SSWN

My second item of interest is a website called School Social Work Net or SSWN that provides support, resources, and a community for School Social Workers. This website includes current research, effective interventions, useful tools for direct practice, and podcasts that discuss important topics within the school environment. Additionally, this website provides an online tool that allows for School Social Workers to track both time and data to assist in making better practice decisions, advocating for workload and role within the school, and identify needs and trends for the social services department. Both access to the website and time tracking tool are free to those who are interested in accessing this item of interest. 

The way that I have been using SSWN at Evanston Township High school is by reading current research on interventions to ensure that I am using best practice with the students on my caseload. SSWN provides school social workers with evidence based research articles to ensure that direct practice interventions are meeting student needs. For example, my supervisor and I have been utilizing mindfulness research and tools provided on SSWN for the social skills group that we cofacilitate. These mindfulness tools will be useful for the students as they prepare and complete their final examinations for the semester. Additionally, I will be using the SSW tools app next semester to track sessions with students and create measurable data. Overall, I feel that SSWN is a point of reference and community that allows for school social workers to connect with the field and find resources that are specific to schools. 

School Social Work Net fits into providing evidence-based education, behavior, and services area of the school social work practice model. The School Social Work team is comprised of licensed practitioners with years of experience in the field as well as researchers that are providing current resources on evidence based practice. SSWN works to provide school social work and mental health professionals with current tools, interventions, and research that remain within a strengths based perspective and can  be used with diverse populations. Beyond interventions and tools for practice, SSWN provides a live stream of current news that is relevant to the field and might effect current policy implementation. By utilizing SSWN, school social workers can build upon their knowledge of evidence based interventions, stay current on research and best practices, and be part of a collaborative community of like-minded professionals.

Below is the link to the SSWN website. Once again, it is free to sign up with your email and full of useful information. I hope you find this tool useful and feel a sense of community amongst fellow school social workers!


https://schoolsocialwork.net/

Child Mind Institute

Child Mind Institute

The item of interest I chose is a website dedicated to mental health disorders and concerns that children and adolescences may encounter. The website is the Child Mind Institute (https://childmind.org/). The Child Mind Institute (CMI) is based out of New York. CMI conducts various research students on mental health issues that occur in children and adolescences.at any given time CMI has multiple clinical studies going on that are led by their vast multi-disciplinary teams. For example, they currently have two different studies related to autism occurring. One is Neuronal Correlates of Autism in ADHD and Autism and the other is Brain and Behavioral Changes Over Time in Young Children with Autism. Also, within the vast realm of research conducted by CMI, they also have a platform called Data-Sharing & Open-Source Initiatives where the researchers for CMI freely and openly share their data as they obtain it instead of withholding it for publication.

In addition to research, CMI offers access to a plethora of other resources some of which include:

·       Topics A-Z (https://childmind.org/topics-a-z/)

o   Provides information about disorders, concerns, medications and basic facts about disorders children can have.

·       Guides (https://childmind.org/topics-a-z/guides/)

o   Resources for parents, educators, and practitioners to use to not only gain a better understanding and to identify signs of disorders and concerns in children but also how to better support children with different disorders.

·       Blogs & Articles (https://childmind.org/topics-a-z/brainstorm-blog/)

o   Provides information about different disorders, concerns, and current factors that can influence or relate to the mental health of children.

·       Programming (https://childmind.org/our-impact/school-and-community/)

o   Offers curriculum for schools and communities as well as webinars for educators, parents, and professionals. Some resources may cost money.

·       Ask an Expert (https://childmind.org/topics-a-z/ask-an-expert/)

o   Provides an FAQ format with questions that other parents have had about their children with different mental health disorders that are answered by the multi-disciplinary team at CMI.

·       Symptom Checker (https://childmind.org/symptomchecker/)

o   Survey platform where parents can check off different items that relate to their child’s behavior. Gives insight into what their child might have but does not diagnose any disorders.

·       Project UROK (https://childmind.org/our-impact/project-urok/)

o   Online platform that allows children with mental health issues to share stories, videos, and to gain support from others with mental health issues. UROK was designed to help de-stigmatize mental health issues through encouraging others to share their stories.

