BOUNTIFUL — When she started as a teacher for a math credit recovery course at Bountiful High School, Alexa Lou Olson noticed that her students who had flunked out of previous classes knew how to do the work but struggled to find the motivation to complete it.

Many of the students, Olson said, faced challenges in interpersonal relationships with friends and family or were dealing with mental health problems like anxiety and depression.

“It wasn’t that they didn’t understand math, it’s that their basic needs weren’t being met and they were struggling with even wanting to be at school,” she said.

Olson began to talk with students about how they can effectively approach and resolve some of those problems. Those students began performing better in class and turning in more of their work, she said.

She went to Assistant Principal Doug Hammerschmidt with her observation, and as credit remediation coordinator has since worked with school administrators to incorporate the social-emotional learning techniques she applied in her math class to all of the school’s study skills courses.

The program is in its infancy and has been “very much a trial-and-error situation,” Olson said. But so far this academic year, students working to recover credit in study skills courses have made up 96 terms of courses, in total, according to data from Olson. One student has worked to make up 15 terms worth of courses since the beginning of the school year.

“All teachers need to incorporate aspects of social and emotional learning if they want to see any type of academic success,” Olson said. “COVID-19 had a huge impact on these kids and their social lives. They need someone to talk to, they need someone to care about them and they need support.”

In applying the curriculum, Olson said she first changed how she talked to students and the body language she used around them. Her goal was to avoid any behavior that would be perceived as authoritative so that students felt more comfortable working with her.

“Once I learned how to be more approachable, students started to open up to me about what they needed help with,” she said.

In working to resolve some of the problems they are dealing with, students in study skills courses use calendars which they fill out every two weeks. Each week, they set three academic goals and one personal goal.

The calendars aren’t only intended to help students keep their school work organized, but also their lives outside of school. Olson said students include their work schedules if they have a job so they can plan out when to do homework, and if their parents are separated, they mark which days they will be with which parent. Planning out their time helps students establish a routine.

Along with the calendar, students are given 5×7 notecards to write down five things they are proud of themselves for.

“They keep this, and I tell them to read it frequently,” Olson said, “especially when they are struggling.”

Olson has also worked with the school to establish a reward system to motivate students to stay on track with credit makeup. Rewards for accomplishments are tailored to each student’s wants and needs.

“We wanted to make sure that everyone was rewarded in a way that was meaningful to that person,” Olson said.

Students in study skills courses are given a Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports survey to help instructors identify how they would like to be rewarded. At Bountiful High School, those rewards include verbal praise from teachers, the opportunity to go on a five minute walk, five minutes on their phone or receiving treats.

“The biggest part of the curriculum is our attitudes when approaching students. They need to feel cared about and praised,” Olson said.

In most of the class periods, Olson said, there are three teachers. Those teachers work together to make sure that every student is asked how they are doing and what instructors can help them with. “We phrase questions in a way that makes students feel comfortable and like they aren’t a burden,” Olson emphasized.

The class also helps students plan out their futures. They discuss the benefits of having an education, and while in the study skills class many students enroll with Davis Technical College.

As the program evolves, Olson said she hopes to eventually secure a social and emotional learning budget so she can better reward and support struggling students. Working to help students develop social and emotional skills has become increasingly meaningful to her as she has seen students develop a greater interest in school, increase attendance and start to visualize themselves graduating.

“Every day I come to work, I get to see students’ faces light up when they know they are accomplishing something,” Olson said. “I get to see students who want to be productive and love being at school because it is a safe space for them. Each one of my students is someone who deserves compassion and validation.”