Counseling Services
A Team Effort
The Counseling Services Team at The Calais School plays a crucial role in the emotional and, in many cases, physical wellness of the students. The role of the Team is to facilitate effective behavioral and social skills development and integration by providing emotional and clinical support for all of our students.
Counseling Services also supports our staff as they work to meet the needs of the students, individually and collectively. Students, teachers, specialists, and supervisors all become team players in order to establish and maintain a safe and productive learning environment. The Counseling Services Team coordinates and oversees all of the intervention strategies required to assist students and their families.
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Counseling Services Team
The Counseling Services Team believes that there are two fundamental principles that guide the intervention strategy:
1. Counselors are utilized most effectively when readily visible and available at the time of need.
2. Proactive interventions provide greater opportunities for success.
By being proactive and highly visible throughout the School and within the classroom environment, counseling services become an integral part of the academic program. As a result, Calais students receive the level of counseling best suited to meet their individual needs so that they can adjust to the ever-changing demands of life at school and beyond. However, it is important to note and understand that the Counseling Services offered at The Calais School are not intended as a substitute for intensive private therapy when required. 
Crisis Counseling, Group Counseling, and Individual Counseling at The Calais School all focus on the development of the following skills as they relate to the school environment:
• Social Skills Training
• Decision-Making and Problem-Solving
• Conflict Resolution
• Anger Management
• Character Development
• Social Emotional Competence
• Citizenship Skills
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Token Economy
Built into the academic program at The Calais School is a well-structured Behavioral Program. Together, teachers and students are guided to form working relationships in their combined effort to reach academic and behavioral goals.
The Behavioral Program represents a community effort to assist students in making both academic and behavioral changes. Strategies included in the program are:
• The development of a personalized set of five target goals to be modified is established for each student in the program. These target goals are defined through a collaborative effort by the staff working with the child. The targeted goals are reviewed on a regular basis and modified when appropriate.
• The Point Card System affords the student an opportunity to pair the five goals that are targeted for change with a visual feedback system to monitor their progress. This system allows each student to know, at all times, the areas that are being met with success and those that will require greater effort on their part to change. Points are awarded for each target area successfully performed each period throughout the school day.
• The Level System allows each student the opportunity to earn greater privileges within the program, and directly reinforces each student's effort to successfully modify their behaviors.
• The School Store is an additional reinforcement for the students. Students may choose to spend or save the points they earned to purchase items that may be of interest to them.
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Counseling and Resource Center (CRC) Services
The Counseling and Resource Center Teachers provide in-class support to our students. For instance, if a student experiences difficulty in making a good choice when confronted with a problem situation, they may need to temporarily leave the classroom environment and go to the Counseling and Resource Center. This allows the class to continue while providing the individual student with the opportunity to refocus and work toward an alternate solution to the problem.
The Counseling and Resource Center Teacher provides:
• in-class support for students and staff
• time-out management
• intervention counseling
• monitoring of problematic behavior within the program
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