The Importance of Providing Services for Educators working with Students at Risk
Written By: Samtina Kanu
The Gap in Services
There is a gap when it comes to services provided to educators being fully trained and prepared when involved with students or adolescents involved in juvenile delinquency as well as the school-to-prison pipeline. Educators often feel ill-prepared and are not trained to deal with misbehavior these students bring into the classrooms (Nance, 2016, 369). Many times, these students face challenges because of circumstances and problems they encounter outside of school that often educators and counselors are not always prepared to manage.
Fixing the Gap
As I was doing research, I noticed that there are not many programs or services targeted toward administrators who work with frequently misbehaving students. From the organizations that I found doing this work, their approach to fixing this gap had varied strategies, but the same end goal. The end goal being to find approaches to intervene in the life of youth before they enter the juvenile system or dropout of school. These approaches require the involvement of school, community, parents, and peers.
An article in the Arizona State Law Journal entitled, “Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline: Tools for Change,” gives school-based solutions on how to reverse the school-to-prison pipeline. The approach mentioned in the article focused on improving academic achievement, reducing dropout rate, decreasing disciplinary actions such as suspension, expulsion, and exposure to law enforcement. The article also mentions the important to recognize that reversing the effects of the school-to-prison pipeline involves going beyond schools and working with the community. It calls for a need for counselors, mental health services, mentoring programs, extracurricular activities, and social support from school administrators and educators that can help build students up. Strategies mentioned are lessening police presence in schools or eliminating zero tolerance policies. In relation to teachers and administrators, the article mentions that, “behavioral problems often correlate to teachers’ ability to manage a classroom and engage the students in productive activities” (Nance, 2015). Educators want more trainings in classroom management and instructional skills that help them to improve their ability to manage their students, to focus on student’s needs and interests, and to engage in a learning environment that is better and happier for the classroom. This type of training for educators and administrators is important for them to gain better awareness and support their students. Whether it is through implementing innovative ways to improve their student’s behavior and improving their understanding of the consequences of the school-to-prison pipeline.
A program called School-Wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) is a program that focuses on improving the school environment. This program involves using a multi-tiered approach to stop behavioral problems from developing and rewarding students for appropriate behavior so that positive behavior is taught and reinforced. Tier one focuses on educators being able to successfully promote positive student behavior. It requires that all members of the school community consistently encourage, reward, and reinforce this positive behavior. Tier two and three focuses on prevention strategies directed at students who do not respond positively to tier one strategies. Tier three strategies include focusing on those students on a smaller scale including small group settings, adult feedback, check-ins, and more communication between school and home. SWPBIS has been successful with many schools, including urban schools and in the juvenile justice system.
A program called Ten Sigma was founded by former school administrators, Dr. John Wessels and Clyde Birkholz. This program aims to provide educators with tools and resources to help them better educate their students and to determine what approach works in the classroom in response to students acting out. They provide transition and behavior tools by setting up assessments and rubrics for teachers to use to improve their student’s behavior and school performance. Another response to prevention is the Juvenile Counseling and Assessment Program or JCAP. JCAP created a model to help address delinquent behavior. The first step in their model is identifying the variables associated with the student’s delinquency. After these variables have been identified they move on to strategies that include group or individual counseling. They highlight the need of training good student counselors so that they can become proficient and use the appropriate counseling methods and strategies that work well with these students.
All of the programs mentioned above used some of the same techniques. The most important is that administrators, counselors, and educators in the school are aware of the backgrounds and the challenges that these students face outside of the school and the risk involved for them. Much like these other programs, Empowered Strategies is an organization that works with school officials to help increase family and student engagement. The program trains administrators and educators to come up with a mechanism in their own schools to develop one on one relationships with their students. It brings awareness to the school administrators about the juvenile justice system and its implications, and how educators have the discretion to reduce the rate of student contact to the juvenile justice system. The goal is to prevent the risk of juvenile delinquency with students that may lead to bigger problems such as getting involved with law enforcement or dropping out of school.
All of these prevention and intervention-based programs stress creating a relationship where the student is able to feel that someone is looking out for them and willing to listen. It also gives the administrators an opportunity to learn how to communicate openly with students who face these problems. With these approaches, students will become more engaged in their school environment instead of being driven away and should be able to confide with their school administrators to receive the proper support they need.
Works Cited
Calhoun, G. B., Glaser, B. A., & Bartolomucci, C. L. (2001). The juvenile counseling and assessment model and program: A conceptualization and intervention for juvenile delinquency. Journal of Counseling and Development : JCD, 79(2), 131-141. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.library.vcu.edu/10.1002/j.1556-6676.2001.tb01952.x
Nance, Jason P. (2016) Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Tools for Change. 48 Arizona State Law Journal 313
https://tensigma.org/sample-page/
McIntosh, Kent., Girvan, Erik., Horner, Robert., Smolkowski, Keith. (2014) Education not Incarceration: A Concepual Model for Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disproportionality in School Discipline. Journal of Applied Research on Children: Informing Policy for Children at Risk. Volume 5. Issue 2 Legal Safety Nets: The Law as a Change Agent for Children.