The Dropout Prevention Specialist Workbook


Book Description

Despite policy efforts at the state and federal levels, the school dropout rate for students in the United States is estimated at a staggering 500,000-to-1,000,000 children and youth per year. And while school social workers and other professionals working with truancy and school dropout issues are well positioned to offer assistance as Dropout Prevention Specialists (DPSs), an overwhelming number of those who fill such roles go vastly undertrained and underprepared for the demands they face. Authored by a nationally leading specialist in dropout prevention, this workbook serves as a how-to guide for those in the helping professions who serve in an intervention or dropout-prevention capacity. Specifically, it guides readers through useful resources that address the varied and intersecting causes of student dropout while providing real-life anecdotal experience from the author's five-plus decades in the field. As school districts across the country continue to adopt DPSs in their schools, The Dropout Prevention Specialist Workbook aims to meet the demand of training and preparing them for the future while clearly defining needs of the work ahead.




The Dropout Prevention Specialist (DPS) Workbook


Book Description

""This workbook is intended for School Social Workers and others who find themselves in positions either in a school, or school district, working in the area of attendance improvement and dropout prevention and recovery. It is intended as a practical guide to going about actually doing this complex, multi-faceted, and very important job. Many books and articles have been written regarding why students drop out of school, along with numerous suggestions of how to address this nationwide problem, but none to the best of my knowledge have provided direction to actually going into a school and starting to tackle this challenging problem.""--




Developing Your School’s Student Support Teams


Book Description

Developing Your School’s Student Support Teams is a practical manual for schools seeking to establish and sustain coordinated teams in support of students’ social, emotional and behavioral health. Every day, students struggle with a range of issues, including traumas, that complicate their learning, engagement, and overall well-being. School psychologists, counselors, social workers and nurses are employed in many school districts, but their schedules often make it difficult to collaborate effectively in developing and implementing comprehensive intervention plans. This book promotes teamwork throughout schools by exploring how interdependent practitioners can come together at the appropriate levels and times to help coordinate school and community resources. This "filtering" process will guide K-12 leaders and service professionals toward systems and decision-making that enable long-term student supports, accurate identification of systemic learning barriers, improved school culture and climate, attention to diverse populations, and more. With these proactive teamwork strategies, school staff will be better prepared to share workload and accountability and to identify and build upon the existing strengths and supports of every student.




Ethical Decision-Making in School Mental Health


Book Description

"Knowing yourself and your responsibilities requires understanding your ethical assumptions and frameworks. This chapter identifies four major ethical theories that inform professional codes of ethics, including deontology, consequentialism, ethics of care, and virtue ethics. It also provides a typology for the mental health professional's use of self that includes (1) negative underinvolvement, (2) positive underinvolvement, (3) positive overinvolvement, and (4) negative overinvolvement. It ties each of these positions to the use of a hierarchy of professional influence, ranging from persuasion, leverage, inducement, and threat, to compulsion"--




Black Students Matter


Book Description

"From the moment a Black child enters the world, they are at a disadvantage simply because of the color of their skin. The unfair treatment shown towards them often stems from racist stereotypes of Black adults that are passed along to innocent children because of adultification bias. This bias is shown towards Black children by assuming they are older than their actual age and seeing them as less innocent and culpable for their actions (Epstein et. al, n.d.). For example, the "Sapphire" stereotype that Black women are hypersexualized and promiscuous (Epstein et. al, n.d.) appears when a young Black girl is blamed for being sexually assaulted due to her "acting" or "dressing grown". Or the "Savage" stereotype that Black men are aggressive, violent and criminals (DeGruy, 2017) that underlies the decision-making when Black boy gets into a fight with a White boy, but the Black child is the only one punished. In every environment, Black children are treated differently because of adultification bias that robs Black children of their childhood"--




The Art of Becoming Indispensable


Book Description

Despite their institutional preparation and lived experiences, new school social workers encounter numerous practices, political considerations, community engagement strategies, and seemingly fundamental elements involved in the learning curve needed to move from entry-level to proficiency. The Art of Being Indispensable What School Social Workers Need to Know in Their First Three Years of Practice contains content specific to what they will need in their first three years of practice, bridging the learning gap from their academic preparation to early employment in P-12 settings. Organized into four sections - The Host Environment, The Macro School Social Worker, Integration and Intervention, and School Social Worker Sustainability - the content of the book is framed by a mixed-methods study on the needs of new practitioners. It is an indispensable guide that new school social workers can consult to effectively execute their roles and responsibilities.




Solution Focused Brief Therapy in Alternative Schools


Book Description

Solution Focused Brief Therapy in Alternative Schools (SFBT) provides a step-by-step guide for how school social workers and counselors can work with other school professionals to create an effective solution focused dropout prevention program. Along with illustrative cases and detailed explanations, the authors detail the curriculum and day-to-day operations of a solution focused dropout prevention program by drawing on the experiences of a school that uses this approach.




Equity in the Classroom for Every Child


Book Description

This handbook is written to provide guidance for educators, teachers, parents, grandparents, and caregivers as they navigate through a child’s educational experiences. After more than four decades of attempting to close the Achievement Gap, this book generates support for teaching diverse learners and children of color by constructing a teaching and learning environment that ensures equity in the classroom for every child.




Leading for Diversity


Book Description

"I strongly endorse this book and feel that it holds great promise for the field." Ray Terrell Coauthor of Cultural Proficiency Proactive leadership fosters strong interethnic communities! This timely volume provides powerful models of leadership that are effective in developing schools where positive interethnic relations can flourish. Countering the often-heard belief that troubled race relations are endemic to schools, author Rosemary Henze and her team of researchers face the issue head on by incorporating diversity issues into educational leadership. Schools are vehicles for change in race/ethnic relations when proactive leadership is developed and maintained. Vignettes and case studies allow you to assess and develop your leadership skills in interethnic relations by helping you to Recognize and develop their own leadership strengths in a diverse school Assess how organizational structures support or constrain positive relations Understand the nature of ethnic conflict or tension in your school Identify your school′s priority needs Develop a core vision of interethnic relations Create and implement a plan for promoting positive interethnic relations Document the effectiveness of your plan The broad concept of leadership presented here includes not only principals and administrators, but also teachers, parents, counselors, students, and community human relations professionals who emerge as leaders facing a range of issues—including gang violence, racial conflict, staff divisions, and other issues—that need to be addressed in the area of interethnic interactions. These representatives of schools with diverse populations form leadership teams able to speak out for real educational reform in reducing racism and prejudice in schools.




The Cult of Smart


Book Description

Named one of Vulture’s Top 10 Best Books of 2020! Leftist firebrand Fredrik deBoer exposes the lie at the heart of our educational system and demands top-to-bottom reform. Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: Academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability. Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that hierarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place. This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.