Ridgeview Elementary School in Falcon School District 49 has been nominated for the Capturing Kidsí Hearts National Showcase Schools Award, presented by the Flippen Group, a management consulting firm based in Texas.According to the Flippen Groupís website, the Capturing Kidsí Hearts program outlines a process that helps educators ìexperience socio-emotional learning techniques that will provide them with classroom facilitation tools for peaking student interest, establish collaborative agreements of behavior in every classroom, creating high performing groups, increasing pro-social skills, creating more time on-task, and increasing student performance.îTheresa Ritz, principal at RVES, said the school has been implementing the CKH process for about four years, when the entire POWER zone decided to start using it. ìWe trained all of our licensed staff and some of our classified staff at that time,î she said. ìCapturing Kidsí Hearts is really foundational to everything else that we do. It is our philosophy, along with the Flippen Groupís, that if you have strong relationships with people, then everything is better.îRitz said the goal of the Capturing Kidsí Hearts process is to help build meaningful connections between students and their peers, students and staff and staff and parents. ìWe want kids to excel academically, but we also want them to feel safe and cared for,î she said. ìWe know kids that are comfortable will learn more, retain more, and get along better. Itís a domino effect of positive things.îAccording to the Flippen Groupís website, Capturing Kidsí Hearts was developed in 1990; since then, campuses across the nation have used the process to help create the socio-emotional safety net necessary for learning. The National Showcase Schools Award recognizes and celebrates schools that have implemented Capturing Kidsí Hearts and go above and beyond expectations to build an environment where students are connected to one another and eager to learn.Ritz said RVES is one of 134 schools nominated for the National Showcase Schools Award for the 2017-2018 school year and one of six in Colorado. To be considered, Ritz said the school had to go through a rigorous application process that included surveying staff and students and submitting a variety of data, which the Flippen Group uses to determine the nominees from the thousands that implement Capturing Kidsí Hearts.Once a school has been nominated, Ritz said the Flippen Group then conducts site visits and looks for specific criteria like interactions between students and staff members. They consider the main Capturing Kidsí Hearts strategies to make sure those are in place and effective; and they also meet with various groups, including a parents group, student group and a teacher leadership group, she said.Since teachers go through quite a bit of training during their careers, Ritz said it is rare to find a program that moves everyone on a high level; that is what Capturing Kidsí Hearts has done. ìEveryone really believes in the process,î she said. ìIt is still work, though. It is easy to get distracted by lots of other things but this process means a lot to the staff. They really do love children above all else.îRitz said the Flippen Group is still conducting site visits, but has indicated that they hope to announce the award winners after D 49ís spring break, which runs from March 19 through April 1.ìJust to make it this far and be an official nominee is quite the accomplishment,î Ritz said. ìIt says so much about our staff, our students, our parents and the work that we are doing. Regardless of the outcome, I am extremely proud of the staff and really the entire community because it is not just teachers; it is the support staff, the classified staff, the office staff.ìWhether we win the award or not, what we are doing is the most important thing we can be doing for the kids.î
