Students’ access to opportunities in life largely depends on their access to diverse, supportive relationships. Now, updated Christensen Institute research illustrates the impact students’ connections and relationships have on their ability to achieve success in adulthood–and underscores the need for schools to track this data as they measure students’ progress.

The updated report augments ongoing research and provides education leaders with the tools, knowledge, and sample survey items to make important strides toward measuring students’ networks in more equitable, meaningful, and actionable ways.

Emerging research from other organizations has strengthened the need to understand just how important relationships and resources are to students, particularly as opportunity gaps grow even wider.

In 2021, nonprofit think tank Brookings Institution published “How We Rise,” which analyzes findings from a survey developed by research partner Econometrica to assess how individuals’ education, job, and housing networks impacted their chances of economic mobility.

A similar research collaboration between Strada, a national social impact organization, and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) evaluated undergraduate students’ engagement in career preparation activities, including surveying students about their participation in various social capital-building opportunities and their confidence tapping into alumni and professional networks.

I was recently working with middle school educators and asked them about the biggest challenges they are facing. Without skipping a beat, they said dealing with discipline issues, students who at times just don’t seem to care, and their own lack of motivation.

This made me think about the struggles of maintaining a positive school culture, how students often do not get what they need, and how exhausted these educators must be. Whether we are talking about life in general or education specifically, it’s very difficult to adjust, see different perspectives, and find joy when you are in the thick of it.

But, it’s not impossible.

Understanding joy

Joy is an interesting emotion.  In her recent book, Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown defines joy as “an intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure, and appreciation.” This is different from happiness, which Brown defines as “feeling pleasure often related to the immediate environment or current circumstances.”

The data is clear: Our students are in the midst of a mental health crisis. A survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one in three high school students experienced poor mental health during the pandemic, and nearly half of all students felt persistently hopeless.

We’re now seeing the ripple effects of three years of education disruptions and seismic shifts in learning structures, which underscore the vital importance of caring for the whole student. Our students’ difficulties mirror the increasing anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation that teens nationwide are experiencing. Over the past two years, Tempe Union High School District has centered its focus on prioritizing student mental health. Here’s how we did it–and what we’ve learned.

Leveraging the power of student voices

When we returned to in-person learning, we saw that our students needed even more support than we imagined. We didn’t hesitate when it came to getting them the resources they needed, because timing is critical for mental health challenges.

We asked our student representatives what social-emotional support they and their fellow students needed. That conversation evolved into a districtwide comprehensive mental health policy adopted by Tempe Union’s governing board in 2021. Cementing a resolution around social-emotional wellness into our policies signaled to our students and community that holistic health is a major priority for Tempe Union.

Children in America are in crisis–struggling with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues at unprecedented levels. As a child and adolescent psychiatrist for the Behavioral Health Center at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, I have had a first-hand look at the increasing numbers of youth struggling with mental health.  

From losses and disruptions caused by the pandemic to increases in gun violence and school shootings to social injustices, children are inundated with messaging across many platforms that negatively impacts their mental health. 

In response to the influx of mental health cases, the American Academy of Pediatrics has declared a national emergency and the U.S. Surgeon General has issued a public health advisory. Over 60 percent of youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment. Even in states with the greatest access, nearly 1 in 3 are going without treatment. 

Louisiana ranks 49th in child well-being and 62.5 percent of youth diagnosed with major depression did not receive mental health services.  

To support a child’s mental health, we need to meet them where they are — at school. 

Barriers to mental health care 

Prior to COVID-19, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 1 in 5 children suffered from mental illness. Data from 2021 indicates that number jumped to 37.1 percent. Yet, only about 20 percent of these children received care from a mental health provider. Access to these mental health services is quite limited for various reasons. 

Some families live in communities where they are unable to find mental health care due to the lack of providers in their area. Other families, particularly those in minority and low-income households, encounter financial and transportation barriers, making it more difficult for them to access mental health services. To tap into these services, they must travel far or be placed on long waitlists to receive care. 

