To Implement Primary Prevention Principles Designed to Address an Issue of Concern to the Entire School Community - Assignment Example

Topic:  To implement primary prevention principles designed to address an issue of concern to the entire school community Primary Prevention: Primary Prevention Programs in pre-schools or elementary schools has great potential to enhance the roles of school personnel. These programs lead to the collaboration of services of school psychologists, teachers, and school administrators and in some cases external consultants are also the part of prevention programs. The programs are conducted mainly to facilitate the adoption of social skills and health promotion programs. The school leaders are needed to initiate the move towards prevention program. Co-operators of school leaders, for instance, school psychologists, as well as school consultants help in the prevention program by providing school leaders a way to expose several procedures of how to deal with several problems of children, more particularly, student achievement, self-esteem enhancement, substance abuse, or crisis situations within school limits (Shaw, M. C., Goodyear, R. K., 1984). Nowadays, children are more demanding than in the previous era’s. They want to be self-dependant. Some children rather than others cannot make it normally. They need special and supportive training to get into the stream. (Stephen J. M., Astrid M. O’ M., March 2008). For the appraisal of these children which are usually left behind, prevention programs are being conducted by many school leaders. According to school psychologists, special training programs are required to be conducted in premature level of their studies so as to make them building up their strong character. Prevention programs are one of them to help the students psychologically as well as mentally to enhance their behavior and get to know of dealing with certain critical situations which make them brave enough to start running again among the other normal children. Program to implement primary prevention principles: Primary schools have some funding collected to support pre- level children who are not making expected progress. The main aim of Prevention Programs is to raise the standard of all children. Strategies are to be made in order to give the children additional support in achievement as well as in dealing with other critical issue like substance abuse or crises management. Primary prevention program is a significant program that brings changes in structural framework of each educational unit. This helps the children in memorizing common practices and consistent application of positive or negative reinforcement. I, as a school consultant, organized a prevention program for crisis management among primary school children. It is the utmost need of nowadays, that children have to be given instructions of how to react in certain crisis situations. Many children overreact in such hectic situations like in bomb blast, or firing. According to the current scenario throughout the world, crisis situations are increasingly becoming an international issue and children are the first ones to get caught in the situation. The huge aftermaths of these crises make these children unable to become a part of main stream. We designed special training programs, also called prevention programs, in several educational units which would help these children build braveness among themselves so as to make the children aware of how to react in certain crisis conditions, in case there is no one to guide in any real time incident. Procedure: Prevention program, that our consultant team developed, is a procedural event that usually consists of 5 days. Out of these five days, during the first four days children are given lectures on how to control emotions and overcome their abrupt behavior in case of any crisis. Secondly, lectures should be given on how to react in crisis like an earthquake, fire exhaustion, bomb blast, firing or any other major crisis including the training of where to hide or run in order to get escape. (Stephen J. M., Astrid M. O’ M., March 2008). Each scenario is to be highlighted to the children in first four days of prevention program. We set the last day of the program for practical implementation of different crisis situations that would be created for children so that whatever has been taught is to be practically judged. If the children react properly, then the school psychologists that are chosen by our consulting team determine the success of Prevention Program. (Intervention Programs, October 2002) School Psychologists have a bigger hand in the implementation of prevention programs in schools. They have to check out whether the children are getting through this program or not. We as consultants discovered two factors that highly influence the prevention program designed by us. One is behavioral expectations that are set up by school psychologists and other is observations and positive praising of children that help them to grab more quickly what is being taught to them. (Odom SL, McConnell SR, McEvoy MA, Peterson C, Ostrosky M, Chandler LK, Spicuzza RJ, Skellenger A, Creighton M, Favazza PC, 1999) Behavioral Expectations: Behavioral expectations of psychologists are the measuring unit of success of particular prevention programs. We develop a setup through which psychologists could measure behavioral expectations of children. This is mainly done to check if the children should prevent initial occurrences of behavior after getting through Prevention program. (Intervention Programs October 2002). We ask psychologists to give some expected behavioral predictions of students of primary classes. This is arranged before commencement of prevention program. When at the end day of the practical event in the program, children behavior is suspected by these psychologists, it is then measured with the original prediction. This is done to get successful level of program and by the results it is decided that either children need another similar prevention program to get through the particular crisis management or they have achieved the satisfaction level. Observing and Praising Appropriate Behavioral Actions: Other important factor set by our team is observing overall children and praising them even if they are not adopting up to the mark set by our team psychologists. This factor has highest success rate of prevention program, psychologists strongly try to work out in building up character in children and to make them emotionally strong (Mize J, Ladd G.W., 1990). We conduct several tests to work out on how to "catch" children exhibiting the appropriate behaviors. Not only behavioral aspect but also specific praise is extremely important in increasing the reoccurrence of appropriate behavior.  Our Psychologists also give guidance to school leaders to highly praise children for whatever their behavior is. According to them, praising helps in witnessing appropriate behaviors in particular areas. (Primary Prevention Program, 2010), Goals for Prevention Program: 1. Effective teaching of appropriate behavior to all children:  Our Primary prevention program is founded on the assumption and belief that all children can exhibit appropriate behavior.  It is set to be the most significant responsibility of school leaders and psychologists to identify the contextual setting events and proper practical environment that enable exhibition of appropriate behavior. 2. Early intervention:  We made the prevention program in order to intervene before targeted behaviors occur.  