It's Booster Time
Holding booster trainings during the school year is a great way to keep the SECOND STEP program going strong and enthusiasm high.
A booster training can help staff:
- Revisit your school's or agency's implementation plan to see if you're on track
- Identify and problem-solve implementation issues
- Tell SECOND STEP success stories
- Express issues and concerns about teaching SECOND STEP lessons
- Trade ideas and strategies that work
- Practice skills such as coaching and role-play facilitation
- Recommit to using the program school- or agency-wide
To plan your booster training, use the SECOND STEP Teacher Follow-Up Survey to get a sense of teachers' challenges and needs and how they’re doing with implementation.
A booster session could be as simple as taking 20 minutes out of a staff meeting to talk about challenges and successes or as elaborate as a full day to practice skills and expand whole-school implementation.
Bright Ideas for Your Booster Training
- If you don't do a survey ahead of time, take time during the session to explore successes, challenges, and needs. Check out this Mid-Stream Implementation Assessment activity.
- Write scenarios that describe conflicts that commonly occur between children, and conduct small-group role-plays with your staff. Group members take turns coaching the other role-players to use SECOND STEP skills. Skills might include empathy (for example, acknowledging feelings), calming-down strategies, or the problem-solving steps.
- In pairs, have staff pick a subject area such as art, math, or social studies. The facilitator picks a grade-appropriate SECOND STEP lesson. Each pair writes a lesson plan for its subject area and incorporates the SECOND STEP concepts from the assigned lesson. Lesson plans can be copied and distributed so everyone carries away new ideas.
- As a large group, or in small groups, brainstorm ways to reinforce SECOND STEP skills schoolwide (such as poster contests, assemblies, or student-led parent presentations).
Contact our program implementation specialists for more ideas or to look into scheduling one of our SECOND STEP trainers to visit your site. If you have a booster that has worked well in your setting, post it in the Training Forum in our online community!
Corrina Skildum
Training Specialist
Committee for Children
