Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Taking advantage of a recent opportunity to sit in on part of a training for a district-wide behavior program – “Capturing Kids’ Hearts” (CKH), I stayed longer than planned. The company trainer was positively galvanizing, exhibiting all the wonderful traits and features of the program itself. It was evident the Yucca Junior High school staff were fully engaged and actively participating.
The idea of the CKH program is to proactively build positive relationships between staff and students, incorporating mutual respect, social-emotional wellbeing, positive school culture, and student connectedness; their three common descriptors: relational, intentional, transformational.
The world is much changed during the last couple of years, and the full impact of the circumstances we’ve all endured are still unfolding. Hence, the importance of our intentionally implementing such programs, along with our own strategies for meeting the ongoing challenges. It’s important to build social and emotional capacity to provide a solid foundation for learning capacity. Particularly important, this goes a long way to solving behavior problems.
This was part of the vision of Yucca’s new administrators at the beginning of this school year. Principal Annetta Hadley, with Assistant Principal Bethanie Baker, have been extremely diligent in implementing, with fidelity, the programs in place, and this additional training from the Capturing Kids’ Hearts representative was one of the outcomes. The trainer’s dynamic and highly interactive approach was clearly well received.
Speaking briefly with her afterward, she was highly complementary of YMS’ successful measures, impressed with the progress at Yucca, indicating YMS was on the way to becoming a showcase school.
Much of the reason for success with CKH is empowerment for students. They truly learn to communicate well and make their own choices and decisions in the situations they encounter. Students have learned they will have a professional, respectful, and consistent response from their teachers.
Thanks to district leadership’s decision to increase the number of early release Wednesdays, schools have been able to really concentrate and focus on exactly what is needed at their own site. That’s how YMS spent one of their Wednesday afternoons, expanding their educational toolbox by learning and practicing specific skills and strategies to effectively and positively address issues arising.
Student behavior has changed dramatically, and it’s easy to recklessly toss out claims and accusations in social media postings about situations at school sites. Sadly, one disgruntled individual can say anything – true or false – with no repercussions, setting a match to a perhaps volatile situation. Naturally, as professional educators, response to such is unseemly.
Our doors are always open, parents welcome to drop by their child’s school to ask questions.
Cindy Kleyn-Kennedy is the Instructional Technology Coordinator for the Clovis Municipal Schools and can be reached at:
