CoF Norris High School

Jen Faz, Medea Henke Author

03/16/2021 Added

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[00:00:01.280]Hi, I'm Jen Faz and I'm a special ed teacher
[00:00:03.840]at Norris high school.
[00:00:05.160]And I'm Medea Henke and I'm also a special ed teacher
[00:00:08.410]at Norris high school.
[00:00:10.150]We're gonna talk to you today
[00:00:11.720]about what we do with our high school circle of friends.
[00:00:16.240]I'm gonna go ahead and share our screen with ya.
[00:00:26.020]Just to start off some of the benefits
[00:00:28.100]of circle of friends,
[00:00:30.400]peers obviously get a lot out of it
[00:00:33.050]as well as our focus students,
[00:00:35.660]the peers they're provided with that special needs awareness
[00:00:39.360]that they may not get in a classroom.
[00:00:42.810]We also teach how to befriend and support people
[00:00:47.440]with disabilities as well as this all kind of comes around
[00:00:52.760]and for both sets of students, academic behavioral
[00:00:57.210]and social supports are included.
[00:01:01.240]What makes our group so successful is we meet weekly
[00:01:05.320]every once in a while.
[00:01:06.153]There's a reason why we can't
[00:01:07.400]but the majority of the weeks, we try to meet weekly.
[00:01:10.570]We have more than one facilitator
[00:01:12.550]and both of us are not forced to run it.
[00:01:14.550]We both chose to be facilitators for the group.
[00:01:18.020]We feel that we're pretty knowledgeable
[00:01:19.610]with different abilities
[00:01:20.820]since we're special education teachers.
[00:01:23.200]And another thing that's very successful
[00:01:24.950]for us is we communicate.
[00:01:26.220]We communicate with parents about when our meetings are
[00:01:28.480]and activities are, students and also staff.
[00:01:34.790]Just some more basics.
[00:01:36.670]Like we mentioned before we hold our weekly meeting
[00:01:40.690]during our IAP time, that's our individual academic period
[00:01:45.300]and it's about 25 minutes.
[00:01:46.980]And so we set it every Thursday so the students know
[00:01:51.200]that that's when they're gonna meet no matter what.
[00:01:54.730]I mean, obviously there are some times
[00:01:56.160]that we have to change things up,
[00:01:57.380]but it's not too often.
[00:02:00.420]Some meetings are peer only and others are
[00:02:03.020]with the whole group.
[00:02:05.610]With the peer only, maybe especially in the beginning,
[00:02:08.370]we're doing some trainings
[00:02:10.050]that we don't want our focus students.
[00:02:11.920]They don't necessarily need to be in a part of that group.
[00:02:15.420]We do plan something different for them.
[00:02:17.160]So again, they know that Thursdays they always have to,
[00:02:20.347]not have to but they always have an option to come join in.
[00:02:25.270]Like I said, during the peer only meetings
[00:02:27.500]we do a lot of troubleshooting.
[00:02:31.190]That's when the students let us know
[00:02:33.200]what's going on with the class, you know,
[00:02:35.270]in classes and in lunchroom, behaviors,
[00:02:38.980]things like that or a fan.
[00:02:41.540]They're just our eyes and ears.
[00:02:45.240]And one thing we do, we do have a PowerPoint.
[00:02:48.530]So if anyone is interested at the end we'll have our emails
[00:02:52.950]but I can definitely share that with you too.
[00:02:55.740]With what we talked about with our peers.
[00:02:58.460]Our whole group meetings, we do social skill lessons.
[00:03:01.920]We incorporate also the social skills obviously
[00:03:05.580]and the social interactions too, but the social skills,
[00:03:10.100]you know, just teaching them how to communicate,
[00:03:12.610]how to have a conversation.
[00:03:13.780]Things like that's really important.
[00:03:15.550]We also do once a month
[00:03:17.670]we meet outside of school for an activity.
[00:03:19.630]And we'll talk more about that in a little bit.
[00:03:23.120]How We select students at Norris for peers,
[00:03:26.970]we usually find someone we have noticed
[00:03:32.500]has good social skills.
[00:03:35.890]We also are very lucky here at Norris staff teachers
[00:03:38.750]who are very supportive circle of friends.
[00:03:40.560]And we'll have teachers come down and say,
[00:03:41.997]"Hey, is this person in circle of friends?"
[00:03:43.727]"'Cause I think they would be great because they get"
