Day 2 of the 31 for 21 Challenge
Not only is it Teacher Tuesday on the blog, but it’s also
Teacher Tuesday at Shepherds College.
Every Tuesday at noon, the faculty and staff meet in the
conference room for discussion and training. Today, the Residential Life Staff
and the Academic Advisors met for an hour, and I was invited to attend. On
alternating weeks, the faculty will meet. This time serves several important
purposes:
1.
The staff gets to fellowship! For a short period, they get to break away
from being teachers, counselors, managers and disciplinarians and just focus on
being co-workers, peers and friends. They each bring their lunches, and the
room smells wonderfully of things like homemade Caesar salads, Subway
sandwiches, and watermelon. They chat about upcoming weddings, babies, the
Packer game and Pinterest.
2.
They pray and invite God into their thoughts,
their conversation and their day.
3.
Announcements are made. Today they talked about
upcoming staff training, an atypical class schedule for October 26th
and a Horticulture Field Trip on October 19th for Joe, Daniela, Sean
and Donovan.
4.
We have a Preview Day coming up! On October 12th,
parents, prospective students, teachers and any other interested parties are
invited to campus to learn more about our unique program. Today, the staff
talked about the schedule of events and worked out which 1st year
students will host our visitors. These hosts will sit at the lunch table with
the prospective students to make them feel comfortable and welcome, talk to
them about their experiences at Shepherds, and take them to the Bolthouse
Center after the meal to play games while their parents attend more meetings.
5.
Shepherds College is a ground-breaking program
for young adults with intellectual disabilities. There are other programs out
there that are similar, but none just like us. We are constantly trying to
improve, so we set the bar high and then keep raising it. This means we are
continuously learning, continuously growing, and continuously pushing our
limits. This means training.
Today, Mrs. Konopasek taught the
staff an exercise called Circles of Control using R.E.A.L. teaching methods.
Mrs. Konopasek had staff
stepping in and out of hula hoops in response to verbal examples of things a
student might or might not have control over. When “your breakfast” was stated,
the staff stepped into the hula hoop to show that they were in control of what they ate; when
“your height” was stated, the staff stepped out of the hula hoop to show that
it was something out of their control.
She then passed around an “I’m
in Charge” handout designating feelings and actions that we can or cannot
control – green for go (yes, I can control it!) and red for stop (No, I can’t
control it!). By learning this lesson on control, students will grow to
understand that we can influence
people by our words and actions, but ultimately we cannot control them.
The staff then paired off to
talk about ways the circle of control can be taught and reinforced in the
Residential Life and Academic/Advising settings.
In past meetings, Mrs. Konopasek
taught a process written about by Michelle Garcia Winner called Social Behavior
Mapping. She revisited this topic and showed the staff how to use the Circles
of Control in conjunction with Social Behavior Mapping for an effective visual presentation
of the consequences of trying to control others.
Miss Houk ended the meeting by
asking the staff to apply what they learned about Circles of Control toward
specific issues that arise with the students in the classrooms and living
areas.
It’s not every day that I can leave work wiser and empowered
with knowledge. I now feel adequately prepared to go home and take on my
teenage daughter. She may be outside my hula hoop, but I just picked up the
skills needed to map her social behavior.
The students aren’t the only people learning at Shepherds
College.
Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.
