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Introduction

This curriculum is designed to prepare students to use SpeakOut with Advocatr and promote a positive school culture together with their teachers. The curriculum is anchored in Social-Emotional Learning and Restorative Practices and emphasizes self-awareness, social awareness, and relationship building skills. It consists of 10 lessons

1. Setting Goals to Promote a Positive School Climate

2. Communication

3. Trust, Respect, and Agreements

4. How to Gain Trust and How to Lose Trust

5. Intent versus Impact & Suspending Judgment

6. Accountability and Ownership

7. Accountability for What? To Whom?

8. Trust and Power

9. Using SpeakOut with Advocatr

10. Conflict Engagement

The lessons are suited for Advisory classes or some equivalent, or could be incorporated into Health, Language Arts, or various elective courses. Each lesson takes about 25-30 minutes, offers optional extension activities and recommendations, and requires minimal preparation.

Learning Activities & Materials

The lessons engage students in games, role play, brief surveys, partner work, community building circles, and self-reflection. The lesson plans contain guidelines for all activities. Teachers are encouraged to ask students to make their own journals to use specifically for this course. (Give each student 7 or 8 pages of college lined or blank paper, ask them to fold the stack in half width-wise, staple along the crease, and draw a cover on the front page.)

Social-Emotional Learning and Restorative Practices

Each lesson engages both teachers and students in activities to build social-emotional literacy and promote a restorative environment. Teachers will be able to most thoroughly support students in the curriculum if they have some familiarity with active listening, affective language/non-violent communication, relational circle facilitation, behavior-specific praise, bias management, intercultural fluency and strategies for power-sharing in the classroom. The Positive and Restorative Schools (PRoS) teacher professional development allows teachers to practice these strategies in a safe environment as well as experience and practice the lesson activities prior to delivering the curriculum.

The development of these materials was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A210071 to University of Oregon. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.