StreetLight Chicago homeless youth

Rebecca Zavala

StreetLight Chicago

StreetLight Chicago is a new app created for adolescents experiencing homelessness in the city of Chicago. This application was created by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. This new app provides up-to-date information on shelters, health clinics, emergency contacts, education and job placement, food programs, mental health services and more. This app was created from a focus group conducted on what did youth experiencing homelessness need? The app was created for youth so it is user friendly. The app has a map and provides locations for resources nearby and how to navigate to those locations. Through the app, you can book a bed for the night at a shelter. The app is helpful in that it is a “one-stop shop” for many resources.

This app will be helpful and we can share with our students. I think this app would be great for teenagers. This can also be beneficial in giving our students a sense of empowerment and providing them with this resource and hopefully they can seek services easily through the app. I also appreciate that the creators really tailored it to adolescents. This application would fall under the core competency five: Advance human rights and social and economic justice. Our students have basic human rights, such as freedom, safety, privacy, an adequate standard of living. We are the advocate for the student and it is our responsibility to provide and inform our students of resources available to them.  

http://www.streetlightchicago.org/

Zones of Regulation Curriculum

          The item of interest that I have chosen is the Zones of Regulation curriculum. As social workers in the school setting, we encounter many students that in some way struggle with regulating their emotions. Self-regulation is something that everyone, whether we are aware of it or not, are continually working on. Many of us have the ability to recognize when we may be feeling less regulated and are able to manage our own feelings to get to a calm state. For a lot of us, this comes naturally but for others such as many of our students, the skill of being able to manage our own emotions needs to be taught and practiced. Originally, the curriculum was created for students diagnosed with things such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), Tourette syndrome, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder, selective mutism, and anxiety disorders. These are all diagnoses that we encounter daily as school social workers. However, the curriculum is now said to be able to reach a much broader population, the zones can benefit everyone, not just students.

            The Zones help teach self-regulation by categorizing the various ways we feel by putting the emotions into four different colored zones. By categorizing our emotions into four colored zones, we help students become more aware of how they are feeling and by identifying how they are feeling they can learn more skills as to how to help manage these emotions. The red zone describes emotions such as anger or rage. The yellow zone describes emotions such as frustrated, anxiety, silliness, or nervousness. The green zone describes a calm state when a person may feel happy, focused, or content. Finally, the blue zone describes low alertness and feelings of sadness, boredom, or tiredness. Each zone contains emotions that are totally natural, but depending on the environment that the emotions are being experienced, they may need to be managed. This curriculum teaches students to use strategies to move zones, such as moving from red to green. The curriculum offers 18 complete lessons to work with the students on. My supervisor explained to me that although some of the lessons may seem repetitive and that we are saying the same thing over and over, that by the end of the curriculum that you will start to notice a difference with the students. Although the curriculum is fairly expensive my supervisor has told me that it is extremely worthwhile. 

Kuypers, L. M., & Winner, M. G. (2011). The zones of regulation: a curriculum designed to foster self-regulation and emotional control. Santa Clara, CA: Think Social Publishing,Inc.

Bounce back
https://bouncebackprogram.org

Bounce Back is a school-based group intervention for elementary students who were exposed to stressful and traumatic events Designed to be administered by clinicians, Bounce Back is based on Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma inn Schools or CBITS. Bounce back trainings can be done completely online; the training offers multiple lectures that outline the curriculum in specific details. Once you complete all lessons you have access to all the material, resources, and activities all planned out and ready to use with students specifically in the school setting and dealing with trauma. This program is laid out in 10 sessions, which include individual, parent and group sessions. The purpose of Bounce Back is to teach students ways to cope with and recover from traumatic events, helping them go back to their routine of doing what they want and need to do. The Bounce Back program is appropriate for children and families of diverse ethnic and social backgrounds.  The training is intended to teach the adult the process of the program from the initial interview and screener, to the lessons and activities and eventually “graduating” from the program.  The program is free; however, it will take you a couple of hours to complete the whole training, and it can be done in more than one sitting. I encourage everyone to check it out and complete the training to help build your social work resources. 


https://bouncebackprogram.org

Stephanie Hernandez

Mindfulness Practice            

Working in a school setting, the term SEL is thrown around alot in conversation. As school social workers, we use SEL to help guide our practice when working with students in areas of self-awareness, decision making, and social awareness. Focusing on the social emotional part/experiences of a student helps the social worker get a holistic viewpoint of the student. However, a new term that I recently heard at my field placement is mindful practice, this year all staff members at my field placement are required to attend professional development on mindful practices. Researching more about the topic I noticed the similarities of mindful practice and SEL, adding mindful practice as a support for SEL. “Mindfulness and SEL each prescribe certain practices and psychoeducation (which means discussion of psychological concepts that helps students better understand and regulate their internal life and behavior).” The goal of mindfulness practice is to train adults in acquiring skills to then teach to their own students. The 3 main skills to learn are: emotion regulation, attention control and self-awareness.

