Lavelle Preparatory Charter School Staten Island

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Contacts

Theresa Peterford (DBT co-ordinating teacher), Priscilla (Counsellor) and Megan (Social Worker)

School Context

The school is open to all students although encourages those living with emotional challenges to attend. The school is a mix of about 60% general education students (mainstream) and about 40% with disabilities including mental health issues, autism and cognitive difficulties. The school currently has over 520 students. Each class has 17students to one teacher and teacher’s aide. Part of this school’s “charter” is to maintain a focus on wellness and consequently, the school incorporates a number of wellness programs including DBT STEPS-A.

DBT STEPS-A at Lavelle Prep

  • Started STEPS-A program last year and continuing the program this year
  • The Director of Counselling for their Charter was familiar with DBT and encouraged the use of the DBT STEPS-A program. As this has come from administration, the program has been welcomed by the principals in terms of staff time and training accommodations.
  • The program is delivered to Yr 7 and Yr 8 grades and is taught by the teachers.
    • These grades were chosen based on the specific needs of the cohorts and other influential factors such as maturity level, other school work demands etc.
    • It is planned for Yr10 to receive a “refresher course” however as this program is still in it’s infancy, this will be in two years time.
  • Have started to see improvements through decreases in their behaviour management referrals and in school suspensions.
  • So far, no formal evaluation of the program has been made however this year will be using measures of:
  • Individuals are offered sessions with the School Counsellors in between the group sessions

Barrier

Barriers to the program

  • As their students come from a variety of cognitive levels, they found that some students were not able to acquire the necessary skills in each lesson.
    • Solution: the school adjusted the program to run over 2 years as opposed to the recommended 1 year program. They deliver a little of each modules in both of the years.
  • School teachers were given a 3 day training with the DBT STEPS-A program developers (Jim Mazza and Lizz Dexter-Mazza) however the Lavelle Prep team found that some teachers felt uncomfortable delivering the content (eg. some were reading from the script in the book).
    • Solution: upon reflecting on this element of the program delivery, this year have implemented a weekly session with the school counsellor and all teachers of the program so that, as a team, they can use the STEPS-A curriculum as a guide but adjust and differentiate the lesson to be engaging and meaningful to their specific cohort. The counsellors indicate that this has improved the teacher’s comfortability with the content and has allowed the team to come up with very creative ways of demonstrating the skills eg. through project work such as devising a board game to role playing.
  • Diary cards were not being completed as homework by the students
    • Solution: the team decided that once a week, the students would spend time in class to complete the cards
  • The school did not want to use the DBT STEPS-A test at the end of the unit as they wanted the gains to be reflected through other measures
    • Solution: students/teachers to complete other pre/post measures (listed above) as well as evaluations of projects and class participation.

Difference

Point of Difference

Lavelle Prep has integrated some of the DBT skills into their behaviour management strategy.

Their strategy is called ” Reflect, Connect and Learn” (RCL) and in this process, after students have engaged in behaviours that are not in line with the school’s policies, they are given the option to either engage in DBT skills for 3 sessions or engage in an academic (kind of in-school suspension) for 6 periods. If they choose the DBT component, they work either individually or in small groups (if other students are in the same process), to do chain analysis of what happened to put them into RCL and then work on problem-solving skills to identify alternative behaviours.

Applying the knowledge to the Australian Context

  • Integrating the DBT language and lessons into the behaviour management strategy is very intriguing. Although this might be difficult for a SC to have time to do, potentially it could be worked through in the long suspension mandated meeting or more immediately with the Deputy who is considering suspension.
  • I think the pre/post measures are vital for this type of intervention. I think the power of being able to quantify the possible effects of such a program would be very helpful. I have already used the SDQ for this purpose however had not considered the other measures for DBT pre/post tests. The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) (Gratz & Roemer, 2004) appears to be very relevant as one of the core modules is Emotional Regulation, thus it makes sense to measure this construct with such a scale. As previously discussed, it is also important to use other measures such as attendance, behaviour and academic records to provide a holistic overview of potential effects of the program.

Resources:

  • Gratz, K. L. & Roemer, L. (2004). Multidimensional assessment of emotion regulation and dysregulation: Development, factor structure, and initial validation of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 26, 41-54. Retrieved from http://cairncenter.com/forms/difficultiesinemotionalregulation_scale.pdf
  • Greco, L., Baer, R. A., & Smith, G. T. (2011). Assessing mindfulness in children and adolescents: Development and validation of the child and adolescent mindfulness measure (CAMM). Psychological Assessment, 23, 606-614. Retrieved from http://www.ruthbaer.com/academics/CAMM.pdf
  • Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire retrieved from http://www.sdqinfo.com/
  • Gioia, G. A., Isquith, P. K et al (2013) Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF)

Quote of the Day:

We are doing the best we can AND we need to do better.
– DBT assumption

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