Running Head: THE VILLAGE PROGRAM AT BURR ELEMENTARY 1

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1 Running Head: THE VILLAGE PROGRAM AT BURR ELEMENTARY 1 Analyzing the Village Program at Burr Elementary School Midge Daniel Trinity College

2 Running Head: THE VILLAGE PROGRAM AT BURR ELEMENTARY 2 From working for the Village at Burr I have had the opportunity to observe the life of a third grader in the Hartford Public School System. I have been immersed into the Burr Community and I have gotten to personally know many of the kids. I have had many conversations with the children, the teachers and the administration at the school and from my conversations and observations I have identified many of the issues that the school and the children must deal with on a daily basis. I have also studied the Village program and what their presence in the school has been. From these observations, I have developed some of my own suggestions to improve the effectiveness of the Village program at Burr. Since Burr is in the Hartford Public School System, they are presented with stressors that other, more affluent, rural, communities may not face. The Village at Burr deals with issues of child abuse, teenage pregnancy, family issues, drop out, parental neglect, violence and crime. In addition to these stressors, they also deal with children with behavioral problems, mental problems, and learning disabilities. Some of these stressors will be found in any elementary school, but many of these stressors are because the school is in Hartford. The Village offers many services aimed to help the children and their families who must deal with stressors like these. Some of these support programs are; behavioral heath treatment, adoption, foster care, pregnancy prevention programs, financial help, family preservation services and many more ( Since Burr is a community- based school, they work together with the Village within the school to provide services for the children and their families. At Burr specifically, they offer an afterschool program for the hard to engage students, a Positive Youth

3 Running Head: THE VILLAGE PROGRAM AT BURR ELEMENTARY 3 Development Program for children with behavioral issues, Family services, and a Teen Outreach Program to teach youths life skills, and a mentoring program for students (T. Tirado, personal communication, February 13, 2013). The Village tries to work together with the Burr staff so that the children can have the support and resources they need to develop into a healthy child. One aspect of the program that is very important to the Village at Burr is their Positive Youth Development Program. This program is designed for children with behavioral issues, and it aims to give these children the support they need outside of the classroom. This is a program where they learn to create positive relationships, practice social norms and improve their social skill in general (T. Tirado, personal communication, March 13, 2013).. In this program they aim to teach the children life skills, coping skills and social skills so that they can learn appropriate behavior for certain situations and have the tools to do so (T. Tirado, personal communication, March 13, 2013). When investigating this Positive Youth Development program, I would start by doing qualitative interviews with the students participating in this program. The interviews would be minimally structured, and I would ask the child questions to try and understand the effectiveness of this program. I would be interested in understanding if the program is giving them the support and the attention they need, and if they are learning helpful skills and then applying them to real life situations. I would also want to know if they feel marginalized because they have these behavioral issues and if they feel like they are excluded or shut down by their peers or teachers. When interviewing the children I would make sure that I created an open and comfortable

4 Running Head: THE VILLAGE PROGRAM AT BURR ELEMENTARY 4 environment. An important part of interviews is making sure that there is a strong relationship between the researcher and the participant (Kloos, 2012). Since I have been working with the children for a semester, they would be comfortable around me and the trust would already be there. Another strength to this approach would be that I could record all of the questions and the responses and have the teachers or other members of the Village staff view the interview and rate it to increase the reliability and validity of the investigation (Kloos, 2012). One drawback to interviewing is that it takes a lot of time so there are often fewer participants. Because of this, it makes it a lot harder to generalize the results (Kloos, 2012). Another way of investigating the Positive Youth Development Program would be a more quantitative method of surveying. Based off of the interviews, I could get a sense of how comfortable the children feel in their school environment and if they feel like they are getting support from this program. I could ask them questions about how they feel in certain social situations and if they feel equipped to handle these situations or not. I could also ask them about relationships with peers and teachers. The survey would also include questions about the types of skills they feel they have acquired. From this survey we could identify the situations they feel uncomfortable in and see if this is because they have not been taught or have not developed certain skills. One strength of this method would be that a survey is a standardized measurement, which allows us to generalize the results (Kloos, 2012). From the survey we would also be able to see what changes needed to be made in the program. One limitation of a survey is that surveying young children can be difficult because they may not understand the questions or understand the point of

