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Merrimack High School to join study for social emotional leaning app

By Grace Pecci - Staff Writer | Oct 16, 2019

MERRIMACK – After unanimous approval from the Merrimack School Board, Merrimack High School will participate in a study by the Prevention Innovations Resource Center at the University of New Hampshire, which will aid in developing a mobile app to support healthy relationships and social emotional learning for students in grades nine through 12.

Merrimack High School is one of several schools across the state to participate in the study.

Last week, Project Director Delilah Smith brought the idea to the school board.

Smith said the proposed project goal is to develop a mobile app for high school students that encourages healthy relationships and supports social emotional learning through the use of technology.

“We’re really looking at violence prevention and response-based features,” Smith said.

Smith said when they were first notified that Prevention Innovations Research Center received funding for this project, she met with New Hampshire School Administrators Association Executive Director Carl Ladd.

” (Ladd) talked to us about the schools that are doing some really great work, and Merrimack High School was one of those schools. … We talked about what you’re doing with social emotional learning and curriculum development,” Smith said.

Smith then met with Merrimack School District Superintendent Mark McLaughlin to discuss the matter further.

“A lot of our work in this area is developing self-awareness and looking at social emotional learning,” Smith added.

The project to develop this app will be funded by the National Science Foundation and has the support of New Hampshire Deputy DOE Commissioner Christine Brennan as well as Executive Director of New Hampshire School Administrators Association Carl Ladd, Smith said.

Upon the project’s completion, participating New Hampshire schools will be given access to the mobile app and will be encouraged to use the app to support current SEL learning initiatives.

The project has three optional phases that the schools can choose to be a part of.

Phase I, lasting from October to the end of December, will consist of designing the actual app.

“Our goal is to really engage administrators, high school students, teachers and parents to look at what it is high school students need and want out of a mobile app,” Smith said.

The hope, Smith said, is to collect data that can be developed into a prototype of a high school healthy relationship app that is tethered to the school’s community.

Project officials will then conduct focus groups with administrators, teachers, professional staff, parents and students as part of Phase II.

“What we’d like to do is gather the data we collected via student, teachers, parents and administrators and then create a prototype of this particular app. When we create that prototype, our hope is to go back and demonstrate the prototype and solicit some feedback from students,” Smith said.

The product is set to be finalized in September 2020.

“The hope is we create the prototype in the winter and then bring it back to your students, bring it back to your staff and then in the summer we’re hoping to actually develop the app, then encourage your students to download the app and then gain feedback,” Smith said.

During her presentation, Smith gave several examples of ideas that have risen in focus groups at other schools, many of them being preventative-based features.

One idea was a feature called “Time to Leave.” This would allow students to receive a fake call or text to get them out of an uncomfortable situation.

The other prevention-based feature that has come up in focus groups and interventions is called “Expect Me.”

Smith said “Expect Me” is a feature where a student can notify friends or family members that they are leaving a destination and can be expected in another destination within a certain time frame.

This also would allow for tracking of that student if they chose to enable their location.

Another suggestion Smith has received is the “Find Help” feature, which would provide resources that a student might need at school or in the community such as a counselor or the police.

“It’s really looking at putting the resources in students’ hands,” Smith said.

The data that will be collected will not have any of the student’s names, for privacy reasons.

“What we are collecting is the year of the student, gender of the student and that’s really all we’re collecting, and the information is looking at, again, not specific content but it’s looking at how do you as a student use mobile apps and what attracts you to a mobile app,” Smith said.

After Smith’s presentation, School Board member Cinda Guagliumi made the motion to allow Prevention and Innovations Resource Center at UNH to conduct research at Merrimack High School to support the development of a mobile app to support healthy relationships for students in grades nine through 12.

“It’s my hope that we support, as a school board, innovative approaches to problems that our students are facing, that we support the safety of our students and we also support education in general,” Guagliumi said.

Grace Pecci may be reached at 603-594-1243 or gpecci@nashuatelegraph.com.

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