If prevention program intervene before problematic behaviors escalate, the interventions are much more manageable.  Highly effective universal interventions in the early stages of implementation which are informed by time sensitive continuous progress monitoring, enjoy strong empirical support for their effectiveness with at-risk students. 3. Behavioral modeling:  We make prevention program by using an efficient, needs-driven resource deployment system to match behavioral resources with student needs. (Ofsted January, 2009). We make it highly effective by giving most differentiated instructions in the most unique way. Our model is rotate around the behavioral model that is set in accordance with covering all types of children behavior from those which are fast enough to adopt any change in behavior to those who need additional support in adopting certain behaviors. Prevention program must plan for all behaviors. 4. Research-based, scientifically validated intervention program: We make our slogan as No Child Should Be Left Behind. For this, we use scientifically research-based curricula and interventions. The purpose of using research based scientifically validated interventions is to ensure that program setting up for children is enough effective for the type of student and the setting. Research based interventions provide best opportunity to school in implementing strategies that will be effective for a large majority of students (Cynthia S., 2005). 5. Monitoring progress:  For determining the success of our prevention program, our consultant team continuously monitors the students progress. Major task of our prevention program is to monitor each child progress. The use of assessments that can be collected frequently from children and observation of behavior in case of under age children are sensitive to small changes in their behavior (Rossi J., Stuart A., 2007). 6. End decisions: In the end, our psychologists examine the whole practical event and the children’s behavior, and give approval of behavioral acknowledgement by school children. Our Psychologists give decisions that are based on professional judgment informed directly by student office discipline after seeing the result of last day practice that is a part of prevention program. The success of prevention program is based on end decisions made by collaboration of school leaders as well as school psychologists. If there are marks of behavioral improvement among majority of children, prevention program then winded up but in case of failure of adoption of certain behavioral changes by children, psychologists usually made the decision of extension in prevention program till each child adopt certain behavioral practices. (Reddy, L., A, Newman, E., Thomas D, Courtney A., Chun, V., April 2009), Conclusion: Primary Prevention Programs are organized mainly by school consultant, leaders or psychologists to enhance some children behavioral or motivational abilities. Some children are active enough to get through all the chores in one strike whereas, there are children who need a little push in order to get started. For a variety of reasons, some students do not respond to the kinds of efforts that make up Primary Prevention, just as some children do not respond to initial teaching of academic subjects.  Some children need booster shots and some children need intensive interventions. It goes without saying that we want to prevent the major "upsurges in targeted behaviors" that we hear about in the news: violent acts against teachers or other students, theft, bullying behavior, drug use, and the like. However, research has taught us that efforts to prevent these serious problems are more successful if the "host environment"—the school as a whole—supports the adoption and use of evidence-based practices. Practices that meet these criteria include teaching and rewarding students for complying with a small set of basic rules for conduct, such as "be safe," be responsible," and "be respectful" (Reading intervention programs, March 2008). These rules translate into sets of expectations that differ according to various settings in the school. Thus, on the playground "be safe" means stay within boundaries and follow the rules of the game. We developed a prevention program for primary school children in order to get them aware of how to react in crisis management. We as consultant set this prevention program in order to make children keep the hands and their feet to walk on the right side at the right time. We believe that students come to school knowing these rules of conduct, and that those who dont follow them simply left behind in the tragic scenes. Our psychologists assume that systematically teaching behavioral expectations and self praising make the children more strong and powerful emotionally and behaviorally and they react much more positively. Our prevention program also tries to establish a climate in which appropriate behavior is the norm. In effect, by teaching and encouraging positive student behavior, we reduce the "white noise" of common but constant student disruption that distracts us from focusing intervention expertise on the more serious problems. References: Cynthia S., (2005), Adolescent literacy interventions programs: Chart and Program review guide, Learning Point Associates, Retrieved from http://www.learningpt.org/literacy/adolescent/intervention.pdf Helen C. W. (1998), A School Based Intervention Programme for Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder, Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, 3(1), 35 – 50. Intervention Programs (October 2002), Managing NLS/NNS intervention programs, Retrieved from http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/node/85282?uc%20=%20force_uj Mize J, Ladd GW. (1990) Toward the development of successful social skills training for preschool children. In: Asher SR, Coie JD, eds. Peer rejection in childhood. Cambridge studies in social and emotional development. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 338-361. Odom SL, McConnell SR, McEvoy MA, Peterson C, Ostrosky M, Chandler LK, Spicuzza RJ, Skellenger A, Creighton M, Favazza PC, (1999), Relative effects of interventions supporting the social competence of young children with disabilities, Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 19(2),75-91. Ofsted (January, 2009), An evaluation of National Strategy Intervention Programs, Alexandra House, London. Primary Prevention Program, (May 2010), Thanet Excellence Cluster, Retrieved from http://thanetexcellencecluster.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=88 Reading intervention programs, (March 2008) Learning & Teaching, Retrieved from http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/reading-intervention-programmes-3284 Reddy, L., A, Newman, E., Thomas D, Courtney A., Chun, V., (April 2009), Effectiveness of School-based prevention and intervention programs for children and adolescents with emotional disturbance: A Meta-Analysis, Journal of School Psychology, 47(2), 77-99. Rossi J., Stuart A., (2007), The evaluation of an intervention programme for reception Learners who experience barriers to learning and development, South African Journal of Education, 27(1), 139–154 Shaw, M. C., Goodyear, R. K., (1984), Primary Prevention in Schools, Personnel and Guidance Journal, 6(2), 46- 95 Stephen J. M., Astrid M. O’ M., (March 2008), The effectiveness of a Nationwide Intervention Programme to prevent and counter school bullying in Ireland, International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy, 8(1), 1-12 Read More