Click here to visit our website April 2021

What's In This Newsletter?

NEW COVID-19 Class for SCHOOLS - Clock Hours Available!
COVID-19 Updates and Reminders
Building Upon Your Innate Resilience
24 Signature Character Strengths
April Child Care Health & Safety Featured Classes - NEW CLASSES!

teacher in class with students, masked and distanced

NEW COVID-19 Class for SCHOOLS. Clock Hours Available!

This course is being offered as a public health service to teachers in our community, and offers 1 in-service hour (1.0 STARS credit which can be credited as a clock hour) at no cost for a limited time. Schools remain a critical place for children to thrive, grow and develop. The intent of this training is to provide evidence-based information and practices for COVID-19. Topics covered will include how the virus is spread and specific guidelines for limiting exposure in out-of-home settings such as school. This training will provide specific guidance for engagement in typical school activities children while practicing physical distancing, health screening and sanitation. Click here to take the course!

Note: This class is specifically designed for K-12 public and private school staff. School-age child care programs should take our COVID-19 Class for Child Care Providers for information most relevant to your setting.

COVID-19 Updates and Reminders

Report all Cases

Remember that all cases of COVID-19 that child care and early learning settings become aware of must be reported to the Snohomish Health District per WAC 246-101. You can let us know that you have a case by calling (425) 252-5415 or emailing childcarehealth@snohd.org.

Continue with all Prevention Strategies
While many of our child care providers and educators have been eligible to receive their vaccine, children are still not able to be vaccinated so all the strategies to prevent the spread of the virus need to continue.

Masks
It is required that all staff and children ages 5 and over wear face coverings and it is strongly advised that children age 2 to 4 wear face coverings. Wearing face coverings reduces the risk of spreading the virus. The face covering guidance from Washington State Department of Health was updated last week. This graphic shows relative risk of spreading the virus depending on wearing a face covering.

Ventilation
Allowing plenty of fresh air into your indoor spaces is important to reduce viral spread. The Washington State Department of Health and the CDC both have guidance that can help you improve your air quality. Opening windows and doors as much as possible and safe, using air HEPA filtration devices, as well as making sure your HVAC (heating ventilation air conditioning) system is properly adjusted can help.

Vaccine
Individuals who have been fully vaccinated (i.e. both doses of Pfizer or Moderna or one dose of Johnson & Johnson plus 14 days after) and who have no symptoms do not need to quarantine if exposed to a positive case. If symptoms develop, they must quarantine and should get tested.

Travel
An update to travel guidance was released by the CDC on Friday, April 2. To see the full report, click here. The updated guidance states that:

Fully vaccinated travelers are less likely to get and spread COVID-19.
People who are fully vaccinated with an FDA-authorized vaccine can travel safely within the United States.
- Fully vaccinated travelers do not need to get tested before or after travel unless their destination requires it
- Fully vaccinated travelers do not need to self-quarantine
Fully vaccinated travelers should still follow CDC’s recommendations for traveling safely including:
- Wear a mask over your nose and mouth
- Stay 6 feet from others and avoid crowds
- Wash your hands often or use hand sanitizer

Building Upon Your Innate Resilience

“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you'd
ever believe at first glance.” - Jodi Picoult

Sometimes, life can really be challenging. Do you ever feel like your world is falling apart? Have you recently lived through a crisis or very difficult time? Do you feel like there are too many demands on your time and that everyone wants something from you?

Some of us have had a huge recent loss. Maybe a loved one has been very sick with or died from COVID-19. Maybe a child has had a mental health crisis that became a life and death matter. Maybe the stress of the lockdown during this time has taken a huge toll on your relationships. Although I have not had a crisis recently, sometimes I have felt overwhelmed when demands for my time are coming from every direction. My to-do list is a mile long.

Meg Jay is a clinical psychologist, and the author of the book Supernormal. In an article I read, she shares practical ways to overcome whatever life throws your way. She starts out by stating that she doesn’t think that people bounce back from adversity. She says that the words “bounce back” do not help people feel understood, they don’t feel seen in light of all of the complexity of their situation. Instead, Dr. Jay likes to describe resilience as a heroic struggle.
“It’s really a battle, not a bounce,” she says, “An ongoing process that can last for years." Dr. Jay has these practical tips for how you can become more resilient.

