#45 Sussex County Teacher Edition: Stanhope / Miss Reilly

"Social and emotional learning is so easy to implement in your everyday teaching." - Maggie Reilly

One of the one things I’ve come to know about facing challenges and tragedies is that kids of all ages sitting in classrooms all throughout Sussex County and the state of New Jersey suffer greatly from them. Year after year I witness these levels in children increasing. Students trust themselves less, they lack resiliency, as well as the ability to cope with minor disruptions.

My Mission

As the Sussex County Teacher of the Year with a platform for embedding yoga and mindfulness into daily classroom instruction, it's become my mission to seek out other teachers in the county who are making tremendous shifts in the learning process for kids.  While I accept this honor very graciously, I also acknowledge the fact that there are many other teachers in the county who deserve to be highlighted for implementing the same practices.

"I feel overwhelmed as an educator...so this was nice to be able to go to this training and learn about social and emotional learning and just be able to implement it in small ways, daily." 

- Maggie Reilly 

With the help of our Executive County Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Rosalie Lamonte, and all the Chief Administrators in the county, I‘ve been able to make some great connections, hear some inspirational stories, and learn about the healthy goodness that’s happening with our kiddos in the classroom to help them build strong social and emotional character, which creates a solid foundation to confront the personal and academic challenges they are facing.

"Think about the social and emotional standards that you want your kids to really excel at … and do not try to get through every single thing in one year...focus on empathy for a whole school year with your students."

- Maggie Rielly

Above: Maggie's students doing a mindfulness activity with ClassDojo.

Matt de la Pena's book above links to his website.  Maggie and I share a LOVE for his book, which is about finding light in dark places.

@KiraWilley     Click the book to connect to Kira's website!

Maggie can be reached by email at [email protected] on Facebook @Maggie Reilly and

on Twitter @MissReills

NJ Review article: "Mindfulness is Not a Class Period, It's a Lifestyle"