Essay Sample on Citizenship Communication and School Safety

Thank you for allowing me your time to address the holistic development of our students to ensure a safe community environment. I am Peggy Gillig, the Wings Academy lead teacher and a Learning Support teacher. I come to you today with a concern involving all students, not only the students I have and support. I travel throughout the school building with and without our Wings Academy students. My concern is for a safe community where our students can learn academically and socially, understanding content and emotions. As a secondary school with teenage social-emotional developmental years and preparation for the workforce and college, our community must find a balance between academics and social emotions to develop our future citizens. Teaching today is heading toward a more holistic approach to benefit the educational setting (Elbertson et al., 2010).

As the lead Wings Academy teacher and a learning support teacher, I find social-emotional development as important as academic content for our institution. Social exposure during the learning environment contributes significantly to academics (Elbertson et al., 2010). It is crucial to develop a student’s social-emotional health to ensure and engage in meaningful discussions of educational content in each classroom. The teaching and practicing social-emotional behaviors support the development of the whole student and help the teachers with classroom management. Investing much of the first week of school to social skill learning reflects a smooth expectation-managed classroom for academic learning. I want to propose and incorporate social-emotional skills learning program into our school curriculum. This curriculum would encompass the entire school community and be taught by each classroom teacher with the counselors and general staff reinforcement. This program would show students that the numerous adults they encounter daily are unified in producing a safe, educational environment to expand their knowledge and personal goals.

Incorporating the practice and lessons of social skills encourages and supports students to

be responsible academic scholars. Practicing social skills will be the foundation of the automaticity of behaviors. The students need time to practice each social skill to learn from seeing, doing and hearing. Discussing these situations will build understanding among all involved. The teachers will need time to discuss and plan the activities for the given social behavior. The discussions will be meaningful and guided by the scripts and activities (Peace Education Foundation, n.d.). I want to recommend PeaceWorks social skills program. In researching social skill programs, I found this encompassing our Spanish-speaking and English-speaking families. This program has school and home activities. It provides development for students from pre-kindergarten through high school. It gives exercises to build social skills connecting to academic curriculum lessons. It may be difficult to have each of our “feeder” schools implement this program as some are public and others are private schools. I would encourage all private schools to incorporate the same program regardless of the social-emotional skills program chosen.

Our surrounding areas have increased gun violence. Investing in social and emotional skill development for our students as they live and or travel through these areas to attend our school is crucial. Investing thirty minutes a day to develop or reinforce social skills will benefit our community. It is essential to remember our current students who have experienced gun violence in their public schools that generated a lockdown for us before arriving here. Building the social-emotional skills will benefit their communication and give them the experience in understanding all sides of situations. Understanding the feelings of these practiced situations will lead to calming or deescalating circumstances that tend to become volatile. 

According to the Indiana Department of Education mental health page, one in five students across the country suffer from some mental health disorder. Approximately half of the students receive the help and support to understand their condition. According to the National Association of School Psychologists, now is the time to engage in a serious discussion about improving the mental health needs of our students (Indiana School Safety Hub,  2021). This discussion is not about stopping volatile situations in schools but supporting students’ safety and security to achieve academic and life success (Indiana School Safety Hub,  2021). Teaching students how to follow the rules or receive consequences is the first step toward developing a well-balanced social-emotional and academically successful student. The teachers must be given time during the day to teach and reinforce these skills to benefit a safe school environment. Given the teachers, this time will allow for observations and more intense skill development from the counselors if necessary. It will be important for the teachers to collaborate within their departments to discuss the lessons and students, to support one another to continue a robust unified program of social-emotional skill learning.

Investing the time and resources for a program such as PeaceWorks will create students we can all be proud to call our alumni in the future. Our students will actively participate in their academic learning and understand good citizenship communication. Demonstrating social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, appropriate strategic or intensive skills instruction with practice guided by teachers and reinforced by staff produces the mental health support students in today’s world need.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to showing you more detailed information 

and example lessons from PeaceWorks and other social-emotional learning programs so that we can continue to support our students holistically and become well-balanced citizens.

References

American College of Education. (2021). CI5513: Developing Student Self-Management 

Skills: Module 3 [Presentation]. Canvas. 

https://ace.instructure.com/courses/1856176/modules/items/31798018

Elbertson, N. A., Brackett, M. A., & Weissberg, R. P. (2010). School-based social and emotional 

learning (SEL) programming: Current perspectives. Second international handbook of 

educational change, 1017-1032.

Indiana School Safety Hub, I. D. of E. (2021, March 31). Mental Health/Substance Use 

Disorder. Indiana School Safety Hub. Retrieved from 

https://www.in.gov/schoolsafety/mental-healthsubstance-use-disorder/ 

Peace Education Foundation. (n.d.). Teaching peace,creating solutions. Magento Commerce. 

Retrieved from https://peaceeducation.org/