COURSE OVERVIEW
Creating a School Program to Support the Mental Health and Success of Newcomer Students
This 15-hour course is designed specifically for the teachers, counselors, social workers, psychologists or support staff interested in learning more about how to support youth from immigrant and refugee backgrounds.
15 PD HOURS | $275.00
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Learning Objectives*
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Assess your own knowledge, awareness, and skill in serving youth from immigrant or refugee backgrounds, particularly those impacted by trauma. (ASSESS)
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Increase your empathy for experiences related to some typical migration journeys to the U.S., and list the strengths that are present in the youth who undertake such journeys. (DEFINE)
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Describe the four core stressors framework (Ellis et al., 2020), including trauma, isolation, resettlement, and acculturation stress. (DEFINE)
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Identify the ways that newcomer stress and trauma may present in both academic and social settings, and begin a plan for how you could design a helpful response. (MANAGE)
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Utilizing the SAMHSA principles of trauma-informed practice, create a chart of direct service strategies that are consistent with your role and could support newcomer youth in their academic/career, social/emotional, and basic resettlement needs. (MANAGE)
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Identify local resources with which you could engage in order to deliver meaningful and relevant indirect services to newcomer youth in your school; create an asset map. (DELIVER)
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Create a service plan that combines your professional standards for best practices, the principles of trauma-informed practice, and any of the 4 core stressors of newcomer youth that you have observed in your school. (DELIVER)
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Finalize a service plan for your school setting based on the above, and evaluate how well it does at filling the 3 tiers of MTSS models. As an optional step, you can also solicit feedback from key stakeholders (supervisor, students/families, peers). (ASSESS)
Course Features
- Self-Paced: Flexible learning components for you can work on at times that are most convenient to you.Â
- 15 Professional Development Hours upon successful completion
- Practical Application activities for you to apply course strategies and tools
- Eligible for 1 graduate credit with an additional fee of $75 paid to UMass Global
About the Instructor
Laura Gonzalez
Laura Gonzalez has 25 years of experience working in higher education, addressing college access for youth from immigrant families. In Laura's post-faculty career, she served as the coordinator of the educational program at an ORR facility for unaccompanied minors in NC. This led to her current work co-founding an educational consulting company that equips facilities serving unaccompanied minors with meaningful educational tools. Laura holds a PhD in Counselor Education, a Master’s degree in College Student Development, and a Bachelor’s degree in Women's Studies. Laura and her husband have a bilingual and bicultural family, including three children. Laura collaborates part time with Immigrant Connections, while serving as the Research and Development Director for One Journey Together, LLC.
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