Homeless, but not Helpless

Regardless of the kind of area you work in, homelessness is probably a bigger problem than you think. In urban settings, it's even more pronounced. I recently attended a training on the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and the services available to families experiencing homelessness, and it was so informative and helpful. It was one of those trainings where I could use the information immediately the next day-- and did.

The biggest misconception about homeless is that the family is living on the streets, but it's actually living without a permanent home (specifically, a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence). "Homelessness," per the McKinney-Vento Act, can look like one of the following:

• Sharing housing.
• Living in a motel, hotel, trailer with wheels, or campground.
• Emergency or transitional shelters.
• Awaiting a foster care placement.
• Cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, standard housing, bus or train stations.
• A nighttime residence not ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation (i.e. park bench).

The biggest qualifier I see in my school is families sharing housing. It's actually astounding the amount of my kiddos who would qualify for McKinney-Vento now that I know this is considered a form of homelessness, because they do not have their own permanent residence. We also see a lot of families living in hotels.

How do you know if a family might be homeless? Watch the students closely. Are they wearing the same clothes every day, or don't have clothing appropriate to the weather conditions? Do they hoard food, ask for seconds, etc? Do they have working telephone numbers? Are they evasive about their living situation when asked? 

The McKinney-Vento removes the barriers impeding homeless children from attending school. It ensures homeless children transportation to and from school free of charge, allowing them to attend their school of origin (the last school they were enrolled at or the school they attended at their last permanent residence), regardless of what district the family resides in. It also requires schools to register homeless children immediately, even if they lack normally required documents, such as immunization records or proof of residence. Even after finding permanent housing, a family can access McKinney-Vento services for a year afterwards.

One thing that concerned me was how little I knew about the McKinney-Vento act. As an educator, I didn't know about a vital act that ensures proper education for disadvantaged students? And if I didn't know much about these resources, what about the parents?

Just a few days after the training, we were notified of a family who had experienced a house fire and has been living in a hotel for the past two months. The five kiddos in the family were wearing the same clothes every day, didn't have coats (good ol' Western NY weather is unkind), and always seemed hungry. Mom came into school looking for support, and we were able to provide her with quite a lot immediately. We gave the students extra uniform pants and shirts and also enrolled them in our school's Backpack Program, which provides a backpack of nonperishable food from the local food bank to students for the weekend. I also notified our district's McKinney-Vento liaison, who will contact mom for further support.

As school psychologists, we may seem to be primarily responsible for the appropriate education of special education students. However, we need to be mindful of the resources and tools that will lead to the proper instruction of ALL students. Investigate the McKinney-Vento act, find out who your district's liaison is, and refer families. You never know who might be in need. 

Here is the full text of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Asisstance Act, for those ambitious folks out there.

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A Day Without Accomplishing a Thing in Group is a Day Wasted

Today in group, the lesson was on problem-solving! Last time, we reviewed all the steps we've learned to identify how we're feeling, know how our body feels, and ways to calm down--all of which the kiddos have to do first before they can problem solve. Today's lesson was mostly based off of Skill #30 in Skillstreaming in Early Childhood. The boys would be thinking of different choices they could make in a certain situation, picking a "good" choice, then talking about how they would carry that out. Sounds great, right?

I felt like this, only with clothes and
without the sweet hat.

Wrong. Group was pretty much a waste.

Today was the class's first day with a new student who is going to be very challenging. He is brand new to our building and his grandma and mom came in before he arrived to let us know what a terror he is. Awesome, you know things are going to be stellar when you get the "he's terrible" talk two weeks before he arrives. Well, little L arrived in a wind storm of crazy, and swept all the other boys into his tornado of nuts.

Pretty much all we were able to accomplish today was talking out different choices we could make in the situations in the Skillstreaming book. L was so off-task and distracting (crawling on the floor, playing in the sink, pulling math manipulatives off the shelves, playing with a yard stick), the other munchkins couldn't focus for very long. We'll have to chock this one up to experience and work harder next time. To stay in line with School Psychology Awareness Week, my strength for today was knowing when to walk away.

And I did... really quickly.



