Developing Relational, Emotional, and Adaptive Minds (DREAMs)

 

 

DREAMs is a trauma-informed, group intervention for 5th - 8th grade students in Pittsburgh-area schools. The goal is to equip and empower students with the tools to build their social and emotional skills (i.e., self-awareness, perspective-taking, conflict resolution, stress management). The hope is that students grow these strengths to manage the consequences of significant life adversity and build resilience. 

 

 

The program consists of 11 psychoeducation lessons led by a qualified facilitator. The curriculum is built around evidence-based principles targeting emotional dysregulation. Sessions focus on building things like emotional vocabulary, self-monitoring and awareness, social cognition, emotional regulation, and practical coping. This is a strengths-based program focused on maximizing student’s academic and behavioral potential and setting up with the capacity to become peer support mentors. 

 

 

 

 

 

Some students are disproportionately exposed to adverse, challenging life experiences. These experiences are oftentimes ongoing and the resulting stress has consequences for their cognition and ultimately academic functioning.

 

 

School discipline reforms like restorative practices (i.e., community building, healing circles, mentoring) can be effective as universal interventions. Yet, in most cases, these interventions are often not designed to address intensive emotional, behavioral, and academic disruptions tied to students’ significant adversity and trauma. Staff capacity is often limited in terms of bandwidth and expertise to address these and other mental health needs.

 

In response, the DREAMs program is designed with a trauma-informed framework to serve students with more intensive support needs. This supports and advances the collaborative Just Discipline Project, which aims to advance achievement for all students by coordinating, implementing and facilitating school‐based community building and restorative practices. Specifically, this work aims to support teachers, students, and staff in efforts to use relationally based practices that ultimately reduce the need for use of exclusionary discipline in the school. This work is a component of overall efforts to create equitable and racially just opportunities for success in school and in life that ensure all students are college and career ready. 

 

 

 

 

Interested? 
Join the contact list or email Monica Henderson, DREAMs program coordinator (mah386@pitt.edu) with questions.