Alongside these barriers, stigma associated with mental health remains pervasive – and this is especially apparent in minority communities. According to the American Psychiatric Association, African Americans, Hispanic, and Latinx communities endorse significant depressive and anxiety related symptoms, and their suicide risk is gradually increasing over time. Studies show when students of color are treated in the medical system, they may experience discrimination, judgment, and implicit or explicit bias. As we work with minority communities, it is important for us to look back to where the distrust is coming from, and re-establish trust by remaining curious and collaborative, remove barriers, and ensure they have access to equitable care.

Creating a school culture of mental health awareness 

When putting the pieces together to create the overall picture of a robust, school-based mental health program, another big component is the educational and training piece for school staff. 

As a social worker for an in-district classroom inside of a Texas elementary school, I have the honor of serving some of the most vulnerable students in our community. On March 21, World Social Work Day, it’s important to highlight the essential role social workers play in promoting the well-being of our students and their families.

Every day, I have the privilege of witnessing the incredible resilience of our students, who face challenges that many adults would struggle to overcome. Food insecurity, trauma, and family instability are just some of the obstacles facing our students, and these challenges can have a profound impact on their academic performance, emotional health and future opportunities.

This is where social workers come in. Social workers are a unique component in the education system because we are trained to focus on both the student and their environment. I work alongside special education teachers and other staff to provide the support that our students need to thrive.

Social workers explore external factors that impact a child’s emotional and academic learning and identify strategies to improve their situation. It is our job to help kiddos be successful and feel secure.

Eighty-four percent of teachers are concerned about student mental health, saying that students are developmentally behind in self-regulation and relationship building compared to students prior to the pandemic. Teachers also report that they are increasingly the target of disruptive student behavior and that classroom incidents involving physical violence have more than doubled since the onset of the pandemic.

These are among the findings of a new survey report from education company EAB at the School Superintendent Association (AASA) National Conference on Education (#NCE2023). The report summarizes findings from a survey of more than 1,000 district and school administrators, teachers, and student support staff.

“Students who exhibit disruptive behaviors are often dealing with underlying mental or social health issues,” said EAB Senior Director of K-12 Research Ben Court. “Unfortunately, nearly 60 percent of teachers feel that pressure to boost lagging academic outcomes leaves them with insufficient time to address behavioral issues, and only 45 percent feel they are receiving adequate training to do so.”

EAB released a second report at the conference, “2023 Voice of the Superintendent” that highlights findings from a separate survey of 198 school district superintendents across 37 states.

The world needs its mentors and educators. Teachers are the ones who equip the generations to come with the tools necessary to excel. It’s as simple as the relationship between cause and effect. Without them, society would dwindle, and the forward progress of everything would slow down to a snail’s pace. After all, education is one of the pillars that make up a thriving society, making teachers essential.

Teachers are also human beings. They have a life worth living and carry similar struggles as everyone else. The degree of those struggles may vary, but today, we’re going to hone our focus specifically on teachers who either have a disability or some form of chronic illness.

There are a lot of stressors that are one teacher in today’s world, and to have to deal with physical, mental, and/or emotional issues only stands to make it more difficult to maintain a sustainable well-being. Let’s explore the ways we can provide relief and support for teachers with disabilities.

Tips for Teachers with Chronic Pain or a Disability

There are a few ways that teachers can mitigate the obstacles of chronic pain and disability in the workplace. Remember that the specific issue that teachers deal with doesn’t have to define them. Their qualifications, character, and competency will outshine any ailment, whether it’s apparent or not.

• Be honest with yourself and others – You must have the freedom to express that condition in the way that suits you. It’s not something you need to hide, but it’s also not something you have to broadcast. It’s not dictating your life in a way that could make you less eligible for a teaching position than anyone else.
• Know your own limitations – It’s important that you self-identify what your own physical and mental limitations are so that you don’t accidentally get thrust into a situation that you can’t handle. You should consider expressing your known limits with the administration so they can be mindful of what they can ask of you.
• Join the DTN – The Disabled Teachers Network (DTN) is a source of community and connections intended to serve and assist disabled teachers. It contains a wealth of helpful materials and resources that can help disabled teachers around the world find harmony in their work.
• Use the superpower of empathy – Being an individual who suffers from a chronic illness or disability gives you a unique vantage point. Although it can feel burdensome to deal with discomfort or inconvenience, you may actually be able to harness that issue to help others.
• Know your rights and permissions afforded to you by the ADA – The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is there to protect all individuals who suffer from some sort of disability. It is meant to protect employees and impose accommodation. You can rely on the ADA to request reasonable workplace accommodations that will help you perform your job better and in a way that won’t be needlessly taxing on you, physically or mentally.