Although this is not an exhaustive list of the resources or information that is provided through the Child Mind Institute, these are resources that I found to be unique and potentially beneficial. The information and resources provided through this website allow for anyone on it to gain better insight into the diverse mental health disorders and concerns that children and adolescences face. I think that this website is a great tool to have in our toolbox as school social workers as we could share the information on it with our fellow educators at our schools and with the parents of the students that we work with. This website could be especially useful to share with parents who may not have a deep knowledge of mental health disorders in children. Parents and children alike could utilize this website to gain a better understanding of disorders especially if a student is being evaluated for special education services (IEP or 504). With this website in our toolkits, we can continue to partake in the home-school-community linkages that are a part of the school social work practice model (Villarreal Sosa, Cox, & Alvarez, 2017).

Please explore this awesome website! https://childmind.org/

References

Villarreal Sosa, L., Cox, T., & Alvarez, M. (2017). School Social Work: National Perspectives on Practice in Schools. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978019027842.

Boardmaker Online

The item of interest I want to share is a multi-level approach website that is mainly utilized for the special education classroom, however, offers benefits to all educators and service providers. The website is https://goboardmaker.com/. Boardmaker online is an online resource that allows you to create, search and support interventions in place through visuals. Beyond the creation of visuals, boardmaker online also serves as a gateway to other resources. The boardmaker online website provides links to additional hands on games, manipulatives and actives that are evidenced-based practices, particularly relating to Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA).

Boardmaker also allows you to address behavior, and mental health services in a multi-level approach from of the school social work practice mode by creating or finding documents from the website that monitor progress and evaluate service effectiveness. Boardmaker can be an assistant to collecting data and tracking student progress towards IEP goals and educational standards.

Individuals with disabilities learn and manage their world better when visual strategies are used to support their, understanding, expression, and positive behavior.  Visual strategies encourage communication, emotional regulation, learning, and independence for our students. The visuals from Boardmaker also help with organization and structure for students who either struggle with organizational skills or require organization.

I have utilized Boardmaker to create data tracking documents, behavior charts, emotion cards to help students communicate, visual task cards to keep students on track, graphic organizers, visual schedules for school and home to ensure services are being implemented in all settings, and social stories to encourage positive behavior.

Boardmaker is not free however since this resource can be used by ELL teachers and general education teachers I would highly recommend advocating for access. This resource has been used by ELL and Gen. Ed. teachers by creating word walls that are visuals cards with sight or vocabulary words to help the students create sentences.

Prices:

Personal: 1 month/$9.99, 1 year/$99, 2 years/$190, 3 years/$270

Professional: 1 Month/$19.99, 1 Year/$199, 2 Years/$360, 3 Years/$540

District: Call for pricing (800) 588-4548



Free resource that offers premade visuals: http://www.victoriesnautism.com/communication--behavioral-cues.html

TherapistAid

My first item of interest is a website called TherapistAid that provides mental health professionals with worksheets, interactive tools, guides, videos, articles, and products such as card games, books, and much more. When visiting the website, mental health professional can use filters based on demographics including children, adolescents, and adults as well as specific topics that they are looking to address. The topics that are covered with the tools provided include anger, anxiety, art therapy, CBT, communication skills, DBT, depression management, education, emotion regulation, goal setting, grief, parenting and behavior, positive psychology, relaxation, self-esteem, stress management, substance use, and values.

The way that I have been using TherapistAid at my internship with Evanston Township Highschool is for the formation of groups and the content being covered throughout group sessions. Each full time social worker and their interns are responsible for creating and facilitating a certain amount of groups during the school year. I have used both the tools available at Evanston in addition to TherapistAid to help create an online resource center for social workers to use. Social workers can go to this shared web page and look up the topic they are covering in group. Once they search for the topic and click on that folder, there will be a list of resources provided which includes worksheets, curriculums, videos, interactive games, and much more. For example, I will be cofacilitating a group that focuses on social skills for students considered high functioning who have IEP goals that indicate a focus on communication and positive socialization. By filtering the demographic and specific topic, I can use TherapistAid to pull worksheets and activities that will assist students with increasing social skills.

