UPPER & LOWER SCHOOLS
Practices
To promote the development of domain-specific skills, our SEL and academic support specialists meet individually with students — and push into or lead classes (1:1 support or group-led learning, including during lunch and recess) — in order to focus on the social-emotional and cognitive challenges particular to learning differences, giftedness, and twice-exceptionality. Our flexible menu of integrated and 1:1 empirically validated interventions — doctoral-level school psychologists, speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, Orton-Gillingham certified learning specialists, and gifted / special education-trained content area specialists — promote the development of our students' skills both in and beyond the classroom. Twice-exceptional students often display a statistical tendency toward perfectionism, but with the right mix of SEL and academic supports, our students are able to stay motivated about learning and school.
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Our integrated and 1:1 empirically validated intervention options in learning therapy, speech, OT, school psychology, guidance counseling, and target academic strengths and challenges, as well as social-emotional learning (SEL), and they evolve, shift, and fade as your child develops self-regulated learning and increased independence.
WHAT IT ALL MEANS
Key Supports & Practices Defined
POSITIVE BEHAVIORAL SUPPORTS (PBS)
Lang's values coalesce into two primary frameworks for shaping student thinking and behavior: PBS and CPS (see below). All teachers are trained in both frameworks, so everything students do all day long at Lang are steeped in these growth mindset-oriented values. As an instructional and classroom management approach, PBS assumes that children respond more productively and in a more lasting manner to positive reinforcement than to punishment. Practices in the PBS toolkit include targeted praise, planned ignoring, clear routines, teacher proximity, and silent signals between teacher and student.
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COLLABORATIVE & PROACTIVE SOLUTIONS (CPS)
CPS is a treatment model and process created by Ross Greene, M.D. to help adults and children articulate and discuss together their concerns about an ongoing challenge, brainstorm potential solutions to this challenge, and agree on an initial approach to solving the "unsolved problem." The CPS framework helps adults see that "children do well when they can," and that challenging behavior has its roots in "lagging skills" rather than, for example, in the desire to seek negative attention. CPS is based on the premise that challenging behavior occurs when the expectations being placed on a child exceed the child’s capacity to respond adaptively. For children, the CPS process gives children a voice and a say in how their challenges are understood and addressed, and it models for them a constructive way to resolve conflict.
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BIG G
BIG G ("What was good about your class [or your day] today?") is a Lang-specific program for monitoring and self-monitoring student thinking and behavior. In the Lower School and for students benefitting from this support in The Upper School, Daily Report Cards (DRCs) set forth collaboratively created, concrete goals for students the achievement of which is assessed at the end of each period; students get "reward time" at the end of the school day and parents may also provide salient rewards at home for their child's accomplishments. In most of The Upper School, our Daily Review system asks students to self-reflect on their day with staff support at the end of each school day. It promotes increased awareness of the connection between thoughts and behaviors. The program’s development was informed by Martin Seligman’s book, Positive Psychology.
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ZONES OF REGULATION (LOWER SCHOOL)
The Zones of Regulation is a curriculum geared toward helping students gain skills in consciously identifying their emotions and regulating their actions, which in turn leads to increased self-regulation and problem-solving skills.
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DBT STEPS–A (UPPER SCHOOL)
DBT Skills In Schools: Skills Training for Emotional Problem Solving for Adolescents (DBT STEPS–A) is a social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum implemented in our middle and high schools through a weekly "Foundations" class taught by our doctoral level psychologists; these skills are reinforced for Upper School students through 1:1 school counseling sessions. DBT is designed to teach adolescents effective emotion regulation, decision making, and problem-solving skills.
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ORGANIZATION, TIME MANAGEMENT, AND PLANNING (OTMP)
OTMP is an empirically based training program for students struggling with executive functions in relation to school-based organizational skills across four areas: managing materials, tracking assignments, time management, and long-term planning. Staff members embed elements of OTMP into students’ daily routines and content instruction; tools employed daily are check lists, specialized paper planners, and Google Classroom.
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SCHOOL COUNSELING
Students receive at least 30 minutes of formal school counseling each week with one of our doctoral level school psychologists. This typically is done individually in their assigned school psychologist’s office. However, school counseling can be offered in the classroom with a school psychologist pushing-in to provide individual support within a class setting or recess, or school psychologists may do multiple check-ins daily with certain students.
DAILY REPORTS CARDS & DAILY REVIEW
What is BIG G?
BIG G is a relational, process-focused approach for helping students self-reflect on their individually tailored goals. BIG G sessions happen at the end of each school day for Upper School students who have graduated from the more concrete goals of daily report cards (DRCs). Each session begins with the question, "How good was my day?" A teacher then engages in dialog with the student about what they found satisfying about their day and what might have gotten in their way. Articulating a response to this question helps students become aware of what helps them connect, engage, learn, and be inspired. BIG G is a practice specific to Lang that was influenced by Martin Seligman’s book, Positive Psychology. The BIG G process enables students to understand the specific motivational ingredients unique to their ability to successfully collaborate, learn and create.