First, recognize that your struggle is valid, no matter what you are struggling with. Don’t be ashamed of what makes you stressed. Some of the most common adversities are stressors that are chronic.
Then, realize the ways you’re already resilient. You may not have alcoholism or drug use in your home, but I’m guessing you’ve been through something. Think about the three toughest times in your life and how you got through those times. You already are resilient.
Don’t wait for the situation to fix itself. Resilient people take action. It may not be solved overnight, but every problem can be approached somehow.
Know your strengths and use them. Resilient people tend to use the strengths they have and those are different for each person. If you are not sure what your strengths are, go to the website www.viastrengths.org and take a 10-minute survey to discover your top 5 signature strengths. When you use the strengths that are your own, the side effect is joy! Use your strengths to tackle whatever is in front of you.
Don’t try to do it alone. Resilient people seek support, whether it is a partner, a best friend, or a therapist. In order to fare well after adversity, it is best to surround yourself with people who care.
At the same time know that it’s okay not to tell everyone. Everyone’s support network looks different depending on the person. For some folks, they have 2 people in the world who really know them. For others, they will want to be known by a bigger community. Love is very powerful, and love is love. The brain does not know one kind of love versus another. Go to the people who care about you and understand.
Find your favorite way to take a mental break. If your problem can’t be solved overnight, lose yourself in a book or a hobby or FaceTime or Zoom with some friends, or now that child care providers are getting vaccinated, you can hang with some of your colleagues. Don’t feel overwhelmed by the problem. Throw a frisbee, turn off the news alerts on your phone. Sometimes the world feels overwhelming.
Be compassionate with yourself and realize all the ways adversity has made you strong. Past struggles and stress have helped you gain confidence and prepared you for future challenges. Don’t see yourself as broken, see yourself as strong and resilient. You can take whatever comes, because you have experienced tough times in the past and come out on the other side.

In closing, let’s reflect on what we can learn about resilience from the art of mending broken ceramics:

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending broken ceramic vessels by sealing the cracks with lacquer and dusting them with gold powder. The golden cracks of these mended vessels make them even more precious and valuable than before. In essence, the vessels are more beautiful for having been broken. Kin means gold and tsugi means to repair, inherit, succeed, continue. One life lesson we can draw from the art of Kintsugi is that our broken parts allow us to be reborn into something more resilient, more complete, and more beautiful for having struggled. It is with great care and intention of an artist that we can turn our broken pieces into something whole – into a masterpiece.

Hope you all have a good week. Be strong.

Please see the article below for a NEW Building Resilience Course for Child Care Providers and to obtain more support on this topic of resilience.

24 Signature Character Strengths

Below is the description of 24 signature character strengths. In the essay about resilience, also in this month’s newsletter, we talk about taking a brief survey and finding out what your own strengths are. This survey can be found at www.viacharacter.org. I highly encourage you to take the survey, because the side effect of using your character strengths is joy!! Our strengths are the essence of who we are. Once you know what your strengths are, you can find out more about them here in this essay. If this information is interesting to you, take the Resilience for Child Care Providers through Snohomish Health District’s Talent LMS, found here.

Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence
Those who express an appreciation of beauty & excellence notice and appreciate beauty, excellence and/or skilled performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.

Bravery
To be brave is to face your challenges, threats, or difficulties. It involves valuing a goal or conviction and acting upon it, whether popular or not. A central element involves facing – rather than avoiding – fears.

Creativity
Creativity is thinking of new ways to do things. It involves producing ideas or behaviors that are original. However, originality is not enough: whatever is created, whether an idea or a product, must also be useful or adaptable. For example, you might write a blog post that is unique because it is entirely gibberish. That’s not going to be useful, so it would not be considered creative.

Curiosity
To be curious is to explore and discover, to take an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake. Curiosity is often described as novelty-seeking and being open to experience, and it’s associated with the natural desire to build knowledge. It is fulfilling to journey toward an answer, to engage in a new experience, or to learn a new fact. To go to a new restaurant, visit a new city, meet a new person in your class, or to conduct an online search for a question can each fulfill your quest for new experiences and new information.

Fairness
Fairness is treating people justly, not letting your personal feelings bias your decisions about others. You want to give everyone a fair chance, and believe there should be equal opportunity for all, though you also realize that what is fair for one person might not be fair for another.