Ways That Employers Can Help Teachers with Disabilities and Chronic Pain

Of course, while they should play an active part, it isn’t the sole responsibility of teachers to support themselves. Administrators and employers should also put provisions in place to provide the structure and support educators need.

When GEMS American Academy returned to in-person schooling after the COVID shutdowns, one of the first things our positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS) team noticed was that we had a significant increase in behavior problems. We knew that our students would respond well to rewards for positive behaviors, but in the past, we found it difficult to manage a schoolwide system and to ensure it was used consistently by teachers.

We decided to continue using our updated House system, CritterCoin, to track positive behaviors and manage rewards, and took some extra steps to encourage teachers to use it. Each year our use of the system has grown. In year one, some teachers struggled to make the transition, but those same teachers are now taking the lead in using it to encourage positive behaviors in their classrooms. Here’s how we’ve been working to bring teachers and students on board.

Addressing Negative Behaviors

Though we believe the most effective way to improve student behavior is to encourage positive behaviors, negative behaviors don’t just go away if we ignore them. In order to be able to fully address them, we need to have the necessary data to be able to identify key areas of concern. We’d previously been using a shared Google form where all teachers could log negative behaviors, but this data can easily be lost and is hard to track. Due to those struggles, we are moving our behavior tracking system over to PowerSchool so that our admin is able to see the log of information for any student for as long as they are in our school.

Once that data is all collected together, we can see patterns, such as cohorts of students who are having a difficult time or problem areas in the school where incidents tend to occur more frequently. If we notice that young students are frequently having issues in the bathroom, for example, we will send lesson plans to the teachers in those early grades so that they can take their students to the bathroom—or wherever else the behavior is occurring—and teach them what the expected behaviors in that place are.

We also have posters printed to put up in specific areas, such as the hallways, bathrooms, classrooms, auditorium, outdoor play areas, and even on the iPad and laptop trolleys. These also focus on the positive behaviors we’d like to see in those areas, which are all based on our four values. Those attributes are that we are Respectful, we take Ownership, we have a positive Attitude, and we are Responsible. Our school mascot is a wildcat, so we use the acronym ROAR to help students remember these attributes.

How Our PBIS System Works

To award and track points by students and by House, we use the CritterCoin system. Right now we have two separate systems because our secondary students were using a different set of values to identify positive behaviors, but we plan to combine the two with a single set of shared attributes in the next few years. We also plan to add a school-wide display with the running House totals at the same time.

In this episode of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan:

• 3 strategies to support student well-being and SEL
• Building culture and community takes more than a committee
• Fostering student well-being

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

A notable new lawsuit against social media industry leaders by the Seattle school district has left legal experts divided on how the case will unfold.

The complaint — which alleges that the school district and its students have been harmed by social media’s negative effects on youth mental health — could lead to sweeping changes in the industry, one expert said. Or, as others expect, it could fizzle out with little chance of winning in court.

Seattle Public Schools alleges that the companies — which include Meta, Google, Snapchat, and ByteDance, the company behind TikTok — designed their platforms intentionally to grow their user bases and “exploit the psychology and neurophysiology of their users into spending more and more time on their platforms,” according to a complaint filed earlier this month.

 Kent School District in Washington filed a similar complaint within days.Become a Chalkbeat sponsorhttps://828600fe5aa45bf05a2a149ca5e15adc.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

If the evidence and argument put forward by the districts are sound, a win could usher in a wave of similar litigation by school districts across the nation, said Derek W. Black, an education law professor at the University of South Carolina. 

“What’s on the line here is not the money,” he said. “What’s on the line is the court saying these groups are responsible and therefore they must stop this behavior. That’s what’s on the line: the mental health of the current generation and those that follow.”

