With a focus on enhanced social and emotional support for students, SISD educators at various schools in the district are implementing processes designed to help students feel secure, connected, and eager to learn.
SISD administrators and teachers at Helen Ball Elementary, Hueco Elementary, Bill Sybert School, Desert Wind School, Salvador H. Sanchez Middle, Socorro Middle, and Socorro High School participated in a training for Capturing Kids’ Hearts, a program designed to cultivate improved relationships, improve school culture, and strengthen trust between teachers and students.
“Relationships are extremely important in all aspects of our students’ lives,” said Tammi Mackeben, SISD director of guidance and counseling services. “The working relationship between a student and teacher can be one of the most important factors in student success academically. Capturing Kids Hearts is providing support in strengthening relationships in each of our campuses, which we know will have a huge impact.”
Capturing Kids’ Hearts teaches educators how to model positive behaviors in the classroom to inspire trust among students, which in turn will foster a safe, supportive environment and develop productive behaviors, build and maintain positive relationships and help set and achieve goals.
“Today’s training is all about making connections with the students,” said David Philips, a math teacher at Desert Wind School. “It’s about letting them know that you are invested in them.”
Philips said that programs such as Capturing Kids Hearts helps teachers to re-focus energy on social-emotional support. It is easy to get distracted solely focusing on lessons and that can cause teachers to miss out on important opportunities to connect with students, he said.
Capturing Kids' Hearts equips teachers, coaches, administrators, and district leaders to implement transformational processes focused on cultivating relational capacity, improving school culture, strengthening trust between teachers and students, building self-managing classrooms, creating accountability, improving academic performance, and fostering trauma-informed care.
The training included sample exercises to help connect with students in the classroom, one-to-one person scenarios, and icebreakers for teachers to get comfortable and familiar with their peers to form a stronger and more unified front in working toward social-emotional learning.
Debra Salcedo, a SCEI coach at Bill Sybert School, said students have been impacted by numerous things and the world is a different place than it used to be. She said being able to know how to support students socially and emotionally will help ensure they succeed in the classroom.
“I feel like this training is going to inspire teachers to build relationships within their classrooms thus empowering students to be leaders,” Salcedo said.
Ruben Avalos, a math teacher at Socorro High School, said that Capturing Kids' Hearts really enforces building relationships not just with students, but with your peers, which will lead to a stronger faculty overall and help everyone be at their best for the good of the students.
“This training makes you really think and want to become a better teacher, co-worker, friend, spouse, and person overall,” Avalos said. “What we learn here can be applied to everyday life.”
Published October 17, 2022
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