By Jennifer Theurer

Abilene Public Schools recently received the Kansas State Department of Education’s Copper Kansans Can Star Award in the social-emotional growth category. Using the Boys Town Well Managed School models, the school district works with students from pre-K through middle school.

“There’s 16 basic foundational social skills that we teach,” said Jenna Delay, Abilene Middle School principal. “Those are things like how to greet others, how to have an appropriate voice tone, how to have a conversation, how to accept no for an answer, those kinds of skills.”

Once students reach fourth grade, they build on that foundation by learning skills like sportsmanship, having a good attitude, and taking care of their belongings.

“I think this helps really even the playing field for all of our kiddos, because everybody comes in with different experiences,” Delay said. “But, in the world, there are some of those unwritten rules that we just have to learn in order to be successful.”

Abilene school district staff go through the Boys Town Well Managed School models too.

“[It] give us the skill set to be able to keep ourselves regulated so that we can help our dysregulated students get back to a sort of baseline,” Delay said.

The KSDE has four levels of awards with gold being the top award, then silver, bronze, and copper. Delay said there were 40 school districts that won socially emotional awards and none of them received gold.

To some this award may look like just another banner hanging on the wall, but Delay said, “It means two things. One, it means that we’re moving in the right direction as far as socially emotional support for our students, but it also means that we have room to grow.”