Others aren’t so sure.

“It is not a winning lawsuit, and it shouldn’t be,” said Aaron Saiger, an education law professor at Fordham University.

Here’s a look at where the case stands and what legal experts anticipate the future may hold:

What the school district and social media companies are saying

Seattle’s school district has argued that social media companies are maximizing profit at the expense of the mental health of young audiences, who spend significant amounts of time on the platforms and report associating them with stress and anxiety, according to the complaint.

Meanwhile, the social media companies named in the lawsuit emphasized their own commitments to teen and child safety.

“We want teens to be safe online,” said Antigone Davis, global head of safety at Meta, noting the company has developed parental supervision tools and other privacy and safety measures on teen accounts. “We don’t allow content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, and of the content we remove or take action on, we identify over 99% of it before it’s reported to us.”

Spokespeople for Google and Snapchat highlighted similar steps they’ve taken to enhance safety for teenagers and children, like allowing parents to impose screen time limits or monitor whom their kids are connecting with on the platform. ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit seeks a court order labeling the actions of the company a public nuisance under Washington law, a term that applies to actions that endanger a considerable number of people. It asks the court to tell the companies halt the practices noted in the suit and provide financial compensation to the district. 

How likely the case is to succeed

To Black, a school district is an unexpected plaintiff, but one he believes could have higher odds of success than individual families.

He drew comparisons to cases against the tobacco industry, which grew more successful as governments pursued lawsuits based on the harmful impact of the product on state healthcare systems. An individual might struggle to prove their negative experiences were clearly caused by the product but with broader trend data to refer to, the argument becomes more compelling, he said.

The focus on product design, rather than content on the platform, adds viability to the case, Black added.

“This isn’t just about holding the internet in general liable,” he said. “This is about specific affirmative actions that Google, YouTube, Facebook and others are taking.”Become a Chalkbeat sponsorhttps://828600fe5aa45bf05a2a149ca5e15adc.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

But others believe that it points to a common marketing strategy and doesn’t make a compelling case for legal liability.

“A lot of product marketers would love to addict their customers and do everything in their power to do so — that’s called product marketing,” said Eric Goldman, a technology and marketing law professor at Santa Clara University. “We don’t hold many services or products liable for addicting customers.”

Casinos, for example, aren’t held liable for gambling addictions, he said.

Saiger questioned whether the district had standing. Rather than tobacco cases, he felt it was more comparable to a school district suing a sugary food manufacturer for making children ill in their district.

“It’s a very long causation chain, and I don’t think the courts will be inclined to let the school district pursue it,” he said. “To say, ‘We’re service providers to children whose mental health is affected by thousands of things, and we picked you,’ strikes me as a very attenuated way to understand liability under the nuisance law.”

Goldman also questioned the timing of the case, noting that an ongoing lawsuit by dozens of families against social media companies has made similar arguments. That case, as well as the pending U.S. Supreme Court case Gonzalez v. Google, could have dramatic implications for the school district lawsuits, he said.

“I would assume the [school district] case is going to fail,” he said. “But the battle is taking place in the legislatures as well.” 

What the case could mean — win or lose

Regardless of outcome, the case will attract additional media attention and public scrutiny, experts said. A win could spark other lawsuits and bring changes to social media companies, while a loss might spur litigators to shift tactics in future cases.

“If the evidence that’s in the complaint is true, it is one of, if not, the most important lawsuits to be filed during my lifetime,” Black said. “Because it stretches across so many states … This case, though it would have to be replicated elsewhere, is potentially a huge turning point that is equally significant for the entire nation.”

It’s complicated to think about what remedies are possible in the case, Saiger said. He believes social media offers a public good, unlike tobacco or asbestos, for example.

“A plausible remedy in the opioid case was to take the pills off the market,” he said. “That’s not a plausible remedy, in my opinion, for social media, because it has social value.”

Though the court could intervene and seek changes to social media companies’ business practices, such as insisting against certain marketing strategies or requiring stronger age verification, Saiger said such changes seemed more likely to come from a state legislative body.

Goldman added the court is unlikely to consider the benefits of social media. 

