Michael Klein

Seattle University

Guidance Curriculum

My guidance unit consisted of 12 weeks of lessons using the Second Step
program. The schedule of this curriculum ranged from emotional development to anti-
bullying education, which followed a video storyline. The classes would also form into
groups to talk about how their own thoughts to each other. The program itself was very
well organized. Each 6
th
grade block class received a 45-minute lesson every week and
each lesson planned transitioned into the next week. Before I calculated the data results, I
felt like there would be a major change from the pre survey to the post survey because of
how the students were paying attention and responding to each lesson.
Second Step gave me specific directions on how to disseminate the data for each
survey question. I put each question into a specific category that included acceptance of
social exclusion, acceptance of physical aggression, acceptance of verbal derogation and
perceived social-emotional competence. Unfortunately the results were not up to par with
what I was expecting. Only one of the categories was significantly higher from the pre-
test to the post-test and that was acceptance of social exclusion. With the rest of the
categories the improvement was minimal. I was a little disappointed because I had given
myself higher expectations of the results before I even got the results. I had especially
expected that the results from the perceived social-emotional competence category to
show extremely high marks because there was so much focus over the 12 weeks on this
category alone and I felt that a lot of the students had improved so much in their
questions and responses during the end phases of the guidance curriculum. Instead the
category measured almost no significant change.
Despite the disappointment, I am still happy with how it turned out and I actually
still believe that this program worked better than the results show because the students
showed me how much they had learned, through our one on one interactions, towards the
last few weeks. After this reflection on my lessons, I still feel like I would want to use
this program for myself when I become a professionally licensed school counselor.