Reaching Today's Students Online
Course Outline
Course Description
Reaching Today's Students: Building the Community Circle of Caring is an exciting synthesis of the most current theories, strategies, and practices to comprehensively address the needs of children and youth at risk within educational settings. Building upon traditional philosophy and educational commitment with current research and proven strategies, Reaching Today's Students strives to fulfill the promise that all children and teachers can succeed.In Reaching Today's Students, teachers begin by exploring the motives and dynamics surrounding misbehavior and the desire to learn. They learn how prevailing assumptions and practices within the four worlds of socialization - school, family, work, and friends - actually reinforce misbehavior while interfering with learning.
Before launching into strategies and techniques for dealing with conflict, teachers first learn how to create a Community Circle of Caring - a healthy and positive environment that meets children's four basic needs: connection, competence, self-control, and contribution. By building this foundation, teachers can reclaim youth and prevent conflict before it occurs. For example, teachers learn how to:
- Build relationships with resistant students (connection)
- Use instructional strategies that produce positive student behavior (competence and contribution)
- Instill a sense of responsibility in children (self-control)
Meanwhile, teachers and administrators briefly examine their beliefs, attitudes, and skills about instruction and behavior management, considering their traditional responses to discover various new alternatives to conflict situations. They also learn how to decode student behavior in light of the four basic needs model.
The course then describes specific interventions, strategies, and techniques to avoid and to diffuse potential conflict situations. The course presents these strategies along a continuum of intensity. For example: "low-key" responses can prevent power struggles from escalating; "unconventional" interventions can be effective when "low-key" responses do not work; and "interventions of last resort" help to bring a situation under control safely. This part of the course concludes with promising strategies for resolving conflict and for drawing troubled students back into the Community Circle of Caring.
In the final part of the course, the circle is intact. Using a state-of-the art change process and several hands-on activities, teachers look at ways to expand the circle and thereby strengthen the opportunities for all children to succeed. First, teachers develop a shared vision of their ideal school. They measure this vision against the current structure and culture of their schools. Then they learn how to realize this vision by building consensus, by documenting the need for change, and by initiating the change.
Course Outcome
The participants in this class will increase their knowledge of techniques and strategies proven effective for classroom instruction and individual student behavior management. Specifically, participants in this class will enhance their current knowledge of instructional and behavioral approaches to use every day within their classrooms and schools to productively create a more supportive, accepting instructional environment. In addition, this course will describe and model researched techniques and strategies to use within a problem-solving format to address the needs of all students.
Objectives
Competencies to be demonstrated and mastered by participants in this class include:- Examine and evaluate current beliefs and strategies that are implemented in building a community circle of caring within individual classrooms and schools
- Develop a personal vision statement that exemplifies a specific professional situation, and defines the purpose and goal of creating a successful learning environment
- Demonstrate enhanced professional knowledge of methodologies, materials, and theories to be used with students with academic and behavior needs within the area of classroom and behavioral management
- Identify effective classroom management techniques
- Evaluate knowledge of classroom organizational and management techniques by implementing planning, self-reporting, and observational procedures
- Select and incorporate one motivational strategy into his/her classroom routine
- Appraise his/her teaching success using the Effective Teaching Checklist
- Evaluate strategies and techniques for developing an effective, caring classroom community for all students
- Choose and implement at least one motivational strategy in the classroom
- Assess, model, and characterize implementation of effective research-based classroom management procedures for all students within a classroom or school that build on the four critical needs: connection, contribution, competence, and self-control
- Develop a classroom intervention and crisis strategy that provides for anticipated classroom incidents, challenges, and interruptions
- Assess interventions for student behaviors along the continuum of intensity - from low-key to crisis management responses - by avoiding, de-escalating, and resolving conflict
- Evaluate critical attributes of effective discipline within a classroom community that promote student responsibility and an internal locus of control
- Assess strategies and techniques that may enable his/her students to support each other within their classroom environment and meet individual needs for contribution
- Appraise strategies and techniques that might help his/her students to support each other within their classroom environment through the use of specific skills of mediation and problem solving, and that meet their need for contribution and self-control
- Characterize an internal locus of control, and identify strategies to promote such development through self-control
- Seek feedback on his/her teaching by having a peer evaluate his/her teaching effectiveness
- Characterize techniques and methods of problem-solving that can be used in a team setting to address an individual student’s academic and/or behavior concern.
- Integrate into the practice of his/her profession effective problem-solving strategies to aid him/her in identifying appropriate plans of action for any given situation.
- Formulate a plan of action for implementing a solution for a specific classroom concern.
