SEL Awardee
Terri Miller
Hamilton Heights School Corporation
Arcadia, IN
“We will replicate a return to school project that has been successfully implemented in a neighboring school district. We have an active Community of Practice with that school district. The project uses evidenced based therapy methods, relationship building, coping skill development and resiliency building strategies to offer opportunities for students to support themselves and other students. The goal is to address the anxiety that is preventing the students from successfully attending and participating in a school setting. The project will impact the students who are struggling, their peer mentors, their family members, school staff and community members. In many cases, the students' family members and their classmates feel as helpless as the students themselves. All impacted realize that it is best to have youth in school, but caring adults and peers also feel as if they are being insensitive if they force or "guilt" the student into going to school. We have found that does not work, and we have seen many instances where the helpless feeling has led all parties to give up. In most instances, these are students who were on their way to being contributing members of our small community. Unfortunately, the anxiety and the time away from school due to on and off quarantines and other factors that are out of our control, our community will not benefit from these promising youth due to their inability to overcome adversity and gain resilience to overcome their anxiety. Our hope is to stop this from happening.”
Tags:
District, Elementary School, Students Affected by Suspensions, Suburban, Traditional Public School