Concluded Project - end date Spring 2004
Project SUCCEED
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Contact:
Barbara Friesen, Email: friesenb@pdx.edu
Program Description
Project SUCCEED (Supporting and Understanding Challenging Children’s Educational and Emotional Development) was a research and demonstration project funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. Portland State University and the Community Action Organization Head Start of Washington County collaborated on the project’s final year of field research (2001-2002). The project’s purpose is to develop, provide, and evaluate an approach to helping family members and Head Start staff address challenging behaviors of young children. Although funding for the project has ended, a downloadable version of the Project SUCCEED trainer's manual (with complete bilingual handouts) is available here.
General Philosophy
The philosophy of Project SUCCEED is based on four principles. First, family members and teachers are essential partners in developing appropriate strategies for working effectively with children. Parents and teachers need to be actively involved in the development of programs that affect them, their children, and the children they work with daily. The project also recognizes that parents and teachers have different values and beliefs about children. It is not the intention of this project to impose one “right” way of working with children. Children are diverse, and diverse approaches need to be taken with each child. Although there are common ideas that underlie strategies, there is no single strategy that will work for all children. The SUCCEED curriculum provides many developmentally appropriate strategies for supporting challenging children and their caregivers.
Second, children’s individual characteristics and their environments need to be looked at holistically. Often, only the impact of the family and teachers on the child is assessed when working with children with challenging behaviors; however, challenging behaviors can best be explained, we believe, by the interaction of a child’s biological traits with their environment. SUCCEED stresses the mutual interplay between nature and nurture, biology and environment. As a result, children’s social environment, culture, temperament, health, sensory functioning, motivation, interests, strengths, and relationships with others are all taken into account in understanding and addressing their needs.
Third, children with challenging behaviors should receive the help and support that they need within their communities and in regular school environments. With few exceptions, any adaptations that need to happen to help a child be successful should occur in their regular home or school environment. SUCCEED promotes a model of inclusion, rather than segregation.
Finally, working with families and professionals respectfully and effectively is essential. Often when dealing with challenging children, professionals and parents do not work well together. Meeting young children’s mental health needs requires strong partnerships –a true team effort-- among families, professionals, schools, and other agencies. In keeping with this principle, the SUCCEED curriculum was developed in collaboration with parents and teachers in two Oregon Head Start programs, and SUCCEED classes were led by teams of teachers and parents.
Goals
Project SUCCEED has the following goals:
- Increase family members’ and teachers’ skills and confidence
in helping children with challenging behaviors.
- Reduce family members’ and teachers’ stress caused by
challenging behaviors in children.
- Improve the home and classroom environment.
- Reduce problem behaviors of these children and increase their social,
cognitive, and emotional competence.
- Decrease the incidence of kindergarten failure.
- Increase families’ sense of empowerment and ability to advocate
for their children’s needs.
- Increase the involvement of community partners in addressing the mental health needs of young children.
Activities
Project SUCCEED has four components:
- Adapting a training curriculum to specifically address the needs
of challenging children.
- Putting the curriculum to use in a 12-session training program that
parents and teachers attend together.
- Providing support through “coaching” of families and
teachers to help them work effectively with challenging children.
- Increasing the success of participating children’s transition to kindergarten.
The training curriculum, which was offered to six Washington County Head Start classrooms in winter-spring 2001 and eight in fall 2001-winter 2002, contains these units:
Module I: Understanding Challenging Children
1. Introductions and Positive Discipline
2. Temperament
3. Sensory Integration
4. Environmental Stressors and Children
Module II: Working with Challenging Behaviors Module
5. De-escalation: Helping Children Calm Down
6. Communication with Young Children
7. Natural & Logical Consequences and Adapting/Individualizing the Environment
8. Choices and Re-direction
III: Preventing Challenging Behavior
9. Managing Stress and Self-Care
10. Building a Child’s Self- Esteem; Feedback and Attention
11. Social and Emotional Development and Building Social Skills
12. Playing with a Child, Transitioning to Kindergarten, Group Wrap-up.
Classes were conducted with simultaneous English/Spanish translation; all handouts were in both English and Spanish.
Coaching took place with participating teachers (intervention classrooms only) from December 2001 through April 2002. Lyn Gordon, a project Program Coordinator who has both early childhood and children’s mental health experience served as coach, visiting each classroom six times for 1-3 hours per visit. He connected Head Start staff’s concerns to concepts they were learning from the SUCCEED curriculum, offered teachers suggestions and encouragement, and was in general a friendly, experienced presence in the classroom.
Facilitation of successful transitions to Kindergarten was addressed explicitly through the curriculum itself; a small study of Washington County pilot year (2000-2001) participants transition to Kindergarten was also conducted. Analysis of this primarily qualitative information is ongoing.
Process and Outcome Evaluation Methods and Preliminary Results
As a research and demonstration project, Project SUCCEED included evaluation of both the process (i.e., the training classes and coaching efforts) and the outcomes of the intervention. Research methods and preliminary findings were presented as a poster at the Oregon Summit on Early Childhood Mental Health in September, 2002; See PowerPoint version of the poster.
Evaluations of the classes themselves were very positive. Every 2001-2002 participant rated the classes as meeting their needs as a parent or teacher “well” or “very well.” When asked how well SUCCEED helped them in dealing with children's challenging behaviors at home or in the classroom, 91% responded “well” or “very well.” As one participant wrote,
Quiero…agradecer a ustedes por todo lo que he aprendido con estas clases. Me siento como una nueva persona, más segura y con más armonia en mi hogar. Me siento más segura para poder entender algunas conductas que presenten desafios con mis hijos y en mi trabajo. Gracias Project SUCCEED y Head Start por esta oportunidad.
[I want to thank you for everything I have learned in these classes. I feel like a new person, more assertive and with more harmony at home. I also feel more confident in understanding about certain behaviors and challenges with my children and at work. Thank you Project SUCCEED and Head Start for this opportunity.]
This information will be useful to the Community Action Head Start program, as well as to other Head Start programs that are looking to address serving children with emotional or behavioral concerns in a regular classroom setting. The results of Project SUCCEED will be shared with both local and national Head Start programs in an effort to improve services to all young children. The project's final report will be available at this website in Spring 2004.