How to help students Keep jobs, have healthy relationships, and stay out of jail

SLO of the Month: Graduates will show a recidivism rate of 25% lower than the state average.

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 Whether in the community or in-custody, our students have enrolled with Five Keys to turn their lives around. This article offers 3 things you can do to help students maintain healthy lifestyles and support them on their journey to recovery!

1. Incorporate Opportunities for Social Emotional Learning

As our student re-enter, it’s important that we support their social, emotional development so they can respond appropriately in the workplace, at school, and with their families. This can be done by including instruction in the following five areas: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Responsible Decision-Making, and Relationship Skills.

Click Here for More Info on SEL

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SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING ACTIVITIES
The activities below have all been hand-selected for you and are AWESOME.
​If you're short on time, those marked with *** are a good place to start.

Self-Awareness Activities:

• ***Myers Briggs Excel Assessment -- This is an easy way for students to discover their Myers Briggs personality type using technology, without the internet! Download this Excel Document and students can take the test and have their results generated instantly, with a personality profile and everything!
• The Step Ahead Workbook, Module 1, Assess Yourself: People are more successful and satisfied when their interests and skills are being put to good use. But first, we must know what these are! This module contains several activities to build self-awareness in students, including The Califorina CareerZone Interest Profiler and Myers Briggs Type Indicator assessment.​

Social Awareness Activities:

• ​***Create opportunities to learn about and practice empathy: Brene Brown explains the difference between empathy and sympathy through truth and humor in this 3-minute video​.

Relationship Skills Activities:

• ***Community-Building Circles: Try these community-building circles that have been tested and approved by Five Keys teachers in a variety of settings, from the book Circle Forward by Carolyn Boyes-Watson and Kay Pranis.
• Try these 3 student-approved Ice Breakers​ that really help you and your students get acquainted in a comfortable, fun way (from Cult of Pedagogy).

Looking for more? Click below to download CASEL's Sample Teaching Activities to Support Core Competencies of Social and Emotional Learning.

Download Here

Self-Management Activities:

• Use Calm Classroom or other mindfulness exercises.
• Self-Management and Wellness Workbook -- an interactive workbook about building self-discipline in your personal life, workplace, physical health, and relationships.
• Video Series from best-selling author Brendon Burchard about goal-setting and overcoming challenges.
• ***Video: Thinking to Doing to Being. Dr. Joe Dispenza, author of Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind  explores how meta-cognitive practices like mindfulness and reflection can help you think in new ways, change beliefs, and literally rewire your brain.

Responsible Decision-Making Activities:

• ABC Problem Solving Worksheet, with instructions: This resource helps students analyze why they respond negatively to situations and teaches them a process to disrupt their self-destructive thinking patterns. The basic idea is that some event activates an emotional response (A) and that our beliefs about the event (B) have consequences (C) for how we respond. If you can change your beliefs, you will have different, less negative, emotional responses. 

• Person-Centered Plan: This is a document that can be used with students to help them vision map or plan anything from a goal for the next week to the next five years. It can be used at any stage and is also useful when given KWL Charts (a 3-column chart where they write what they Know/Want to Know/Learned).
• ​Change-Plan Worksheet: This resource can be used to help students articulate goals in many areas of their lives. It also helps them anticipate barriers to reaching their goals so they can develop a plan to overcome those barriers. 

2. Teach Core Employability Skills

• ***The Career Path Academy Workbook is a newly developed resource designed to equip students with the self-knowledge and job application skills needed to secure a career they love. Teachers and students will appreciate the clean, easily-digestible, but highly informative worksheet design.
• ***Give your students this Employability Checklist to help them self-assess what skills they already have and determine which they need to attain!
  
• Also check out the Step Ahead Workbook, which contains modules on Creating a Plan and Setting Goals, Finding a Job, and Managing your Career.
• There's also the Job Readiness CTE curriculum, another great resource which includes units on Career Readiness, Resumes, Cover Letters, Applications, Interviews, and other career exploration tools from O*NET OnLine.​​

3. Connect Students to Their Next Destination

Connect students to the idea of college!

• Check out the College and Career Readiness Course, which covers important skills that will be necessary in your students' future academic and professional careers such as communication, goal setting, the college admission and financial aid process, study skills, and more.
• Take students on a college field trip! Use this College Visit Scavenger Hunt to help make the most of their visit.

Northern California Connections:

• Connect them to community sites. Students without a high school diploma who are about to be released should have a copy of the Northern California Learning Center flyer to learn which sites are most convenient for their continued learning.  Most of these sites are co-located with other non-profits that provide social services such as workforce development, housing assistance, and substance abuse counseling. 
• College Pathways. Our Northern California College Pathways team can be emailed at collegepathways@fivekeyscharter.org.  Teachers can also make copies and distribute the College Pathways brochure that includes direct phone numbers to reach the team who can meet individually with students to discuss college options. 
• Employment Opportunities. Each of the counties where we operate are connected to local workforce development systems.  All of our students are eligible to receive these job placement and readiness services offered through local Workforce Investment Boards. 
  • San Francisco county residents can check out the Comprehensive Access Point at Goodwill;
  • Alameda County's One Stop Career Centers are listed here: https://www.alamedasocialservices.org/public/services/employment_and_training/career_centers.cfm;
  • San Mateo residents should be referred to our partners at JobTrain (http://www.jobtrainworks.org/);
  • Solano Employment Connection centers are here: http://www.solanoemployment.org/contact-us/locations.html;
  • San Francisco students who are incarcerated should also reach out to our Jail Based Career Center for pre-release job preparation (see flyer here.)

​​Southern California connections:

• Connect them to community sites. For your students without a high school diploma who are about to be released, have them complete the Community Site Referral Form. Teachers can then submit this form to their principals, who will transfer the information to the community site(s) selected by the students. Upon receiving an alert, Community Sites teachers will then reach out to the student following his/her release date.
• Connect them to community college. For students who are about to be released and interested in attending a community college, have them complete the Higher Education Referral Form. Students will then receive this Higher Education Referral Letter, through which Five Keys will either provide a specific contact from the selected college or general information about enrollment.
• Connect them to employment opportunities. In order to help facilitate employment connections for your students who are about to be released from custody, please have students complete the the Vocational Pathway Referral Form
  and submit to your principal.
• Community Site Welcome Letter. Community Site teachers and principals, when you receive a referral to one of your community sites for a student coming from in custody, you may want to send a Community Site Welcome Letter to the address provided.