Long time, no see!

In June of 2014, I had an amazing baby boy. I manged to write 13 more blog posts in the four months that followed...you know...the months where he didn't require entertaining and was generally happy. That's where my blogging came to a screeching halt. "Balancing" motherhood, being a wife, and full time counseling proved to be enough of a challenge on its own.

I wanted to be this:

But alas, I was this:

Now I'm entering the second trimester for my second little one - the magical trimester where energy returns and I feel like I can conquer the world! I also have a much better handle on our counseling program (in part due to an amazing co-counselor) and have high hopes for being able to handle at least biweekly blog posts. Here's to dreaming!

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Responsive Classroom and School Counseling

A few summers ago I was lucky enough to be able to attend a week long training on Responsive Classroom. Besides sharing what I learned with other faculty and staff at my school, I try my best to implement these practices into my Life Skills lessons.

Some key facts about RC:

• Comprised of three interconnected parts: Engaging Academics, Effective Management, and Positive Community
• Focus on child development
• High importance on teacher language (reinforcing statements, reminding statements/questions, and redirecting statements)
• Uses logical consequences (including 'take a break') instead of punishment
• Emphasizes the importance of movement and academic choice
• Uses interactive modeling (as opposed to 'show and tell' modeling) for routines, procedures, social skills, and academic processes

The most major way that I incorporate RC into the school counseling program is through providing teachers with Morning Meeting greetings, shares, activities, and messages that reinforce the Life Skills lessons or target specific class issues. More on this in future posts! 

The other simple way I incorporate RC into the school counseling program is by including a spot for interactive modeling and a spot for academic choice or movement onto my lesson plan template. Seeing those concepts every time I write a lesson reminds me to include them. Here's my template:

*The spot for "MNPS Student Characteristic(s)" is something specific to my school district. School counselors create action plans every month to show how we've done something to develop each of five characteristics students need to have when they leave our school.

Interactive modeling has the following components: provide context for the skill you're going to model, model the skill (without commentary), ask the students what they noticed, have another student model, ask the students what they noticed, have all students practice. I've used or will use interactive modeling for:

• walking to the rug from their desks
• using 'talk it out' or 'ignore' in conflict resolution
• deep breathing to regulate strong feelings
• sharing ideas in a group

Here's an outline for what interactive modeling might look like for deep breathing:

I also try to include either academic choice or movement into the lessons. Below are some examples of each.

And last but not least, I try to use teacher language whenever I'm in the classroom, cafeteria, hallway, etc. (pretty much anywhere but my office). I do this partly to model for other teachers in the school and partly because I truly believe it is working to improve behavior. For more information on teacher language in a Responsive Classroom, I recommend checking out the RC website and the book The Power of Our Words by Paula Denton.

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