You may have seen those road signs that say "mind the gap," as as school counselor our job is not just awareness of the gap, but to actively work towards closing it. Sometimes stake holders can fall victim to just seeing where there are needs, talking about them, talking about how to fix them, but not making an active effort to close them. Let's be counselors who are action oriented.
Closing the Gap is defined in Merriam Webster's Dictionary as: "to reduce or eliminate a difference between two people, groups, or things." Therefor when we talk about closing the gap, we are talking about creating an environment where every type of person can succeed and is achieving the same as their peers. In education and most schools there is typically a gap between certain types of students. Sometimes the gaps have to do with different factors such as race, socio-economic status, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality or any other potentially diverse features.With more online school as a result of COVID-19 we have had greater gaps than usual. This makes understanding a Closing-the-Gap action plan even more crucial.
A Closing-the-Gap action plan has to have three things:
Specific goals that are addressed.
Intended methods of evaluating school success using participation, out come data, Mindsets and Behaviors.
Intended impact on measurable student outcome data (achievement, attendance, discipline).
There is a video that does an excellent job of breaking down how to develop these goals, identify these populations, create lessons, and then measure the results. Knowing how to read and access your schools data is a key. The Public School Review is a great place to get data on your school. This website helps you see some of the data already collected on your school and to begin to be able to formulate goals addressing the needs. The last link I will provide if for an example of a closing the gap plan done at a high school.This plan shows how the counselors address their goals target population, lessons, and data.
When I think of some of the things I would like to do in my future school counseling program, here are some of the closing the gap ideas I have:
Mentorship: Mentorship is a great way to get community members involved in your school. Also, having mentors come in to work with some of your low achieving students can help give them the academic and social support they need to succeed. Some of these mentors can be teachers within the school. It would just be important to make sure you have a diverse group of adults.
After or During School Support Groups: Students who find themselves on the lower side of the gap could benefit from a Group Therapy type of intervention. This would look like a support group that I would like to run that talks about Growth Mindset, study skills, perseverance, and choices. A group that took six to eight weeks could help gives some of these students better tools to succeed. Also, this would help them realize they were not the only ones in this boat.
Hopefully these two programs would help the students to buy-in and invest in their education. These plans would help me achieve the measurable goals of students increasing their grades by one letter grade or 10%, and their attendance going within the reasonable amount of absences category. Also I would like to see a 5% reduction in the amount of discipline referrals for these students. The scores compared will be from the beginning of the support groups and mentorships to the end results.
Hopefully this post will help you on your journey to begin to create your own Closing-the-Gap plan!
Commenti