|
School Social Work NOW
Supporting Innovative Practice, Effective Leadership & Applied Research
August 2011 - Vol 1, Issue 38 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Greetings! | |
Handouts from the 2011 Research Summit are now available on the the ACSSW website. Either click here on 2011 Summit Handouts or go to the website, click on "ACSSW Events", and then on "2011 Handouts." Open access will be available through August 18th. After that, only Summit Participants and ACSSW members will be provided a log-in code.
With the 2011-2012 school year fast approaching, it's time to begin thinking about new ideas and about how to educate policy and decision makers about the services we provide to students, families, teachers and administrators. Several new tools are available to you to do this.
Traditionally, school social workers fostered collaborative approaches to problem solving. While there are quite a few PowerPoints that promote school social work, there are none--'til now--that promote Specialized Instructional Support Personnel (SISP), a new term being used to replace current descriptors such as "related service providers", "pupil services", and "support services." ACSSW, in collaboration with other professional school personnel and within the IDEA Partnership, worked to develop a new PowerPoint that demonstrates how SISP personnel support the learning of children and youth. To access the PowerPoint, click the IDEA Partnership link abovbe and scroll down.
In addition to the SISP PowerPoint, you will find other tools that can help to develop your presentation, including a Presenter's Guide and a Dialogue Guide. Review these tools before the school year starts and develop your plan on how and when to educate key people (school boards, administrators, teachers, etc.) on the necessity of school social workers and other SISP to the learning and academic success of students you serve. You can adapt the SISP PowerPoint to your particular district or school situation.
NASW is seeking input on its draft of Standards for School Social Work Services. This is an opportunity to weigh in on this important issue. The public comment period ends at 11 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on September 2, 2011. This is your opportunity to contribute to the growth and ethics of school social work. Visit the link now.
If you have ideas or comments regarding what you'd like to see in next year's e-letter issues, don't hesitate to contact us. Send your thoughts to: Ideas and Comments.
Judith Kullas Shine
President |
|
Professional Development Opportunities | |
This link includes state, national and international professional development opportunities.
Professional Development Opportunities
If you represent an organization with PDOs of interest to school social workers, please contact us with details. We will consider each request in terms of relevancy, timing, and interest level. |
|
|
|
|
Practice Points | |
An Australian report on the legal risks associated with the use of social networking sites has found that while 95 percent of students use social networking sites, nearly 30 percent did not think social networking held any risks. The project was designed to focus on the legal risks of social networking as experienced by secondary school students, teachers and parents. The majority of parents (80.4 percent) said they had seen their child's social networking site profile at least once. Parents and teachers were particularly concerned with issues of cyber-bullying, stalking or grooming (establishing an emotional connection with a child for purposes of sex or other exploitation), with a lesser number expressing concerns about identity theft and disclosure. Moreover, nearly 20 percent of students were ambivalent about risk, essentially reporting the degree of risk was irrelevant to them as social networking is "just what everyone does."... A very small group of students identified concerns relating to privacy or unwelcome disclosure of data..."While risks posed by forms of abusive behavior such as cyber-bullying and grooming have been emphasized both by the media and policy responses, comparatively little attention has been given to the potential legal risks that children and young people may face when using social networking sites," said Michael Henderson, Ph.D., one of the co-authors of the report. Full article.
Researchers from the American Headache Society's Women's Issues Section Research Consortium found that incidence of childhood maltreatment, especially emotional abuse and neglect, are prevalent in migraine patients. The study also found that migraineurs reporting childhood emotional or physical abuse and/or neglect had a significantly higher number of comorbid pain conditions compared with those without a history of maltreatment. More.
Children for a variety of reasons often "hit a wall" when asked to verbalize their feelings and concerns in therapy whether individual, group, or family therapy. At that point the child becomes anxious and the therapist is challenged to shift gears and find "face saving" and productive ways for them to participate in a meaningful way in the therapy process. Some children may not be able to verbalize due to developmental limitations, others may "shut-down" due to anxiety, anger, fear, resentment, a few may not be able to verbalize due to trauma events or trauma that occurred in the preverbal period. When this wall is hit it is helpful for the child if the therapist has a repertoire of strategies that are not language-dependent such as symbolic play either directive or non-directive, drawing, storytelling, or therapeutic work with symbols. This article intends to broaden the range of tools the therapist can utilize when children reach the limits of their ability and/or willingness to verbalize. Click for full article.