[00:03:46.067]"along so well with some of your students"
[00:03:47.837]"or they're a great mentor already outside"
[00:03:50.797]"of circle of friends."
[00:03:52.460]And so we'll ask them if they wanna join our group.
[00:03:57.010]And our focus students will sometimes tell us students
[00:04:00.140]that they're interested in having come to the group.
[00:04:04.850]So we'll ask them and see if they're interested
[00:04:07.810]The focus students that we choose,
[00:04:09.570]we choose any child who has difficulty making friends.
[00:04:14.560]They have difficulty fitting in
[00:04:16.320]and they obviously lack social skills.
[00:04:19.120]So we have a pretty good list of students who are ideal
[00:04:24.640]for the circle of friends group.
[00:04:26.530]And one thing about that too,
[00:04:27.810]is we don't say no to any students.
[00:04:30.060]If somebody wants to be a part of it,
[00:04:31.490]we absolutely let them be a part of it.
[00:04:35.800]So this is a big one.
[00:04:37.330]How do you get kids to show up?
[00:04:39.270]This, if you look at the picture
[00:04:41.150]that's a bulletin board outside our room.
[00:04:43.720]We always have, when the next meeting's gonna be
[00:04:46.930]when you know the next event that's gonna be happening
[00:04:50.750]for the month and also a sign up sheet.
[00:04:53.210]So we can see who is gonna come
[00:04:55.540]and who we need to talk to, things like that.
[00:04:58.980]We, you know, kids like food.
[00:05:02.210]We will bribe them. (mumbling)
[00:05:04.010]But we don't have to, but we provide snacks.
[00:05:07.630]I talked about the bulletin board.
[00:05:10.010]We email the kids, the parents.
[00:05:12.600]I also have a Google classroom set up.
[00:05:15.940]I print out flyers.
[00:05:18.418]Prizes Oh yes we do.
[00:05:20.270]Yes, we do lots of prizes.
[00:05:22.070]And I give the flyers to the students.
[00:05:25.790]I email the flyer to the parents
[00:05:28.570]so that they also know what's going on.
[00:05:32.650]Some funding ideas you can apply
[00:05:35.360]for a grant from the autism action program.
[00:05:38.580]We also run concession stands here at Norris.
[00:05:44.906]We do like middle school athletic events
[00:05:50.020]and we run the concession stand
[00:05:51.630]and we make 50% of the profit
[00:05:54.720]which it's also a great social skills activity for,
[00:06:00.870]it's also a great social skills activity
[00:06:02.780]for our kids because they get to work with customers
[00:06:07.080]and learn how to count back money
[00:06:08.800]and that type of stuff.
[00:06:10.320]Donations, we have people who will donate money
[00:06:13.170]and stuff to our kids.
[00:06:15.110]And we've also in the past created
[00:06:17.040]and sold circle of friends t-shirts too as a fundraiser
[00:06:23.150]Some of our social media ideas.
[00:06:25.710]You know one thing that we like to do is we ask the kids
[00:06:28.280]what do you think will be fun?
[00:06:30.020]When do you want to do?
[00:06:31.990]We do some getting to know your games,
[00:06:33.750]especially in the beginning, you know,
[00:06:35.650]to help learn people's names and interests.
[00:06:38.320]The kids love the open gym time.
[00:06:40.670]We find that if we, they like it
[00:06:43.780]but they also like doing kickball, things like that
[00:06:46.420]having a little bit more organized, you know,
[00:06:49.190]just putting some balls out in the gym
[00:06:51.910]isn't always the best option.
[00:06:53.770]So we always try to get something organized
[00:06:56.320]And board games.
[00:06:57.380]That's a great way to work on lots of good social skills.
[00:07:02.040]We've even done an iPad scavenger hunt
[00:07:04.320]which you can do any kind of scavenger hunt.
[00:07:06.100]Minute to win it games are very popular.
[00:07:09.510]And in the spring we have our show choir come
[00:07:14.220]and teach students, you know popular dances
[00:07:18.350]since prom is going to be coming up.
[00:07:20.740]Even a couple of years ago we had a student ask.
[00:07:24.330]He asked if we could learn how to slow dance.
[00:07:27.890]'Cause we always do group dances, things like that.
[00:07:31.160]And so I thought that was pretty mean.
[00:07:33.850]And so we were working on those things.
[00:07:37.600]Some of the skills, social skills lessons that we include
