School connectedness has been shown to be a mediating factor in students' academic and social lives. A recent study looked at the importance of cognitive-behavioral therapy and mentored self-help interventions to foster connectedness (Oscar & Bamidele, 2015). This study particularly looked at how these interventions affected academically at-risk school adolescents ages thirteen to nineteen that identified under any gender.
Using the intervention of cognitive-behavioral therapy could look several different ways. Some school systems that have the opportunity to have counseling service provided to their students and school. These therapists to a degree, have the opportunity to use any approach in their individual counseling, but this article found that the use of a cognitive-behavioral approach was very effective. A way to begin to implement this intervention outside of counseling services provided by therapists is to take the cognitive-behavioral approach in individual sessions with the students. This approach looks at helping the students to identify their difficulties and then they work towards changing their dysfunctional thinking, behavior, and emotional responses (Oscar & Bamidele, 2015). In these sessions with the students, if you incorporated spirituality, you could begin to ask questions about what their spirituality or outlook on the world has to say on their thinking and behavior. This could also help them begin to form a holistic approach to their behavior and thinking.
The first stage of implementing these two interventions would be administering a needs assessment for the school to figure out how connected the school felt, and then you would look at specific questions regarding their connectedness to staff and faculty. If those scores were very low, you would know that's an area of connectedness you need to work on. Specifically for the students who scored the lowest and were academically at risk, you would begin to pull them and ask them about meeting weekly with a mentor. It would be necessary to consider the impacts of diversity in these mentoring relationships. For instance, a student who is a minority may best benefit from a mentor who is of that same minority, especially if they speak different languages. This could help the student not only be mentored by a positive adult but an adult they can better identify with.
In these mentoring relationships, the mentor would need to agree to meet with the student either weekly or bi-weekly for eight to twelve weeks. This is to establish a meaningful and trusting relationship with the student. The mentor would then need to do three things: look at academic grades, make a plan for the week to improve or maintain grades, and have one area of social/emotional need they are working with the student on. These meetings could take fifteen to thirty minutes. For students with a learning disability, the mentors would need to make sure they understood the students learning capabilities before making academic goals. Also, the mentor may need to work more closely with special education teachers or have more education on what special education looks like.
Using these two interventions, mentoring and a cognitive-behavioral approach in sessions, students will begin to look at themselves holistically and feel more connected to the school and themselves. Through mentoring, the students experience buy-in from adults at the school. This shows them that people care for them and are invested in them. Students who feel connected to faculty will feel more connected to the school as a whole. Creating healthier students who are thriving academically, mentally, and emotionally, in turn, creates a school that feels connected.
My colleague Jack Manning proposed the following intervention for the LGBTQIA+ students:
Empathy is arguably one of the most important tools anyone can use to create a culture of school connectedness. In regard to the LGBTQIA+ community, students' sexual identities are beginning to take form. It is important to note that the LGBTQIA+ community is one of the largest populations outside of the normative populations that can be found in schools. The first intervention to be discussed comes from The Trevor Project. It is a tool that can be utilized for a powerful impact on the importance of understanding others on the macro-level within a school system. As stated above, the best age population for this intervention would be 7th-12th grade. Any gender can participate.
The purpose of the intervention, again, is to examine an individual’s inner judgments of others in a safe and productive way and explore the importance of self-identification. Each student in this activity will get a different color star. Each color being: blue, purple, red, and orange. Each student will then label their star with their name, a community they belong to, someone who is most important to them, a specific family member one goes to for advice, a job or career one would like, and hopes and dreams. At this point, one would direct the student participating that they are to presume the position of a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. No one may talk until the activity has come to a close. Simply follow instructions.
The next stage would be to have the students respond to instructions depending on the color of their star. Blue stars are always accepted. Purple and Orange stars may have a bit of rejection, but nothing extreme. Red stars will lose the written statement on the section of the star directed. At the end of the activity, the people with blue stars will have a full and complete star. Their sexual identity and coming out were completely accepted. The Purple and Orange star has some damage but has people who accepted them. Following the activity, one would direct the students to a debriefing. Asking the questions: How did it feel to take part in this activity, who had a red star/how did that feel/who had a blue star/how did that feel, what did you learn from this activity, and what do you feel you can do to make our classroom and school a more supportive place for LGBTQIA+ students (Pierce, 2015)?
When students learn to empathize with one another and connect to others’ perspectives it can do nothing else but create an environment of school connectedness. More than just facilitating conversation on LGBTQIA+ and understanding their perspective, it is important for school professionals, who want high levels of perceived school connectedness, to continue discussions on understandings and empathizing with others. It is through doing that does one creates unconditional positive regard and complete acceptance of others (Kuehn, 2020).
Kuehn, H. C. (2020). An ethical perspective on Increasing LGBTQIA+ Inclusivity in Education.
eJournal of Education Policy, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.37803/ejepS2012
Oscar, I., & Bamidele, O. (2015). Cognitive behavioural therapy and mentored self-help
interventions in fostering school connectedness among academically at-risk school
adolescents in Ekiti State. European Scientific Journal, 11(14), 177.
Pierce, J. (2015). Empathy and awareness: Coming out stars activity. Retrieved March 20, 2021,
content/uploads/2017/08/75ea657f061737b608_6pm6ivozp.pdf
Commentaires