Education
Red Deer Public Schools Mental Health Pilot Program now permanently supporting kids and families in crisis
Behaviour Support Team building capacity across Red Deer Public
Red Deer Public’s Behaviour Support Team has continued to make a positive difference throughout the Division as they help develop mental health strategies for students and help support teachers.
In the fall of 2022, the Division received a $706,000 grant through the Mental Health In Schools Pilot Program from Alberta Education. From this grant, a three person Behaviour Support Team was formed, which includes a registered psychiatric nurse, a teacher with additional training in supporting mental health and behaviour, and a social worker. This centralized team travels to schools throughout the Division as needed to help support students, staff and families.
Since December 2022, the team of three has made over 360 school team or teacher visits regarding an individual student, four classroom group consultations, 19 school-based professional development sessions, four Division teacher training sessions, and one Vice Principal training session.
“Once developed, the team was immediately available to classrooms to respond in a timely fashion to a crisis situation in school. They can help de-escalate the situation while maintaining the safety and dignity of the student and allowing the classroom teacher to return to teaching,” said Nicola Golby, Associate Superintendent of Student Services. “This has also led to less disturbance in the classroom and maintains regulation of other students.”
Recently, the Behaviour Support Team has been collaborating with the newly created Red Deer Youth Stabilization Team (CAST – Child and Adolescent Stabilization Team) with Alberta Health Services. CAST has both been a pathway to psychiatry and community resources with the goal of avoiding an emergency room visit.
“The team has met with AHS members and the CAST team to facilitate ease of access for families reaching a crisis point,” said Golby. “This wrap-around approach has been successful for families that were feeling a sense of hopelessness or desperation for high-level supports.”
Meanwhile, the Behaviour Support Team has been building capacity throughout Red Deer Public in two main ways. Firstly, they work with Learning Teams (Teachers, Educational Assistants, Administrators and Principals) with a focus on identifying proactive supports and strategies to build capacity in the school team.
“As a large part of their work, the team will go in a teacher’s classroom to model and trial strategies side-by-side with the teacher,” said Golby. “One piece is to build skills with the teacher and/or school in order to target dysregulation and diminish the resulting anxiety in other students within the class.”
The second way the team has been building capacity is through group professional development.
“Red Deer Public began implementing Student Support Rooms in our elementary and middle schools in fall of 2023. These rooms are part of a strategy to have a place for students to go when they need to regulate their emotions, display big behaviours, or to connect with an adult while maintaining dignity in a more private space,” said Golby. “The Behaviour Support Team has been training the 18 Student Support Room teachers, primarily using Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model of Education, Gordon Neufeld emotional playgrounds, and Martin Brokenleg’s Circle of Courage. This professional development has been a great way to collaborate and support our teachers.”
Moving forward, the team will continue to provide support where needed throughout Red Deer Public Schools, while building the capacity of staff, students and families.
From the Fraser Institute
According to a new study published by the Fraser Institute, if Canada wants to remain competitive with emerging economies around the world, we must increase our math, science and reading scores—and not simply pursue high levels of “equity and inclusion” as the primary goal for our schools.
Indeed, highly equitable and inclusive schools—with declining PISA scores, as is currently the case in Canada—do a disservice to students and society at large.
Why? Because higher test scores translate into greater “knowledge capital”—that is, the full body of knowledge available to an economy—and boost economic growth (and, incidentally, the tax revenues that fund our schools).
Indeed, the goal should be equitable access to a quality education. And the most realistic and meaningful way to measure student progress is through PISA tests, which every three years assess the performance of 15-year-olds worldwide in core subjects of math, science and reading rather than the limited curriculum objectives used in provincial testing, which can only show progress or decline within individual school systems. In today’s world, where competition is truly global, we must know how our students and schools perform compared to their peers in other countries, especially the “Asian Tigers” of Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Tiawan whose rapidly growing economies have been driven by rising PISA scores.
Obviously, countries with higher test scores can teach other countries how to improve—although there are limits and some traps here. Attempting to cut and paste Singapore’s or Korea’s much more meritocratic systems of highly competitive student assessment and selection would be impractical and impolitic in Canada. Even so, policymakers should consider reinstating more meaningful meritocratic norms in Canadian schools to encourage and recognize academic achievement. Nothing succeeds like success, except recognized and rewarded success.
Closer to home, other provinces could benefit from considering why Quebec is such a stellar performer in math and why Alberta has the highest overall PISA test score average of all provinces.
But fair warning, recent attempts at school improvement in Canada show that top-down one-size-fits-all changes—including extending compulsory attendance, reducing average class size and tinkering with course content—have had little positive effect on student performance, although they may please teacher unions. If policymakers want to achieve more equitable success for more students, they should introduce more flexibility, school autonomy and choice into our top-heavy centrally regulated school systems. In this respect it may be no accident that the three highest performing, mid-spending provincial K-12 education systems (Alberta, Quebec and Ontario) offer relatively high levels of school choice, although of quite different kinds.
