Each week, Evans City Elementary School Principal Lauri Pendred meets with students during lunch to talk about a variety of topics. It was a recent discussion, though, that struck Pendred. One student told her, “I like that you teach us how to speak kindly to each other.”
“It’s not just having this expectation of a bully-free environment or being kind, but it’s teaching them how to be kind and speak kindly,” Pendred says.
These lessons are applied every day at Evans City thanks, in big part, to Kayla Snyder, who is in her fourth year as school counselor. Last year, Snyder helped implement a counseling program that aligns with the national model recommended by the American School Counselor Association. As a result, Evans City earned a national school-counseling award from the ASCA for its Recognized ASCA Model Program (RAMP). According to the ASCA, the award is given to schools for making an exemplary commitment to comprehensive school counseling programs.
According to the ASCA, only 650 schools have been designated as RAMPs since the program was established in 2004. Evans City will accept the award this summer at the national conference in Denver.
Pendred and Snyder collaborated throughout this past school year on how to implement RAMP, which includes identifying areas of support for students through academic, personal and social development. To see the effects of the program, Snyder and Pendred also examined data related to attendance, discipline, PSAE scores, academic performance, report card grades, behavioral referrals and more. This data was then used to guide the program in deciding what groups and lessons would work best.
“I was definitely surprised [to receive the award] because the way [the ASCA] scores, it is pretty rigorous,” Snyder says. “The reason it was able to be implemented was because of Lauri, because she was so supportive in helping me implement it from the beginning, helping me plan and helping me get everything in order.”
Once a month, Snyder goes into each K–4 classroom to conduct lessons that focus on topics such as empathy, emotional management and problem solving.
“The goal is to be preventive and proactive rather than reactive,” Snyder says. “A lot of times we’re addressing needs that come up within the lesson, but then the umbrella is that we’re being preventative and proactive.”
Pendred says if students are acting out or having conflicts, Snyder and fellow teachers can help the youths regulate their emotions and find solutions to problems.
“You’re building a more cohesive school community with common language throughout the whole school, addressing the whole child socially, emotionally and more,” Pendred says.
Evans City earned the award this past January, but Snyder had to submit everything for review by October 2016, which included documenting every aspect of the program over the course of the year.
The application also included 12 components that the ASCA evaluates, including classroom lessons and data evaluation, that totaled more than 300 documents. Snyder says the goal is to detect factors such as a decrease in referrals, and increased attendance rates from the start to the end of the school year.
Evans City Elementary Principal Lauri Pendred (left) and school counselor Kayla Snyder.
While earning the recognition is a momentous occasion for Snyder, Pendred and the Evans City community, seeing the effects of the program first-hand has been inspirational. This includes the school’s ability to remove any prior stigma associated with counseling.
Pendred and Snyder explain there is a comfort level students have visiting the counselor’s office. It’s a positive place for students.
At a recent open house, Pendred and Snyder visited with a family whose children had trouble coming to school, but after the lessons from Snyder, there was a dramatic change.
“To see them the other night at open house with big smiles on their face walking happily down the hall and knowing all those issues having been extinguished and that the kids are happy coming to school every day shows what a difference those interventions can be,” Pendred says.
Snyder was also reminded of how beneficial the counseling program has been when a fourth-grade student shared the following quote about the program: “[Snyder] helped me be able to feel what other people are feeling; how to be in other people’s shoes better than I did before. That is something I am working on, and she made it a lot easier for me.”
“It’s not only empathy, but kids setting goals for themselves and working toward those goals and recognizing what’s hard for them and what they need to be better at,” Pendred says. “That’s pervasive throughout the whole school, and that’s common language.”
