St. Louis Regional Elementary Principals’ Professional
Network
Meeting Notes
11-9-15
- Mickey Hughes, SSD--Social-Emotional-Behavioral Specialist for 9 St. Louis Region Districts, topic facilitator.
- Key point: Schools must become trauma-informed places for children who are exhibiting
FLIGHT-FIGHT-FREEZE behaviors.
- When you have students exhibiting behaviors, look into the trauma possibility first. Adverse childhood experiences can be the starting point for trauma.
- Principals attending agreed that adult behaviors in the building can be among the most difficult to change. One starting point might be working agreements: “We don’t yell at kids here.”
- Another idea to build understanding and empathy:
A brainstorm activity was given to use with children or
adult staff to relate trauma effects to better-understood physical impairment
effects: “How many of you wear
glasses? Today, we will take your
glasses so that everything is “fair and even.”
This can be an eye-opener for those that want to insist that treatment
should be the same across the board for every child.
- Reality: Punishment doesn’t work for these kids—it would have worked when they were 6 if it were going to work.
- Various principals shared experiences with challenging students and the issues that resulted with staff members. Just as kids get disregulated, so do teachers. The challenge is how to help regulate.
- Ideas shared:
Self-Regulation Methods recommended by some administrators:
Zones of Regulation:
For Tier 2 kids. Typically a 16
week intervention group with 4-5 similar aged students. To find out more, google “Zones of Regulation”
or search it on Teachers Pay Teachers for ideas on how to implement—does not
require formal training but can be very effective tool for students to learn to
self-monitor.
SuperFlex—another methodology used by some schools that
provides common vocabulary for self-regulation of students.
Ross Greene’s book “Lost at School.”
- YOU CAN PERFORM A FUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOR ASSESSMENT without a formal, extensive, long drawn-out tool (see handout attached). The answers to many questions are already at the table if the right people are seated at the meeting and accountability is present once the plan is in place.
Jason Cox of Hazelwood and Mickey Hughes shared ideas they
are trying to implement for some challenging SEB students.
Question: What
resources do schools have available for parents?
Therapeutic classroom programs are creating parent groups
who have a social worker assigned for group and individual counseling,
including meetings with parents.
- Discussion of Sensory Rooms—Hazelwood West Middle has one in place. Must have established, taught-in-advance routines with these rooms, using a timer. Put sensory break before preferred activity so student will be agreeable to leave sensory. All agreed that finding personnel to escort students to these rooms is a challenge.
- Next session: January 11 at EdPlus. Discussion of Brite Locker, an app for collecting and organizing artifacts for teacher PGPs will be among the topics discussed. If possible, load this app on your phone before the next meeting so you are ready to play with it. Additional topics for January meeting will be announced later. It is possible we may do a follow-up on this topic in the spring, since it impacts so many of us.
Thanks to all who attended and especially to Mickey Hughes
for donating her time to brainstorm with regional principals in our
Professional Learning Network at EdPlus.
