STAR Program

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    We are part of the STAR Program in the Santa Rosa County School district.  This program consists of highly individualized and very small group (9 maximum) training and education of students who are able to perform with core standards cognitively but unable to manage behaviors within a general education or inclusive setting. The program emphasizes on a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) approach.  Research (Kuehn, BM (2007) - children with mental illness, Brunstein Klomek, A. & Stanley, B. (2006) -depression and suicide in adolescents, and Connolly, SD & Brunstein, GA 2006 - child and adolescent anxiety disorders) shows clearly that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) approaches show improvement in children with emotional disturbances.

     The program is based on the scientifically supported assumption that most emotional and behavioral reactions are learned. Therefore, the goal is to help students unlearn their unwanted reactions and to learn a new way of reacting to situations. When students understand how and why they are doing well, they can continue doing what they are doing to make themselves well. While our teachers are NOT cognitive behavioral therapists, the approach used in CBT is one which is feasible for use in the classroom.

     A central component to this type of approach is a very structured program of discrete learned behaviors in which the instructor identifies unwanted behaviors to extinguish and identifies positive behaviors that we wish to replace the unwanted behaviors with. While eventually it is the goal for children to internalize these behaviors, they need an enormous amount of external assistance and structure to extinguish negative learned behaviors and replace them with positive behaviors.

     The program consists of a teacher, paraprofessional, and crisis intervention specialist and no more than 3-9 students for each class period. Program utilizes the behavioral content identified in the behavioral curriculum currently under development as well as components of cognitive behavioral management. Students will be assisted in identifying behaviors that are inappropriate in the academic environment, exploring triggers for those behaviors, identifying positive behaviors with which to replace those unwanted behaviors and practicing those positive behaviors in a safe, nurturing and structured environment. The program will use a structured reward approach to build external buy in and eventually transfer the behaviors to an internal, intrinsic motivation.

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