Initial Application: So You’ve Been To Training… Now What?

  • Step 1:  Build a lesson and teach it! 
    • Teach that lesson to an individual student, a class, or a group.
  • Step 2: Practice surrendering the one-up relationship. 
    • Select one or two items from our list of “surrendering the one-up” strategies
    • Practice these strategies with an individual student, group, or class.

Planning Your Implementation

To start planning your WhyTry implementation, download the implementation checklist.

Start Where You Are: Implementation Basics

  • Identify if you plan on delivering the curriculum as a responsive toolkit,  focusing on using it as self contained lessons/interventions (Partial Fidelity, i.e. a counselor uses “The Reality Ride” or “Defense Mechanisms” with an individual student to help process a conflict they were involved in) or progressively delivering all 10 metaphors/units of the curriculum as part of a course or group. (Full Fidelity)
  • Identify who will be taught the WhyTry curriculum.  (Individuals, Small Groups, Class-wide, School-wide, at-risk, etc.)
  • Identify who will be teaching the WhyTry curriculum.  (Counselors, Social Workers, Psychs, Behavioral Specialists, SPED Teachers, Gen Ed Teachers)
  • Identify when and how often the WhyTry curriculum will be delivered and how many hours per week it will be delivered.  (ad hoc Responsive toolkit to kids that end up in your office, weekly or bi weekly scope and sequence progressively working through the full curriculum.)
  • Identify where you plan on delivering the WhyTry curriculum.  (after school program, a teacher’s classroom, a counselor/social worker/psych’s office, other)
  • Identify desired outcomes (increased classroom engagement, decreased office referrals, decreased behavioral issues, improved resilience measure r score, other)
  • Identify required technical resources and a designated tech expert to assist with technical requirements (activated online account access, laptop or tablet support, access to YouTube, iTunes and other online media resources, access to an audio speaker, etc.
  •  Identify other resources necessary for successful implementation (Printed material, journals, activity props, etc.)

Keys For Long-Term Implementation Success

  •  Establish a Resilience Leadership Team who can help drive the implementation. This team may include district level directors, school directors or administrators, experienced or motivated teachers, etc.
  • Establish a collaborative WhyTry learning community consisting of those that are implementing the program.  Their purpose is to share successful solutions to challenges, success stories, etc. and to assist and encourage one another in your implementation.  (This should include all onsite WhyTry facilitators from your school/organization and possibly some or all of the WhyTry Leadership Team.  If you have neighboring areas that have implemented WhyTry you may consider combining into a larger WhyTry Learning Community.)
  • Schedule evaluation checkpoints for the Leadership Team and Learning Communities to review, evaluate, and discuss successes and challenges including review of how measuring your identified desired outcome(s) is going.
  •  Schedule program evaluation meeting of the three main WhyTry keys to success that are covered in the Level 1 training (Surrendering the 1 Up, Relevance, and Framing).We recommend scheduling these at least once a month for the first three months after completion of the Level 1 training.(Month 1 = Review Surrendering the 1 Up, Month 2 = Review of Relevance, Month 3 = Review of Framing)We have included some sample training review meeting schedules and recommended content.These review meetings are best held after some attempt at usage to allow you to have experiences of success and challenge to draw upon.

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