Promoting Children’ s Success: Building Relationships and Creating Supportive Environments

1. Promoting Children’s Success: Building Relationships and Creating Supportive Environments Melissa Teixeira Week 2

2. Pyramid Model • Public health, tiered model • Promotion, prevention, intervention • Promote the development of all children • Provides a conceptual framework for a comprehensive array of interventions and approaches

3. The Pyramid Model: Promoting Social and Emotional Competence and Addressing Challenging Behavior Tertiary Intervention: Few Children Secondary Prevention: Some Children Universal Promotion: All Children

4. The Goal of the Pyramid is to Promote Children’s Success By: • Creating an environment where EVERY child feels good about coming to school. • Designing an environment that promotes child engagement. • Focusing on teaching children what TO DO! • Teach expectations and routines. • Teach skills that children can use in place of challenging behaviors.

5. Key Social Emotional Skills Children Need as They Enter School • Confidence • Capacity to develop good relationships with peers and adults • Concentration and persistence on challenging tasks • Ability to effectively communicate emotions • Ability to listen to instructions and be attentive • Ability to solve social problems

6. What do children do when they don’t have each of these skills?

7. When children do not have these skills, they often exhibit challenging behaviors.We must focus on TEACHING the skills!

8. Relationships: The Foundation of the Pyramid

9. Building Relationships… why is this important?

10. Why is it important? • The relationships that we build with children, families, and colleagues are at the foundation of everything we do. • It is important to build these relationships early on rather than waiting until there is a problem. • Children learn and develop in the context of relationships that are responsive, consistent, and nurturing.

11. Building Positive Relationships with Young Children https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQixEKut8bM Take Notes as the Video may be on the Midterm

12. Building Relationships • Children with the most challenging behaviors especially need these relationships, and yet their behaviors often prevent them from benefiting from those relationships. • Adults’time and attention are very important to children, and we need to be sure that we are giving them that time and attention at times other than when they are engaging in challenging behavior. • Parents and other colleagues (such as mental health providers and therapists) are critical partners in building children’s social emotional competence. We should all work together to ensure children’s success and prevent challenging behavior.

13. Building Relationships • Helps each child feel accepted in the group • Assists children in learning to communicate and get along with others • Encourages feelings of empathy and mutual respect among children and adults • Provides a supportive environment in which children can learn and practice appropriate and acceptable behaviors as individuals and as a group

14. Behavioral Expectations of Two Groups of Mothers Farver & Lee-Shin, 2000

15. Mean Age Expectation in Months for Milestone Attainment Carlson & Harwood (2000)

16. Managing Personal Stress • How does one manage personal stress in the classroom

17. CONNECTED DISCONNECTED

18. Managing Personal Stress: Thought Control Calming Thoughts “This child is testing to see where the limits are. My job is to stay calm and help him learn better ways to behave.” “I can handle this. I am in control. They have just learned some powerful ways to get control. I will teach them more appropriate ways to behave.” Upsetting Thoughts “That child is a monster. This is getting ridiculous. He’ll never change.” “I’m sick of putting out fires!”

19. Managing Personal Stress: Thought Control Upsetting Thought “I wonder if the corner grocery is hiring?” “He ruins everything! This is going to be the worst year of my career.” Calming Thoughts “I feel undervalued right now – I need to seek support from my peers and supervisor.” “Having her in my class is going to be a wonderful professional development experience.”

20. Reframing Activity Handout #1

21. Adult Conversations Video 1.1 What are some of the things this teacher does to build positive relationships with children

22. Building Positive Relationships Maintain a 5:1 (positive to negative) Give attention when the child is engaged in appropriate behaviors

23. Positive Adult-Child Interactions • Acknowledge child’s communication (verbal or non-verbal) • Greets children by their name • Engage in one-to-one interactions, at eye level • Use a pleasant, calm voice and simple language • Provide warm, responsive physical contact • Follow the child’s lead and interests during play • Listen to children and encourage them to listen to others • Acknowledge child’s accomplishments & efforts

24. It All Adds Up Encourage: • Active Listening • Wait Time • Observation • Mirroring • Self Talk • Parallel Talk • Reflection • Expansion • Modeling

25. It All Adds Up Discourage: • No • Don’t • Stop • Demands - directions • Using a loud voice • Intimidating request

26. The Benefits • Influence a child’s emotional, cognitive, and social development • Help children develop secure relationships with other adults • Help children develop good peer relationships • Help reduce the frequency of behavior problems • Help children develop positive self-esteem • Results in higher rates of child engagement

29. Communication Is Key worksheet #2

30. What are ways we can encourage a child in the classroomBrainstorm in your groups

31. Encourage children in the classroom

32. Ideas for Encouragement • Greet every child at the door by name. • Post children’s work around the room. • Have a “star” of the week who brings in special things from home and gets to share them during circle time. • Call a child’s parent in front of them to say what a great day she is having or send home positive notes. • Call a child after a difficult day and say, “I’m sorry we had a tough day today. I know tomorrow is going to be better!” • Give hugs, high fives and thumbs up accomplishing tasks.

33. Encouragement • When a child misses school tell him how much he was missed. • Write on a t-shirt all the special things about a given child and let him/her wear it. • Find time to read to individual children or a few children at a time. • Acknowledge children’s efforts. • Give compliments liberally. • Play with children, follow their lead. • Find out what a child’s favorite book is and read it to the whole class. • Let children make “All About Me” books and share them at Circle Time.

35. “Every child needs one person who is crazy about him.” -Uri Bronfenbrenner

36. Encouraging: Families How can you make relationships with families who are difficult to reach? Why are these efforts important? • To your instruction • To the support of children with challenging behavior

37. Encourage Parents Of the children

38. Encouraging the teaching team Why is it important to have a teaching team with good relationships? • To your instruction • To the support of children with challenging behavior

39. How do you build relationships with your assistant teacher? Other team members? What strategies might you try?

40. Relationships with team members