Equity and inclusion are noble goals, but they shouldn’t interfere with student progress. There’s too much at stake, for students and the country.
Author:
News release from The Democracy Fund
TDF and James Kitchen Defend School Board Trustee Monique LaGrange
Briefs were filed in Monique LaGrange’s case on the week of April 8, 2024.
RED DEER: The Democracy Fund (TDF) has partnered with lawyer James Kitchen to represent former school board trustee Monique LaGrange as she takes The Board of Trustees of Red Deer Catholic Separate School Division to court for kicking her off the Board because they took offence to one of Ms. LaGrange’s social media posts.
Mr. Kitchen filed two applications for judicial review in December 2023, challenging the Board’s decisions to penalize Mrs. LaGrange and disqualify her from sitting on the Board. Mr. Kitchen has now filed his briefs, which lay out in detail how the Board’s decisions are procedurally unfair and unreasonable and should be overturned by the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta.
The two judicial reviews will be heard virtually by a Red Deer judge over the course of a three-day hearing on May 1-3, 2024, starting at 2:00 PM on Wednesday, May 1. Members of the public are encouraged to attend by accessing this link.
In Alberta, judicial reviews are heard on the basis of a record of documents compiled and submitted to the Court by the decision-maker, which is supposed to include everything presented to the decision-maker at the time the decision was made. In this case, Mrs. LaGrange had submitted to the Board 33 pages of emails and letters from Albertans who supported her. At first, the Board failed to provide these supportive emails and letters to the Court, but that changed when Mr. Kitchen filed an application to compel the Board to do so. Redacted versions of these emails and letters, which are also quoted at length in the briefs, can be viewed here, starting at page 113 of 169.
Mrs. LaGrange was democratically elected to the Board in 2021. Despite this, the Board expelled her because she allegedly failed to comply with sanctions imposed on her by the Board in September 2023 for posting a meme to her Facebook account that some people found offensive. The impugned meme depicted two side-by-side photographs, one of children holding swastika flags and the other of children holding pride progress flags. The meme, which drew much support but also some disapprobation from the community, included a caption stating, “Brainwashing is brainwashing.”
The Board asked Mrs. LaGrange to apologize for the meme, which she declined to do because she believed she had done nothing wrong. In speaking to the Western Standard, Mrs. LaGrange stated, “I was elected to stand up and protect our children, and that is what I am doing.” Among other things, the Board, on September 26, 2023, ordered LaGrange to undergo sensitivity training at her own expense for allegedly breaching their code of conduct by posting the meme and to refrain from making public comments about sexual minorities in her official capacity as a Trustee.
The Board subsequently alleged Mrs. LaGrange had breached some of these sanctions and voted to disqualify Mrs. LaGrange as a trustee.
TDF and lawyer James Kitchen have chosen to defend Mrs. LaGrange to defend the free speech rights of all Canadians, especially in the context of statements made by democratically elected representatives.
To support Mrs. LaGrange, please consider making a tax-deductible donation on this page.
About The Democracy Fund:
Founded in 2021, The Democracy Fund (TDF) is a Canadian charity dedicated to constitutional rights, advancing education, and relieving poverty. TDF promotes constitutional rights through litigation and public education and supports access to justice initiatives for Canadians whose civil liberties have been infringed by government lockdowns and other public policy responses to the pandemic.
Medical Elites’ Disgrace Over Ivermectin
Parent and gender dysphoria groups granted intervenor status in New Brunswick school policy case
Does Scottish gov’t turmoil signal the end of the ‘green’ agenda’s stranglehold on Europe?
Policymakers in Ottawa and Edmonton maintain broken health-care system
Official Temperature Data Aren’t ‘Data’ and Shouldn’t Be Used to Restrict Freedom
Getting Real About Justin’s Real Estate Economy. It Won’t Last
Why Do The Same Few Always Get The Best Sports Scoops?
-
COVID-192 days agoMore victories for freedom as ArriveCAN charges dropped and fines reduced
-
COVID-192 days agoTrudeau government only sought legal advice after Emergencies Act was invoked, records indicate
-
Alberta2 days ago
Province announces next step to revamped health care system
-
Health2 days agoTHE WPATH TAPES: Behind-The-Scenes Recordings Reveal What Top Gender Doctors Really Think About Sex Change Procedures
-
COVID-192 days agoTrudeau’s public health agency recommends another experimental COVID booster
-
Addictions2 days agoPoilievre attacks decriminalization of hard drugs with Safe Hospitals Act
-
Uncategorized2 days agoRCMP recruitment failure has Alberta advocacy group calling for Provincial Police Service
-
Alberta23 hours agoPharmacist-led clinics improve access to health care: Lessons from Alberta