My theme for the past few weeks has been school-based interventions that work; what can be done now, for very little cost, to help students perform and behave better in school. I’ll continue on this topic this week.

Peter Wolinsky

In the past month, I have led a series of ‘case conferences’ at each of the primary schools. Along with the school nurse, school counselor, Educational Welfare Office, and the Education Officer for Multi-Professional Support Services, I have been demonstrating a team approach that serves to identify students who are struggling in school and offers ways of helping them improve their performance. At each school, the teachers identified one student of concern. We then met as a staff and talked in detail (and confidentially) about the student’s strengths and weaknesses. We included information on academic performance, behavior, health, family concerns, social skills, and non-academic talents. The next step was to brainstorm some ways to help the student. Brainstorming is a process for developing creative solutions to problems. It works by focusing on a problem, deliberately coming up with as many solutions as possible, and pushing the ideas as far as possible.
Once the group has brainstormed ideas, I then ask the classroom teacher to pick three or four ideas that she wants to try. We then agree to meet again in a few weeks to see if these interventions have had a positive impact. So, what are some of the interventions, or ideas, that are being tried? One is to give the student time with an older mentor. For example, a fourth grade student who is struggling with reading will be partnered with a sixth grade student. The sixth grade student will meet with the younger child two or three times per week and will read with him. The older child serves as a role model, provides additional reading instruction, and hopefully motivates the younger child. This is also a wonderful way to ‘reward’ older students who are doing well in school. Another brainstorming idea is being tried with a second grade student. This boy is struggling with reading, and isn’t feeling good about school. The team agreed to try having this boy read to some of the Kindergarten students each week. In this way, he can be the ‘teacher’, and he has an opportunity to feel good about his reading skills, even if he is not reading at grade level. It is also a great benefit to the Kindergarten teacher, who can give some of her children the reward of sitting with an older student.

Another idea that came from our brainstorming session is H.O.P.E. This is a simple but effective way to help engage students in school. It stands for Hello, Objective, Plan, Evaluate. A teacher volunteers to be a HOPE provider, and is assigned to a particular student. The teacher greets the child every morning, says Hello, welcomes him to school, asks how his morning is going, etc. Then, the teacher quickly reviews an Objective, such as “I hear you are going to raise your hand and participate in class today!” The teacher can help the child Plan for this objective (“When are you going to do this? During Math?). Finally, the teacher helps the child Evaluate his day before going home (“Did you have a chance to participate in class today?”) Believe it or not, even this simple process has been shown to be highly effective.
Peter Wolinsky is the Educational Psychologist. He works for the Education Department of Anguilla. His email address is Peter.Wolinsky@Gov.AI.

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