            Emotion regulation, is how one responds to emotions and how that respond impacts our well-being. Learning how to respond in a mindful way can help our emotion regulation. Attention control, in practicing mindfulness, one learns to select and object of attention and to hold a connection to that object, and to come back to the object when one is distracted. This skills is helpful for students to be successful in academics, and goal-directed behavior. Finally, self-awareness includes present moment awareness of the body and emotional cues. These 3 skills combined will allow students to create mindful habits for dealing with difficult situations. Mindfulness practice is a new technique that is still being researched and implemented in schools. There is still much to be learned from it but the benefits so far have been positive in decreasing negative student behavior, promoting self-awareness and contributing to academic success.

http://www.mindfulschools.org/foundational-concepts/integrating-mindfulness-social-emotional-learning-programs/

Transgender Youth

My item of interest is a workshop on crisis planning for transgender youth specifically in the school setting. This workshop will be helpful for anyone who wants to further their understanding in working with transgender youth and how to effectively provide crisis intervention for these students. The transequality website is also extremely helpful to those who do not know current policy and can really be used to help advocate for the students. The rights of transgender youth are clear and not to be compromised.
I feel that the number of transgender students is rising and as social workers we need to be aware of these student’s rights. I have encountered some administrators who do not support the rights of transgender students. It is our responsibility to protect and fight for the rights and ensure that their rights are being protected and honored in the school.

https://www.transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/kyr/KYR-school-June17.pdf

Crisis planning, implementation and focus on a special population “Transgender youth”
Wednesday, October 25th, 2017
9:00am – 2:15pm Registration starts at 8:30am
Central Middle School
18146 Oak Park Avenue, Tinley Park

About the workshop: The purpose of this workshop is to provide school and agency personnel involved with crisis teams and crisis management, interventions for responding to crisis that result from sudden loss and death. This year’s focus will be on managing the aftermath of school crisis. 

Behavioral Observation of Students in School (BOSS)

Melanie Bagnola SWK 664 Item of Interest #1 October 11, 2017
The item of interest that I chose is the Behavioral Observation of Students in Schools (BOSS). This is a direct observation program that assists in learning more about a student’s behavior while in the classroom. The BOSS is able confirm or deny any reports of problems, to provide information on the severity of the student’s problem, and provide baseline data. The BOSS measures three main areas, which are the student’s engaged (on-task) behaviors, non- engaged (off-task) behaviors, and the teacher’s directed instruction. These areas are measured during a 30-minute observation time. The social worker goes in to the classroom and records the student’s behavior in 15-second intervals. Another portion of the BOSS is when the social worker observes peers of the student. This provides the social worker with comparison data for them to look at. The social worker has five options to mark as to how the student, and their peer, is doing. These options include: active engaged time, passive engaged time, off-task motor, off- task verbal, and off-task passive. Active engaged time (AET) is when the student is doing what they are supposed to be doing, such as writing, reading aloud, and raising their hand. Passive engaged time (PET) includes when the student is listening or looking at the assigned task, but not doing anything beyond those listening or looking. Off-task motor (OFT-M) includes when the student is out of their seat, touching other students, or fidgeting in their seat. Off-task verbal (OFT-V) includes when the student is making sounds, talking out of turn, or calling out answers without raising their voice. Off-task passive (OFT-P) includes when the student is sitting quietly, but not paying attention to the assigned task which can include looking out the window and looking around the room.
The social worker will mark every 15-seconds which of the five options the student is currently portraying. Every fifth interval, the social worker will observe a peer and switch peers every new interval. The BOSS can be completed using the paper version or the application version, which can be used on an iPad or phone. While using the application version, the data is automatically calculated into graphs to see the student’s and peer’s activity during the observation time. While using the paper version, the social worker would need to calculate the data manually. The BOSS is connected to the School Social Work Practice Model through the data based decision making. By using the BOSS, the social worker is being provided with concrete information so that they are best able to make a decision to assist the student in need.

Treatment Planner

While meeting with my advisor before I have an IEP meeting, I was struggling to create goals that would be sufficient. My supervisor handed me a bunch of packets, some helpful and some not so helpful. He then showed me a book, “The Complete Psychotherapy Treatment Planner.” He explained how he uses this book frequently for his students to help him come up with goals. What he also explained was how it broke down the long-term goals into short-term objectives. For the short-term objectives, it give many therapeutic interventions to use for each objective. While working with my students, this book will give me suggestions for my students’ goals, but also suggestions for objectives and interventions to use.

My supervisor explained to me that his copy was very old and there was probably a specific adolescent version that was much newer, so I searched it and got my hands on my copy. When I got my copy and dug deeper into the book, the objectives and interventions have an EBP symbol next to the ones that are psychological treatments that have the best supportive evidence for the interventions and objectives. This is very helpful when working in a school because when I am trying to work with a student, I know that when I follow the suggestions from this book, I will be using a practice that is evidence based. This book has been very helpful so far and you can get it for relatively cheap on amazon. 

Here is the amazon link