Forgiveness
Forgiveness means to extend understanding towards those who have wronged or hurt us. It means to let go. In many cases this is the letting go of some or all of the frustration, disappointment, resentment, or other painful feelings associated with an offense. Forgiveness, and the related quality of mercy, involve accepting the shortcomings, flaws, and imperfections of others and giving them a second (or third) chance. As the expression goes, it is letting bygones be bygones, rather than being vengeful. It is a process of humanizing those who have led us to feel dehumanized.

Gratitude
The character strength of gratitude involves feeling and expressing a deep sense of thankfulness in life, and more specifically, taking the time to genuinely express thankfulness to others. This thankfulness can be for specific gifts or thoughtful acts. It could also more generally reflect recognition of what that person contributes to your life. We can be grateful for deliberate acts by others, such as a piece of art from a child, or for spontaneous treasures, such as a cool breeze on your face on a hot day. What marks gratitude is the psychological response: the transcendent feeling of thankfulness, the sense of having been given a gift by that person or event. Grateful people experience a variety of positive emotions, and those emotions inspire them to act in more virtuous ways – humbler, more persistent, or kinder. Gratitude tends to foster the character strengths of kindness and love, and therefore is closely associated with empathy and with connection to others.

Honesty
When you are honest, you speak the truth. More broadly, you present yourself in a genuine and sincere way, without pretense, and taking responsibility for your feelings and actions. You are a person of integrity — you are who you say you are — and you act consistently across the domains of your life rather than being one way in the community and a completely different way in your family. As a result, you believe you are being consistently true to yourself.

Hope
The character strength of hope has to do with positive expectations about the future. It involves optimistic thinking and focusing on good things to come. Hope is more than a feel-good emotion. It is an action-oriented strength involving agency, the motivation and confidence that goals can be reached, and also that many effective pathways can be devised in order to get to that desired future. Optimism is closely linked with having a particular explanatory style (how we explain the causes of bad events). People using an optimistic explanatory style interpret events as external, unstable and specific. Those using a pessimistic explanatory style interpret events as internal, stable and global.

Humility
Humility means accurately evaluating your accomplishments. It’s easy to describe what humility is not — it is not bragging, not doing things in excess, not seeking the spotlight, not drawing attention to yourself, not viewing yourself as more special or important than others. On the other hand, it is not bowing to every wish or demand of another person and it is not being highly self-critical. Truly humble people think well of themselves and have a good sense of who they are, but they also are aware of their mistakes, gaps in their knowledge, and imperfections. Most importantly, they are content without being a center of attention or getting praised for their accomplishments.

Humor
Humor means to recognize what is amusing in situations, and to offer the lighter side to others. Humor is an important lubricant to social interactions, and can contribute to team building or moving toward group goals. Where other strengths are more or less essential for achieving certain types of goals or dealing with certain types of problems, humor is rarely an essential component to positive social interactions, but it is often a desirable one. It is also a valuable method of coping with distressing situations.

Judgment
Judgment involves making rational and logical choices, and analytically evaluating ideas, opinions, and facts. To use a term that originally came from outside the character field: it is critical thinking, weighing the evidence fairly, thinking things through, and examining the evidence from all sides rather than jumping to conclusions. Judgment also involves being open-minded and able to change one’s mind in the light of evidence, remaining open to other arguments and perspectives. It should be clear at this point that judgment is a core “strength of the head” — it’s a very thinking-oriented character strength.

Kindness
Simply put, kindness is being nice to others. As you examine kindness further, a number of important dimensions begin to unfold. Kindness is being generous with others, giving your time, money, and talent to support those who are in need. Kindness is being compassionate, which means to really be there for someone, listening intently to their suffering or just sitting with them and silently supporting them. Such compassion involves a deep concern for the welfare of others. Kindness is also being nurturing and caring to others — to enjoy doing favors for them, to take care of them, and to perform good deeds.

Leadership
Leadership can take on many forms. As a character strength, leadership refers to the tendency to organize and encourage a group to get things done, while maintaining good relations within the group. Like teamwork, leadership involves being committed to the goals of the group, but how that commitment manifests itself is very different. Leadership involves setting goals and accomplishing them, enlisting effective help, building coalitions, and smoothing ruffled feathers. Effective leaders are able to provide a positive vision or message that inspires dedicated followers who feel empowered and perhaps even inspired.

