Syllabus

Course Description

Reaching Today's Students: Building the Community Circle of Caring is an exciting synthesis of the most current theories, strategies, and practices to comprehensively address the needs of children and youth at risk within educational settings. Building upon traditional philosophy and educational commitment with current research and proven strategies, Reaching Today's Students strives to fulfill the promise that all children and teachers can succeed.

In Reaching Today's Students, teachers begin by exploring the motives and dynamics surrounding misbehavior and the desire to learn. They learn how prevailing assumptions and practices within the four worlds of socialization - school, family, work, and friends - actually reinforce misbehavior while interfering with learning.

Before launching into strategies and techniques for dealing with conflict, teachers first learn how to create a Community Circle of Caring - a healthy and positive environment that meets children's four basic needs: connection, competence, self-control, and contribution. By building this foundation, teachers can reclaim youth and prevent conflict before it occurs. For example, teachers learn:

• How to build relationships with resistant students (connection);
• How to use instructional strategies that produce positive student behavior (competence and contribution); and
• How to instill a sense of responsibility in children (self-control).

Meanwhile, teachers and administrators briefly examine their beliefs, attitudes, and skills about instruction and behavior management, considering their traditional responses to discover various new alternatives to conflict situations. They also learn how to decode student behavior in light of the four basic needs model.

The course then describes specific interventions, strategies, and techniques to avoid and to defuse potential conflict situations. The course presents these strategies along a continuum of intensity. For example: "low-key" responses can prevent power struggles from escalating; "unconventional" interventions can be effective when "low-key" responses do not work; and "interventions of last resort" help to bring a situation under control safely. This part of the course concludes with promising strategies for resolving conflict and for drawing troubled students back into the Community Circle of Caring.

In the final part of the course, the circle is intact. Using a state-of-the art change process and several hands-on activities, teachers look at ways to expand the circle and thereby strengthen the opportunities for all children to succeed. First, teachers develop a shared vision of their ideal school. They measure this vision against the current structure and culture of their schools. Then they learn how to realize this vision by building consensus, by documenting the need for change, and by initiating the change.

Objectives

Competencies to be mastered by participants in this class include:

• Identify, discuss, and enhance current beliefs and strategies implemented to build a community circle of caring within individual classrooms and schools.
• Demonstrate enhanced professional knowledge of methodologies, materials, and theories to be used with students with academic and behavioral needs within the area of classroom and behavioral management.
• Demonstrate knowledge of classroom organizational and management skills through various planning, self-reporting, and observational procedures.
• Demonstrate applied knowledge of planning of classroom and behavioral prevention and intervention techniques for classroom and individual students through use of planning and implementation guide.
• Demonstrate knowledge of and interventions for student behaviors along the continuum of intensity, from low-key to crisis management responses.
• Demonstrate the knowledge of various techniques and methods of problem solving approaches within a team setting given an individual student academic and/or behavioral concern.
• Demonstrate applied knowledge of problem solving approaches within a team setting given an individual student academic and/or behavior concern through actual implementation of procedures.
• Demonstrate the continuation of the community circle of caring on a school-wide basis through the development of an individual implementation plan.
• Demonstrate professional communication and collaboration through participation in the class Forum, e-mail, and journal writing.

Curriculum Design

Reaching Today's Students is a forty five-hour, 3 graduate credit course taught online. The participants in this class will increase their knowledge of techniques and strategies proven effective for classroom instruction and individual student behavior management. Specifically, participants in this class will enhance their current knowledge of instructional and behavioral approaches to use every day within their classrooms and schools to productively create a more supportive, accepting instructional environment. In addition, this course will describe and present researched techniques and strategies to use within a problem-solving format to address the needs of all students.

Time Requirements

This course is offered over a period of 15 weeks. Modules are completed over the 15-week period pending length of assignments per week.

Skill and Hardware Requirements

Students may use either a Macintosh computer or a PC with Windows 2000 or higher. Students should possess basic word processing skills and have Internet access as well as an active email account. Students also are expected to have a basic knowledge of how to use a Web browser, such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, etc.

Course Materials

The textbook for this course is Reclaiming Youth at Risk, Larry K. Brendtro, Martin Brokenleg, & Steven VanBockern, National Education Service, 1998, and the Reaching Today's Students: Building the Community Circle of Caring Participant Workbook.

Course Outline

Module One: Building the Community Circle of Caring

Contents:

• The student will examine and evaluate current beliefs and strategies that are implemented in building a community circle of caring within individual classrooms and schools.
• The student will develop a personal vision statement that exemplifies his/her specific professional situation, and defines the purpose and goal of creating a successful learning environment.

Module Two: Caring Classroom Management Understanding the Dynamics of Misbehavior

Contents:

• The student will appraise his/her knowledge of methodologies, materials, and theories regarding behavior management and students with academic and/or behavioral needs.
• The student will assess effective classroom management techniques.

