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Self-Care in the New Year!

Self-care is not selfish! 2025 was a tough year for the MEP family, so 2026 is a great time to recharge our batteries and take care of ourselves. As a caring profession, educators are susceptible to compassion fatigue due to secondary trauma and empathy.

Here are some tips for educators:

Don’t go it alone! Rely on your colleagues.
Recognize compassion fatigue as an occupational hazard.
Seek help with your own traumas.
If you see signs, talk to a professional.
Attend to self-care.

Some strategies:

Boundary setting – It’s OK to say no!
Reducing screen time/news
Limiting time on social media
Looking for and documenting one positive thing per day
Meditation
Mindfulness
Validation of emotions
Give small tokens of gratitude
Connection activities

Now is the perfect time to create a self-care plan! Also check out videos by Dr. Mona Johnson’s on the topic in the Personal Wellness Archived Webinars and some resources specific to educators’ self-care.

Winter Storm Safety

Just in time for the winter months, iSOSY has introduced the Winter Storm Safety STAT Lesson!

Dozens of service providers attended a webinar in December focused on presenting the new lesson to students. You will find a recording of that helpful webinar at the top of the STAT Lesson page. Let us know what you think!

Start the New Year with Students in Mind

As we return from winter break, it’s essential to re-engage our youth by starting meaningful, relationship-centered conversations. Before diving into academics, taking time to check in and create space for students to share how they are doing, what challenges they may be facing, and what supports they need to feel successful.

By offering a safe, judgment-free environment, staff can help students express their thoughts and goals for the months ahead. This opens the door for identifying both academic and non-academic support, whether that is tutoring, mentoring, mental health resources, or simply someone who will listen.

Re-engagement begins with connection. When students feel seen, valued, and supported, they are more ready to participate, learn, and move forward with confidence.

Ask open-ended questions. “How have you been? What’s been going well?
Validate feelings about being out of school.
Identify current barriers (transportation, family responsibilities, work, mental health).

UPDATED English for Daily Life Lesson

The goal of EFDL's For Your Health is for students to understand how to access health care and increase confidence in advocating for their health. These lessons were designed with the idea that each instructor will approach them in a different way to meet student needs and interests. Flexibility and scaffolding are built into all six sub-topics:

Provide Essential Information
Your Body
A Healthy Mouth
A Healthy Body
A Healthy Mind
Healthy for Public Life

Register Now for Webinar Opportunity!

Unique Parent Involvement Strategies for State, Regional, and Local MEP Programs

February 5, 2026

1:00 PM MST/ 2:00 PM CST/ 3:00 PM EST

Presented by the Migrant Parent Empowerment Consortium (MPEC)

MEP programs from four states will be represented on a panel to discuss their unique and effective strategies to facilitate migratory parent involvement. The workshop is designed to provide specific ideas and methods to assist state and local staff to enhance parent engagement.

Honoring Martin Luther King Day on January 19, 2026

Martin Luther King Jr was a Baptist minister and a central leader of the civil rights movement who advocated for equality through nonviolent protest. He led landmark efforts such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. His work helped drive major changes in U.S. law, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King’s legacy continues to inspire movements for justice, human rights, and peaceful social change.

Education Trends - AI

Introducing and exploring the basics of artificial intelligence, definition, and how computers learn from data to make decisions, bias, and tools.

Mini Lesson:

What is AI, in simple terms? AI is when computers or machines are designed to do tasks that normally require human thinking, like recognizing faces, suggesting music, predicting what you will type, or answering questions.

o How to teach: Ask student to list devices or apps they think use AI. Show examples: TikTok recommendations, Google Maps routes, or game NPCs.

How machines “learn” from data. Data is information. AI uses data to learn patterns. Data can be numbers, pictures, words, clicks, videos–anything a computer can process.

o How to teach: Have student sort items (colors, photos objects) to show how AI groups information. Explain that AI learns by looking at many examples.

What is Bias in AI? Bias happens when AI makes unfair or inaccurate decisions because the data it learned from was incomplete, unbalanced, or one-sided.

o How to teach: Use examples from games or social media where recommendations feel “off.” Ask: “Who might be left out of this technology?”

What are AI tools? AI tools are apps or programs that use artificial intelligence to help users create, learn, or solve problems. Examples: Chatbots, image generators, music or beat-making AI, language translation tools.

o How to teach: Let student test a tool, guess how it works, then connect it to the definitions above.

Start the New Year with Students in Mind

Register Now for Webinar Opportunity!

Honoring Martin Luther King Day on January 19, 2026

Education Trends - AI

www.osyconsortium.org