Here at VariQuest, many of our education consultants were once teachers themselves, and all of them have credible voices that they bring to the table thanks to their backgrounds. Not only that, but almost all of our employees in every department are well-connected in the education world - through family, friends, or the wonderful educators our children are taught by, in their schools. And we know that every educator has a unique story to share, and deserves as much support as we can give them. Recently our Director of Sales, Jason Butts, sat down with his friend Anna, a Moderate-to-Severe High School Life Skills Special Education Teacher at Prior Lake High School in Minnesota, to learn more about her unique story.

Do you love listening to podcasts in the education space? Are you looking for more information and resources on Social-Emotional Learning and Teaching in schools? We've got something great just for you! The Common Ground Education Podcast, hosted by Charles Barr, a licensed social worker in the state of Illinois with 15 years of experience in serving schools, is focused on progressive education, mental health resources and multi-disciplinary collaboration. Its goal is to provide needed information to professionals in the educational domain. Recently our very own expert Education Consultant Howard Shaw, a 20-year teaching veteran, sat down with Charles to discuss his experiences in the classroom and school community with developing a supportive social-emotional learning environment, and how visual aids are important in these programs to reinforce and help students.

As an elementary teacher, when you reach that 100th Day of School, you may be thinking about it being the halfway point in the year, as well as a good time to reevaluate and set new goals for the remainder of the classroom days with your current students. But reaching that halfway point - also deserves a celebration! Often students will be asked to bring 100 of something, complete a scavenger hunt, make shirts, or otherwise to commemorate the event - but because we at VariQuest want you to have endless options in your toolbox, we've come up with a few more ideas - and we'd like to share them with you.

Whether students are learning by doing or learning while doing, keeping them engaged during a lesson provides for maximum learning potential. And what kid doesn't love learning about dinosaurs? Enter our latest sensory path for elementary students: Dinosaur Discovery. Designed for grades K-3 and special education, this sensory path combines learning about dinosaurs with writing and reading activities to incorporate English Language Arts (ELA) with science for a truly engaging and fun activity. Increased focus and expended energy are just two of the benefits of a sensory path - but they can also be a great break from traditional instruction. Using this free downloadable activity kit, you'll have all the resources, printables, and tips you'll need to carry out and try this lesson in your classroom!

When you return from winter break and begin a new calendar year with students, you might be looking for new ways to start fresh with your lessons and may even make resolutions to create more hands-on projects. Often outdone by the commercially celebrated holidays at the end of the year, setting New Year's goals, honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and celebrating Valentine's Day provide for lots of fun ways you can celebrate and discuss social-emotional and historical concepts with your students in those first few months of the year. We at VariQuest® are always brainstorming to come up with fun, new ways to teach lessons in your classroom, and because many of us are visual learners, we'd like to not only tell you about them, we'd like to show you how easy it is to create all of these visual and kinesthetic learning supports - with videos!

Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, has been celebrated for thousands of years. It is one of the most important holidays widely celebrated in many Asian countries and territories including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Thailand. Usually falling between January 21st and February 20th, this year's start of the 2023 Chinese New Year will occur on Sunday, January 22nd, and is the Year of the Rabbit. The celebration lasts for about 15 days. Gung Hay Fat Choy is a common Chinese New Year’s greeting in Chinese Cantonese, which means “wishing you great happiness and prosperity.” On Chinese New Year, the themes of happiness, wealth, longevity, luck and good fortune are celebrated. Some of the traditional celebrations include family gatherings, visiting friends and relatives (baai nin), exchanging “lucky money” contained in red envelopes (lai see), decorating homes with paper decorations and scrolls, lion dances, and fireworks. Chinese New Year is a special holiday to celebrate with your class while teaching them others’ cultures and comparing them to American traditions. We have put together a collection of fun, hands-on and Common Core-aligned lessons and activities, classroom decorations, and craft projects for you to explore and enjoy with your class, and I want to share them with you!

As another calendar year comes to a close, we reflect back on all that has happened - good or bad - and consider how we can move into a new year with a positive attitude and fresh perspective. Recent years have proven - it is so incredibly important to remember the GOOD. We wouldn't be able to teach history in our classroom if no one had documented it, and students know that while they have many things in common, everyone is unique. And so, it is a valuable exercise to encourage students to document their own experiences. Here are 3 ideas for students to reflect on their year as a learning assignment, social-emotional wellbeing exercise, or just a fun holiday tradition they can start with their families:

Reflecting on, and regulating emotions is a life-long learning process. Even as adults in the age of discussing the "Karens" - we all need to remember to take a moment to stop and think about how we're going to react to a problem, before our reaction becomes the problem. In an elementary classroom with lots of different personalities and energy levels, students may be working on the lines between "tattle-tale", needing an adult to help, or critical thinking to calmly solve problems on their own. In this realm of social-emotional learning, we've once again partnered with Cathy Henry, educator and founder of The Curriculum Corner and Free Word Work, to create this How Big is My Problem? lesson plan for elementary teachers to help students look at problems and regulate how they would (or should) react. By encouraging thoughtful reflection and practicing scenarios, students can begin to see how things might upset themselves and others, and how they can find their own solutions to many everyday issues.

VariQuest® is your source for the various tools and ideas you need to improve the classroom experience for teachers and students. We offer an exceptional array of learning tools and devices including learning tools for visual learners you can combine with your curriculum to transform the way your students are taught and how they learn.

Journaling is widely regarded as one way to improve mental health, as writing and reading about our feelings and events help us to process the emotions behind them. And because the activity is valuable for any age capable of reading and writing, it's a simple activity we can all share. Because generating the ideas or what to write about tends to be the hard part, consider following this journaling idea: have each student complete one page per day, divided into three sections about what they're reading, feeling, and learning. If you'd like to "theme" your prompts, you have the option to make them as complex or as simple as you'd like. Have students submit entries they're particularly proud of, for sharing with the greater class, and use all students' reading, feeling, and learning entries as opportunities to foster larger lessons and discussions with the whole group. It's crowdsourcing, weaved into your curriculum!