Bad Signs (School Environment Food for Thought)
You can tell quite a lot about what goes on in a classroom or a school even if you visit after everyone has gone home. Just by looking at the walls-or, more precisely, what's on the walls-it's possible to get a feel for the educational priorities, the attitudes about children, even the assumptions about human nature of the people in charge.
A chart that I created more than a decade ago called "What to Look for in a Classroom" listed some Good Signs along with Possible Reasons to Worry (Kohn, 1999, appendix B). Among the latter: walls that are mostly bare, giving the building a stark, institutional feel; and posted displays that suggest either a focus on control (lists of rules or, even worse, punishments) or an emphasis on relative performance (charts that include grades or other evaluations of each student).
"Because I've done so elsewhere, I won't take time here to explain why such lists and charts make me shudder. Instead, I'd like to consider a few signs and posters that are generally regarded as innocuous or even inspiring." Continue here. |
| Leadership News | |
10 Leadership Lessons from the Playground
Whether you realize it or not, as a child, you learned things that are fundamental to your success as a manager or leader. Here's the rub. The act of growing up probably robbed you of these precious lessons. There are a number of reasons for that:
- You become pragmatic and lose perspective. By necessity, adults focus on the most pressing issues and therefore sacrifice "big picture" perspective.
- You become overloaded and distracted. It's ironic, but the combination of information and communication overload, and personal and professional responsibilities, actually makes adults more subject to distraction than children.
- You become jaded. Negative experience causes you to develop a tough exterior or a filter that, unfortunately, also filters out positive experience and opportunity.
- You learn new lessons from the wrong teachers or sources.
- You grow up. Long story short, time and experience take their toll.
At its core, success in managing and leading organizations is based on how well you know yourself and your ability to understand others. And the most important lessons you've ever learned about yourself and others were as a kid. Read more. |
|
|
Research Highlights |
Research Reflections About When Schools Work Well Twenty-one Specific Activities for Improving Schools
This paper synthesizes four research projects the authors completed between 2006-2011. The first research study was a case study of leadership in five highly-effective elementary schools in Alberta. Second, [they] thoroughly reviewed literature in the area of Student Engagement. [The] third research project included 50+ interviews compiling ten years of success stories from the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI). The final research project was longitudinal study asking high school students at risk of not completing high school why they had disengaged with learning and how they would change schools. This paper attempts to reflect upon [the] collective research. [The authors] synthesized [their] work into seven key findings, twenty-one specific positive actions, and three actions that suggest principals should not do. Key findings include: (1) engaging students; (2) encouraging specific teacher actions; (3) building good relationships; (4) building spaces for learning; (5) focusing on how learning takes place, not on what is learned; (6) involving parents; and (7) practicing shared leadership. For more details and full article click here.
Researchers Using Video Face Options & Challenges
UW-Madison education professor Sharon Derry chaired a national task force of scholars in writing guidelines for researchers who use video and who want to better design formal and informal learning environments. Some findings from their work, funded by the National Science Foundation, recently appeared in the Journal of the Learning Sciences. Researchers face several challenges,
including deciding which elements of a complex environment should be video recorded; which analytical frameworks and practices are available and appropriate; what technological tools are available and which must be developed; and how research protocols can encourage data sharing while protecting subjects' privacy rights. Click here and scroll to page 6. |
|
|
In the News | |
Was the $5 Billion Worth It?
In a lengthy interview given to The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft founder Bill Gates concedes the difficulty of improving public education, and that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which since 2000 has poured $5 billion into education grants and scholarships, has made some missteps. "It's been about a decade of learning [for the foundation]," Gates admits. An initial interest was schools with fewer students to promote less acting up in the classroom, better attendance, and closer interaction with adults. From 2004 onward, the foundation spent $100 million to open 20 small high schools in San Diego, Denver, New York City, and elsewhere. "But the overall impact of the intervention, particularly the measure we care most about -- whether you go to college -- it didn't move the needle much," Gates says. This understanding of just how little influence seemingly large donations can have has led the foundation to rethink its focus in recent years, according to The Journal. Instead of school-level investments, its goal now is to leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent. "So we come into this thinking that we should fund the research," Gates says. Of late, the foundation has been working on a personnel system that can reliably measure teacher effectiveness. Click here for more.
