Session One-This session focus is on promoting the belief that many teachers already possess good helping skills. Skills they are unaware of because they aren't considered important in their academic teaching role nor in the supervisory and evaluation process. This is the time to begin asking teachers what helping skills they possess and what skills they lack. This session then lays out a training curriculum suggested by teachers themselves. A process which focuses on their own teaching world, emphasizing what skills works well and what skills needs improvement. And most important in these opening conversations is that the " teaching of helping skills" centers on teachers converations rather than lectures by the trainers. Remember teachers idea of " training," based on their past experiences, is sitting siently while being lectured to by an outside expert. Teachers are seldom asked to share their insights, knowledge, and concerns. Being asked to " talk" about what they know and need is new and unfamiliar teritory. Yet it can be a welcome breath of fresh air. There is also a subtle teaching lesson in this process. If teachers are encouraged to " talk" about their own experience, they may learn that the same process is needed by students, parents, and colleagues in need of an open door for help.
Session Two-This session focuses on why becoming an advisor and helper can improve their teaching skills and relations with student, parents and colleagues. It's a " what's in it for me" session. Here are a few examples of the topics to be convered in this session:
1.Helping students resolve their personal and well-being problems can serve to incease their chances for academic success and help them avoid isolation, risky behaviors ,school failure, and dropping out.
2. When teachers become helpers they become learners again. When teachers enter the profession they develop an " academic " persona and work style that follows them throughout their career. They often have little awareness or importance about the non-academic side of their career. However in becoming advisors and helpers they are thrust into assesing the helping skills they have and learning the new skills to be successful. It's a challenging change and like most new learners they become energized, curious, and also confused , anxious and uncertain. This new found energy can help them to find professional renewal and capture the thrills and risk that can come with change.
3. When teachers become helpers they become more effecive teachers for " all" their students. This new role requires teachers to move beyond their one-dimensional academic role. What is now required is to view the whole student; personality, culture, background, successes and failures, health and wellness, relationships, family life, hopes and dreams.
4, When teachers become helpers they become more coupled with other teachers. Academic teachers often appear self-sufficient; they usually work alone and tend to be isolated from colleagues.When teachers beome advisors that changes. Even teachers who are skilled advisers will encounter student problems that will leave them uncertain and confused about how to respond. But they are not alone. As an advisor they will have a group of colleagues to serve as their support network, offering feedback on how to intervene.
Session Three-When teachers become helpers they begin to recall how they were helped or not helped as they tried to navigate through their risky teen years. Here are some examples of the topics to be covered:
1. What educators helped guide you during your teen years?
2. What skills did these educators have? Were they good listeners? Nonjudgemental? Encouraging? Capable of delivering critical feedback in a postive way that made sense to you? Were they accessible, trusting, and able to make you feel safe, at home?
3.What words of encouragement and support did they use when talking with you? Do you still hear their words and use them with your students?
4. Have you modeled your professional life after these educators? Many teachers go into the teaching profession because they encountered positive teacher helpers in their own experience and want to pass on this care and guidance to their students.
5. And of course you probably have intereacted with teachers who lacked the helping skills, caring, and compassion you needed as a teenager. What were they like? How did they rebuff your effort to get the help you needed? Do you still try to avoid using the their words ? Words that send needy teens quickly away.
Session Four- When teachers become helpers they begin to become aware that they often tend to help certain students and avoid helping others who they may dislike, make them feel uneasy,anxious, and wish they would seek help from someone else. All normal feelings, but feelings that they need to explored and helped to find some positive human connection with. Here are some of the topics that can be covered in this session:
1, What are the characteristics of the students you like? For example, do you feel more comfortable with female than male students ? The brightest and more articulate students? Students who are well-behaved? Students who praise you?
2. What part does gender, race , color, culture, appearance, personality, and ability play in determining who you like to help and guide and those who don't fit on your helpig list ?
3. What personal needs of your are met through interactions with your favorite students? Are your needs for praise, affirmation, and support met by interacting with these students? We all come to our work setting with personal needs to be met, But is your overall efficiency as a teacher being diminished by focusing too much on students who are most like you, interest you, and make you feel comfortable?
4. In order to raise your awareness about who you " include" and who you " avoid" in the helping process make a list of your profile for who you include and who you avoid. Remember we all come into teaching carrying baggage from our upbringing and family lives. It's only natural that we bring our own bias to the classroom. However ignoring these bias and not putting in the work to change them leaves each one of us being less than we could be, never reaching the goal of becoming a great teacher.
Session Five- When teachers become helpers they become aware that their are certain problems they like to help with and problems they tend to avoid.. Her are some exmples of the topics in this session:
1, What kinds of problems do you like to help with, even gravitate toward?
2. What kinds of problems do you avoid, want to run away from, may even frighten you?
3. Here's a list of common problems teens face. Which appeal to you? Which send a red light of caution off in your mind and belly? Here they are: school problems such as failure and poor achievement, conflicts with teachers and peers, hostile, abusive, pressure parents, family crisis such as divorce, death and loss, suicide , emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, eating disorders, tobacco, alcohol, and drug abuse, bullying.
4. Time for truth. Make a list of those problems you tend to gravitate towards and those who make you think " I'm out of here , referral right away. "
This kind of training session can be offered in two -hour intervals during the school week or on weekends.
Many students, parents, and a-risk educators are in need of intervention, support, and an open door to find help and a respit. Teachers are ideally positions to offer this support if they are encouraged, trained, and in the end required to help their students achieve both academic gains and personal growth.. One need not interfere with the other, We need teachers to elevate their role and expect them to be responsile strewards of the schools in which they teach. Teachers who can plant little seeds of hope and opportunity. Teachers who can say to their students, " you are valued and you can take your rightful place in the world." I believe the training program I descried above is beginning step in helping teachers learn how to think, speak, and act so their students are valued and cared for.
Here are more extensive resources concerning " why" and "how" we need to bring teachers on baord as helpers:
William L Fibkins, An Educator's Guide to Understanding the Personal Side of Students' Lives. Rowan and Littlefield Education, http://www.rowmaneducation.com/.
William L. Fibkins, Students in Trouble: Schools Can Help Before Failure. Also Rowman and Littlefield
William L. Fibkins, "Training Middle School Teachers To Be Effective Helpers." Schools in the Middle, NASSP, April 1999, pg. 6-8
William L. Fibkins, " Stronger Advisory Programs can Stem the Spread of School Violence., " ,Middle Ground, NMSA, Oct. 1999, pg. 41-42
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