Palace Pheasant Chapter Report
Palace Pheasant Chapter had a nice representation at the SDCA Conference in Rapid City. We had 9 people attend our chapter meeting on Thursday afternoon. Thank you to those who attended. There were at least another three chapter members attending the conference. It was good to see you there. I hope all had a renewing and energizing conference experience.
At the Awards Banquet Friday night, one of our chapter members was awarded the Mary Lark, Humanitarian Award. Congratulations to Penny Virchow for receiving this award and the work that went into the achievement. Margie Neugebauer was given the Walt Flannery Award from the SD School Counseling Association in recognition of 15 years as a school counselor.
At our chapter meeting several ideas were discussed for next year's programming. One was to have a book study and discuss it by conference call. Another suggestion was to have monthly meetings and whoever can make it, attends, and those that can't will try next time. As for service projects, two ideas were mentioned; one was to provide teddy bears for the police and Highway Patrol in our chapter area. The second suggestion was to bring personal care items to the meetings to be given to the domestic shelters located in our chapter area. If you have other ideas, please let me know or Sadie Hansen, our president-elect.
Palace Chapter will have one more meeting this spring on May 22 in Plankinton. Glen Geraets has arranged a tour of Aurora Plains Academy for us. It is set up for 3:00 p.m. at APA. We will start a tour of the cottages at three. Staff will provide an informational meeting until after 3:30. Then we will tour the school after school is dismissed. In this way confidentiality issues are avoided. We will finish by enjoying a meal together. At this meeting we need to elect officers for next year. Be thinking about what leadership role you would like. We also would like to recognize Diane Carr, elementary counselor from Mitchell, who is retiring. We have had a great year, let's keep it up!
Response from Pre-Conference Prevention Framework for the Future Decade
One of the pieces my masters program missed was informing counselors of the different prevention frameworks. I have been to Respect and Protect training, Resiliency training, and 40 Developmental Assets involvement. I have wondered how these fit together or do they fit together. As counselors we are bombarded with different subjects and program ideas. The Prevention Framework pre-conference gave me the impression that all 3 of the above are prevention models and all three are effective. One of those, 40 Developmental Assets I would like to promote further. I have been involved with this framework since the early 90s. The Developmental Assets come from research that Search Institute in Minneapolis has done with thousands of youth across the U.S. They have a yearly national conference and have developed many books, articles, lesson plans, and other tools to go along with the research to make the Developmental Assets workable in schools, classrooms, and communities. Their research began with the Profiles of Student Behavior and Attitudes and has expanded. The 40 Developmental Assets are divided into 8 categories under external and internal assets. Four types of external assets are: support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, and constructive use of time. The four types of internal assets are: commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and positive identity. Each of these types then has numerous other assets that develop the types further. I have used the Profiles of Student Behavior and Attitudes for a comprehensive needs assessment that we have used in our school's consolidated application and as a guide to our Drug and Gun Free activities. I like the theory because it focuses on positive attributes our students have and addresses the negatives in a more proactive rather than reactive manner. Watertown, Pierre, and Mitchell have Healthy Youth/Healthy Communities coalitions that are active and effective and are based on the 40 Developmental Assets. If you are interested or need more information, call me or check out the www.search-institute.org website.
Margie Neugebauer
Palace Pheasant President