My "Just Rub Some Dirt in it" Era
By Susan Kimmel, Director of the Purchasing Consortium
If you have been reading our MISBO Fun with Purchasing Blog, you have likely figured out I am a Gen X-er. As a child, on any given Saturday, I finished my bowl of Captain Crunch cereal and was shuffled outside with only a Red Delicious apple and a water hose to survive the day with *gasp* no sunscreen. If I scraped my knee, I was told to rub some dirt in it and keep moving. I also had an unpaid side hustle as my dad’s remote control. I went to high school in the 80’s wearing Jordache jeans and a side ponytail. My “text” messages were constructed from ripped-out notebook paper folded into a football shape and hurled across the classroom when my teacher was writing on an actual blackboard. When I drove to the varsity football game in the family station wagon with eight of my best friends and five seatbelts, I didn’t have a cell phone, and my parents never thought twice about if I made it to the game. I cut my teeth in corporate America in the work hard, play hard era of the late 80s and early 90s. My dress code was a skirted suit (black, charcoal, or navy only), a white blouse, pantyhose, and closed-toed shoes. *currently cringing inside. If I had a rough day at work, my self-care consisted of a good cry in a hot shower, and I was good to fight another day.
Give me an "I pity the fool" if you can relate!
I’m pretty darn proud of my ability to fend for myself and the “bounce back-ability” I learned in those days. But, let’s be honest, I’m glad we aren’t still in that era. I’m exhausted just thinking about it! I am glad that health and wellness are now simply part of our culture, and people understand that the analogy of putting the oxygen mask on yourself before helping others is crucial.
Our MISBO Consortium Partners get that too! And they are great resources for all areas of health and wellness for your school community. From curriculum to facilities and mental health resources, our valued MISBO Consortium Partners are here to help you create a healthy and safe community for students, faculty and staff! Check out these resources created just for you!
Staff & faculty resources
Reducing Teacher Burnout: A Multifaceted Issue. Strategies to Retain Quality Educators
Experiencing the dreaded feeling of burnout and continuing to push through it has become the norm for many educators, but it doesn’t have to be that way! To combat this issue, we interviewed Lloyd Hopkins, Executive Director and Founder at Million Dollar Teacher Project, a nonprofit that aims to elevate the teaching profession in a way that enables every student to be taught by a highly trained, qualified, understanding, and engaged teacher. As we take a deep dive into this issue, we’d like to present you with a few tips to decrease teacher burnout in your school/district and, in turn, decrease attrition rates.
Maximize your Summer Break (and Mental Health)!
Teaching is a rewarding, yet demanding profession. Teachers spend long hours in the classroom grading papers, preparing lesson plans, and supporting their students both academically and emotionally. Due to the multi-faceted nature of the profession, it is easy for teachers to get caught up in the demands of the job and neglect their own mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Yet, focusing on these areas is essential for teachers to stay healthy, happy, and effective inside and outside of the classroom.
Business Office & Finance
The silent struggle of Accounts Payable Professionals
Manual, paper-based accounting processes are the leading cause of “manualitis”. Read our blog post to learn more about curing this dreadful condition with Accounts Payable (AP) Automation.
Checking Under the Hood; How to Perform a Six-Step Maintenance Checkup on Your Retirement Plan
Does your retirement plan make curious noises when it travels over a few market bumps? Are you getting enough mileage out of your savings rate? Is your diversification strategy as energy efficient as it should be? Performing an annual maintenance on our 401(k) can help make the road to retirement as smooth as possible. Here’s a six-step checkup that can be performed in just a couple hours:
Embracing Electronic Health Records to Boost Productivity, Reduce Paperwork
Learn how one school saved time, reduced paperwork, and simplified a complex process in this case study from SchoolDoc.
Facilities & Transportation
Can transportation impact your daily well being?
The condition or status of our body and mind is one of the most crucial factors we take into account in our everyday lives. Taking care of our personal well-being is the best way to ensure that we have a positive mood and remain productive throughout the day. It might have an impact on how we get the day started, such as by doing our morning routine, which includes things like getting some exercise and eating breakfast, among other things. Even the mode of transportation you take to go to work or school might be a factor.
