Social-Emotional Development
As social/emotional experts, Patton's School Counselors design and implement school-wide initiatives to promote all students’ social/emotional development. Interventions that promote social/emotional development will also improve social behavior and academic performance and reduce problematic behaviors and emotional distress. Over two decades of research has shown the important roles social and emotional skills play in each child’s success in academics and the community.
Skills such as:
demonstrating self-control
Persisting at challenging tasks
Making good decisions
...are all necessary to being successful students and adults!
To achieve this goal, our counseling team uses the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment, or DESSA, when working with students to better understand their social and emotional skills. In the tool, students will be rated by counselors and teachers on their performance in competencies such as:
Self Awareness
Self-Management
Social Awareness
Relationship Skills
Goal-Directed Behavior
Personal Responsibility
Decision Making
Optimistic Thinking
The assessment data allows the counseling team to design individualized, group, and whole classroom interventions related to each competency and to also identify which social and emotional skills your student has already learned and what skills they might feel that they still need to develop.
Disclaimers:
All assessment data is kept confidential and secure
All counseling lessons and activities will be scheduled during times that are least disruptive to their academic learning and time in class and would never last longer than 30 minutes.
All counseling lessons and activities proposed to students from the counseling assessment will be ungraded and voluntary-based. No student will participate in an activity they or their guardians did not consent to.
Parents/students would be able to stop participation at any time without any negative consequences or repercussions related to their education.