The core curriculum results report were based on three guidance lessons that were taught during the school year. The lessons were focused in three specific grade levels, Grade 1, 3 and 5. The three lessons are from the Second Step Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Empathy unit. The lessons addressed the Mindsets and Behaviors in the academic and social-emotional domain. Our vision and mission’s goal is to help students possess the academic, social, emotional, and career skills to be lifelong learners and achievers.
Through developing the skills to be empathetic and show/give compassion, the students at Leihoku Elementary School will be college and career ready with the skillset to problem solve in an appropriate manner. Our vision and mission aligned with the ASCA mindsets and competencies in these lessons taught. These lessons taught also align with the Counseling Department’s second program goal: By the end of school year 2016-2017, the number of office referrals will decrease by 5% from 201 to 190.
All three of the lessons are from Grade 1, 3 and 5 and from the SEL Empathy unit. The focus of all three lessons was showing compassion.
For the Grade 1 lesson, the goal was to have the students (1) listen, (2) say kind words, and (3) helping are ways to show caring. The goal was to show how to care and help in a given situation. Based on the results from this lesson 73% were able to show compassion to another student based on the initial lesson and modeling done by the Teacher/Counselor. The remaining 27% needed an additional small group or individual lesson conducted by the Counselor. Following the additional lesson, the 27% of students could show compassion following the lesson with an additional small group lesson.
For the Grade 3 lesson, the goal was to have students identify ways to show compassion for other given different situations and show appreciation for another’s concern. 82% of the students were able to accurately give a compassionate statement given a scenario. 16% of the students needed an additional lesson conducted by the Counselor before giving a compassionate statement. 2% were not able to give a compassionate statement. These students are identified under IDEA.
For the Grade 5 lesson, the goal was to have the students (1) say something compassionate and (2) do something compassionate. 67% of the students were able to write a compassionate statement for the 3 given scenarios. 30% of the students needed additional modeling done by Counselor before being able to write a compassionate statement for the 3 given scenarios. 3% of the students, identified under IDEA and non-verbal, were unable to give a compassionate statement despite whole and small group lessons.
Although the students were able to complete the skills practice, the counselors began to question if students were able to apply the skills in real life situations. This was partially due to to high volume of referrals. In addition, the counselors realized that how often or to what extent the skills were reinforced throughout the day, week, year by the class teachers made an impact on the extent to which the students could apply skills. Because of this, the decision to have every staff member teach/co-teach a lesson or facilitate a lesson was made as a change for the next school year. The decision to have the lessons taught on the same day was another discussion to ensure all students were getting the lesson with fidelity. With these new changes, students could benefit because the common language would be used by all teachers as they would have been involved in a lesson at the beginning of the week. Education Assistants and adult supervisors could reference the same topics using the same vocabulary.