1. Social/Emotional Learning Skills Class A Tier 2 Behavioral Intervention Program Model and Implementation Presentation for Teachers and Staff
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Editor's Notes
The history of behavior interventions at Sycamore has typically been extremely punitive. The retention program was a program mandated by the district that kept failing 8 th graders at the school site and were mainstreamed with other students. These students were older than the rest of the students because they were failing 8 th graders and tended to misbehave because they were unmotivated to be at school and were on campus being labeled as failures. We also had a learning skills class that started as a response to the academy where a teacher would be a “case carrier” for a retention student and would go through organizational, study skills and motivational tools to keep students in line. Because of some success with the learning skills class, a second learning skills was created for the general population of students (non-retention). This class was similar in nature working on student motivation but generally focused a lot of attention on organization and study skills and had no curriculum. The current practices have changed immensely in the last five years. It started with the Academy program which was started last spring by the previous RtI coordinator. It started as a response to the high expulsions numbers from our school site. Secondly, in conjunction with trying to keep students on campus at our school site the school adopted the PBIS model of school interventions. We are continually in the process of monitoring and implementing more positive interventions at our school and this is still in its baby stages. Lastly, the subject of this program model is the social/emotional learning skills that has started this spring.
The reason I came up with a social/emotional learning skills class was to address the need of having a preventive intervention for students before our Academy. The Academy is a tier 3 intervention in our RtI process that houses some of our most struggling behavior students. These students were identified by specific staff members who are familiar with behavior modification strategies as well as the assistant principals who see these students on a regular basis for referrals. The Academy is a completely separate program for these students and includes using a completely different class schedule, a cohort of volunteer teachers who work with these young people and two coordinators who oversee the direction and management of the program and its students. There were two major problems when trying to select students for this year’s cohort of academy students: 1) there was no clear criteria used for selection of students. The staff members and APs who were involved in selecting students did so based on students who were kicked out of class the most and nothing else; 2) there wasn’t a progression of interventions for students before entering the academy. I wanted to provide students with a class where they had an opportunity to learn their own behavior modification skills and intervene with student behavior before having to place kids into the academy.
There are 3 main goals for the social/emotional learning skills class: Provide a progression of behavioral interventions that precede entrance into the Academy. I would like to use this class to sell the idea to my school site and staff that specific behaviors and modification strategies can be learned and are not just innate qualities brought upon by years of misbehavior. It is also a tier 2 intervention that again is less intensive than the Academy. This class provides more opportunity to use data from these classes to create a more clear entrance process into the academy by using this class to help intervene and support kids while also identifying students who need a more intensive environment. Using the class as a legitimate intervention for starting the behavior modification process and goes against the norm of providing babysitting for these students or more add more punitive environments for these students.
Program Theory Develop the necessary interventions to support struggling students. Interventions will include: Academic interventions: English, Reading, Math Behavior interventions: social/emotional support, violence, gang prevention Implementing a clear continuum of interventions that is clearly communicated and used by teachers will be able to identify and support struggling students resulting in greater academic achievement.
The purpose of the evaluation is to analyze the decrease of student misbehavior and positive academic results after enrollment in social/emotional learning skills class. Since the class is in its beginning stages the evaluation questions address issues of entrance and effectiveness of the measures used to evaluate. These were the methods used to select the students for the social/emotional learning skills class. There were also a few recommendations of students made by administrators or counselors based on qualitative methods of data collection they had from knowing students and families. Although we used GPA as one of the measures for selection, one of the questions I had for this specific intervention, because it is not academic in nature, is if it would have any positive effect on a student’s grade point average. My initial thought was that as students increase their social/emotional awareness and build up social strategies and self esteem, their academics would show improvement as well. Lastly, I want to find out how this class can continue to drive and address teacher and classroom management issues amongst the site. By showing effectiveness with certain strategies my hope is that as a whole more staff members will be open to using more but also pinpointing things we can use with our student population in the context of their regular classrooms without the need of sending them to a separate intervention class to deal with problems.
The data and methods being used to determine the effectiveness of the intervention are pretty simple. The same data used as selection criteria for the class will be the same data we use to measure effectiveness of the class. Along with that data though will be the review of a student portfolio that will be created by the students in the last two weeks of the class. Also, teacher documentation of student behavior as well as feedback from students and teachers will be used to determine the effectiveness of the class.
The point of the intervention is to help address needs of teachers with students who have extreme behavior issues in the classroom. This will also help identify the key issues teachers are having in classrooms and help figure out what needs there are for further professional development within the classrooms.
From the onset of the semester, the hope of the class was to see a reduction in these numbers and for the most part this has been the case. There have been a couple of students where nothing has changed and we have continued to see similar behavior before entering the class. But again, in general the class has shown a reduction of these numbers and is so far addressing behavioral needs of teachers in classrooms as well as give students a positive intervention. At the mid-term point, in about 2-3 weeks the plan is to have a teacher and student mid-term survey to see where the students are in this process of building skills. I will also gather teacher data from teachers of these students and ask for specific feedback as to their behavior in the class as well as get feedback on any relevant effect to their academic achievement.
![Site History ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)