Improving the Classroom Performance of Students with Emotional or Behavioral Disabilities: Proactive Interventions at an Out-of-School Time Program
Description of Selected Solutions and Implementation Plan
Starting in September 2006, OST program staff will begin conducting parent and student interviews along with completing their annual enrollment/re-enrollment process. During these interviews, the student questionnaire (Appendix B) and the parent questionnaire (Appendix C) will be completed. Additionally, teacher questionnaires (Appendix E) will be hand-delivered; the OST program has a tradition of ensuring that key staff members personally meet with teachers at the beginning of each new academic year.
Training OST Program Staff
The training of the OST staff in the implementation of the student workshops will begin in October 2006 and continue through the end of December 2006. Provided the intervention is successful, subsequent or ongoing training sessions can be designed to occur simultaneously with the student workshop implementations. The objective of this initial extended training session is to provide the OST program staff with a thorough understanding of EBDs and to ensure that they are equipped with the tools necessary to promote academic achievement. This is also to address the concerns cited in the literature about the level of preparation evident for many general education teachers.
The OST program staff and volunteers currently meet for a general meeting every Wednesday afternoon at 1:00 PM for an hour prior to the opening of the program. To facilitate the trainings while the OST program is in session, these staff meetings will be extended to include a two-hour “working-lunch” workshop. All staff and volunteers will attend these workshops; lunch will be provided by the OST program. An additional full-day workshop will be required for the two full-time OST staff members, the two part-time OST staff members, and the community’s on-site resident manager.
The Wednesday “working-lunch” workshops will focus on the daily behavioral problems that the OST staff and volunteers are likely to encounter. Most of these workshops will focus on different types of difficult behaviors that students exhibit and compare different strategies for managing these behaviors. The workshops will take the form of directed discussions and presentations as well as role-playing activities. Each workshop will be led by the on-site social worker.
The Saturday workshops will be more comprehensive and include more specific goals. For the month of October, the focus will be on behavioral disorders. November’s focus will be on emotional disorders. The workshops in December will focus on strengthening the relationship between parents, regular school teachers, and the OST program staff. As with the Wednesday workshops, these will be facilitated by the on-site social worker; however, presenters from local agencies which specialize with working with individuals with various disabilities will also be included. An ongoing feature of the workshop will be practicing the skill of collecting observational data and the process of developing individual education plans for the OST students.
The first two Saturday workshops in October will focus on some logistical concerns which will help with managing classroom behaviors in general. These include establishing effective classroom rules, dividing the single classroom into different “centers” where different types of activities can occur, and establishing a schedule that is routine enough yet permits flexibility. The second two Saturday workshops in October will focus on behavior management through techniques like using consequences (including positive reinforcements and negative reinforcements) and employing group contingencies (whereby goals are set at the group level but each individual’s actions affect the group result).
November’s workshops will begin with emotional literacy. The first two weeks will be spent looking at some of the environmental inputs that can impact an individual in an emotionally detrimental way. These workshops will consider the unique situation of the residents at this housing community, and the more general possible influences of poverty on the emotional constituency of individuals. It will focus on ways that modeling can affect even emotions, as has been shown with cases where the parents are depressed. During the workshops, it will be stressed that in the process of these discussions, one should not “point-the-finger” and criticize the approaches that these families have taken; instead, workshop participants should try to empathize with the families’ situations and to see if there are other alternatives that can help these students and their families. For the second two weeks, the workshops will focus on methods to help build self-esteem and self-efficacy for the OST participants. This involves developing projects that are challenging to the students but which still gives those students chances for success. This includes designing projects that can be broken into smaller stages and acknowledging student progress at each stage. As time progresses, the projects can be broken into fewer stages, but the students will have had a strong foundation from the encouragement through their earlier success to be able to undertake long-term projects successfully.
December’s workshops will focus on building bridges between families, schools, and the OST program. This will include developing ways to bridge the communication gap while maintaining the confidentiality of the students in the OST program and developing ways to encourage parents to be more proactive in their children’s education. Because of the holiday season, there will only be three workshops in December. The first Saturday will address approaching parents, helping parents with the problems they may have, and helping them identify ways to manage their children’s behavior. This includes identifying home-based strategies which help provide structure and help promote mental health. Some examples of how parents can help are by ensuring that their children have a designated place in the home to study, talking to their children regularly about school and extracurricular activities, taking time to learn about their children’s interests, and by making sure that they listen to their children. The second Saturday will address ways to approach teachers and share the findings of the study without appearing critical of the procedures already being used by the teachers. It will also address ways to effectively share timely information with school teachers. Finally, the third week will focus on bringing parents and teachers together in a more productive manner. Currently, the OST program staff operates almost as a liaison between the parents and school teachers; one objective will be to find ways to make parents more comfortable with approaching teachers directly, and to identify ways that teachers can approach parents in a more positive manner.
