Item of Interest: The Make or Break Year (Emily Krone Phillips)

This weeks item of interest is the book, The Make or Break Year: Solving the Dropout Crisis One Ninth Grader at a Time" by Emily Krone Phillips. In the past few decades students in CPS schools were just as likely to dropout as they were to graduate.This book follows the implementation of Freshman On-Track, an approach to education to address the dropout issues in school. The book follows the research provided by CPS schools in navigating effective intervention to meet freshman students' needs. Furthermore, the implementation of these effective interventions found to positively impact student graduation rates. As I read this book I am choosing to take a critical perspective as the book presents the solution to dropout rates as a series of "simple" solutions. Knowing that academic achievement can be rooted in socio-economic status, race, ethnicity and other factors I am interested to know how accurate the solutions presented in this book are to sustainable and effective change.
Emily Krone Phillips Book Reading

Amazon Link to Book

Elyssa's Mission

        Elyssa’s Mission (website: http://elyssasmission.org/) offers five different free programs (Signs of Suicide, Grief Group, EveryBody Matters, Workplace Education and Scholarship Award Program) based around mental health and suicide prevention. The leading program that Elyssa’s Mission offers is their SOS (Signs of Suicide) Prevention Program (link: http://elyssasmission.org/sos-signs-of-suicide-prevention-program/). This SOS Prevention Program has the ability to educate students, staff, parents, and community members on the signs of suicide, as well as, helps save lives by teaching the technique, “A.C.T.” which stands for Acknowledge, Care, Tell. The program can be done within a period of a school day or can be drawn out to be longer. The program can be done by someone from Elyssa’s Mission themselves or by competent school staff (social workers, school psychologist, etc.). The program is delivered by introducing the students to Elyssa’s Mission and then having them watch a ~25 minute video and then discussing the video. Also, possibly the most important part of the program is screening students by using a Brief Screen for Adolescent Depression (BSAD) sheet. Any students who have alarming scores/answers should be seen by the school social worker in a timely fashion. The relevance of Elyssa's Mission for school social workers is to be proactive in finding students who may be struggling with their mental health or have suicidal ideation, as well as teach others how to identify signs of suicidal ideation and what to do if they see the signs.

        The Signs of Suicide Prevention Program was not invented by Elyssa’s Mission but was adapted by Elyssa’s Mission due to it being a successful evidence-based program. On the Elyssa’s Mission website it is quoted that, “Signs of Suicide (SOS) is the only school-based suicide prevention program to show a reduction (by 40-64 percent!) in self-reported suicide attempts in a randomized controlled study. -(Aseltine et al., 2007 & Schilling et al., 2016).” Elyssa’s Mission uses a prevention and enrichment social work model, as well as a crisis intervention model when needed. Elyssa’s Mission is to help prevent suicide but also provide intervention in the crisis in which someone is suicidal.

References

Our Mission: Suicide Prevention. Retrieved October 8, 2019, from http://elyssasmission.org/.