TherpistAid fits into providing evidence-based education, behavior, and mental health services portion of the school social work practice model. In its mission statement, TherapistAid states “it is dedicated to helping mental health professionals improve their craft by providing free evidence-based education and therapy tools. Our resources are created with clients in mind, which means avoiding jargon, and creating tools that are not only useful in theory, but in practice” (https://www.therapistaid.com/about). By using TherapistAid, social workers and other mental health professional can provide multiple examples of evidence-based practice materials that meet the clients where they are at as well as remains within a strengths based approach. These tools can also be used to monitor group and individual progress to assist in evaluating the effectiveness of services being provided to students.

Below is the link to the TherapistAid website. It is free to sign up with your email and easy to navigate. I hope this will be useful during your internship and beyond!

https://www.therapistaid.com/about

https://www.therapistaid.com/

Win-Win Discipline Model

My first item of interest is one that is used throughout my internship to help create structure for our students. Thomas Jefferson Junior High School in Woodridge, IL, where I intern, is a PBIS school. At Jefferson, we use a Tier 1 intervention for discipline when working with our students. The discipline model that we use is called Win-Win Discipline and was created by Spencer Kagan, Ph.D. This discipline model encourages collaborative learning and takes the power struggle that often occurs out of the discipline process.

The Win-Win Discipline model has four sections and is set up like the graphic below. There are four types of classroom disruptions that are identified as ABCD within Win-Win Discipline. These disruptions are identified as Aggression, Confrontation, Disengagement, and Breaking the rules. Breaking the rules is listed last and the disruption is only labeled as so if it does not fall within the other three categories. Win-Win encourages us to look past the disruption to see why a student is being disruptive. There are 7 positions as to why a student would be disruptive. The student may be disruptive because they are: attention-seeking, avoiding failure, angry, control seeking, bored, energetic, or socially uninformed. These 7 positions help us to understand how to meet the student's needs. We are able to better understand a student’s needs through Win-Win’s 3 pillars of letting students know we are on the same-side through conversations, creating collaborative solutions with the student who caused the disruption, and helping the student gain learned responsibility through teaching them positive ways to get their needs met and to take ownership of their actions. Win-Win Discipline is built on a foundation of engaging in the prevention of disruptive behavior, engaging at the moment- of- disruption where we identify which of the 7 positions the student is in and decide how to respond in a mutually beneficial way through language of choice, and through follow-ups where we check-in, process and help the student understand their behavior and how to correctly and positively get their needs met in the future. This foundation helps to limit the number of disruptions that occur within the classroom.  Win-Win Discipline takes practice, especially when working through the conversations to have within the moment of disruption.

The Win-Win Discipline Model fits into the social work model under the area of promoting a school climate and culture that is conducive to student learning and teaching excellence through the collaborative learning that takes place between the school administration, staff, and students and can be used at all grade levels. This discipline model helps to eliminate the power struggle that often occurs in conflict resolutions in the classroom where one side has to lose. Win-Win Discipline promotes student engagement and ownership in creating a classroom and school environment which is not only inviting but also conducive to encouraging everyone to actively participate in their learning.

Please view the graphic and the PowerPoint below for a further explanation of Win-Win Discipline.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RCt_Qu-9fz4uSQav3qKFK6RNasyMeybQeZ9HyUfXKFA/edit?usp=sharing

Matt and Molly Social Skills

Matt and Molly Social Skills Curriculum

The Matt and Molly Social Skills Curriculum teaches young children different social skills through the use of a 4 sentence story. The curriculum was created to be used to teach children on the Autism Spectrum, different social skills. Each story contains four different cards with a picture on each. Each picture has one sentence that goes along with it. As the facilitator shows the students the picture, he/she also reads the sentence that goes along with that picture. The students are then given a variety of questions related to the story. Depending on the skills of the students you are working with, you can use either the yes/no questions or the wh/how questions that are provided. The social worker at my placement and I, use the curriculum for two special education early childhood classes. One of the classes is lower functioning, therefore we ask them the yes/no questions after each story. The second group of students that we work with are more advanced, therefore we use the wh/how questions with them. The questions allow the students to discuss what they learned throughout the story and recognize the social skill that was taught.  

After each story, we have the students participate in an activity related to the story. After this particular story, we had the students practice the skills of turn taking and playing together, by building a tower out of blocks together. This curriculum is one that is very easy to facilitate and really engages the students. I believe that this curriculum can also be used for general education preschool and kindergarten students.

Title: Matt and Molly Play with Blocks

Skills Learned: Turn Taking & Playing with Peers