Keep your students and teachers safe and healthy when they return to the classroom
CASPR is effective at reducing many pathogens including cold, flu, COVID, and more. Check out these great resources from MeTEOR Education: Video, one pager, case study.
Watch this short information video on CASPR: WATCH VIDEO
Protect What Matters Most, Your Students and EducatorS
For complete virus protection, add air purification to hand and surface hygiene practices with Fellowes AeraMax Pro commercial air purifiers.
Fellowes AeraMax Pro by Staples
Help improve cleaning efficiencies and create clean, inviting spaces
Learn more about this 4-in-1 disinfectant cleaner by Southeastern Paper Group
Rapid Multi Surface Disinfectant Cleaner
databases & curriculum
Empowering Wellness with ProQuest's eLibrary
When you subscribe to eLibrary, an online research database perfect for grades 6 through 12, your students gain access to millions of rights-cleared, authoritative documents from leading magazines and newspapers and over 7 million images. eLibrary’s subject coverage spans the curriculum and is particularly strong in the areas of Health & Wellness.
Editor-created and maintained Research Topic pages include selected documents and images to offer novice researchers helpful context on all aspects of health & wellness.
Popular Research Topics on Health & Wellness in eLibrary include: Body Image, Peer Pressure, Exercise, Nutrition, Stress, Distracted Driving, Smoking
always have a safe and comprehensive health resource you can rely on
With over 150 age-appropriate articles connected to state and national health standards—from body systems and safety to self-awareness and relationships and more—your students will never run out of new topics to spark curiosity about health, wellness, and safety. With PebbleGo Health and PebbleGo Next Health you’ll always have a safe and comprehensive health resource you can rely on to boost learning and engagement with all your students on cross-curricular subjects they want and need to know.
Benefits of Mindfulness in Education
Do you want to give your students the tools to regulate their own emotions and reduce their stress levels? Some of the most valuable resources teachers and staff have to help with this are mindfulness practices. Discover the benefits of mindfulness in education and the top ways to incorporate mindful activities into your classroom curriculum and school with Beanstack.
Top 7 Ways School Libraries Can Promote Health Literacy
Health literacy refers to a person’s ability to find, understand and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions. Here are seven ways school librarians can help promote health literacy.
bonus content
I love good memes, quotes, and internet funnies. Thought you might like the ones I stumbled upon while writing this Health and Wellness blog article!
Does running away from Monday count as cardio?
I don’t mean to brag, but I finished my 14-day diet in 3 hours and 12 minutes.
You: Why do I feel terrible?
Body: Coffee is not a meal
Body: Eat a vegetable
Body: Sleep
You: Guess we’ll never know
I need to get in shape. If I were murdered right now, my chalk outline would be a circle.
I’ve got 99 problems, and 96 of them are completely made-up scenarios in my head that I’m stressing about for absolutely no logical reason.
Did you miss our July Consortium Partner Hot Topics Blog? Check it out here:
Staffing shortages in schools; what can you do?
By Dana Grove, FMX
Schools across the country are dealing with staffing shortages. In fact, 93 of 100 large and urban school districts reported staffing shortages in the 2021-2022 school year, according to the Center on Reinventing Public Education.
Susan Kimmel
Director of the Purchasing Consortium
susankimmel@misbo.com
404.920.8844
Susan curates the MISBO Purchasing Consortium by maintaining and enhancing current partner relationships and pursuing new partnerships based on the needs of our members. Susan educates and informs members of the benefits of utilizing the MISBO Purchasing Consortium. She facilitates communications with partners concerning contracts and product offerings and assists in providing optimal partner exposure. Susan has a bachelor’s degree in business administration, an MBA with an emphasis in MIS, and a certificate in Social Media Marketing. In her spare time, Susan is a personal growth junkie, crochet hobbyist, travel enthusiast, dog lover...cat tolerator, DIY wanna-be, outdoorsy-ish, and an occasional binge watcher.