Social Facilitation and Support

Social/Recess Facilitator

TBS has a unique program that focuses closely on the social/emotional development of children and responds to their need for support at certain stages — as known from child development research, and as observed in all learning environments, including classrooms, play areas, lunch areas, and anywhere students interact with each other. To sharpen that focus, Kate Klaire, the social/recess facilitator, supports elementary teachers in working with the students through whole-class social thinking skills. Students and the facilitator work as a team, looking at the big social/emotional challenges that arise not only in class but during lunchtime, recess, and transition times. An important feature of this work is that, although responsive to faculty and staff concerns, to the greatest extent possible it is student-led and student-directed. The students decide together on the most pressing social issues facing their community, and on how to address them.

Student Councils

In addition, the social/recess facilitator supports children with the occasionally challenging social dynamics that arise in all schools, and guides them towards managing these situations by providing common language and concepts, which can then be shared with other children, teachers, and family members. An important way this support is expressed is through student councils, made up of students chosen by their classmates to work on particular issues of importance to the children. Examples from this year include a K-1 playscape council, a service learning council, and a social rules council, where students wrestled with sophisticated questions about how to make their interactions both kind and fair. One 4/5 classroom took the show on the road, giving a skit in each elementary classroom in which they acted out different scenarios under which children can tease unkindly without even realizing it.

Learning Support

As a part of the learning support team, the social/recess facilitator helps individual students navigate social challenges that may arise for them over the course of the school year. Together with teachers and other learning support staff, the facilitator also works with children who may need more social/emotional support in order to be successful in academics or in their everyday social interactions: children who, for one reason or another, need to practice social skills in order to be able to learn more effectively — and joyfully — at school.