Love
After millions of songs and greeting cards, love needs no introduction. That said, we want to be clear about how the term is used in the VIA Classification. Love as a character strength, rather than as an emotion, refers to the degree to which you value close relationships with people, and contribute to that closeness in a warm and genuine way. Where kindness can be a behavioral pattern applied in any relationship, love as a character strength really refers to the way you approach your closest and warmest relationships. Love is reciprocal, referring to both loving others and the willingness to accept love from others.

Love of Learning
Love of learning means a passion for learning, a desire to learn just for learning’s sake. In fact, curiosity and love of learning are among the most closely related strengths in the VIA Classification. They can still be distinguished though. While curiosity is the motivating force that leads you to seek out new information, love of learning refers to the desire to hold on to and deepen that information. The curious person is motivated by the pursuit of knowledge; the person who loves learning is motivated by the expansion of their fund of knowledge. Where curiosity is often associated with a great deal of energy and a drive to gather information, the lover of learning is often more contemplative. Love of learning describes the way in which a person engages new information and skills. Love of learning is a strength that teachers would like to see in their students, parents want to encourage in their children, therapists support in their clients, and employers try to foster in their employees. It has important motivational consequences because it helps people persist through challenges, setbacks and negative feedback.

Perseverance
Perseverance is sticking with things. It means being hardworking and finishing what is started, despite barriers and obstacles that arise. The pleasure received from completing tasks and projects is very important to those who are high in perseverance. Sometimes he or she must dig deep and muster the will to overcome thoughts of giving up. Perseverance involves organizing oneself to support activities (e.g., scheduling breaks and sticking to them, rewarding in small ways along the way), but when all else fails, this strength helps the person to barrel through until the project is done. This helps build further confidence for future successes and goal accomplishment. Perseverance involves the voluntary continuation of a goal-directed action despite the presence of challenges, difficulties, and discouragement. There are two vectors of perseverance. It requires both effort for a task and duration to keep the task up.

Perspective
Perspective means the ability to see the bigger picture in life. Perspective is about being able to see the forest as well as the trees, to avoid getting wrapped up in the small details when there are bigger issues to consider. While listening to others, perspective helps you to simultaneously think about life lessons, proper conduct, and what’s best for the situation being discussed. This ability to look at systems as a whole, or to think in big terms, helps you to offer good advice. Perspective is distinct from intelligence but represents a high level of knowledge, the capacity to give advice and to recognize and weight multiple sides before making decisions. It allows the individual to address important questions about the conduct and meaning of life.

Prudence
Prudence means being careful about your choices, stopping and thinking before acting. It is a strength of restraint. When you are prudent, you are not taking unnecessary risks, and not saying or doing things that you might later regret. If you are high in prudence, you are able to consider the long-term consequences of your actions. Prudence is a form of practical reasoning, the ability to examine the potential consequences of your actions objectively, and to control yourself based on that examination. Prudence involves far-sighted planning as well as short-term, goal-directed planning. It is often referred to as cautious wisdom, practical wisdom, and practical reason.

Self-Regulation
Self-Regulation is a complex character strength. It has to do with controlling your appetites and emotions and regulating what you do. Those high in self-regulation have a good level of confidence in their belief that they can be effective in what they pursue and are likely to achieve their goals. They are admired for their ability to control their reactions to disappointment and insecurities. Self-regulation helps keep a sense of balance, order, and progress in life. Self-Regulation can be viewed as a resource that can be depleted and fatigued. A useful metaphor can be that self-regulation acts like a muscle, which can be exhausted through over-exertion or strengthened through regular practice.

Social Intelligence
When a person knows what makes other people tick, he or she is displaying social intelligence. They’re aware of the motives and feelings of themselves and others, and how to fit into different social situations. They can feel comfortable and say the right thing whether they’re in the boardroom or the janitorial room, in a school setting or at a construction site.

Spirituality
As is true for many of the character strengths in the VIA Classification, the strength of spirituality has many dimensions. Some of these include meaning, purpose, life calling, beliefs about the universe, the expression of virtue/goodness, and practices that connect with the transcendent. Spirituality has been defined consistently by scientists as the search for or connection with “the sacred”. The sacred might be that which is blessed, holy, revered, or particularly special. This can be secular or non-secular: sacredness might be pursued as the search for a purpose in life or as a close relationship with something greater; the sacred might be experienced in the forgiveness offered by a child, a humble moment between a leader and a subordinate, an awe-inspiring sunset, a profound experience during meditation or a religious service, or the self-sacrificing kindness of a stranger. As a character strength, spirituality involves the belief that there is a dimension to life that is beyond human understanding. Some people don’t connect this belief with the concept of a divinity and prefer to think of it in terms of a sense of meaning rather than spirituality, but in the VIA Classification the terms are considered closely related. Spirituality is believed to describe both the private, intimate relationship between humans and the divine, and the range of virtues that result from the relationships. Spirituality is universal. Although the specific content of spiritual beliefs varies, all cultures have a concept of an ultimate, transcendent, sacred force.

Teamwork
Teamwork means that in team situations you are committed to contributing to the team’s success. The team could be a work group or a sports team, but it could also refer to your family, marriage, or even a group of friends working on a project together. Teamwork extends to being a good citizen of your community or country, and more broadly to a sense of social responsibility for particular groups of people or even all of humanity. In other words, the person high in teamwork applies a certain way of acting in whatever context they consider themselves committed to the good of the group as a whole. Most commonly, however, this strength refers to your being a dedicated, reliable, and contributing member to your small group or team.

Zest
Zest means approaching a situation, or life in general, with excitement and energy, not approaching tasks or activities halfway or halfheartedly. People who are high in zest are excited to get up in the morning, and they live their lives like an adventure. Zest is a dynamic strength that is directly related to physical and psychological wellness. This strength has the strongest ties to overall life satisfaction and a life of engagement.

April Featured Classes

COVID-19 for Washington State Schools

This course is being offered as a public health service to teachers in our community, and offers 1 in-service hour (1.0 STARS credit which can be credited as a clock hour) at no cost for a limited time. Schools remain a critical place for children to thrive, grow and develop. The intent of this training is to provide evidence-based information and practices for COVID-19. Topics covered will include how the virus is spread and specific guidelines for limiting exposure in out-of-home settings such as school. This training will provide specific guidance for engagement in typical school activities children while practicing physical distancing, health screening and sanitation.

Mealtime Matters: Supporting Meaningful Mealtimes in Child Care

This course will reinforce the importance of mealtime practices which promote learning, development, and nutrition among young children in an early learning environment. This training will review components of meaningful mealtimes, including how to support “picky eaters” as well as the importance of fostering a positive feeding relationship between caregiver and child. Relevant Washington Administrative Codes (WACs), Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) guidelines, Early Achievers quality standards, and Caring for Our Children best practices will also be reviewed in this course, as well as current COVID-19 mealtime guidance and exemptions.

Building Resilience for Child Care Providers

This course will build upon our previous course addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). You do not need to have taken the ACEs course to understand this material, though the ACEs course may provide context as to why resilience is particularly important. This course will explain what resilience is, describe some foundational elements of internal resilience in adulthood, and provide opportunities to explore each of these elements in your own life.

General Class and Registration Information

Classes are available to everyone. Learning courses can be taken at no cost. If you wish to obtain a certificate or in-service hours/STARS credit, cost is $10 per credit hour (unless otherwise noted). Remember that child care providers are able to apply for reimbursement through DCYF up to $250.00 once each year. Click here for more information.

Visit the SHD Child Care Health Outreach Program Course link. At the top of the page, select the SignUp link and enter the requested information. Search for classes in the Course Catalog. Once you successfully complete the COVID-19 class for schools, you will automatically be able to print a Certificate of Completion awarding you with one in-service training hour (STARS Credit) and your name will be entered into the MERIT System. An in-service training hour is also available for the Resilience and Mealtimes Matter course. To obtain credit, click on the STARS credit / certificate module of the course (in the Course Catalog) after completing the learning course.

For questions contact: childcarehealth@snohd.org or 425-252-5415

Click here for instructions on how to use our online learning portal.

Click here to go to the online learning website.

Contact Information

Snohomish Health District, 3020 Rucker Ave., Ste. 104, Everett, WA 98201

Email: childcarehealth@snohd.org

Program Phone: 425.252.5415

Website: http://www.snohd.org/238/Child-Care-Providers

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The Child Care Health Outreach Program staff are available to consult with you on these and other health, safety, and nutrition topics by phone, by email, or at your child care.