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Putting the Group Pieces Together

Today's 1st grade group counseling session was very productive! I grabbed Mr. S, another colleague, to come up and assist, as I had role-plays planned and knew that one of me and four of them wouldn't be productive. Our lesson today was putting together the skills we've been learning, so that we can look towards problem-solving (that'll come next time).

We reviewed and reinforced ad nauseum how to identify a feeling and practiced showing with our bodies what different emotions looked like. We mostly focus on "anger" in this group, because that's what these little kiddos with Emotional Disturbances are most troubled by, but we also were able to work on "sad" and "excited," too. After we reviewed the emotional side of things, we reviewed all the different ways to relax when upset, and practiced a few all together, like deep breathing and counting backwards.

After we finished our review, Mr. S and I each took two kiddos to break up and work through scenarios from the Skillstreaming in Early Childhood manual, Skill #28. We gave each boy a scenario or two and had them go through the steps we've been learning:

• Identify the feeling
• Notice how the body feels
• Relax and calm down
• Stop
• (next we'll add "Think" and "Problem Solve")

While they acted out the steps, Mr. S and I helped their partner identified each one. For instance, as each kiddo was modeling how their body felt, the partner pointed out different things the body was doing that meant they were angry or sad (i.e. growling, clenched hands, arms crossed, stomping feet, red face). Then as a trio, we would pick a calming down strategy and practice it together. J came up with a great strategy all on his own--singing the alphabet slowly. I praised him up and down for that good idea, and of course, we all sang it together (his teacher was also impressed, because the class is missing a lot of foundational skills needed for first grade, like letter recognition and sound-symbol correspondence). After we practiced in pairs, we came back to the large group and had J and D, the more put together kiddos of the day, model for everyone. 

The biggest challenge with these kiddos is getting them to sit after our activity or lesson to process. Even with Mr. S's help, the boys had a lot of trouble sitting back down on the rug and listening for a few minutes of talking about what we did today and what we learned. They were under tables, standing by bulletin boards, rolling/laying on the floor, etc. The processing at the end of a lesson is important to me to sum things up and set up the next lesson, but I feel like I leave group lately with things hanging unfinished. On the upside, this was a worthwhile lesson, and it seems like at least the kiddos are remembering what we talk about in group--even if they can't always practice it!

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Progressive Muscle Relaxation? Relax THIS, Lady!

My fourth first grade emotions/anger management group session was marred by the insanity that is November 1st. On this fateful day, the kiddos came to school all tweaked out on candy from Halloween the night before, ready to cause armageddon and other gleeful shenanigans. Enter 50 Shades of Cray.

Group was scheduled for 2:30pm, a nice way to end up the school day before dismissal starts at 3:10. Around 1:00pm, Miss R came down in a tizzy because one of the boys was throwing an Uber Tantrum and she needed help. Mr. S, my mental health counselor colleague, and I strapped on our sneakers and took off (and by sneakers, I mean high heels. Please, you know I didn't have no sneakers on :) ). There we found N, red-faced, scream-crying, face down on the floor, spitting, swimming like Ryan Lochte, only the hands and feet were for punching/kicking/scratching, not winning gold medals. He was not responding to Miss R, the classroom aide, or either of us, and the other students had been removed by the speech therapist, because N had partially destroyed the room.

Mr. S and I held N's hands and feet gently to keep him from hurting himself or one of us, and tried to calm him down, but N was having none of it. Mr. S was getting scratched on his wrists, I was getting kicked (by feet with no shoes or socks... I smelled like sweaty little boy feet for the rest of the day), and it was unproductive. It was one of those situations where you felt totally helpless, because nothing was working to help the kiddo. Mr. S recommended I call the district's crisis team, because this was more than just a tantrum. In the end, the crisis team recommended I call our school resource officer, who came quickly to assist Mr. S, and N's mom eventually came to take him home. We were pooped.

By the time 2:30 rolled around for group, I was worried that N's behavior had set the other 3 boys off and it wasn't going to be a productive session. I was told that it was fine to come up, so I settled myself on the rug with D, G, and J and we got down to business on the topic of "relaxation" (irony). Immediately, I knew that it was going to be a wash--they were much squirmier than normal, D and J kept posturing like they were going to punch each other, and where they normally respond to positive redirection and praising, it wasn't working. What an awesome day to try and do relaxation techniques!