“It’s not really the court’s job to try to balance that kind of evidence, particularly because the proponents of the benefits of social media might not be in the courtroom,” he said. “That’s what legislators are supposed to do.”

Some state legislatures have already taken steps in that direction. California lawmakers, for example, passed the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which imposes more stringent requirements that online services identify and protect minors on their sites.

Signed into law last fall, it faces a legal challenge from the tech trade group NetChoice, which includes major industry players like Google, TikTok, and Meta.

Still, if the school district case is able to proceed, the stakes could be enormous.

“If the plaintiffs tell their story to the judge and are successful, the consequences could be a radical reshaping of the internet,” Goldman said. “That’s a good reason for us to both be concerned about the lawsuit and to question whether or not this is the right way to solve the problem.”

What the science says about social media’s effects

As legal experts disagree about the viability of the case, the science, too, isn’t completely clear.

While research has drawn links between, say, social media use and anxiety or certain types of content and maladaptive behavior, it has not established a clear causal relationship between social media and worsening trends in youth mental health and depression, said Mitch Prinstein, the chief science officer at the American Psychological Association.

“Is social media, by itself, and just kids’ normal use of it, solely responsible for the national trend we’re seeing in youth mental health? Probably not,” he said, adding he wasn’t commenting on the legal arguments. “From a scientific perspective we can’t say that, nor do I know that we could ever say that.”

The claim becomes murkier when accounting for other variables, like economic stress, increased divisiveness across the country, and changing depictions of mental health in media and popular culture. Further muddying the waters are potential upsides associated with social media use.

“On the flipside, kids are now using tech to have their primary interaction with other peers — and we do know there’s very deep research that shows that our interpersonal relationships have a very profound effect on our risk for mental health difficulties and even our physical health,” Prinstein added. “And we are seeing that kids are reporting pretty directly that their social media experiences are making them feel more isolated and lonely.”

So is social media fueling national trends in youth mental health?

“It’s just very hard to answer scientifically,” he said.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education.

Related:
Avoiding the pitfalls of social media in school

The pandemic’s on students’ social and emotional well-being continues to be felt in schools nationwide. Here at Lincoln County R-III School District in Missouri, we are no different. Many of our students are struggling with regulating their emotions. We’re seeing students needing more social and emotional support.

The Lincoln County Resource Board (LCRB) Mid-year School Based Programs Assessment (January, 2022) listed the most critical behavioral/mental health (BH/MH) issues school personnel believed students were facing. 

• The second most critical BH/MH issue was “anxiety, worry a lot, fear” (93 percent).
• The third most critical BH/MH issue was “controlling emotions, anger management, and conflict resolution” (78 percent), similar to the May and December of 2020 results. 

These challenges are not unique to our school district; in fact, the demand for social and emotional learning (SEL) programs has grown rapidly as more and more districts see this need grow and recognize the value of implementing these programs. A 2021 Tyton Partners report noted school and district spending on SEL grew approximately 45 percent between November 2019 and April 2021 and that student wellbeing had become the top priority among schools and districts.

Our district implemented a social and emotional learning initiative in 2019, which
includes a PK-12 SEL curriculum (RULER), a SEL screener (DESSA) and interventions and preventions such as SEL focused Building Intervention Teams. We also adopted online student safety and wellness courses for students, which reinforce some of these SEL skills such as managing stress and developing healthy relationships.

We learned during this process that it’s important to take a multi-pronged approach to SEL. Here are some ways to do this:

1. Prioritize SEL at the district level. Our district recognized we needed a more
systematic approach to social and emotional wellness for students and staff. So, we created the Director of Social Emotional Learning & Support position. The Director of Social Emotional Learning and Supports is primarily focused on developing and leading all District social and emotional supports for students and assisting school staff with appropriate interventions as necessary. This position also coordinates with outside community agencies for student support. We’ve selected RULER as our SEL curriculum and the DESSA as our SEL screener. We created plans for interventions on SEL wellness, dedicating time to helping students specifically work on skills they need instruction with.

When implementing an SEL initiative, it’s important to have a systematic approach and to take it slow. To aid with the districtwide approach it’s helpful to have it a part of the district level comprehensive improvement plan.  Then, each building can develop their building level improvement plans to set targeted goals to help reach the district’s end goal.