Suicide Rates Among Latina Teens Skyrocket to New Heights Immigrant Moms, Their Daughters Weigh In
In Brooklyn, the problem is so acute, more than one in five (21 per cent) has done so - twice the number of all city high school girls. The high rates among this population have been blamed on a disconnect between the girls and their immigrant moms, and a taboo against counseling in immigrant populations. "The magnitude is really troublesome," says mental health advocate Dr. Rosa Gil of the research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It needs to be addressed before it rises even further."... "This is not happening in the countries of origin so immigration is obviously a contributing factor," she says. "The recent census shows the Hispanic community has a very high rate of single mothers so there is a lack of family coherence. Then you add poverty into the mix." "It is also very prevalent for Latina girls to get into a tangled relationship with their moms. "The mothers, born in other countries, might not speak English well and don't acculturate as quickly their children do. They might have to work hard at several jobs or shifts to provide for the family. "Meanwhile they are holding these girls to the same way they grew up in places like Ecuador or the Dominican Republic, where daughters were raised to be dependent and submissive to the family. For more, click. |
|
Webinars | |
Functional Behavioral Analysis and Wraparound
The National Wraparound Initiative is partnering with the Technical Assistance Partnership for Child and Family Mental Health (which is a collaboration between the National Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health and the American Institutes for Research) to sponsor a series of webinars on implementing high quality wraparound. Webinars include a one hour presentation by a National Wraparound Initiative expert, followed by 30 minutes of discussion. The next webinar on "Functional Behavioral Analysis and Wraparound" will be on August 23rd from 2:00PM - 3:30PM Eastern Time. This webinar will teach families functional assessments to manage their own crises as part of the wraparound process. To register for this webinar please click here. |
|
Grants & Funding | |
National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) Research & Development Competition
The National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) FY 2012 Research and Development Center Competition announces a research and development competition.
Topics include:
1. Interventions for Families of Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders;
2. Interventions for Families of Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders;
3. School-Based Interventions for Secondary Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders; and
4. Reading Instruction for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students;
For more information about these funding opportunities, please see the Request for Applications (RFA) and contact the appropriate program officer listed.
Libri Foundation: Books for Children
The Libri Foundation Books for Children Grants donate new, quality, hardcover children's books for small, rural, public libraries across the country. Maximum award: varies. Eligibility: Libraries should be in a rural area, have a limited operating budget, and an active children's department. The average total operating budget of a Books for Children grant recipient must be less than $40,000. Deadline: January 23, 2011. Application Guidelines.
CVS: Caremark Community Grants
The CVS Caremark Community Grants Program is currently accepting proposals for programs targeting children with disabilities that address: health and rehabilitation services; a greater level of inclusion in student activities and extracurricular programs; opportunities or facilities that give greater access to physical movement and play; provision to uninsured individuals with needed care, in particular programs where the care received is of higher quality and delivered by providers who participate in accountable community health care programs. Maximum award: $5,000. Eligibility: nonprofit organizations. Deadline: October 31, 2011. Learn more.
Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Kansas Foundation Invites School Personnel to Apply
A total of $150,000 in grants will be awarded to school personnel working in 2012 to help school-aged children reduce their cardiovascular risk, increase their physical activity, and/or learn healthy eating habits . . . Deadline: October 14, 2011. Learn More.
Sodexo Foundation and Youth Service America Invite Applications for Youth-Led Children's Hunger Volunteer Projects
Twenty-five $500 grants will be awarded to volunteer projects that address the issue of childhood hunger at the community level and are conducted by young people between the ages of 5 and 25 who live in the United States. Deadline: September 16, 2011. Link to Complete RFP. |
|
ACSSW Activities | |
ACSSW's present major activities include:
- increasing research projects and their application within the school environment,
- developing a national school social work role paper,
- a more long-term goal, establishing a National Center for School Social Work Research, and,
- developing the 3rd National School Social Work Research Summit to be held in late June 2012 in Bloomingdale, IL, at the Hilton Indian Lakes Resort.
If you have interest in assisting with one or more of these projects, don't hesitate to contact Judie Shine. ACSSW strives to be inclusive and transparent in all of its activities and welcomes the participation, whether short or lengthy, of its members. |
|
|
