By Kristen Levine

In a presentation to the School Committee this past Monday, Lunenburg High School teacher Joshua Koziol brought in members of an intensive new social skills program aimed at improving students’ lives.

    “Students build awareness of themselves and exercise control over their behavior,” said Koziol. “[Control] contributes beneficially to their lives both social and school-related, and improves school performance.”

    The concept of meta-cognition was first introduced in 1976, defined as an ability to control and monitor mental processes. The concept was refined into a pilot program designed at the University of Western Kentucky, crafted into a social skills plan that aims to help students through hard times in their mental and emotional development.

    “Basically we chose this program looking for a way to allow students to take social skills, apply them to a small setting, and see how it impacted their problem-solving ability and the ability to limit bad choices,” said Koziol. “In limiting the bad, we encouraged good choices, and taught how to make better decisions in the future.”

    The program has four key points for participants to learn: self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-correction, and self-direction. With these goals in mind, students learn to control impulsive behavior, examining their thoughts and motives and pausing to ‘look before they leap’.

    Three participants from the program praised the program.

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