- Illustrate data collection approaches within a team setting to assess and understand student behavior
- Characterize various forms of data as a way to identify the antecedents to observable behaviors
- Assess behavior exhibited by a challenging student in his/her classroom
- Demonstrate the continuation of the community circle of caring on a school wide basis through the development of an individual, school wide discipline plan.
- Generate strategies for communicating a firm commitment to the vision throughout an organization.
- Identify any discrepancies between the vision statement and actual conditions.
- Complete a third self-evaluation checklist.
- Complete the final integration project
Curriculum Design & Time Requirements
Reaching Today's Students is a 13 week 3 credit graduate level or sixty hour professional development course taught online. Modules 1 through 8 will be completed one per week. Modules 9 and 10 will be completed over a five-week period so students will have time to revise and complete the final integration project.Hardware & Computer Skill Requirements
Students may use either a Macintosh computer or a PC with Windows 2000 or higher. Students should possess basic word processing skills and have internet access with an active e-mail account. Students also are expected to have a basic knowledge of how to use a Web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Safari, Mozilla Firefox etc.Course Materials
The textbook for this course is Reclaiming Youth at Risk, Larry K. Brendtro, Martin Brokenleg, & Steven VanBockern, National Education Service, 1998.Session Outline
Session 1: Building Community Circle of CaringObjective: Identify, discuss, and enhance current beliefs and strategies implemented to build a community circle of caring within individual classrooms and schools.
Contents:
- Awareness Activities
- Norm setting for class
- The community circle of caring: rationale
- The community circle of caring: characteristics
Session 2: Caring Classroom Management
Objective: Demonstrate enhanced professional knowledge of methodologies, materials, and theories to be used with students with academic and behavior needs within the area of classroom and behavioral management.
Contents:
- Course and personal vision statements
- Why do kids misbehave?
- Four major theories for behavior management
Session 3: Outstanding Instruction
Objective: Demonstrate knowledge of classroom organizational and management skills through various planning, self-reporting and observational procedures.
Contents:
- Creating caring classrooms
- Effective/ineffective teaching procedures
Session 4: Caring Environments
Objective: Discuss and review effective strategies and techniques to develop an effective, caring classroom environment for all students.
Contents:
- Prevent, intervene, communicate, and motivate students within the classroom
- The principles of effective discipline
- The strategies of effective discipline
- Proactive action planning
Session 5: Planning for Prevention
Objective: Demonstrate applied knowledge of planning of classroom and behavioral prevention and intervention techniques for classroom and individual students through use of planning and implementation guides.
Contents:
- Decision-making context within classrooms
- Classroom prevention/intervention planning
Session 6: Interventions
Objective: Demonstrate knowledge of and interventions for student behaviors along the continuum of intensity, from low-key to crisis management responses.
Contents:
- Review classroom prevention/intervention plans
- Anecdotal records/case studies
- "Power"
- Intensive interventions
- Resolving conflicts to draw students back into the community circle
Session 7: Crisis Management
Objective: Discuss and review strategies of crisis management and diffusing power situations.
Contents:
- Teacher strategies
- Student strategies
- Maintaining classroom integrity
Session 8: Team Problem-Solving
Objective: Demonstrate the knowledge of various techniques and methods of problem solving within a team setting given an individual student academic and/or behavioral concern.
Contents:
- Collecting observational data
- Decision-making matrix
- Problem-solving process
- Brainstorming for positive environments
Session 9: Applying Team Problem-Solving
Objective: Demonstrate applied knowledge of problem solving approaches within a team setting given an individual student academic and/or behavioral concern through actual implementation of procedures.
Contents:
- Individual child change projects
- Case studies
Session 10: Expanding the Circle
Objective: Demonstrate the continuation of the community circle of caring on a school-wide basis through the development of an individual, school-wide discipline plan.
Contents:
- School-wide vision
- Building consensus, communicating the vision
- Documenting the need for change
- Assessing school organizational structure and culture
- Planning for school-wide change
Grading
| Assignment | Points | Grading Scale | |||||||
| Forum and E-mail Participation | 20 | 100 - 93 | A | ||||||
| Classroom Self-Evaluation Checklists | 15 | 92 - 85 | B | ||||||
| Implementation Log/Journal writing | 15 | 84 - 77 | C | ||||||
| Two Action Plans (25 Points each) | 16 | ||||||||
| Two Child Change Problem-Solving Projects (25 Points each) | 16 | ||||||||
| Final Exam | 18 | ||||||||
| Total Points | 100 |
Student Requirements
| 18 points | Formal Assessment of Knowledge | ||||||||||
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| 32 points | Application of Knowledge. | ||||||||||
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| 50 points | Reflection Activities | ||||||||||
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