interested in attending GSMST next year for 9th grade, please check out the importation information here .

 

 

I talked with the 7th graders this week about Teen Lures. For more information about the topics I covered, please see the previous post.

Young people smoking e-cigarettes continues to be on the rise. Here is excellent resource for parents: Catch My Breath.

Have a great weekend!

Dr. Edwards

Keeping Kids Safe

As parents, our number one job is keeping our children safe. We never want to alarm our families, but here are some facts from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children:

• over 18.4 million reports were made to the CyberTipline (possible perpetrators using online means to entice kids)
• there were over 1,600 attempted abductions
• over 68% of the attempted abductions involved suspects using a vehicle

I taught the Child Lures program to our 4th and 5th grade students this week. Three essential skills we want children to have are:

Listening to their instincts to recognize and avoid situations that might threaten their personal safety.

Recognizing various child lures that someone might use to trick a child into trusting them.

Understanding what to do if they are faced with a child lure.

I also taught the Teen Lures curriculum to our 6th graders, and I’ll be in the 7th and 8th Learning Labs before the Thanksgiving break.

While each grade has its own set of lessons, the above essential skills were taught to our middle school kids, too.

In 8th grade only, I’ll teach students about human trafficking (also known as modern day slavery.) This is a horrible crime that is active in our metro Atlanta area. I will share these statistics from the Teen Lures program with the 8th grade students soon.

• The International Labor Organization estimates that there at least 12.3 million adults and children being trafficked throughout the world at any given time.
• As estimated 100,000 American citizens are trafficked each year and 18,000 – 20,000 people from other countries are trafficked into the U.S. every year.
• Human trafficking is the second largest crime in the world – right behind drug trafficking. (Some reports say human trafficking will become #1 soon.)
• Human trafficking is a $150 billion industry worldwide, according to the International Labor Organization. This is money being made off of human suffering of other human beings.

I asked all of our students to tell their parents what they learned. If you haven’t already discussed this, please ask your child about our lessons.

While these topics are sensitive and difficult, we must partner together to keep our kids safe.

Dr. Edwards