The story “Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out!” guided Ripon Christian second-grade students and teacher Julie Vander Molen to explore the “helping hands” in their community as they live into the classroom’s Storyline: Shine. The second graders asked, “Who does the thankless jobs of mowing parks, picking up trash, and cleaning public restrooms?” They discovered that these “helping hands” extended from city workers’ arms. After experiencing picking up trash on the school’s campus themselves, the students reflected Christ’s love by writing and delivering letters to Ripon’s city workers, thanking them for all the work they do in the Ripon community with this message: “Thanks! You SHINE and make our city SHINE!”

As experienced and modeled in your TfT training experiences, many TfT schools implement the practice of opening circles, checking in with their learners before diving into the learning of the day. A common challenge for teachers is to come up with high-quality check-in prompts that invite sharing and reflection. Sources of Strength, an organization dedicated to “training, supporting, and empowering both peer leaders and caring adults to impact their world through the power of connection, hope, help and strength,” has developed a resource that contains countless prompts organized by three categories: Soulful, Strength, and Silly. The prompts are aligned to a calendar. We are grateful for their permission to share this resource with our TfT network. I am confident that you will find the exact prompt you are looking for!