Ikigai for all – Helping all Students find their Purpose

SDIC Regional Counselor Conference: Career First

December 5, 2017

Marina Village, San Diego, CA

I was initially interested in this conference because of the focus on the CTE and Career Pathways. My 2nd-year internship placement is at one of the SDCOE Juvenile Court and Community Schools, and a big focus for our students and the services we provide for them are focused on the career technical education programs. Through this conference, I was hoping to learn about how to build this component into my school counseling curriculum.

Session 1: Ikigai for all – Helping all Students find their Purpose

Jewyl Clarke, Career Pathways Specialist, San Diego County Office of Education

Ikagai: A Japanese term meaning “Reason for Being” or Purpose

The guiding question to this presentation was how can we provide students with the opportunities and tools to connect their academics to careers and find their purpose?

Combination of four components:

·        What you love

o   Understand your strengths, interests, and values can lead to connections to various careers (complete interest profilers or inventories)

o   Experience different opportunities to see what it is that you love to do (mentorships, guest speakers, career fairs)

o   Bring career exploration into the classrooms so students can understand how their learning is applicable to the real world (project-based learning, integrated curriculum)

o   Instead of asking students what they want to be, ask them what problem do they want to solve!

·        What the world needs

o   Understand Labor Markets

§  San Diego Region Priority Sectors (provide high demand, high growth and higher than living wage): Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy, Health Care, Information and Communications Technologies, Life Sciences

o   Know what skills are needed for the job (Internships, Mentorships, Talk to industry professionals, use LinkedIn as a research tool)

·        What you can get paid for

o   What is a livable wage, and how can you achieve it

o   Are you going to get an adequate ROI for with the cost of your education?

o   Are you getting the balance between income and quality of life that is important to you?

·        What you are good at

o   Experience, practice, develop and apply the skills

§  Clubs, Career Pathways, Elective courses, VAPA, extracurriculars, volunteer, summer programs, etc.

o   Set goals and Plan

Student Handout

Resources:

- www.sdeportal.org/student/life_videos

- www.careerwise.msnscu.edu

- www.workforce.org/reports

- www.cacareerzone.org

- www.JA.org/apps

- www.Livingwage.mit.edu

- www.collegetuitioncompare.com

- www.sdcoe.net/lls/cte/pages/essentialskills

- www.sdcoe.net/wbl

- www.careeracademics.org

- www.myworkforceconnections.org

- Monica Rodela

Best Practices: Suicide Prevention

On August 30, 2017, Sweetwater Union School District held: Best Practices: Suicide Prevention in Schools as part of a series of professional development opportunities it offered to school counselors in the district at their professional development center in Chula Vista. Richard Lieberman is a former School Psychologist for Los Angeles Unified School District.  Richard worked as an expert in the School Psychologist Suicide Prevention Unit and coordinated the "Youth Suicide Prevention Program" within the School Mental Health Division for the over 1200 schools and one million students, staff and parents of Los Angeles Unified School District.

As we were just starting our first week as interns, the session provided a perfect opportunity to obtain information about suicide and prepare for an issue that may emerge in the upcoming school year.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young adults between the ages of 15-24, but school and district leaders are frequently unprepared to respond to a suicide event. In this training Richard Lieberman provided us with best practices to create suicide prevention and intervention programs we will share some important key points from the training.

Suicide What Should Schools Do? The Model Policy.

Richard lieberman discussed the importance of several different aspects of a model suicide policy. First, schools need to carefully plan curriculum units about youth suicide prevention. There is no single predictor to suicide and that is why it is so important for school counselors and staff to build relationships with students. ALL staff must receive training in risk factors and warning signs of suicide, suicide prevention, intervention, referral and postvention ANNUALLY. Schools not only need to offer training, but ensure the training is under direction of school mental health professionals. Each year it is important to adjust and review emerging best practices. The following are several things that protect students from youth suicide:

1. Good relationships with other youth
2. Seeks adult help when needed
3. Lack of access to suicidal means
4. Access to mental mental health care
5. Religiosity
6. School environment that encourages help seeking and promotes health
7. Family cohesion and stability
8. Coping and problem solving skills
9. Positive self worth and impulse control
10. Positive connections to school and extracurricular participation
11. Successful academically

Counselors must know the warning signs of suicide to best support students and advocate for them.

What should parents do?

Parents should be included in all suicide prevention efforts and policies and procedures should be shared. It is vital that  Policies easily accessed on webpages of school district that list warning signs of suicide, crisis helpline numbers and who to contact in the district for assistance. Parents also should not be afraid to have conversations about suicide. In additions parents should know and have access to the risk factors and warning signs of suicide. Parents should act immediately to get help and remove all lethal means within the household.

 

Cultural Considerations:

Another huge component discussed in interventions is taking cultures into consideration and knowing the community that you serve. This is done through the following:

1.  Identify cultural-related needs of community.
2. Obtain community resources to meet diverse needs.
3. Have prevention materials translated into native languages
4. Have translators available.
5. Know the traditions, rituals, and belief systems of your diverse population.

