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Bush Elementary School is ensuring that their students and families have many supports when it comes to their social and emotional needs. In addition to Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), which is a proactive approach schools use to improve school safety and promote positive behavior, they are also using a couple of innovative ways to help their Bush School family.
The school has a Chautauqua County Mental Health (CCMH) satellite office with social workers, Kristen Saunders and Sarah Ballard who are in the school Monday through Wednesdays. There has been a CCMH social worker at Bush School for six years but as the need for counseling has increased, the satellite office allows for more referrals and help for students and their families.
"We are so grateful that JPS has invited us into their schools to be part of their teams to help their children and families," said Ms. Saunders. "Teachers and families are the experts and can identify when a child may need help. We are here to help assess if a child or his or her family needs any additional help and be the link to outside organizations. COVID has given students and their families so much added stress and having CCMH social workers in the schools is an additional layer of support for the schools that they can use to help their families. We are a preventative measure to try to step in and help in the early years at Bush."
Teachers or families will refer a child that they feel may benefit from an assessment and include what the goals of the assessment are. The referral could just be for the child to have counseling, but it can also include family counseling. The CCMH social workers have a direct connection with CHHUNY (Child Health Home of Upstate New York), from which they are able to link families with numerous agencies for help.
Another unique way Bush School is helping kids' social/emotional health is through a new activity this year with Chautauqua Arts Education's "Feelin' the Beat" program. They just finished up a 10-week residency. The program is weekly for 25 minutes, and Chautauqua is working with self-contained classrooms and pre-kindergarten classrooms.
"Especially post-COVID, students are struggling with how best to interact with each other, when some of them have been isolated for most of the past two years. Through drumming, students learn how to take turns, how to communicate their emotions, how to be leaders and part of a group working towards common goals," said Suzanne Fasset-Wright, Chautauqua Institution's Director of Arts Education. "Rhythm is something that, as humans, is an ingrained part of who we are - our heartbeats, our walking steps, or even how we perceive the passing of time with the rhythm of the seasons.
When we drum, we share something that is inside us - our rhythm - with others. The way this residency is structured, every students' drumming is welcomed as an expression that's important because it came from them!
They drum to learn the elements of music, like tempo, tone color and dynamics, and they create the music themselves, using those elements of music to connect to their emotions and the emotions of others." Chautauqua Institution knows that Chautauqua County's youth are the most important resource the county has and are the future of Chautauqua County.
"When parts of the community band together - like Chautauqua Institution with Bush Elementary and many other JPS schools, we combine our strengths to lift up our youth to be better equipped to address the challenges we face together," said Ms. Fassett-Wright. "Chautauqua Institution also has much to learn from the county's youth and we're honored to drum with each one of them, getting to know them better and by extension, getting to know what is important to people in Chautauqua County."