J had to be removed to take a "cool down" walk, so with D and G we were able to discuss why it's important to calm down when you're upset, and ways to do so. With some teeth-pulling, we were able to get a good list (watch TV, sit by yourself, put your head down, go for a walk, deep breathing, counting backwards, etc). We also practiced some of the techniques where appropriate, like the deep breathing technique I call "Soup Breathing." Students visualize a bowl of their favorite soup in front of them, which is too hot to eat. They're excited to eat it, so they take a big sniff of how good it smells ("in through the nose"), then blow on it to cool it down ("out through the mouth").

I settled the boys into their tables and crossed my mental fingers that the progressive muscle relaxation activity I planned would be somewhat productive. It took a while to settle the boys down, but we were able to get through a few of the scripts with little trouble. J joined us halfway through and was able to participate appropriately. I used the script found here, with some minor modifications to the introduction and conclusion to shorten them. I also didn't do all the scripts, only "hands and arms," "arms and shoulders," "jaw," and "legs and feet." I liked the script because of the visualization, and while the kids got a little silly, they did exactly as instructed.

Once the muscle relaxation was over and I tried to process and get them talking about the activity, the squirminess was back. D and J were right back at each other, instigating a fight and getting in each other's faces. D went to hide under a table and J yelled and tried to push a chair at him. I went to try and calm J down, but for some reason, he had forgotten all the cool techniques he had just learned! With time and help from Miss R, the boys got settled back into their dismissal routine and I was able to skeddadle. Phew.

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This is How My Body Feels When I'm ANGRY

Third group session today in my emotions/anger management first grade group! Last time, we focused on identifying feelings in others, and today, I wanted to focus on how the kiddos can tell what they're feeling in themselves. Since this group is mainly focusing on anger management, we talked about how we can tell we're angry based on what our body does or feels.

We practiced making "angry bodies" and while the kids flexed like The Hulk and pulled faces that rival Chris Farley's in the "Colombian Coffee Crystals" SNL sketch (above, I couldn't resist), I pointed out different things their bodies were doing. D's eyes got small and narrowed, J's face got red, N's fists balled up. We also talked about what happens inside our bodies when we get angry too, like heads pounding, stomachs getting in knots or butterflies, and hearts beating quickly.

My modified worksheet for today.

Once we got the basics down (and the boys calmed themselves down again, because they got pretty riled up), I sent the boys back to their tables to complete a coloring worksheet our of Colorful Counseling! Life Lessons Learned Through Drawing. I don't own this, but somewhere along the way I received copies of the anger management unit, which I recommend. Most of it is too advanced for these little guys, but this worksheet was good. I modified it a little bit to make the writing portion more simplified, and gave the boys bigger spaces to write in. While they drew their pictures, I circled around and commented on various aspects, and wrote in highlighter their answers to the questions below, so they could trace.

Each boy had really neat parts of their drawing, it was awesome to see their uniqueness. D's was done all in red, because he said red was a "mean color." N's had balled up fists and a big blue stomach, because he said that his tummy feels funny when he's been crying. J's drawing also had balled up fists and a big "yelling mouth." Most of the boys also drew a happy picture on the back. When they were finished drawing, we went back to the carpet to present our pictures. Each boy had a turn to be the presenter, where he described his picture and read each of the lines at the bottom. It gave us a good opportunity to talk about good listening behaviors and how to be a good presenter, as an added bonus!

Next week... relaxation and calming down, in which I will attempt to do a relaxation script with my squirmy friends. Wish me oodles of luck.

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We Feel... AWESOME!

Today for our group, I grabbed the wonderful Skillstreaming in Early Childhood book and taught Skill 21: Knowing Your Feelings. This was a great little lesson to practice identifying feelings in a variety of settings and talking about the situations in which we feel certain emotions.

We started by reading Feelings, by Aliki, which is a wonderful book and covers a ton of different feelings. The boys had a hard time getting past "mad, sad, happy," so the book gave us the chance to talk about "nervous, shy, excited" etc. We went page by page, reading each little snippet, pointing out characters and talking about what they're feeling and why. We also discussed times that they felt the same emotion.

