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Click a link to learn about the lives of military students, the challenges they face, and what you can do to create a supportive school environment that helps them meet their challenges with resilience.
This module is your introduction to the life of a military student, moving from demographics for students and their families into a description of the unique culture surrounding the military. You'll gain valuable knowledge about the special types of challenges that military students face, which will provide the perspective needed for successful interactions with military families. You will also learn some "military speak."
This module explores the challenges brought on by the inevitable and frequent movement of military families, focusing on the social and emotional challenges to mobile students. You'll learn what researchers have discovered about the effects of mobility. By the time you complete this module, you will be equipped with strategies and programs to implement in your school and classrooms to help ease the challenges transfer students face.
This module examines the academic and logistical challenges faced by military students transitioning between schools—such as navigating the bureaucracy of differing requirements and finding compatible academic programs. Through discussions of practical interventions and policies used across the country, you'll discover the strategies and programs to help students overcome these challenges.
This module explains the phases of the deployment cycle, taking into account the emotional reactions of students and their families as well as the protective factors that can help them cope. You will meet our fictional family, the Walkers and their two children, who experience the common challenges of the deployment cycle. You will learn about the strategies used by the principal, teacher, and coach as they try to help the Walker children. A solid understanding of your students' deployment experiences will help you better support the military students in your school.
In this module, we take a closer look at the important role that schools can play in helping students cope when their parents are deployed. You'll learn the various partnerships that may be created to support families, between schools and installations, parents, and the community. More importantly, you'll discover strategies and programs used in schools across the country and around the world that address the specific needs of students at different phases within the deployment cycle.
This module addresses the difficult topic of helping students who may experience the loss or disability of a loved one. From the position that school staff provide stability for students coping with critical life challenges, the module describes what to expect when students experience loss and how to identify those at risk for depression and anxiety. You will learn when to seek help as well as strategies for supporting students and families facing traumatic experiences.
This module introduces the concept of resilience in helping students cope with adversity, including characteristics of resilience and ways to help students remain strong. You'll identify resilience-building skills as well as useful strategies for building students' positive skills of coping, control, competence, and confidence.
This module presents the social and emotional assets of resilient children and youth, describing the relationship between problem-solving skills and resilience. You'll learn the five essential skills of social and emotional learning (SEL) and discover evidence-based programs and strategies that teach SEL school-wide and in the classroom, as well as ways to incorporate SEL into the curriculum.
This module explores how students build resilience through problem solving and how school staff may help. A review of how students solve problems and make decisions at each developmental stage is followed by discussion and examples of how you may teach problem solving at each stage. You'll discover effective methods for building problem-solving skills and resilience, through group cooperative projects, service learning, and student governance.
This module emphasizes creation of a climate of positive school connectedness, which increases the likelihood that students will succeed. You'll be introduced to the first two elements of the "triad of engagement" necessary for student engagement, discover ways to foster them in your own school, and learn how to apply these principles to engage military students.
This module examines academic achievement as the third element of the "triad of engagement" that makes up the formula for connectedness and student success. You'll discover how high expectations, flexible instructional methods, and relevant instruction can bring out the best in students, no matter what issues they are facing. You will learn evidence-based strategies to increase your students' academic engagement.
This module moves from a description of the importance of partnering with students' parents into detailed analysis of Epstein's types of parent involvement with schools. You'll consider how this information applies to military students as well as how it may be useful for fostering valuable parent involvement in your own school. You will learn about specific strategies to build partnerships with your students' parents.
In this module, a broad view of the term community is taken in examining the beneficial aspects of school-community partnerships for students. You'll review protective connections among youth and community organizations and examine how to create truly successful partnership programs. Special attention is paid to the supportive community available to military students and families through partnerships with military installations. You will learn how to build these partnerships in your school and classroom.
Whether your goal is to overcome a problem or enhance your learning environment, you will learn how to create and implement an intervention through a step-by-step procedure. Three fictional educators will assist you as they create a school-wide, classroom, and individual intervention to overcome problems in their school and classrooms. This module explains the process for selecting or designing interventions, identifying the five key steps for successful interventions. Emphasis is placed on evaluating programs at key intervals to determine effectiveness and how to overcome barriers.