5 Running Head: THE VILLAGE PROGRAM AT BURR ELEMENTARY 5 the survey. They also may not be able to articulate their feelings in certain situations on paper. The reading and writing skills of the students also may be problematic. Using these two methods to investigate the Youth Development Program would be useful and beneficial to improving the program. It is extremely important to evaluate programs like these because we need to know if all of the time, money and energy is worth it and that the program is effective. One of the services that the Village offers is a mentoring program. This program is the most similar to my work at Burr. The goal of a mentoring program is to develop a lasting relationship between the mentee and the mentor where they share their skills and knowledge inside and outside of the classroom. When evaluating the process, we would look at who the mentors were, who the students were, and how often they were meeting. It would be important to look if the program went according to plan or if it went off track. In my case, I was supposed to work with small focus groups at lunch time, but ended up being more of a teachers assistant for the whole class. When evaluating the outcome of the mentoring program, we would want to assess the effectiveness of the program immediately after it ends (Kloos, 2012). A big part of my role in the classroom was working one on one with the children who were struggling with reading and writing. To assess if my work with the children was helpful, we could have given the students a reading test before I started working with them, and then given them the same test immediately after I finished. The pre- post test score would show us if there was improvement in the children s reading levels from working with me one on one. When assessing if the program had an impact in terms of long- term effects, we could

6 Running Head: THE VILLAGE PROGRAM AT BURR ELEMENTARY 6 look at the student s grades to see if they were improving. The teacher often asked me to talk about college life because they put a huge emphasis on making sure the kids know that college is an option. We could look at archival data to see if these children ended up going to college. Although the Village offers many effective programs at Burr, many of these programs are targeted for children who have some sort of problem. I think a cost effective program to implement into the Burr school would be the Tools of the Mind Curriculum. This curriculum involves many activities, mostly pretend play, that requires the student to work on their executive functioning skills. A study done by Barrnett in 2008, showed that as children s executive functioning skills began to improve, their behavioral issues began to decrease. If the whole classroom had to participate in activities that improved their executive functioning skills, then the classrooms may be more tamed and the students would be on a more even playing field, which would allow for more productivity in the classroom. One barrier in the implementation of many of the Village programs is that they are targeted for certain individuals with problems. At Burr, this is the case because they don t have enough funding to offer the programs to everyone. The Positive Youth Development Program has great ideas, and the skills that the students learn in this program are very important and useful- ones that all students would benefit from. One way that all of the students at Burr could get this program is by implementing the Best Program into the student s drama class. Best practices focus on learning a specific set of behavioral skills and practicing these skills with different activities (Anastasia, 2012). At Burr, the students would be able to learn

7 Running Head: THE VILLAGE PROGRAM AT BURR ELEMENTARY 7 certain behavioral skills in the classroom, and then they could practice these skills through role- play, games or group activities. These role- play activities could simulate real life situations that the students have to deal with during school and at home, for example, bullying, domestic struggles and peer pressure. Anastasia s study (2012) showed success rates from incorporating Best Practices into mentoring programs. From my experience at Burr Elementary, I was able to observe and understand which stressors effect the learning environment the most, and which programs and interventions the school tries to implement to deal with these stressors. Since I was observing the environment while working with the children, I was able to have a different perspective on how the school functions. I believe that the Village appreciated this different point of view and valued my help and suggestions.

8 Running Head: THE VILLAGE PROGRAM AT BURR ELEMENTARY 8 References Anastasia, T., Skinner, R., & Mundhenk, S. (2012). Youth Mentoring: Program and Mentor Best Practices. Journal Of Family & Consumer Sciences, 104(2), Barnett, W., Jung, K., Yarosz, D. J., Thomas, J., Hornbeck, A., Stechuk, R., & Burns, S. (2008). Educational effects of the Tools of the Mind curriculum: A randomized trial. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23(3), doi: /j.ecresq Kloos, B. (2012). Community psychology: linking individuals and communities (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. The Village for Children. Retrieved March 13, 2012, from we- are.html.