2. Find programs that help cover multiple bases – and set aside dedicated time to do them. Our district adopted online Student Safety and Wellness Courses from Vector Solutions because they are excellent tools to help promote discussions about important issues like bullying, stress management, having healthy relationships, and more. The courses help reinforce social and emotional skills and also help us meet state requirements around some of these issues. Adopting programs that serve multiple needs can help a district be more efficient and more targeted in how it’s supporting students. We look for tools that are going to check multiple boxes.

Once you have those multi-purpose tools, create dedicated class time to use them. Our district has what we call “WIN Time” (“What I Need”) – a dedicated period of time during homeroom for intervention. It can be used for academics or SEL. A teacher can use that time, for example, to have students watch and have a group discussion around one of the Vector video-based lessons.

3. Practice – and reward – positive behavior. This can go a long way toward helping students grow their social and emotional skills and in creating a positive school climate. Troy South Middle School, which serves more than 800 students in grades 6-8, is a great example of a school with a strong focus on this. Middle school can be a tough transition for some students. Troy South Middle School implemented a school wide Positive Behavior Support program with the goal of helping to build positive relationships between students and their peers and teachers while also outlining/explaining
building-wide expectations. The school’s Positive Behavior Supports Matrix describes positive behaviors students can practice in various settings such as using positive language with staff and peers in the classroom or being a responsive listener and active participant during assemblies. Students can earn “RRAP tickets” (Respectful, Ready to learn, Accountable, Positive) for making good behavioral choices, which can be redeemed for various privileges and/or rewards.

The school also does kindness challenges in the fall and spring to support positive behavior. And teachers reinforce behavior by using positive language. For instance, the school has a “chill zone” and a “focus room.” Instead of having negative connotations, it’s explained to students that they don’t go to these spaces because they’re in trouble, it’s because they need space. You need to set the right language and tone of your voice. If a student is having a negative reaction to a situation, we have them take what RULER calls a “Meta-Moment”–a brief step back from the situation where they pause and think about how to turn that reaction positive.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to SEL. However, implementing SEL on a district-wide level, using high-quality curriculum, assessments, and courses that check multiple boxes, and emphasizing positive behavior will all help to provide a well-rounded program.

Related:
How to identify student anxiety in the classroom
Educators, parents remain vigilant about protecting student mental health

Technology has become increasingly important to every level of education, and its value to social-emotional learning, or SEL, is no exception. Just as digital tools provide educators with innovative and flexible ways to reinforce learning in core academic subjects, they can be used to more effectively teach the social-emotional and life skills that students need to thrive in the classroom and beyond.

An essential part of my role as vice president of product for Committee for Children, an industry leader in SEL, is to keep a close eye on trends in education technology. After spending more than 25 years in edtech, I know how crucial it is for educators to understand how to leverage technology to support SEL in practical, meaningful ways.

Here are four of the latest SEL edtech trends that districts and schools can use this year to support the social-emotional well-being of students and staff, enhance students’ engagement with SEL content, and improve family communications.

Trend 1: On-Demand Professional Development

Professional development (PD) that strengthens educator well-being is a crucial and sometimes overlooked part of SEL for students. With teacher turnover rates on the rise, sustained, meaningful investments in the mental wellness of educators should be a top priority for school and district leaders. Professional learning that’s rooted in SEL can help by giving staff tools to manage stress, build trust, and increase resilience.

Higher levels of educator well-being also benefit students. Research shows that teachers with strong social-emotional skills have better relationships with students, enhanced instructional quality, and improved classroom climate.

However, the last thing teachers need is more work on their plates. I’ve seen time and again how leaders can help create buy-in by choosing a program that works for teachers’ busy schedules. It’s increasingly important that teachers can access PD online and on demand. This way, they can engage in learning on their own, and in their own time, rather than at costly, all-day conferences.

Districts nationwide are providing ongoing education for staff, with an increased focus on skill development and flexible learning. The incremental nature of on-demand PD gives teachers take-aways they can use immediately while allowing for consistent practice and growth throughout the year. This presents them with the ability and opportunity to infuse SEL throughout the school day and across disciplines to support students’ development. 