[00:07:41.150]within our weekly meetings is we teach
[00:07:43.810]the five step conversation model.
[00:07:46.510]Again, we talk about prom expectations
[00:07:48.990]and appropriate social skills.
[00:07:52.220]We look at being a good sports
[00:07:55.510]like winner or loser at games,
[00:07:57.240]how to be a good sport in those situations.
[00:07:59.110]And obviously we play a lot of different games
[00:08:01.880]from board games to games in the gym
[00:08:05.360]where students know how to be a good winner or a looser.
[00:08:10.140]We also talk about how to support kids
[00:08:12.090]with disabilities at school.
[00:08:13.560]So that's what we really work on
[00:08:15.290]with our peer mentors on how to support these students.
[00:08:18.380]If they see them in situations that they may need help
[00:08:21.260]in the social skill area.
[00:08:23.220]And we work on independent living skills
[00:08:25.390]like when we go on an activity to a movie or a restaurant,
[00:08:28.930]how do you order?
[00:08:29.770]How do you pay for things that are restaurant
[00:08:31.880]or at the movies and et cetera?
[00:08:37.200]We also do obviously a lot with autism awareness.
[00:08:41.850]A big one is social media use.
[00:08:45.780]We were able to pull in our school media specialist
[00:08:50.750]and she put together a presentation
[00:08:52.980]for the kids and it was awesome.
[00:08:55.380]It was at their level
[00:08:56.550]and it was really eyeopening for many of them.
[00:08:59.990]There's a lot of good resources out there for that.
[00:09:04.670]Another thing too is our students struggle.
[00:09:07.380]And many students struggle
[00:09:08.620]in being able to participate in group assignments.
[00:09:11.590]Teachers assign group assignments.
[00:09:14.010]That's just how it is.
[00:09:16.730]And so we work on those things.
[00:09:19.140]Obviously bullying prevention
[00:09:20.660]and another huge one is dating.
[00:09:21.970]High school students you know,
[00:09:23.500]are obviously very interested.
[00:09:25.090]It doesn't matter what their ability is.
[00:09:27.130]They, you know, they want to date
[00:09:30.530]and be just like their peers.
[00:09:32.460]So we work a lot on that too.
[00:09:36.260]Some of the out of school activities that we do,
[00:09:39.010]we do homecoming tailgates prior to the homecoming game.
[00:09:44.970]Our schools, since we're out in the middle of the cornfield,
[00:09:47.540]we also do a parade that involves all of our four buildings
[00:09:50.950]from elementary to high school
[00:09:53.100]and so we get a walk in the parade,
[00:09:55.210]the circle of friends does.
[00:09:57.050]We do a fall barn party where we get together,
[00:10:00.740]roast marshmallows, those types of things.
[00:10:02.700]We've gone bowling.
[00:10:04.300]We have Roca scary farm around here
[00:10:06.970]and the kids love to do that.
[00:10:08.430]So we'll do an evening there.
[00:10:10.580]Dinner and a movie.
[00:10:12.400]We do a Christmas party here at school.
[00:10:15.630]We do a pre-prom dinner and we tend to chaperone prom a lot.
[00:10:19.600]So we'll be there too
[00:10:20.710]to help students make the proper choices at prom.
[00:10:24.630]And at the end of the year
[00:10:25.463]we do a end of the year party at Urban Air,
[00:10:28.820]which is like obstacles and trampoline
[00:10:31.320]and that type of stuff.
[00:10:32.580]And again, we always ask the students,
[00:10:34.210]Hey, this is what we've done in the past.
[00:10:36.230]Do you guys wanna do that?
[00:10:37.270]Or do you have any better ideas?
[00:10:39.050]And they're typically really good about that.
[00:10:43.871]If you guys have any questions,
[00:10:46.080]feel free to reach out to us,
[00:10:47.610]email us, you know, that's one thing,
[00:10:51.980]you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
[00:10:53.880]We have things that we can absolutely share with you.
[00:10:58.080]If you're interested in doing something, but yeah.
[00:11:02.530]Let us know and thanks for your time
[00:11:05.247]At the end of this video
[00:11:06.450]you'll have time to ask us any questions
[00:11:07.710]that you have but thanks for watching.
[00:11:14.370]Is it done.
[00:11:16.549](laughing)
[00:11:17.482](phone ringing)

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CoF Norris High School

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