Student Workshops
As the OST program operates year round except for major holidays, the workshops for students will begin the first week of January 2007. The workshops have been scheduled to take place on Mondays to give OST program staff the weekend to prepare, and the subsequent week to reflect on the impact of the workshops. There are 18 working Mondays from the beginning of 2007 to the end of the school-district’s calendar on June 15; however, due to testing dates and parent-teacher conference schedules, the number of workshop dates will be set at 16 days. Each 40-minute workshop will be a self-contained workshop but will include elements which will be practiced throughout the subsequent weeks to help reinforce what was learned.
To address emotional disabilities, eight workshops have been designed. These workshops will be on personality development. The first two will start with self-concept and will help students be able to better identify exactly how they see themselves. The second two workshops will focus on the student’s perception of their power in their environment. The third two workshops will focus on anxieties and fears and help children identity ways to either overcome them or minimize their effect. The fourth pair of workshops will address difficult emotions such as loneliness, depression, and neglect and help students find ways to manage these emotions or seek help with these emotions. Through the process of these eight workshops, the students will be taught self-advocacy and be given the tools for self-determination. In other words, they will be have started in the “development of attitudes, abilities, and skills that empower a student to specify—and ultimately to achieve—their own goals” (Bender, 2004, p. 118).
Another key feature of the workshops will be the focus of developing study-skills. The goal of implementing study-skills is to help students with behavioral disabilities such as ADD/ADHD, since they comprise a significant portion of the students at the OST program. There are three pairs of workshop activities which focus on study-skills. The first pair of workshops will address personal development skills including time management, organizational skills, and self-monitoring techniques. The second set of workshops will address process skills including note-taking techniques as well as referencing information from a variety of sources. The third set of study-skills workshops will focus on presentation of knowledge including test-taking skills, and presentation skills.
To complete the Monday workshop series, there will be two final workshops which will be presented to the students will focus on general behavior concerns. In effect, these workshops will be conducted to help students build strong socialization skills. Through these workshops, students will be able to build positive relationships with peers and other adults, be able to think in terms of age-appropriate behaviors, practice different communication methods, and being able to better manage aggression. These workshops will also specifically address adjustment, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and conductive disorders and take an opportunity to reflect on how the environment for these students has changed over the course of their lives.
Note that although the above presentation is divided into distinct categories, there is considerable overlap in many of the areas. Also, to introduce variety, the order in which the workshops will be presented will alternate with workshops from different categories being presented different weeks. As mentioned before, while each workshop will carry a complete theme on its own, they are meant to be part of a comprehensive set of activities to help build the desired skills and competencies of the students at the OST program.
At the completion of the workshops, and while awaiting end-of-year reports from the school teachers, OST program will conduct interviews identical to those conducted at the enrollment/re-enrollment stage to determine whether there has been any qualitative change in the attitudes of parents, school teachers, and students. All data (including report cards and final homework completion reports) will tentatively be collected by June 30, 2007. The aforementioned workshops comprise the key solution strategy for the OST program. These specialized workshops will occur concurrently with the regular workshops and activities—including art, music, reading, and math workshops—which are already in place at the OST program. Thus, if the workshop intervention appears to be successful based on the measurement of outcomes guidelines outlined earlier, the OST program staff will design parent- and teacher-handbooks based on the findings as well as design short end-of-summer trainings for regular school teachers to help them with strategies for working with the varied disabilities.
Along with these workshops, the OST program will continue to focus on its academic rigor, specifically through homework assistance. The underlying principle behind a dedicated homework program is that it will help improve student confidence in the classroom. Attending school with a feeling of preparedness and a better idea of the subject matter will be a reinforcement for the students and lessen their stress load. Students are less likely to feel “picked on” or “singled out” by their teachers if they come to class well-prepared and are thus less likely to exhibit disruptive behaviors. Furthermore, teaching students the diligence to systematically work through their homework will give them more practice with skills that will help them succeed in the classroom as well.