Trend 2: Bite-Sized, Social Family Communications

Communication with families has always been essential for schools and districts, but in the last few years, I’ve seen an increased demand for bite-sized, highly focused messages. Gone are the days of the three-page newsletter—there’s just no time! Families are already inundated with communications from schools, their own work, and everything in between.

Educators are finding that fun video- and audio-based communications are an effective way to share information. Whether they take the form of TikTok-style videos, texts, or app-based messages, to-the-point digital communications are a great way to keep families engaged in their children’s social-emotional learning.

When communications are more accessible, they can also be more equitable. In-person meetings or long Zoom calls require time, equipment, and other resources that families may not have. Language can be another barrier to family communication (the National Education Association estimates that by 2025, one of four children in U.S. classrooms will be English-language learner students), but some messaging tools include translation features to help everyone in the school community stay connected.

Trend 3: Gamified SEL

It’s no secret that video and online games are a huge part of many children’s lives. Transferring students’ enthusiasm for digital games to the classroom is a great way to keep them motivated and engaged—and enhance their social-emotional development. A research-based approach to gamified SEL gives students the opportunity to practice and strengthen social-emotional skills in fun, interactive, low-stakes ways.

Introducing gaming into the classroom is also a way to observe and develop the social-emotional skills kids may have already started to learn in their personal gaming at home, such as working with others and making decisions as a team. Research has shown that popular games like Minecraft can be used in the classroom to foster social connectedness and collaboration and support learning across subject areas.

Trend 4: Digital Check-Ins and Pulse Surveys

It’s valuable for educators to be able to get quick and meaningful feedback about the social-emotional climate in schools and classrooms. Simple tech tools like digital word clouds, polls, and gamified quizzes are a great way to take a “pulse check” on how students and educators are feeling in the moment.

Over time, this data may show trends in moods, behaviors, and performance. For example, feedback might reveal that students are less engaged on the first day after a long break, more enthusiastic on Thursdays, or sleepier in the first week of daylight savings. Teachers can use these insights to adapt their approach and set students up for success.

Additionally, digital SEL programs may include tracking tools, data reports, and self-assessments that capture in-the-moment information about individual and classroom progress. When leaders are more informed about the well-being and performance of their students and staff, they can better support SEL implementation and strengthen school climate.

More Technology, More Possibilities for SEL

As the volume and variety of technology that’s available to educators continues to expand, so do the possibilities for how these tools can be applied in the classroom. Throughout my career, I’ve seen edtech evolve in its ability to give teachers more options for efficient, flexible, and responsive instruction.

When applied to SEL, these tools can also help you strengthen staff and educator well-being, reinforce students’ social-emotional development, engage and connect families, and gather insights to support learning. By leveraging a few of these latest tech trends, you can create opportunities for serious enhancements to the social-emotional well-being of everyone in your school communities.

Related:
SEL is an educator essential
Prioritizing teacher well-being can help schools retain talent

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is an approach to learning that focuses on the social and emotional skills necessary for students to succeed in school and life. SEL is not new, but it has recently gained momentum as more educators recognize the importance of teaching social and emotional skills.

With this new approach, schools focus on developing students’ social and emotional skills to help them succeed academically and socially. Emotional intelligence is the capacity to identify and manage one’s emotions and those of others, use emotional information in thinking, and understand the emotional significance of events.

What are the Benefits of SEL?

SEL is a process that helps people manage their emotions, develop social skills, and build relationships. It’s a way to help children and adults become more aware of the world around them. It also helps them develop better relationships with others. SEL is a process that helps students develop critical social and emotional skills. The goal is to help children become more successful in school and life. The benefits of SEL are numerous. For one, it helps children develop self-awareness, which can be an essential aspect of success. Secondly, it can help reduce bullying behavior because children learn how to identify the emotions of others and how to manage their own emotions. Finally, it has been shown to reduce aggression in students and increase academic achievement. SEL is not just about overcoming challenges or dealing with difficult situations. It’s about developing the skills necessary for success in life.

How to Implement SEL in Schools?

