About the Practice
Positive Reinforcement: Meet students where they are; highlight and celebrate successes; utilize strategies and techniques to encourage, build and restore confidence and self-esteem; occurs during weekly sessions for the past 4 years; teacher teams and guest speakers are involved.
Target Population/Total Students:
9th and 10th Grade students 14-17 years of age, approximately 125 students
Challenges:
- Developing long-term strategies to continue practices as staff and students change
- Identify common planning time
- Integrating socio-emotional needs with College Readiness goals
- Inadequate parental support
- Financial resources for desired hiring of therapists,reading specialists, speech evaluators
How did school overcome challenges?
We work collaboratively as a staff to identify students who are most in need, then, create plans to support them academically and socio-emotionally
How did you evaluate that this practice was effective?
Review of progress reports, report cards, credit accumulation and graduation rate to evaluate effectiveness of academic and socio-emotional supports on the cohort
Student responses on surveys and discussions about practices
How will you continue to sustain this practice?
– Incorporate common planning time into daily schedule to facilitate conversations about students.
– Use of community base organizations to assist in providing academic and socialization opportunities.
– Turn-key training to staff on creating a culturally relevant and positive peer culture.
– Sharing best practices in the school amongst staff.
– Highlighting student successes.