Dearborn Park International School (k-5) serves students in the heart of Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. As part of Seneca’s expanding partnership with Seattle Public Schools, a Student Support Counselor was placed at the school in Fall of 2017.
With an enrollment of about 400 students, Dearborn Park takes seriously it’s responsibility to provide every student with an excellent, holistic education. Dearborn is a dual-language emersion school which embeds Spanish, Mandarin, and English into instruction. As one of the most diverse schools in Seattle, students at Dearborn come from families representing over 25 unique languages and cultures. About 70% of students at Dearborn come from low-income families, and about 40% are English Language Learners. Dearborn is a school where joy is always in the air, families and community members are active and engaged, and staff care deeply about the students they serve.
With an enrollment of about 400 students, Dearborn Park takes seriously it’s responsibility to provide every student with an excellent, holistic education. Dearborn is a dual-language emersion school which embeds Spanish, Mandarin, and English into instruction. As one of the most diverse schools in Seattle, students at Dearborn come from families representing over 25 unique languages and cultures. About 70% of students at Dearborn come from low-income families, and about 40% are English Language Learners. Dearborn is a school where joy is always in the air, families and community members are active and engaged, and staff care deeply about the students they serve.
Seneca’s partnership with Dearborn began with a full-time Student Support Counselor focused on carrying out the reset procedure- helping students who are experiencing behavioral challenges, in the moment, to regulate emotions, reflect, restore relationships, and reintegrate into classrooms. With support from Seneca staff, these Tier II and Tier III behaviors became less frequent and shorter in duration. This reduction in reactive interventions provides a powerful opportunity in Seneca school partnerships – focus can shift to proactive PBIS-informed approaches (check-in/check-outs, reward systems, behavior plans etc) for individual students. It also enables Seneca staff to be key resources in systems changes at both the classroom and school-wide level.
One powerful support that Seneca has been prioritizing with its SPS partners (including Dearborn) is focusing on the Teacher-Student relationship. Research has consistently shown that the relationship between a student and their teacher is one of the greatest factors in student success. This is sometimes referred to as the invisible classroom – “a collection of continuously active neurological and human connections that have an immense effect on learning but little to do with the actual content of the lesson (Olson, 2014).” It is what exists beyond competencies and test scores – it is the behavioral, emotional, and rational elements that create a contextual, safe, and caring environment in which learning occurs for all students. Teachers, more than any other adult in a school building, have the power to create these environments. By closely partnering with teachers and doing in-class proactive work with individual students, Seneca staff play an active role at Dearborn (and other schools) to work towards positive invisible classrooms. These efforts create sustainability, key to the mission of Seneca’s Unconditional Education model.
One powerful support that Seneca has been prioritizing with its SPS partners (including Dearborn) is focusing on the Teacher-Student relationship. Research has consistently shown that the relationship between a student and their teacher is one of the greatest factors in student success. This is sometimes referred to as the invisible classroom – “a collection of continuously active neurological and human connections that have an immense effect on learning but little to do with the actual content of the lesson (Olson, 2014).” It is what exists beyond competencies and test scores – it is the behavioral, emotional, and rational elements that create a contextual, safe, and caring environment in which learning occurs for all students. Teachers, more than any other adult in a school building, have the power to create these environments. By closely partnering with teachers and doing in-class proactive work with individual students, Seneca staff play an active role at Dearborn (and other schools) to work towards positive invisible classrooms. These efforts create sustainability, key to the mission of Seneca’s Unconditional Education model.
Blog Post Written By: Adam Campbell, Director of School Partnerships
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