We want your child to be as successful as possible at school. Success in school is not just about reading and math. It is also about knowing how to learn and how to get along with others. We will be using the Second Step program in your child’s classroom to teach these critical skills.Readers: do you have any experience with this program? Is it good, bad, or indifferent?The Second Step program teaches skills in the following four areas:
1. Skills for Learning: Students gain skills to help themselves learn, including how to focus their attention, listen carefully, use self-talk to stay on task, and be assertive when asking for help with schoolwork.
2. Empathy: Students learn to identify and understand their own and others’ feelings. Students also learn how to take another’s perspective and how to show compassion.
3. Emotion Management: Students learn specific skills for calming down when experiencing strong feelings, such as anxiety or anger.
4. Problem Solving: Students learn a process for solving problems with others in a positive way.
Your child will be learning a lot this year—and he or she will need your help! Throughout the year, your child will be bringing home Home Links that go with several of the Second Step lessons. Home Links are simple, fun activities for you and your child to complete together. They are a great way for you to understand what your child is learning and for your child to show you what he or she knows.
If you have any questions about the Second Step program, please do not hesitate to contact Mrs. Counselor for more information. Thank you for supporting your child in learning the skills that leads to success in school and in life.
Sigh. I'm tired of the canned programs. Can't our teachers come up with their own plans?
No experience with it, but I can't wait to hear how your daughter likes the "simple, fun activities" that you're supposed to do together. And since when do guidance counselors give homework?
ReplyDeleteIts website describes it as "Based on the latest research" and as having "fully scripted, media-rich lessons," and offers materials on "PBIS and RTI alignment" -- three bad signs.
ReplyDeleteTeachers these days aren't allowed to go off script. And personally, those are lessons I think they would learn better if they cut the school day in half and let the kids go interact with the community for the rest of the day.
ReplyDeleteBut but but ... aren't these canned programs expensive? Wouldn't it be cheaper to let teachers plan their own lessons?
ReplyDeleteIf teachers had more control over what they do, they would be more invested in it. True also for students!
We learned all that from the playground. Do we live in a great country or what? Let's just eliminate play, outdoors, recess, family time, down time, daydream time, really mess the kids up big time and then craft expensive time consuming edu-crap to take its place. Tell them this: Keep it simple, stupid.
ReplyDelete"Throughout the year, your child will be bringing home Home Links that go with several of the Second Step lessons. Home Links are simple, fun activities for you and your child to complete together. They are a great way for you to understand what your child is learning and for your child to show you what he or she knows."
ReplyDeleteWow. Aren't you thrilled? Teachers get scripted lesson plans, now you get scripted parenting plans. You don't even have to think. The State will do it all for you. This even promises to be fun! Because we're all such idiots, we couldn't possibly figure out a way to nurture and teach our children without the government linking us to a paint-by-numbers home intervention.
Go out and buy some Morningstar Links. Cook 'em up for breakfast, tell them you did Links and call it a day.