Pyramid Coaching Project

Healthy Social-Emotional Development:
the #1 Indicator of School and Life Success!

The issue: Early childhood teachers have reported an increasing number of young children exhibiting challenging behaviors and mental health challenges. Additionally, research overwhelmingly indicates the importance of teaching social-emotional skills to young children. The Pyramid Coaching Project is our response to these findings: it is offered across the San Juan Region to increase social-emotional development and decrease challenging behavior in children.

 What is the Pyramid Coaching Project?

The Pyramid Coaching Project is a program that builds young children’s social-emotional skills and improves early childhood mental health.

How it works:

The Pyramid Model is an evidence-based educational framework that builds the social-emotional competency of young learners and decreases challenging behaviors. Children in Pyramid Model classrooms learn skills essential to school and life success – skills like problem solving, how to make a friend, and how to identify a range of emotions in themselves and others.

  • Why “pyramid?” The framework takes the approach of increasingly targeted intervention, meaning that all children in the classroom receive social-emotional instruction and learning materials, and then additional intervention is given to students exhibiting more challenging behavior (see diagram).

  • The Pyramid Coaching Project builds on the Pyramid Model. Through the Pyramid Coaching Project, Bright Futures offers individualized coaching and training to help early childhood teachers implement the Pyramid Model in their classrooms.

    • Teachers learn how to use positive, descriptive language and set up schedules, routines, and educational activities that support varying ranges of social-emotional and behavioral needs.

    • The Pyramid Coaching Project is offered in Delta, Gunnison, Hinsdale, Montrose, Ouray, and San Miguel counties. 

 
 

Parent Resources

Check out our YouTube channel!
The Pyramid Coaching Project offers videos in English and Spanish to help parents put these crucial skills in practice at home.

 

Impact

  • 331 Teachers

    A cumulative total of 331 teachers and staff received Pyramid Model training in the past four years. In year four, 67 new individuals received training, continuing the steady growth of the program’s capacity-development in the region.

  • 3,255 Children

    In year four, the number of children that benefited form the Project increased to a cumulative total of 3,255 - a growth of 152% that far exceeds the strategic plan goal of 30% growth.

  • 92% Improved School Readiness

    More than 91% of teachers receiving Pyramid Model Coaching reported an increase in children’s school readiness.

  • — Early Childhood Educator

    “Being a Pyramid Model teacher has instilled more confidence and passion in me. I see the change and growth in children that will impact their entire lives. I am impacting future generations”

  • — Early Childhood Educator

    “The Pyramid Model showed me that teaching social-emotional skills to young children was just as, if not more important, than the academic piece.”

  • — Early Childhood Educator

    “It has made the learning environment a more peaceful place where children love to come, and families are comfortable leaving their children”

  • — Early Childhood Educator

    “One student had difficulty using words when upset and immediately went into a meltdown. Now she is able to breathe, talk, solve problems, and generally not let small problems bother her so much, if any!”