SECOND STEP E-Newsletter
January 2011
Eight Steps to Your Own SEL Breakfast Club
We recently featured a story about some students at Churchill Junior High in Galesburg, IL who benefited greatly from an “SEL Breakfast Club” that Dean of Students Tara Bahnks and her colleagues set up. Many of you have expressed interest in starting a similar program at your own school, so we went back to Ms. Bahnks and asked her to tell us how they did it. Here, in no particular order, are eight things that helped them establish their SEL Breakfast Club—and may help you do the same.
- Choose a time of day. Some Churchill students were being dropped off at a nearby McDonalds very early in the morning and were coming to class hungry, cold, and frazzled. Bahnks’ team decided to have the Breakfast Club take place during the half-hour before the beginning of each school day (which, incidentally, is how the program got its name).
- Establish pay for supervising teachers. Bahnks’ principal got a state intervetion grant for at-risk youth to pay for supervision and transportation; when that runs out, he’ll be appealing to local businesses for funding.
- Ask for teacher volunteers. Although teachers are paid for their time, the Churchill team decided to allow teachers to choose whether or not they would like to supervise a group of Breakfast Club kids in their classroom before school. They set the limit on 15 students per supervising teacher.
- Identify students who would benefit. Any teacher at Churchill can recommend a student for participation in the Breakfast Club, and they usually choose kids who are at risk socially and/or academically, such as latchkey kids. Participation in the program is entirely voluntary, but Bahnks finds that once students start attending the Breakfast Club, they continue because of the sense of trust and safety it provides.
- Send home letters to parents for permission/approval. Bahnks and her team developed a letter to send home to parents of prospective Breakfast Club kids. It outlined what students would be doing during the program, and asked for parental approval to have their child picked up by a staff member (if necessary).
- Ask for a staff volunteer to drive students who don't have transportation. When a Churchill teacher saw a Breakfast Club student biking to school at 7 a.m. in the dead of winter (because the buses didn’t run that early), Bahnks’ team decided to extend additional money to a staff member who would give a ride to school to any Breakfast Clubber who needed transportation.
- Establish activities. Bahnks and her colleagues discovered that the most important thing was for kids to have a safe, warm place to be before school. Sometimes supervising teachers review SECOND STEP skills or provide help with homework, but sometimes kids simply elect to bring in their breakfast from the cafeteria and sit quietly while they eat it.
- Aim for consistency. Says Bahnks, “The key to success has been establishing relationships with students. A lot of them lack that type of relationship at home, so they thrive socially, emotionally, and in most cases, academically through the bonds they create with the teachers.”
