Building a Behavioral Tracking System for an Elementary After-School Program
Encouraging Youth Co-Regulation and Behavior Management
This past year, I interned at the Sarah Holbrook Community center and was fortunate enough to work hand-in-hand with the program director, Melissa Pennington on this project. Through my internship I was able to interact directly with the children and lead some programs and activities. This experience has taught me about the strengths and challenges of after-school programs and how each child chooses to spend their time. I learned the main goal of the program is not just about playing fun games or helping with homework, it’s about offering a safe place to show emotions, communicate, and bond with other community members. After I neared the end of my first semester as an intern, I knew I wanted to continue working with the community center and find a way to give back.
About The Sarah Holbrook Community Center
The Sarah Holbrook Community Center: a place where children can go after school to hangout, have snacks, and enjoy fun activities. It is a safe place where everyone is accepted and cared for equally. The loving and caring staff work hard to make sure each child’s social and emotional needs are met and the activities cater to all interests.
The students arrive shortly after 3:00pm and go straight into the kitchen to enjoy a healthy snack. Afterwards, they have free time to choose an activity to play with friends and staff. Most of the time the children prefer to play outside by riding bicycles, soccer, gymnastics, frisbee, tag, and climbing on nearby trees. Once free time is over, there are three structured activities to choose from and each child has the freedom to decide where they want to go. Those activities last until their guardians come to pick them up. Sarah Holbrook Community Center is filled with special and unique children that come from different backgrounds. The afterschool staff includes the program director, two staff members that lead activities, volunteers, and interns.
Behavioral Tracking System
When I started brainstorming project ideas with program director, Melissa Pennington, I immediately thought about the parents and the ways that they can support their children. It can be challenging juggling parenthood with other aspects of life, and I wanted to make sure they have the tools they need to be successful. These challenges can include single-parent households, financial concerns, and health problems. The community center gets roughly three hours with the children each day and then they go home. As hard as the community center works, it wouldn’t be as big of a success without including the parents.
The after-school program director agreed that parent education is key to helping the children. If positive techniques and styles are not being practiced at home, that affects their child’s ability to participate in after school activities. The community center can provide the resources and articles for the guardians, but how can we help them implement it? If there was a way to show guardians what the after-school staff is doing, then we can encourage those techniques to be used at home.
We began thinking about ways the staff can communicate to parents in a quick and efficient way. A behavioral tracking system would be simple for the staff to fill out at the end of the day and show to guardians. It started out simple, a chart with 3 boxes for the behavior, the tools, and the result. It was an empty page and it was up to the staff to be descriptive and thorough with their answers while having no clear guidelines or expectations. As the log developed, a column was added for the date, the signature of the staff member who filled it out, and guardian signature. The advantage to this was knowing which staff member to follow up with and ensuring that guardians were reviewing this information.
The program director and I analyzed and edited this log for one month while receiving feedback from other staff members. We came to the conclusion that the blank behavior chart was not going to work out because it needed more clarity. I started adding checklists and simple yes or no questions to clearly outline what was needed. A sample page including questions to be answered was provided such as “how was the behavior expressed” and “what were some positives and negatives of the situation?” I wanted the behavioral log to be simple enough that it did not take up much of the staff’s time, but thorough enough that anyone who reads it will understand what happened.
As edits continued to be made, we decided the chart that we had wasn’t able to be successful for describing both positive and challenging behaviors. The log was divided into two separate charts, one for positive behaviors and one for challenging. The challenging behavior log includes checkboxes for the type of behavior including physical, verbal, yelling, crying, or other. These categories were listed to make the process quicker for staff to fill out. Staff will document what the incident was, the type of behavior, what the activity was, who was involved, and the location. For tools, the strategies listed are calm cubby, distraction, took a break, or other. They will also describe the type of communication used and the consequences established. As for the results, What were some positives and negatives, did staff follow up with youth, and were the tools successful? By answering these questions, it gives an overall summary of the situation and how to better assist this child in the future.
The positive behavior log has the same format, but lists different types of behavior such as self regulation, following expectations, and exceeding expectations. The tools suggested were sharing, respect, calm cubby, and others. By separating the two logs, it encourages staff to focus on the achievements and successes of the day instead of the problems.
Resources for Staff and Guardians
The second component of my project is compiling resources for the Sarah Holbrook Community Center to learn from and share with families. When deciding what topics to focus my research on, I checked in with Melissa Pennington to hear her viewpoint and what she thinks is necessary. We began by looking into emotion regulation, communication, and calm down strategies. Each resource that we found, we put in a google folder that was shared with all staff members. I reached out to a few social workers that I knew to see if they recommended any resources that they could share. By the end of this six week project, roughly sixty articles, handouts, workbooks, and activity sheets were put into the folder. The staff is encouraged to share these with guardians after reviewing their child’s behavioral log if they feel they need more support.
The Challenge…
When I was creating this behavioral log and resource guide, I had a scheduled deadline for its completion. I wanted to allow time for a trial run for staff to try it out and provide feedback. However, COVID-19 had other plans and my hopes for a trial run were put on hold. During this time, I was going to note which tools the community center has access to or uses, and which tools they needed. After a meeting with Melissa Pennington, we decided to conduct a virtual trial run where we asked staff to complete the log with made up scenarios. The success of this trial run gave me the much-needed feedback to add the final touches. Despite the challenges presented, this program was designed to be flexible to the needs of staff and family members. The behavioral tracking system is scheduled to be integrated into the 2020-2021 elementary after-school program.
At a time like this, with the Sarah Holbrook Community Center temporarily closed, families can still receive these resources and improve their parenting styles and communication techniques. Families still have love, support, and guidance through virtual communication.
