“MY FAVORITE PART ABOUT THE SMHAPP WAS THE DIRECT APPLICABILITY OF ALL OF THE COURSE CONTENT”– SMHAPP Students Tell Their Story (Part 2)
Loyola SMHAPP 2020 Graduates Sean Delaney, Carlos Evans (pictured above, at the 2019 Loyola SMHAPP Summer Institute) & Laura Montiel talk about their experience in the School Mental Health Advanced Practice Program (SMHAPP). Last month, I put together short Zoom webinars with the SMHAPP grads who had worked together in our “dyad” format as part of their 2-year cohort. They spoke about their experiences overall in the SMHAPP Certificate, but mostly I asked them to talk about each others’ work and what they learned from their time together. As Laura put it so beautifully:
I want to share that the SMHAPP was a great addition to what I already had with my MSW. What this program gave me (in addition to) material that is very practical for me to use in practice, is getting to see, hear and listen to what social work is and how big of an impact we can actually have–that was a mentality change for me. I would encourage anyone to go for it and do the SMHAPP because the one year we have in internship practice in a school is not enough to learn everything there is. So again, I felt like I needed more. And like others said it’s not just something else I had to do. It was a pleasure to do these things.
I’ll be posting all 3 of these Zoom webinars from our SSWN YouTube channel, as they show the power of the SMHAPP in action, as SMHAPP cohort members talk about how the program helped them find a supportive learning community that equipped them with the tools and evidence-based interventions to carry out a school-change project for their school. In this second session, we hear from Carlos about Seans work to establish more effective SEL programming in her school, followed by Sean talking about Laura’s efforts to bolster and enhance the Tier 1 SEL supports in her middle school, and finally Laura talking about Carlos’ work in using school data to establish the best possible conditions for implementation of a Tier 1 social skills/SEL program in his junior high context.
Sean Delaney, Carlos Evans, & Laura Montiel,
2020 Loyola SMHAPP Graduates
“The biggest problem that Sean knew she really wanted to focus on was that her school had a lot of different social emotional learning (SEL) curriculum and processes in place when she arrived–and it was kind of a one size fit all system, and she realized that one size does not always fit all. So she really wanted to dig deep and focus on developing a program evaluation tool that could help her measure to see, are we achieving the outcomes that we’re looking for in our students.”–Carlos Evans on Sean Delaney’s SEL School-Change Project\
“SSW & SEL in an All-Girls’ Practice Setting” (Sean Delaney)
“One thing that I admire about Carlos is that he is very good at doing school needs assessments. He’s really good at collecting data and putting out surveys, and to be able to analyze what he finds. So he has a lot of good data skills. He wanted teachers to implement Lions quest and they already had the curriculum so that was a great start for them and they were offered training, but I think it didn’t go through like he wanted it to to. So he was going to be there to be the support system for them, and what he wanted (to help with) was consistent SEL instruction.”–Laura Montiel on Carlos Evans’ SEL implementation project
“Successful Implementation of Tier 1 SEL” (Carlos Evans)
“I’m thinking about teacher wellness and well being as another factor, and this was a part of Laura’s research that I really loved, and the part of her project that really resonated with me is that she wanted to make sure there’s also the social, emotional intelligence. So thinking more about kind of the adult end of this. Equipping teachers to be the best versions of themselves, the healthiest versions of themselves so that they were more receptive and feeling more confident during the training and then eventually in the SEL rollout. I just really liked that perspective of adult wellness and incorporating your staff into that that equation.”–Sean Delaney on Laura Montiel’s work with getting teachers ready to implement Tier 1 SEL programming as part of her School-Change Project
“Social-Emotional Learning: It’s Not Just for Students” (Laura Montiel)
HERE’S THE FULL CONVERSATION I HAD WITH THESE 2 AMAZING SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS.
Applications are now open for our 5th SMHAPP cohort and are due August 1st–apply today and watch for upcoming SMHAPP events in July 2020 and always follow us @SchoolSocWork and read our SMHAPP students’ work here at www.schoolsocialwork.net
