Two in the Bush: CHAMPS Training

Just as I sat down to write my first blog post of the year someone woke up from her morning nap. J

Whew! Traveling in the bush is never dull and it’s certainly not dull when you add a three month old into the mix. We just got back last night after spending a week in Bethel for various trainings. To begin with we’d had some pretty nasty fall rain and fog for 3 days before we were supposed to leave. Originally it didn’t look like we were going to get out of Goodnews at all. Finally, Monday morning the fog and rain lifted; so Simon, Molly, Junie and I were able to get on the mid-day flight out of the village. We got into Bethel at 2pm and went straight to the training that we’d already missed half a day of.

We were in Bethel for CHAMPS training. CHAMPS is a school wide behavior management and expectations system. The first two days Monday and Tuesday were for our Foundations team, which in such a small school is our whole staff. The Foundations team is responsible for the planning and implementation of procedures and expectations for all areas of the school.

On Wednesday and Thursday Junie and Daddy got to spend the mornings at our bed and breakfast while I went to CHAMPS Classroom Coaching training. Daddy and Junie were working on re-learning a few forgotten skills, taking a bottle and mastering the art of napping alone.

It's hard when you wake up and can't find your mama.

During the transition of moving home to Alaska a few skills she once had were quickly forgotten. Napping alone was the last skill on our list of things to re-learn. Yipee! We’re all happier and possibly a bit more rested now that we’ve conquered the nap. It looks like some time alone with daddy and a free schedule has set us on the right path again. In the afternoons they came to hang out with me at the District office in trainings.

I am the classroom coach for our school. The coaching position provides teachers with non-evaluative observations and data points. As the coach I’ll be collecting data on all of the students and staff in our building. We’ll be looking at things like time on task, ratios of interactions, opportunities to respond and disruptions. Our school will take a close look at our data every 2-4 weeks and we’ll also be looking at a sample of our district wide data on the same things. (http://www.safeandcivilschools.com/services/classroom_management.php)

We started using CHAMPS school wide last year and have been extremely impressed with the results. So this year, we’re on a mission to spread the implementation to even more areas of the school. One of the reasons that CHAMPS is so successful when used school wide is that it uses a common language among teachers for teaching the same behavior. For example, all students in our building can tell you the voice levels and when each level should be used during specific times of the day. If you’ve been reading the blog for quite a while you’ll remember some of the behavior issues that we experienced last year.

Junie with Uppa Carlton, our Assistant Superintendent. (Uppa is grandpa in Yupik)

Junie was a super star! She did great with the travel and just might be the youngest CHAMPS trained baby in the YK Delta! Our trainer said she was the youngest person he’s ever trained. As you can imagine not a person in the room had a problem with our sweet little girl hanging out! She was quick to make friends with her charming smile.

On Friday we worked on some professional development stuff and also spent some time planning out instructional tools for our CHAMPS procedures. Part of the day we had the luxury of working from our home for the week, Bentley’s Bed and Breakfast, during the other part we met with some other teachers and the Instructional Coach for our school at the district office.

Friday night was the part we’d been looking forward to since the beginning of the school year. Seeing some of our friends from last year! All of the teachers hired in the same year have several trainings together—it’s a great way to build community with people in the same place as you. We had a great time having dinner and catching up with our friends. Junie was excited to meet more new people too. She insisted on staying awake until 10:30 when everyone else went to bed.

Saturday we had our 2^nd year teacher in-service meeting. It was there that we learned about 35 of 62 hires from last year are still in the district! This year the district needed to hire for 70 open positions—some of which are still open!

While we were in Bethel one of the families from my class had a sweet new baby girl! That makes for three new girls who call Goodnews home since June. We were super excited to run into them at the airport and discover they were taking the same flight we were back to GNU.

And just for reading the whole way to the end… the part you’ve all been waiting for pictures! Ps. Someone at our house got a year older this week…