Standard 2.

0 School Culture/Instructional Program

Element 2.4 Support teaching and learning in a school environment
Artifact 2.4.1 - Activity 2J
Activity: Participate in Student Assistance Program (SAP) meetings over 2014/15 and 2015/16
school years.
Total Time: 25 hours
Artifact: None.
Description: As a member of the Student Assistance Team, I met for 30 minutes per week (for
approximately 36 weeks the first year and 18 weeks the second year) with three other teachers,
the principal, the superintendent, the guidance counselor, the school nurse, and SAP liaisons who
offer advice and assistance to the team if necessary. The goal of the weekly meeting is to
identify students who are in particular need of any type of assistance from the school. Assistance
could be in the form of seeing the school psychologist, talking to a drug/alcohol specialist,
teachers paying extra attention to students and their well-being, or any other form that may help
students through hard times. The types of issues that are brought up are when students seem
particularly depressed, are acting out in class more than usual, their grades take a big slide, or
when they are referred to the team by other teachers or students. Parents must be asked for
permission before the team takes any active role in assisting the students. My role is to help
identify students in classes that may need assistance and to help the team in arriving at ideas for
how to help a particular student.
Reflection: The team is useful, and I am glad to be a part of it. However, there are many
difficulties when running a team such as this. First, not all parties involved have the same level
of concern and interest for the students when being a part of the discussion. Some members may
find the meetings a waste of time or not want to put effort into helping students. This is likely
because we rarely have catastrophic events, and we normally dont see major changes in
students. However, since the idea of the meetings is to avoid catastrophic events, I feel that
working together and finding appropriate solutions to significant problems is quite worthwhile.
To that end, I have worked at trying to increase the organization of the meetings, ensuring that
we talk about each student that is a concern in order to assess their current state and to determine
if any action needs to be taken.