0.3 Health education course, chapter 4 - childhood psychological  (Page 3/6)

In early infancy, retardation of emotional growth may occur with blunting of affect and lack of interest in the environment. Thiscommonly accompanies failure to thrive and is often misdiagnosed as mental retardation or physical illness. Signs of emotional deprivation in olderchildren include poor attendance and performance at school and bad relationships with peers and adults.

Failure to seek preventive medical or dental attention, such as immunizations and routine health supervision, anddelay in seeking care for illness may be clues to inadequate family functioning.

Items to consider

Checklist for Emotionally-Safe Classrooms -by Jane Bluestein, Ph.D.

Excerpted from Dr. Bluestein's latest book, Creating Emotionally Safe Schools (Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications,Inc., 2001) due out in August of 2001.

Survey:

Is your School an Emotionally Safe Place?

This survey lists a number of practices which characterize a school with an emotionally safe climate. It has beenincluded to help you evaluate your school's goals, policies and intentions, as well as the degree to which each exists in actual practice.The list is deliberately idealistic and comprehensive. Studies suggest that each item is an important component of an emotionally safe schoolenvironment, and that emotional safety is built on a combination of all of the characteristics listed in this survey. As schools strive to achieve thespecific behaviors each item suggests, they will no doubt see improvements in the culture of the school, as well as in the performance, commitment,behavior and interactions that occur within its walls. Likewise, as schools increase the agreement with each of the items in this survey, theycan expect a reduction of stress commonly associated with failure, rebelliousness, disruptiveness and passive student behavior.

You may wish to use this survey to evaluate the degree to which your school is committed to each item in terms of its philosophy orvision, as well as the degree to which the behaviors described in each item regularly occur in actual practice. You can rate each item for an individualclassroom, or according to your perception of the school environment as a whole.

Use the following scale to rate each item:

1- Strongly Agree

2- Somewhat Agree

3- Somewhat disagree

4- Strongly disagree

Need for Meaningful Outcomes (Positive Consequences), Structure, Boundaries (Limits) and Follow-Through

___ We make a deliberate effort to anticipate what students and teachers (and parents) will need in various situations inorder to prevent problems from occurring.

___ We have and communicate boundaries and policies that clearly describe desirable and acceptable student behaviors.

___ We have and communicate boundaries and policies that clearly describe desirable and acceptable staff behaviors.

___ The school environment is reward oriented (as opposed to being punishment oriented): Rules and boundaries emphasize thepositive consequences of cooperation and compliance.