NASHVILLE, Tenn. ñ For many teachers, managing ongoing student behavior
problems is a full-time job, one that can keep them from effectively
delivering classroom content. A program developed by Vanderbilt in
partnership with Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools to improve
behavior is now being introduced to more than 4,000 North Carolina
pre-kindergarten students. The program is called Reaching Educators,
Children and Parents, or RECAP.
"So much instructional time gets taken up with behavioral management,"
said Tom Catron, a professor of psychiatry, psychology and pediatrics,
Kennedy Center investigator and co-director of the Vanderbilt Institute
for Public Policy Studies Center for Psychotherapy Research and Policy.
"Teachers trained in RECAP will teach students about emotion regulation
and help them develop positive social skills before they enter
kindergarten."
Catron says RECAP would support the sort of pre-kindergarten
intervention recommended by the recently released study "High-quality
Pre-kindergarten: The Key to Crime Prevention and School Success in
Tennessee" by the organization Fight Crime: Invest in Kids. The study
found that at-risk children who attend quality pre-kindergarten
programs are five times less likely to be involved in crime in the
future than their peers who did not attend such programs.
"Using RECAP in pre-k classrooms not only addresses existing problems
with specific children, but enables teachers to set up a prevention
program for all children," Catron said.
RECAP was developed by Vanderbilt psychologist Bahr Weiss and evaluated
in partnership with the National Institute of Mental Health and
Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. The program is still used at
approximately 15 to 19 Metro sites with children who have been
identified as having mental health problems.
Teachers who participated in the program in Nashville saw dramatic
changes in their classrooms after implementing RECAP, and follow-up
evaluation of the students showed lasting changes in their behavior.
"Most of the teachers that implement this program say that within a
couple of weeks there’s a huge difference in the amount of time they
spend correcting inappropriate behavior, and that they can provide
instruction without delays," Catron said.
Teachers participating in RECAP are trained and provided with a manual
and 60 lesson plans. The lesson plans emphasize positive reinforcement
and include teaching and rewarding children for "friendly skills," such
as sharing and helping their classmates, and show teachers how to use
age-appropriate consequences to deter negative behaviors. The program
also trains teachers how to respond to behavior problems in a
matter-of-fact manner, and teaches children to recognize how their
feelings affect their behavior and that their behavior is something
they can control.
In North Carolina, RECAP is being paired up with the successful Bright
Beginnings program in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools system. Bright
Beginnings is an early intervention literacy-based program for children
who have been identified as being at-risk academically.
"We serve children who are educationally needy. We’ve heard again and
again from teachers that a significant concern is behavior," said Ellen
Edmonds, director of early childhood education at Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Schools. "The teachers felt they didn’t have resources to help children
develop behaviors that were appropriate, and that they were spending
their time correcting inappropriate behaviors. We think RECAP is a
great tool to help children develop positive behaviors. Our teachers
are very excited."
The Vanderbilt team is testing a "train the trainer" model in
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Under this model, Vanderbilt staff
trained social workers and psychologists who work in the schools. These
individuals then trained the teachers and will provide ongoing
consultation in the classrooms. In the past, Vanderbilt provided the
teacher training and ongoing consultation. The goal of the new approach
is to reduce costs and also encourage the program to be
self-perpetuating in the schools where it is implemented.
Media contact: Melanie Catania, (615) 322-NEWS
melanie.moran@vanderbilt.edu