Extending Best Practices – From Surviving to Thriving

When

This is a three-part series.

Session #1 - took place on Tuesday, October 19th.

Session #2 - took place on Wednesday, January 26th, 2022. 

Session #3 - took place on Thursday, March 31, 2022.

These sessions were NOT recorded.   

Description

Education during an enduring pandemic creates unique challenges for our students, their families and for us as caring adult professionals.  To rise to this challenge, we are called to extend best practices in trauma-sensitive education, social-emotional learning, and even disaster recovery.  This three-part series will deepen the conversation, knowledge and skills to build resilience in times of uncertainty.  Each session will present one aspect of a multi-dimensional progression to improve academic and wellness outcomes for our students through recognizing the interrelated aspects of our resilience and recovery. 
Participants will be invited to explore actions and strategies that may be applied personally and professionally to stabilize, restore, and connect so that we may all thrive.

Session 1 – Restoration of Self to Serve our Students and our Work (10/19/2021)
As staff, we play a critical role in the health, well-being and resilience in our students.   Our greatest asset in this work is our ability to be role models or mentors in developing the social-emotional and academic skills they need to be successful. Maintaining this asset requires us to have our own healthy strategies!  This session will offer action-oriented approaches to restore our professional resilience and enliven our work with strategies for ourselves and with one another to foster a culture of wellness.

Session 2 – Offering Stability to Families and Caregivers to Support Student Success (1/26/2022)
In times of stress, students consciously and unconsciously assess how the adults in their lives are coping.  When they are doing well, students will do better.  This session will offer participants with pathways to be supportive and stabilizing influence in our students’ lives through our ability to engage with adults in the home.  Special focus will be offered on supporting older students providing caregiving to siblings or others in their families.

Session 3 – Communities of Connection for our Students and their Families (3/31/2022)
As advocates and agency-builders we have a unique role in facilitating connections between our students, their families and supportive resources at school.  By increasing our ability to be effective ambassadors between public school culture and a student and their family, we can increase the likelihood of successful early intervention.  This session will provide participants with insight on recognizing and responding to signs of concern and building effective connections to supports available through their current districts.  Additional emphasis will be placed on professional partnering to support student needs.

The content in this presentation is geared towards serving the migrant populations in New York State as defined under Title I, Part C and the approved State Service Delivery Plan, and may NOT be appropriate to all situations.

Please refer to the disclaimers page, which includes the vendor notice, Google™ Translate disclaimer, and nondiscrimination and accessibility policy, before proceeding further.

Objective

Participants will be invited to explore actions and strategies that may be applied personally and professionally to stabilize, restore, and connect so that we may all thrive.

Presented/Developed by

Amy Scheel-Jones, MS Ed.

Director, Trauma-Responsive Care & TIG, Coordinated Care Services, Inc.

About the Presenter

Amy Scheel-Jones brings depth and breadth of experience to capacity building and change management strategies. In her work as a School Counselor, Amy spent 10 years developing expertise in practical approaches to prevention, resiliency and fostering well-being that is now applied across sectors.  A committed youth and family advocate and systems thinker, Amy has consistently applied these core principles to accelerate practice transformation efforts   in educational settings, behavioral health system planning, and cross-sector community impact efforts.  The core of her work includes sustainable system transformation grounded in trauma-responsive principles, positive youth development, and resilience enhancement with an equity focus.   Specifically, Amy oversees the Consortium on Trauma, Illness & Grief in Schools (TIG), a regional collaboration of comprehensive training and integrated crisis response network serving participating districts for 20 years.  Areas of focus include training and consultation on the impact of childhood adversities (ACEs), trauma-responsive practices, resilience development, behavioral health system transformation, suicide, strategic planning for crisis response, and change management for school-based initiatives. She is a contributing editor to the Reaching Teens Toolkit 2nd edition (AAP.org), where she created a portal for education professionals aligned with SEL competencies.  She received her BS in Human Development and Family Studies at Cornell University followed by her MS in Education in Counseling from SUNY Brockport.  

Special Instructions

Below you find the resources from each session.