Athletes in Action
Our new Athletic Director of Sports Medicine, Breanna McLain working with a new athlete on setting a baseline for concussion assessment. Basically, all athletes are surveyed about health concerns and given several short assessments before their season starts. In the event of a suspected concussion injury they are given the assessments again in real time to determine the probability of a concussion. There is clear CIF protocol regarding concussion assessment and return to practice procedure. Player safety is of the highest priority. We are very fortunate to have Breanna as a full time certified athletic trainer. She is already making huge in roads into injury prevention, assessment and rehabilitation

PBIS Information
Flashpoints
by the PBIS Committee

The following has been adopted from the KQED program “Mind/Shift” (https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/04/21/20-tips-to-help-de-escalate-in...)
Students’ behavior is a form of communication and when it’s negative it almost always stems from an underlying cause. There are many reasons kids might be acting out, which makes it difficult for a teacher in a crowded classroom to figure out the root cause.

A National Institute of Health study found that 25.1 percent of kids 13-18 in the US have been diagnosed with anxiety disorders. No one knows how many more haven’t been diagnosed. Additionally between 8 and 15 percent of the school-aged population has learning disabilities (there is a range because there’s no standard definition of what constitutes a learning disability). 9 percent of 13-18 year-olds have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (although the number one misdiagnoses of anxiety is ADHD), and 11.2 percent suffer from depression.

‘We are 50% of every interaction with a child, so we have a lot of control over that interaction.’
“So basically we have this gap in teacher education,” said Jessica Minahan, a certified behavior analyst, special educator, and co-author of The Behavior Code: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students. Often, Minahan argues, teachers are trying typical behavioral strategies for a group of kids for whom those strategies don’t work.

Your PBIS committee will be providing short weekly articles within the FFF every week to offer a positive behavioral technique for your consideration and use. We are excited to present them to you and hope they will be profitable to you in your craftwork of shaping minds and futures. Teach on fellow pedagogue, teach on!