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2/12/2011 12:59:00 PMGrant to fund training in Cleveland schools to help children understand emotions

 February 12, 2011, 12:59 PM

By Ken Prendergast, Sun News

CLEVELAND -- A $200,000 grant from the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation will allow the city school district to provide training and professional development to expand a program which helps young children understand their emotions.

Because of the Mt. Sinai grant, the district-wide program called Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies will be expanded to include grades three, four and five.

The grant pays for training teachers, principals, assistant principals and support staff. The program is expected to sustain itself, with minimal costs for training new personnel.

PATHS is actually an international curriculum program and is based on four lessons: self-esteem, impulse control, feelings and behavior. It trains teachers to help Cleveland Metropolitan School District students understand how their emotions control their behavior.

District officials chose PATHS to affect social and emotional learning during the early grades. The PATHS curriculum has been incorporated into daily classroom instruction.

“Mt. Sinai is pleased to support this early childhood prevention curriculum so that Cleveland’s children can succeed in emotional development, educational attainment and other life skills,” said Mitchell Bank, Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation president.

Through PATHS, students are encouraged to model “turtling,” a technique that imitates how a turtle withdraws into its shell when it encounters a threat. Students cross their arms around their body and are even encouraged to put their heads down for a few minutes.

The “turtle” teaches students to stop, breath and state what the problem is and how they feel.

According to the Cleveland school district, a teacher survey showed widespread satisfaction and success using PATHS, with an overwhelming 86 percent of teachers attributing improved classroom behavior and overall classroom environment to the implementation of the PATHS curriculum.