Brief Intervention for School Problems

This workshop describes the major principles and strategies of brief intervention. Brief intervention is an efficient, research-supported, culturally sensitive approach that is well-suited to the practical realities of schools and school problems. Although this workshop focuses on intervention with individual students, brief intervention is applicable to a variety of intervention services, levels, and goals including group intervention/group counseling, response-to-intervention (RTI) teams, organizational change, school-wide and classroom-level interventions, and parent/family intervention. Goals and interventions are developed in close collaboration with students, teachers, parents, and other key people. Based on a compelling body of research on “what works” in helping people change, brief intervention conforms the intervention process to clients by honoring and accommodating their unique strengths, resources, opinions, and feedback. Common strategies include: (1) helping students develop specific and personally meaningful goals; (2) developing collaborative, change-focused relationships that promote cooperation and motivation; (3) using “change-focused questions” designed to gather information and activate solutions; (4) viewing every contact as an opportunity for change; (5) crafting unique and creative interventions from the material supplied by students and others; (6) building on “exceptions to the problem;” (7) detecting and empowering small changes throughout the intervention process; (8) working with students viewed as uncooperative or “resistant”; (9) using quick and reliable strategies for obtaining feedback from students and others, and making related adjustments; and (10) addressing other school-based applications of brief intervention principles including group counseling, parent/teacher consultation, and intervention assistance teams. The workshop includes numerous videotaped and “live” demonstrations, experiential exercises, and practice/application activities designed to increase the practical relevance and applicability of training content.

Workshop Agenda

Opening Exercise

What is Brief Intervention?

Three Guidelines of Effective Intervention

Empirical and Conceptual Foundations

Building Cooperative Relationships with Students and Others

BI Strategies/Interventions

• Utilizing Exceptions and Other Client Resources

• Problem-Busting

Evaluating and Maintaining Progress

Troubleshooting When Things Don’t Go as Planned 

CEU/Learning Objectives

Participants will learn how to: