Over the years I have taken part in or facilitated the development of dozens upon dozens of programs to support children and young adults who have needs that call upon staff with special skill sets, understandings, and training.  These programs are so particular that the dollar investment in personnel, training, materials, and resources can easily be more than $30,000.00 per student per year.  Putting programs such as these together takes patience, experience, education, training, and trust.  They cannot be put together on Zoom, in a few sessions with a consultant who charges $500.00 per hour, either.  But, let’s be honest, if someone offered you $500.00 per hour to talk on Zoom – wouldn’t you do it too?

I know those dollar amounts are considerable – but believe me when I tell you that districts depend on private schools to provide services for students, and the annual cost of one single student to be transported to and from a specialized school that is out of town can easily cost more than $100,000.00 per student per year.  The finances aren’t really what drives us to create our own programs – we educators are more interested in building programs that keep our kids in their schools, with their friends, close to their homes and families – because these things are important for their growth in their communities.  The dollar amounts are astounding enough that every taxpayer and town official should be clamoring to invest in programs.  It is a spend-to-save thing, you know?

I sat through one session of the $500.00 Zoom variety PD once a couple of years ago.  An author, broadcasting from Martha’s Vinyard, was on the screen quoting from a book that he wrote, and I even saw one or two people on the screen paying attention.  Most were clearly engulfed in other work, responding to E-mails, on social media, or perhaps playing Tetris. It was a colossal waste of public funds.  There were other sessions, but I did not attend…because I read the book. Actually, it was pretty good – but it was only $4.39 on Amazon.  What savings!

The Therapeutic Crisis Intervention Program is part of a broader network that has worked in this field since 1974, when special legislation resulted in funding to study and develop programs to prevent child abuse.  Folks, the program that I am talking about wasn’t developed by a single person.  It is not a book with a new idea, nor is it available via Zoom.  This program’s foundation is 49 years old and still growing.   Aside from its growth and expansion through six different decades, also keep in mind that an Ivy League University backs it and can be found throughout the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Russia, Israel, Australia, South Korea, Ireland, Bermuda, Spain, and the UK.   Here is the kicker – no advertisement.  No flyers coming in the mail, no spam E-mails, and nothing at Barnes & Noble or any other publication that we subscribe to or purchase. 

When the $500.00-an-hour authors and consultants come – I run.  Doesn’t matter what degrees they have or how many copies sold.  The experts are all the researchers (retired and new) who have worked on this for 50 years.  The knowledge comes not only from ideas, but from trial and error, from case studies of colossal mishaps – some in which students or staff were seriously injured, or worse, died.  Yes, children have died in schools and residences as a catastrophic outcome of physical intervention.  This is serious work; we need serious people and serious organizations to take the wheel.

This tried, and true system calls upon six domains to be effective, and to illustrate these, I am only going to pose a series of questions…

Domain I: Leadership and Administrative Support

Does the leadership of your school or organization participate in and support staff training in intervention methods that work with kids?  Or are the leaders nowhere to be found during training week?  Are they participating in the training, or are their faces buried in their phones and computers?

Do leaders support and influence decision-making during times of high stress, or are they just there to follow up with you, write you up, or disparage your work if something goes wrong?

Have you been given a set of universally known principles that guide your work, or do you fly by the seat of your pants?

Domain II: Student and Family Inclusion

Are students and families involved in decision-making about school and classroom functioning?  Or do we save family participation for the book fair?

Does your school or classroom encourage students to have a voice or choices? Or do they get to exercise their voice and choice only when they tell you off?

Domain III: Clinical and Social Work Participation

Do your students have plans – like the one I needed for Rod in my previous blog – that would have helped me know that his bringing a weapon to school and using it to cut another student was likely?

Do students receive goals-based counseling to help them achieve goals so that they can better connect to learning, or do your counselors just run from crisis to crisis, putting out fires?

Domain IV:  Coaching and Post-Crisis Response

Are there coaches to help new staff learn on the ground – or is every person for themselves, and when things go bad, they are blamed?

When something really tough happens (fight, property damage, staff being attacked, student found to be abused), are there colleagues who debrief with affected staff – or is it suck it up buttercup time?

Domain V:  Training and Competency Standards

Is there cyclical training to keep staff improving, or do staff participate in the cheapest, shortest training possible and hope for the best (If so, an author can help you for $500 per hour).

Are staff encouraged to seek additional training to continue to grow – or is this simply not in the budget?

Domain VI: Documentation, Incident Monitoring, and Feedback

Do you have a data team around incidents to understand times, locations, and reasons, or are incident reports filed and never looked at again?

Does your team take time to review and talk about incidents or run out at the end of the day, trying to forget them? 

Conversations worth looking forward to!