NEWS PHOTO JEREMY APPEL Medicine Hat Public School Division's Behavioural Emotional Support Team presented to the board at Tuesday's meeting.
Pictured: Claire Petersen, Adele Henderson, Greg Ferris, Chelsea Hallick, Sherri-Dawn Lemoine and Danielle Pluth.
jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel
Medicine Hat Public School Division’s Behavioural Emotional Support Team has been working with special needs students for the past three years.
On Tuesday, six members of the team presented to the board of trustees at this month’s meeting.
“More heads are better than one and we’ve been lucky to collaborate with each other and use multiple perspectives, multiple lenses to support our staff and support our students,” said Claire Petersen, the division psychologist.
She likened services provided by BEST to a layer cake.
“They’re not particularly stable on their own. The more layers you have – the more supports you have – the more challenging it becomes, so what we need in the middle of the cake is support, dowels, columns – pieces that hold the cake together,” said Petersen.
Each team member represents a support in the middle of the proverbial cake, she said, adding that there is significant overlap between their roles.
Sherri-Dawn Lemoine, a team educational assistant, said they’re undergoing supporting individuals through valued attachments (SIVA) training, which she called a “holistic relationship-based model,” with an emphasis on collaboration, goal direction, self-management and healthy empowerment to build relationships.
Self-care is also a major component of SIVA, for which Lemoine borrowed an analogy from the world of food and drink.
You can’t drink from an empty water bottle, so finding those things on a daily basis that will help replenish us is important,” she said, suggesting a 15-minute walk at lunch as an example.
Teacher Adele Henderson spoke of the team’s collaborative problem solving (CPS) model, which regards students’ misbehaviour as having an unmet skill or need.
“Coaching teachers and school staff on having that mindset is a huge piece of our work, an important foundation so we can start to talk about behaviour in a different way,” said Henderson.
“Within the CPS model, you’re really looking at, not necessarily what the behaviour is, but when the behaviour is occurring and why it might be occurring, and once you have an understanding of that you can begin to have collaborative conversations with the student.”
The purpose is to try and see matters form the student’s perspective, she said.
Chair Rick Massini was effusive in his praise of the initiative.
“Education has really become a complex issue and I just don’t know the general public has any idea of what goes into providing programs, services and supports for kids,” he said. “I just want you to know we’re really proud of the work you do and we’re seeing the results of that.”
“There are a lot of layers in our cake,” replied Petersen.
