CCALM

       Counselor Check-Ins and Logging Moods (CCALM) is an intervention that utilizes the structure of Check-in/Check out and provides students with distributed opportunities to learn cognitive-behavioral therapeutic techniques. The goal of the intervention is to help students build awareness of their emotions/moods and irrational thinking patterns and reflect on their engagement in class throughout the school day as well as build trusting relationships with school counseling staff. The current intervention involves high school counselors delivering a brief dose of CBT prior to beginning the CICO process. The content of this orientation to CBT was based on Merrell's Strong Teens Social Emotional Learning Program and incorporated coping strategies that the students could utilize. Following this brief lesson, students checked in and out with counselor daily, while rating their mood and engagement during each class period. Counselors reviewed data with students daily to identify particularly challenging times, identify emotions and automatic thoughts occurring during those times, and brainstorm coping strategies to be used on the following day. Last year, we piloted this intervention with success. This year, we will aim to replicate the pilot and plan an experimental/quasi-experimental research design for a more sophisticated study. We have an accepted NASP presentation on this project.

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BESTed

      Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Teaching in Education reflects an interdisciplinary project between faculty and students in Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies, School Psychology, Social Psychology, and Developmental Sciences. The purpose of BESTed is to support pre-service educators as they develop skills needed to effectively prevent and respond to challenging social-emotional behaviors in secondary school settings. Learning modules and observation activities (to take place in spring) give educators the opportunity to learn culturally responsive classroom management practices. Our research goals are to continue collecting pilot data and also writing grants to fund a scale-up of this project. We have an accepted NASP presentation on this project. 

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Strong Kids

      The Strong Kids Social-Emotional Curriculum Series is a program aimed at preventing symptoms of depression and anxiety and giving students practice in key social-emotional skills. The curriculum is aimed at grades PreK-12. Currently, we are systematically reviewing over 42 studies that have been conducted on the curriculum series. In addition, there are several unanswered research questions that we could begin to explore and interview data that we have yet to analyze regarding factors pertaining to quality implementation in schools.

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BIRCh

The Behavioral health Integrated Resources for Children project is a $750,000 funded grant from Boston Children’s Hospital and Collaboration for Community Health. The BIRCh project provides information and resources to build capacity of schools to select and implement a continuum of sustained and coordinated school mental health practices to support positive academic outcomes for students. This year’s primary project involves mapping professional development resources already available across the state.

https://www.umb.edu/birch/about 

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