Module Three: Outstanding Instruction Creating a Climate for Prevention

Contents:

• The student will validate knowledge of classroom organizational and management techniques by implementing planning, self-reporting, and observational procedures.
• The student will select and incorporate one motivational strategy into his/her classroom routine.
• The student will appraise his/her teaching success using the Effective Teaching Checklist.

Module Four: Creating an Effective Caring Classroom Community

Contents:

• The student will evaluate strategies and techniques for developing an effective, caring classroom community for all students.
• The student will choose and implement at least one motivational strategy in his/her classroom.

Module Five: Using Planning and Implementation Guides for Classroom Interventions

Contents:

• The student will assess, model, and characterize implementation of effective research-based classroom management procedures for all students within a classroom or school that build on the four critical needs: connection, contribution, competence, and self-control.
• The student will develop a classroom intervention and crisis strategy that provides for anticipated classroom incidents, challenges, and interruptions.

Module Six: Avoiding, De-escalating, and Resolving Conflict

Contents:

• The student will assess interventions for student behaviors along the continuum of intensity - from low-key to crisis management responses - by avoiding, de-escalating, and resolving conflict.

Module Seven: Helping Students Support Each Other within the Classroom Community

Contents:

• The student will evaluate critical attributes of effective discipline within a classroom community that promote student responsibility and an internal locus of control.
• The student will assess strategies and techniques that may enable his/her students to support each other within their classroom environment and meet individual needs for contribution.
• The student will appraise strategies and techniques that might help his/her students to support each other within their classroom environment through the use of specific skills of mediation and problem solving, and that meet their need for contribution and self-control.
• The student will characterize an internal locus of control, and identify strategies to promote such development through self-control.
• The student will seek feedback on his/her teaching by having a peer evaluate his/her teaching effectiveness.

Module Eight: Team Problem Solving

Contents:

• The student will characterize techniques and methods of problem-solving that can be used in a team setting to address an individual student’s academic and/or behavior concern.
• The student will integrate into the practice of his/her profession effective problem-solving strategies to aid him/her in identifying appropriate plans of action for any given situation.
• The student will formulate a plan of action for implementing a solution for a specific classroom concern.

Module Nine: Applying Team Problem-Solving

Contents:

• The student will illustrate data collection approaches within a team setting to assess and understand student behavior.
• The student will characterize various forms of data as a way to identify the antecedents to observable behaviors.
• The student will assess behavior exhibited by a challenging student in his/her classroom.

Module Ten: Expanding the Circles: Strategies for Organizational Change

Contents:

• The student will illustrate the continuation of "the community circle of caring" on a schoolwide basis by developing an individual, school-wide discipline plan.
• The student will assess strategies for communicating a firm commitment to the vision throughout an organization.
• The student will identify noted discrepancies between the vision statement and actual conditions.
• The student will complete a third self-evaluation checklist.
• The student will complete the final integration project.
• The student will complete the course evaluation

Course Requirements:

Requirements	Points
Forum and E-mail Participation	20
Classroom Self-Evaluation Checklists	15
Implementation Log/Reflections	15
Two Action Plans	16
Two Child Change Problem-Solving Projects (8 Points each)	16
Final Integration Project	18
Total	100

Grades
100-93 - A
85-92 - B
75-84 - C

Final Grading

The quality of the participants' products (both tests and projects), as well as Forum participation, will be evaluated by the instructor as described above in determining the final grade. In addition to the above, course instructors have the discretion to either add or substitute course requirements to address specific requests of course participants. They may opt for a final examination or paper that test both conceptual understanding and application skills.

Student Academic Integrity

Participants guarantee that all academic class work is original. Any academic dishonesty or plagiarism (to take ideas, writings, etc. from another and offer them as one's own), is a violation of student academic behavior standards as outlined by the Teacher Education University catalog and is subject to academic disciplinary action.

Bibliography

Erika Daniels, & Mark Arapostathis. (2005). What do they really want? Student voices and motivation research. Urban Education, 40(1), 34-59

Gagné, F.  (2007). Ten Commandments for Academic Talent Development. The Gifted Child Quarterly, 51(2), 93-118. 

Lease, A., McFall, R, Treat,, T. &  Viken, T.. (2003). Assessing children's representations of their peer group using a multidimensional scaling technique. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 20(6), 707-728.

Patrick, H., Ryan, A, & Kaplan, A. (2007). Early Adolescents' Perceptions of the Classroom Social Environment, Motivational Beliefs, and Engagement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(1), 83. .

Poynton, T, Carlson, M., Hopper, J. & Carey, J. (2006). Evaluation of an Innovative Approach to Improving Middle School Students' Academic Achievement. Professional School Counseling, 9(3), 190-196

van Lier,C., Muthen, B., van der Sar, R &  Crijnen, A. (2004). Preventing disruptive behavior in elementary schoolchildren: Impace of a universal classroom-based intervention. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72(3), 467-478. 

Wilhelm, J. & Smith, M. (2006). What Teachers Need to Know about Motivation. Voices From the Middle, 13(4), 29-31

Teacher Education University reserves the right to adjust and adapt this syllabus as necessary.