First 5 Nevada County’s Blog

posted by Amanda Scheerer

Hi!  I am writing from the “Grass Valley School Readiness” office and we are getting really excited about our new program to be launched in September.  We will be bringing a new curriculum to Preschools and Caregivers in the district.  This curriculum is called “Second Step:  A Violence Prevention Curriculum”. 

I will be training teachers to use the Second Step Curriculum in their preschools and I wanted to share a little with everyone about the program.  

Four of the larger preschools in the area who have shown an interest in Second Step have been chosen to be trained in how to use it with their students at the preschool level.  After these schools have received the training I will be training four additional schools, and as time and interest permit, I will continue to train throughout the year. 

The focus of Second Step is on assisting children with the recognition and understanding of their emotions and the emotions of others and to provide them with efficient problem solving skills and emotional coping mechanisms.  This is taught with the aim of reducing anger and violence in the classroom and at home, as well as to increase social competence in children’s day to day interactions. These skills have been shown to increase success for children in school and in later life.  In a 2007 study of 142 elementary school students, University of Delaware researchers Caroll E. Izard and Christopher J. Trentacosta found that students who seemed adept at managing their emotions were also the ones teachers rated as more academically competent.

The Committee for Children (which produces this curriculum) takes pains to tie the Second Step curriculum’s goals to academic objectives: It publishes a chart identifying the ways each Second Step unit can support skills in math, science, health, and language arts. (See link at: http://www.cfchildren.org/) 

Second Step is a research based curriculum which, since 1987, has been used in North America and overseas.  The three major units of the program are Empathy Training, Emotion Management, and Problem Solving.  

To match the needs and abilities of younger children, the Preschool/Kindergarten level of the program contains only three steps:  (1) “How do I feel?” (2) “What is the problem?” and (3) “What can I do?”  These steps are at the core of the more sophisticated steps provided in the curriculum used with older children. 

Using these three simple steps, children are taught how to “read” and interpret internal cues, external social cues, and generate possible solutions to the problem through a series of 20 to 30 minute lessons given once or twice a week.  At the pre-K/Kindergarten level, these lessons include:

*Dealing with Losing Something
*Dealing with Distractions
*Fair Ways to Play
*Dealing with Name Calling
*Learning to Have Fun with our Friends
*Joining In
*Dealing with Being Hurt

The lessons are taught in a lively, interactive, child-friendly way using puppets, role playing, and discussion revolving around a photograph that depicts some aspect of the lesson being learned. Following, is a link to a Sample Lesson Card from the program. Each Second Step Lesson revolves around one of these Lesson Cards. http://www.cfchildren.org/media/files/ssp_pk_lesson.pdf. 

An interesting observation by many involved with teaching Second Step is that not only are the children receiving benefits from the program but that staff is also working more harmoniously after being exposed to the Second Step lessons as they internalize the skills they are teaching to the children.   

It will be very interesting to watch this program grow and to track changes in behavior and coping skills of the children in the participating preschools; I will keep you updated on our progress!

On a related note – I was browsing an interesting website today called the “Greater Good Magazine” Greater Good is published quarterly by The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Greater Good advances the Center’s mission to ’sponsor and disseminate leading scientific research into the roots of everyday altruism, healthy relationships, and happy children’.  I was reading the listing of their beliefs (bulleted below) and felt it was very much in line with exactly what Second Step is aiming for:

• The human inclination toward goodness is strong, but it can be strengthened by specific social conditions.
• The good of society as a whole can be promoted through the science of positive and “prosocial” emotions and behaviors — for example, by studying emotions and behaviors such as compassion, respect, joy, trust, love, empathy, gratitude, and tolerance.
• People who possess the inner resources necessary for their own emotional well-being will help foster social well-being through their behaviors toward others. At the same time, social harmony helps foster mental health at the individual level.
• Similarly, social well-being in our communities begins with well-being in children and families.

This site also features an informational page on parenting called the Half Full Blog: Social Science for Raising Happy Kids. (http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/tools.html) Take a look and get some good tips and advice on parenting.  There is a lot of interesting information there.