SOAR Project

SOAR’s aim is to promote SOcial-emotional Adjustment and Resilience in children in Oswego County, NY.

This program began in 2013 as a partnership between SUNY Oswego and the Oswego City School District. We are now working exclusively with the Hannibal Central School District. Through this program, college students train to become certified prevention specialists and visit elementary school classrooms to work with children who may be at-risk for developing social and emotional difficulties.

The SOAR program has utilized a variety of evidence-based social-emotional learning curricula, including the Social Skills Group Intervention protocol (SS GRIN). We have recently adopted Second Step® programs help students build social-emotional skills—like nurturing positive relationships, managing emotions, and setting goals—so they can thrive in school and in life. Using this protocol, students learn about:

• Introducing Yourself Properly • Personal Space • Respect • Consequences/Stop & Think • Good Listening •  Effective Verbal & Nonverbal Communication • Cooperation • Compliment Sharing • Compromise  • Identifying & Managing Emotions

The depth and scope of the SOAR curricular concepts varies and is dependent on the grade level of the elementary students. SOAR seeks to explicitly teach and give direct instruction on such social skills and concepts that the students may otherwise never be exposed to and may not learn through implicitly interacting in their environment with peers. It is through this explicit and direction instruction that we hope to prevent the development of poor social functioning or successfully intervene and aid such initiative such as anti-bullying.