Evidence Based Prevention Curriculum

Signs of Suicide Prevention Program which was discussed as a resource in the training is incorporated into the suicide prevention curriculum and is the first school-based suicide prevention program to demonstrate significant reductions in self-reported suicide attempts. SOS is a school-based gatekeeper training for that incorporates suicide awareness with a brief screening for depression and other risk factors associated with suicidal behavior. The program is based on the action steps ACT “acknowledge, care, and tell”  through which individuals are taught to acknowledge the signs of suicide that others display and take them seriously, demonstrate care for the at-risk individual, and tell a responsible adult. The program’s teaching materials consist of a video and a discussion guide. The video features dramatizations that depict the signs of suicidality and depression and the recommended ways to react to someone who is depressed and suicidal. It also includes interviews with real people whose lives have been touched by suicide. Students also are asked to complete the Columbia Depression Scale (CDS), a brief screening instrument for depression, derived from the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (Aseltine and DeMartino, 2004).

Postvention, now what?

Below is the postvention checklist. A few key aspects that we found to be important was ensuring school sites have memorial protocols. Schools also should avoid holding services on school grounds because all student deaths should be treated in the same way. In addition permanent memorials on campus should be discouraged. One great way to honor the student and bring the community together is to have grieving friends and family create a suicide prevention effort. The school and students can also partner and be involved in this.

Natalie Weinstein and Tessa Leon

California School Climate Health and Learning Survey System

The Strategic Use of your California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) training focused on how schools can effectively utilize data from the CHKS survey. The training was put on through the San Diego County Office of Education presented by Leslie Poyner. The training referred to what is commonly known as the CHKS survey to CalSCHLS, which stands for California School Climate, social-emotional and mental Health, and Learning supports and engagement through a Survey system sponsored by the California Department of Education. This survey has been used a measure for the US Department of Education in order to identify proactive factors that link directly to success in school, cares, and in life. CalSCHLS measures and asses school climate factors. School climate is composed of supports that engage school safety which include; high expectations, caring relationships, opportunities for meaningful participation, perceived school safety from school community members, and school connectedness. School climate also measures the violence, victimization, and substance use within a school community. A school’s school climate score ranges from 100 to 500, 300 being the mean average. The presentation explains the correlation between school climate and school performance. Schools in California that have a higher school climate index score, or what is known as “beating the odds,” typically have a higher amount of personal resources, higher levels of academic performance, and more support from adults at school; which is seen through high grades, increased school connectedness, less absences, and a sense of safety at school.

The presenter focused on a detailed explanation of how schools have effectively used CalSCHLS to increase school climate index scores. As mentioned prior, school climate encompasses a variety of factors. The school that was used as an example of how to increase the school climate decided to focus on the caring adults in school’s question of the survey. Their goal was to increase the percentage of 9^th and 11^th grade students to feel that some adult cares about them in the school setting. The presenter explained how the school utilized the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) model.  The Plan was to institute a graduation policy that required every student be enrolled in a non-academic organization each year of high school. All staff was required to offer a hands-on class any topic of their choice, and students would choose the class they wanted to be a part of in the beginning of the year. The Do aspect focused on the observation part of the plan. A high level of engagement was reported being seen amongst both students and staff because students were able to select a class based off their interests.  The Study component required revision of the school climate report card and the average score of students that believed there was a caring adult in school. The goal was to hopefully see an increase in the percentage of students that answered pretty much or very much true for the caring adults question. The district noted an increase after the program was implemented and the CalSCHLS survey was administered again. The Act component focused on reviewing the data examined and summarizing how the plan, do, and study aspects were carried out. Staff was noted to be more involved, specifically with students that they had struggled with behaviorally with in the past. Students were noted to have more trusting relationships with teachers, which allowed teachers to refer students appropriately, and student’s problems were being addressed more effectively.

The presenter had us review our CHKS data and do an activity that required us to look at various components within the schools we are interning at. She provided us with a prediction worksheet that required us to graph and predict the percentage of students that answered the question, and then afterward report the actual percentage so we could ultimately compare results. We looked at questions that focused on harassment of school property, caring relationships, academic motivation, and drug and alcohol use. This was a beneficial activity because it allowed us to note the difference in what we perceive versus what students are actually reporting based of their perceptions and experiences. Facilitating an activity like this with staff would be effective and would allow for a concrete illustration of the discrepancies and possible disconnect happening between staff and student perceptions of the school. 

This workshop was extremely beneficial, especially when it comes to reviewing CHKS data. In my experience working in various schools, a lot of the time the CHKS results are disregarded because it is seen as more work for counselors to review and analyze. However, as we can see from the example provided in the workshop, reviewing the data can make a major difference concerning various gaps that exist within a school. My one suggestion for this workshop would be to review more about analyzing the data, and noting what to focus on specifically.  Counselors or any district member reviewing the data would be more inclined to do so if there was a straight forward more procedural way of doing so. I would highly suggest that counselors at all levels attend a workshop like this in order to understand the importance the CHKS serves, and how it can be vital data that could transform one’s school.

Contact Leslie Poyner if you would like to learn more about this

Email: lpoyner@wested.org

californias3.wested.org

- Ella McParlane