We all have “high flyers” on our radar for either academic or behavioral needs. We monitor these students and communicate with families and teachers to make sure they are aware of their unique needs. What about the students that have yet to be identified? The process to check, monitor, inform, and evaluate is often long and time-consuming. Unfortunately, these students need help sooner rather than later. What if there was a better, more efficient way to help teachers and students get the support they need while keeping key players informed? This is where Kid Chats comes in.
Background
I had the pleasure of speaking with Amanda Wood, Deputy Elementary Principal at Singapore American School, about Kid Chats. We talked about how the process started and how it has evolved. According to Amanda, Kid Chats is an idea that originally came out of a conversation at a National Middle School Association conference. In middle school, a student concerns meeting model was common.
However, teachers usually end up talking about 5% of the kids for 90% of the time. Even though some students’ academic needs are fine, teachers were not able to address a student’s social and emotional needs. Due to this, a system was started to go through every child and give a simple “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” From there, for students where all teachers gave a ”thumbs down,” or note for concern, they would be discussed first. This was a quick way to get through all the students. These conversations were held weekly, meaning that over the course of a month, all students could be discussed.
Old Process
In the elementary school six years ago, the process was significantly different. The classroom teacher had to go through a long and tedious procedure and meetings were scheduled for only one child at a time. In addition, counselors, school psychologists, principals, learning support teachers and classroom teachers needed to be present. If there were many students to discuss, it would take a long time before a student was able to be brought up. Therefore, a different approach was needed. Kid Chat developed from the notion of how can we, as teachers, problem-solve together and what can we do in the classroom to support these students. With the counselor’s support, we could document and try some ideas. Over time, we can then evaluate and then move forward through a tiered approach instead of just jumping straight in to “let’s get him tested.” We have our Data Days to discuss academic needs. Kid Chats is meant to address the social and emotional behaviors that are impacting a child’s day at school.
Small PLCs (professional learning communities) usually consisting of three to five teachers, meet and discuss students with needs. When this started six years ago, the conversations had minimal structure, and notes were recorded and kept by the counselor and/or principal. In general, students that were brought up were mainly for academic reasons. On a number of occasions, the 45-minute conversation was often dominated by talking about one student. This did not allow other teachers in the group to bring up students of need from their class.
New Process
This year, we decided to refine the approach to Kid Chats and bring a more focused structure to the conversation. The introduction of the CASEL standards helped frame the conversation around social-emotional needs while still validating the academic concerns of the teacher. We also decided to move away from typing in a document to recording information about students in a form.
Teachers can fill out the form before the meeting. During the meeting, we can use the function of spreadsheets to filter the form by date, student name, or concern and look at students that are up for discussion. If we notice a trend with concerns, for example, most students being discussed seem to have issues with self-management, we can then focus the conversation on self-management. The group can discuss ways they can help students with self-management issues in the classroom.
In addition to the form, we also have a number of internal and external documents and websites that counselors and principals use for intervention ideas and techniques. Although these have been around for a long time, some of the documents were not utilized due to a lack of awareness. To improve this, we have moved to put everything in one location, which for us is Google Data Studio. By focusing on the CASEL standards in these conversations, the counselors are also able to play a vital role. In addition, creating a common language in the elementary school around these standards moves us in the direction of looking at how we’re are assessing these standards and how we can move towards incorporating these into the report card.
Moving forward
Once teachers are familiar with the CASEL standards, we would look at developing a system for having teachers take time to think about all of their students and rate them on the standards and given times throughout the year. These would not be formal evaluations but used more as checkpoints. Those students that seemed to score lower in certain areas or across the board would be the ones that teachers would then bring up in KidChat. As we continue to refine the process, we want to focus on the CASEL standards, giving teachers the time to reflect on the standards about each student and use that as the framework. This will keep conversations focused and efficient.
Below is an example of a Google Data Studio Kid Chat report. Anyone involved in the conversation can fill out the form during or prior to the meeting. Upon submission, the results are populated in the dashboard. You can experiment with the example here. If you would like something like this set up for your school or organization, please feel free to contact us. We would be happy to customize this to meet your organization’s needs.
