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PATHS opens news possibilities with Twiggle the Turtle

Times Observer photo by Stacey Gross Bentley Sherry (left) gets compliments from his classmates as Matt Menard explains why we give compliments.

Twiggle the Turtle has arrived at Warren Area Elementary Center (WAEC).

Part of the PATHS curriculum, a social and emotional component designed to integrate with classrooms from the preschool to grade 5 level, Twiggle teaches students how to “do the turtle” when faced with emotional overwhelming and interpersonal conflicts.

Matt Menard, kindergarten through second grade counselor at WAEC, purchased the program after seeing it demonstrated at Warren County’s Head Start program. Head Start has been using the PATHS curriculum for several years, and Menard said he was impressed with how it gave students an opportunity to think critically about how to deal with conflict and frustration.

Behavioral issues surrounding social competency and emotional regulation have been an increasing problem in incoming cohorts to WAEC over recent years. Menard hopes that PATHS will help deal with that. The program, designed to be taught several times a week for 15 to 30 minutes at a time, introduces students to characters like Twiggle, who they watch go through a specific process for dealing with feelings, which can often be overwhelming and hard to navigate for students still too young to have a strong grasp of how to label, evaluate, and process them.

The first part of a PATHS lesson involves picking a Turtle Helper from the class — each child getting a turn to be recognized by helping with the lesson and receiving compliments.

Compliments are given from classmates, teachers, and Menard himself to the day’s Turtle Helper, and the student is then asked to take his or her compliment sheet home and have parents add to the list with positive aspects of personality or behavior.

“Then we put them somewhere to remind us each day” said Menard.

Students then hear a story with a puppet Twiggle role playing a new interpersonal conflict or emotional problem that needs to be solved. Students are asked to practice the “turtle technique” as Twiggle shows them how he stops when he recognizes a feeling that needs to be dealt with, goes into his shell, says the problem out loud and identifies how he’s feeling.

“Henrietta knocked over my blocks” might be an example of how to state a problem, and “that makes me angry” is a way to state the feeling.

As simple as those steps sound, they’re not familiar to a lot of students. Feelings can be complex and confusing, and a step-by-step process for recognizing, evaluating, and processing or dealing with them isn’t something we’re instinctively born knowing, the PATHS curriculum teaches educators. When students are done with that step they’re asked to give examples of how they could solve the problem, how they should solve the problem (and the difference between the two) and how they would solve the problem, with feedback given by Menard.

Menard said that although this is the first year PATHS is being implemented with kindergarten through second grade students, he’s gotten positive feedback so far.

The curriculum comes with an evaluation kit, which he said he plans to start distributing to teachers next year so as to gain some data and take a look at whether the curriculum is having an impact on the number of behavioral issues teachers in those grades are seeing.

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