After we finished examining the book (and they wanted to go through EVERY character), I had pictures printed off of people and animals showing different emotions. We went through each picture and I had the kiddos make up a little story about why each person or animal was feeling that way, and tell about a time that they felt that way too. It also gave us the opportunity to talk about different synonyms for each feeling (mad: angry, upset, frustrated, etc). Lots of repetition and praising, to the point that their teacher must've thought that we were accomplishing nothing!

My favorite animal photo from group today.

This was a good group today, the boys were on-task with minimal fidgeting. I find that it works really well with such a small group of students to just call them out individually if they're not raising their hands. If they are, then they get chosen and get verbal reinforcement ("D, I love how you raised your hand, thank you"). Next time, we're going to talk about how our body feels when we feel certain emotions, and how we can tell by looking at other people.


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Hot Potato, Hot Potato!

Today was the kick-off of my newest counseling group, hooray!! For this group, I'm going to be focusing on identifying feelings and the way the body feels when we have certain emotions, and ways that we can cope and problem-solve when we get upset. These boys have a lot of anger management issues, and when they get upset, they resort to screaming, crying, hiding under tables, hitting, and throwing things. It's especially hard for the little ones with significant emotional problems to express themselves properly, so that's what we're going to work on.

Today's group was just an introduction, laying of ground rules, and team building. I started the group by talking about what behaviors are safe and unsafe for us to use in group and reviewed the classroom rules. The kiddos were super rambunctious because they had just come back from speech. After some calming and reinforcing of the little things they were doing correctly ("I like how G's voice is on 0," "J, thank you for sitting criss-cross," "N is showing me ready behavior because his hands are in his lap," etc), we got on track and the boys chose their group name to be The Footballs.

The activity we did today was all about communication and working together. I blew up a balloon and the boys stood in a circle. The objective was to keep the balloon in the air. We brainstormed ways to hit the balloon (with our hands, knees, heads, elbows, etc) and how we have to hit it (gently, up, not across the room, not at another person). Each took their spot on the carpet and up the balloon went. As we went through the first very exciteable round, I got to point out a lot of skills:

• Assertiveness - making sure they "called" the balloon by saying "I got it" if they planned on hitting it. It kept them all from running into each other and gave each boy ownership over that hit.
• Turn-taking - one of the boys, J, got a little too riled up and kept hogging the balloon. I had the opportunity to redirect him to include the other boys, and had him sit out when he needed a break from the excitement to give the others a chance.
• Apologizing - as expected, a few bumps occurred. We practiced saying a good apology when this happened (i.e. looking at the person in the eye, saying you're sorry, and why) and also accepting the apology with a "thank you, it's okay."

For the second round, I had the boys put their hands in their pockets or under their arms, and they had to keep the balloon in the air without using their hands. Obviously, this was much more challenging for kiddos with impulse control! Every time someone used their hands instead of another body part, I had to stop the game and remind them. D was excellent in this round and helped direct the boys to play appropriately as well (i.e. telling them to spread out so they wouldn't kick each other, reminding them about "no hands").

In retrospect, this game was probably a little above the kiddos level, but we made the best of it. Once we were done, I got the kiddos calmed down (a rather big task after jumping all over whacking a balloon around), and we processed a bit. We talked about what was easy, what was hard, and what we learned about working together and talking it out. They pooped out and lost attention pretty quickly, so processing was kept at a minimum.

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All About Emotions and Social Skills!

At one of our last bi-weekly meetings, my principal asked that my colleagues and I plan to do counseling groups in our 6:1+1 Special Classes to teach appropriate social skills that the kiddos may be lacking. I immediately jumped all over the idea, because it meant I could do a group in my new squish G's classroom! He's a "squish" because I want to hug and squish him... obvi.

As with the 5th grade social skills/anger management group that I ran a few years ago in a 6:1+1 classroom, I will outline and recap my lessons on this post as they are completed. And here we goooo!

• Session 1: Hot Potato, Hot Potato!
• Session 2: We Feel... AWESOME!
• Session 3: This is How My Body Feels When I'm ANGRY
• Session 4: Progressive Muscle Relaxation? Relax THIS, Lady!
• Session 5: Putting the Group Pieces Together
• Session 6: A Day Without Accomplishing a Thing in Group is a Day Wasted
• Session 7: The Tale of Peter Rabbit
• Session 8: Popcorn-y Goodbyes

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