|
BY REQUEST... October 1998 |
Second Step
Contact
Description Second Step is a school-based social skills/violence prevention curriculum for preschool through junior high students that teaches children to change attitudes and behaviors that contribute to violence. Created by Committee for Children, a national not-for-profit agency, the curriculum teaches skills to reduce impulsive and aggressive behavior in children and increase their level of social competence. Research has shown people prone to violent and aggressive behavior lack a common set of social skills (empathy, impulse control, problem solving, and anger management). In addition, studies have also indicated that the reasons children do not use prosocial behavior include lack of modeling, lack of opportunities to practice behaviors, and inadequate reinforcement. Second Step addresses this research by teaching, modeling, practicing, and reinforcing skills in empathy, impulse control, and anger management at all grade levels. The content of the lessons vary according to grade level, and the skills targeted for practice are designed to be developmentally appropriate. Schools or school systems that choose to implement the Second Step program are required to be trained in Second Step methodology. The Committee for Children holds regular regional Second Step trainings throughout the country and in Canada. Schools can also elect to pay Second Step experts to come to them and provide training. Trainings can be structured in a "train-the-trainer" model, which equips educators to go back to their schools to serve as Second Step trainers, or they can be geared as general staff training, which gives teachers the skills to effectively use the Second Step curriculum in their classrooms. Those who attend the training for trainers receive a full set of materials and staff-training videos to help them conduct their own staff trainings. The Second Step curricula for preschool and elementary students consist of three kits: Preschool/Kindergarten, Grades 1-3, and Grades 4-5. In these kits, the main lesson format is the use of an 11" by 17" photo lesson card. The teacher shows the photograph to the class and follows the lesson outline on the reverse of the card. The lesson techniques include discussion, teacher modeling of the skills, and role plays. The lessons in the middle school/junior high curriculum are divided into three levels: Level 1: foundation lessons, and Levels 2 and 3: skill building lessons. Each level includes discussion lessons, overhead transparencies, reproducible homework sheets, and a live-action video. The three levels of lessons allow students to receive comprehensive, multi-year training in prosocial skills. At each grade level (preschool through grade nine), the lessons build sequentially, and should be taught in the order intended. The lessons vary in length from 20 minutes at the preschool level to 50 minutes in middle school/junior high. There are approximately 20 lessons for each grade level. Families can also be involved in the Second Step program. A Family Guide to Second Step: Parenting Strategies for a Safer Tomorrow is a video-based parent program designed to help parents and caregivers of Second Step students in preschool through grade five apply prosocial skills to parenting situations. The family component works to familiarize parents with the Second Step curriculum, assist them with reinforcing the skills at home, and give them the skills to communicate feelings, solve problems, control anger, and deal with conflict. The family component of the program requires a group facilitator (trained in Second Step instruction) to conduct meetings. Everything a group facilitator needs to conduct the six group meetings is contained in the Second Step Family Guide, which includes a 30-minute overview tape, three skill-training videos, a scripted facilitator's guide, masters of family handouts, and refrigerator magnets depicting the problem-solving and anger-management steps. Second Step was first pilot-tested in 1985, and has since received acclaim for its success in developing positive social behavior in children. In 1997, the results of a study conducted on the Second Step program by the Centers for Disease Control found that students who were taught the curriculum became less physically and verbally aggressive after participation in the program. In addition, these students were found to have increased their positive social interactions, while the behavior of students not receiving Second Step instruction worsened, becoming more physically and verbally aggressive over the school year with no measured increase in neutral or prosocial behavior. The program was also positively reviewed in a recent publication by Drug Strategies called Safe Schools, Safe Students: A Guide to Violence Prevention Strategies. Today there are over 10,000 schools using Second Step around the United States and Canada. For more information about Second Step, including costs and scheduled training events, please contact the Committee For Children at 1-800-634-4449, or visit their Website at http://www.cfchildren.org.
|
