Empowerment
Anne Byer-Rajput, Ph.D. Educational Psychology, is the Lead Empowerment Coach for St. Paul Public Schools, primarily serving the 11 secondary EBD programs. Housed at Homecroft School with The Lab, Anne trains St. Paul Public Schools’ staff in Empowerment, facilitates PAS/PSD team development with Mary Tinucci, and coaches special education staff in the implementation of empowerment social skills groups and behavior management techniques in middle schools across the district. Before taking the position as Empowerment Coach, she worked as the Lead at Murray Junior High PSD for 8 years and as a counseling psychologist for 10 years.
anne.byer-rajput@spps.org
(651) 744-1006Homecroft School
1845 Sheridan Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55116
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About Empowerment
Empowerment is a social skills curriculum based on the work of Dr. Steven Stosny’s “Compassionate Power” and Twin Cities RISE! “Personal Empowerment Training.” Developed for use with EBD students in St. Paul Public Schools by Anne Byer-Rajput, Ph.D. (Lead Empowerment Coach) and Kim Stout, MSW (Murray Junior High PSD), it is an approach to people and behavior that is founded on the belief that each person has core value,: every person is loveable, important, and valuable regardless of a their behavior or any other personal characteristics.
Empowerment interprets negative behavior and conflict as the consequence of someone experiencing a core hurt (see below for definition), and encourages both students and staff to look within themselves to identify core hurts and values, find solutions to problems, and discover personal empowerment.
The Empowerment curriculum uses a number of key terms that are useful for self-understanding as well as interpersonal conflict resolution.
Core Value – every person’s birthright. Every person is loveable, important, and valuable regardless of behavior or any other personal characteristics.
Core Hurt – the opposite of core value; negative events in a person’s life that have made them feel unloved, rejected, unimportant, accused or worthless that turn into “buttons” or “triggers” for that emotion. Core hurts are frequently the root cause of interpersonal conflict.
State of Mind – a person’s thoughts and moods which influence their behavior.
Power Mode - the ability to control your state of mind, take care of your self and help others, creatively solve problems, and handle challenges.
Weak Mode – blaming others for your state of mind, feeling helpless and/or worthless, relying on others to do your work and solve your problems, and hurting yourself or others with words, violence, and/or unhealthy choices.
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