School Partners Pursue Next Steps

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School Partners Pursue Next Steps
Participants in our newly formed initiative, School Partners: Sharing the Bread, met on Saturday evening June 15 at the home of Myles and Rose Miller to discuss next steps for expanding the use of affective skills education. The School Partners program is intended to involve interested volunteers among our parents and friends to partner with a core team made up of Larry Evans, Myles Miller and John Borland. The goal of this partnership is to gain access to and so introduce the value and benefits of affective skills to faculty and administrators in the six area school districts served by DCTS.

Following a dinner hosted by the Millers, Myles led the School Partners group in an understanding of appropriate steps and options to gaining appointments with school district administrators to discuss affective skills education. Myles distributed instructional handouts describing his experience with making professional contacts including his own contact to the Susquehanna Township School District. Provided were suggestions for individuals within the administration with whom school partners might make initial and target contacts. Among these were the district superintendent, school district office personnel, the school principal and counseling staff. We also explored effective means to securing appointments including face-to-face visits, telephone calls and e-mail.

Important to the success of securing an appointment is the structuring our dialogue and the points we wish to convey. Myles handed out to our school partners suggestions for language to use and areas of discussion to cover during first contacts. These included stating the purpose of their contact regarding affective skills, detailing their personal experiences with and impressions of the affective skills programs provided at DCTS, their request for a meeting between School Partners representatives and administrative staff members to discuss further, setting the anticipated attendees for the meeting and securing a date and time at which to meet. Myles stressed to partners the importance of reworking the suggestions to arrive at their own personalized message and of practicing and rehearsing their dialogue.

Of course we are not attempting to become salespersons to district personnel, but rather to state our feelings and requests for advancing affective skills education in a manner that is concise and coherent so as to best gain the attention and interest of the administrator being contacted. As Myles pointed out, the affective skills curriculums sell themselves; all you have to do is sell you.

Core team members went on to identify how we plan to continue as successful school district contacts are made by school partners and meeting arrangements are secured. We will next meet to discuss the way in which we will conduct our meetings with district administrators. Our next meeting will identify the topics we will cover with administrators, materials we can provide and designations of roles and responsibilities within the School Partners team. We will also examine the support and educational services we can extend to district staff and how we will follow up with administrators to aid them in understanding affective skills curriculums, experiencing the value and benefits of affective skills outcomes and exploring strategies for implementation of affective skills programming within their schools.

Our group finished the evening by discussing the potentials for affective skills education, but also in profiling the difficult environment from which district administrators may receive our message. It was acknowledged that district personnel are faced with a number of pressures – social, bureaucratic and political – to play it safe, stay with the conventional and not embrace new ideas or approaches. School partners explored the many and various ways that we might anticipate, support and encourage administrators in thinking and acting outside of the box with affective skills.

We adjourned feeling better prepared to support one another as we embark into this new area of endeavor.

-- John Borland --

Affective Skills Web Site

Last Modified: March 21, 2003