SEL is a type of education that focuses on children’s social and emotional development. It helps students develop skills in empathy, self-awareness, self-management, interpersonal relationships, responsible decision-making, and the ability to control impulses. SEL aims to foster a healthy school climate by providing opportunities for all students to learn about their emotions and how they affect themselves and others. There are many ways to implement SEL in schools, but it is important to remember that this must be done in a meaningful and effective way for the students. SEL strategies are a vital part of a teacher’s toolkit. They help students develop the skills they need to succeed in the classroom and beyond.

The three most common SEL strategies teachers use are:

1) Teaching self-awareness: Students learn to recognize their own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. They also learn how these affect others and themselves.

2) Teaching social awareness: Students learn about different cultures, groups, and relationships between people.

3) Teaching responsible decision-making: Students learn how to make decisions that will result in positive outcomes for themselves and others.

Teaching students to control their behavior and emotions is a relatively new one for teachers to consider. However, changes in family dynamics, the rise of social media, and increased technology use have necessitated a shift. Teachers should set clear goals for students, provide feedback on work, and maintain a positive classroom environment to encourage self-regulation skills.

The Importance of Teaching Students Social-Emotional Skills

The importance of teaching students social and emotional skills is not to be underestimated. It is challenging to know how much these skills will affect a student’s life, but it is clear that they have the potential to make a huge impact. Students developing social and emotional skills are more likely to succeed in school and their future careers. They are more likely to have better relationships with their peers, teachers, and parents. They are also less likely to experience mental health conditions like anxiety or depression.

As the world becomes more connected and technology advances, we are seeing a shift in how children are raised. This change has led to an increase in mental health issues in children. Teaching social-emotional skills can help children develop these skills and lead them to be more successful in life. Social-emotional skills are essential for every child to learn, and they can be taught through everyday interactions with other people, such as teachers, parents, or even peers. These skills include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

Related:
What SEL teaches us about safety
Teachers can’t keep up with the need for SEL

As was the case for so many other therapists working with children and families, March 2020 felt overwhelming in our center for child and family therapy. From seeing clients in-person all day in our client-centered, carefully designed therapy rooms equipped with all the therapeutic tools that a child therapist might need to engage a child in the hard work of therapy, we scrambled to figure out a way to transfer our clinical tools to the virtual realm. The transition from using toys, games, animal assisted therapy, art, music, movement, and parent-child attunement enhancing interventions to connecting through a digital screen seemed at times to be an impossible mission.

The transition was especially challenging for our very young clients and those who appeared to have significant struggles with the adjustment to virtual education. Even after weeks of creating and identifying multiple virtual tools that enabled us to engage most of our clients in expressive ways to process their experiences and share their internal worlds with us, we consistently received skeptical messages from parents who were certain that their child would not be able to effectively use a virtual platform for their therapy work.

We were convinced that we would be eager to return to our carefully designed, in-person therapy rooms as soon as we possibly could safely do so. Little did we know that we would not only find the virtual therapeutic tools to be highly effective, even in some of our most challenging and complex cases, but we would also discover that there are many unexpected and valuable therapeutic benefits that come with this virtual approach to providing child and family mental health therapy services. 

Logistical and Therapeutic Benefits of Virtual Therapy

The benefits of virtual therapy are both logistic and therapeutic. Parents have found that avoiding the “schlep” has been a significant help for them in their overly scheduled family-lives. In addition, the common reasons for canceling sessions have been greatly reduced, allowing for a consistent and predictable therapy schedule for children, which are significant factors in the efficacy of treatment and child-therapist relationships.

Related:
Teletherapy’s crucial role in reaching remote students
COVID-era teletherapy authorizations are expiring, but the problem persists

Therapeutically, we have been able to include family members (especially furry family members!) in new ways. When animals/pets are included in therapy, children feel more comfortable and open to process difficult thoughts and feelings. Connecting from the comfort (or for some, the discomfort) of their own personal environment encourages clients to share more fully and deeply about themselves and their home lives. They are able to show us their rooms, their favorite stuffed animals, and the reality of their family-life burdens. We observed this to be a clear benefit when one of our clients who had been in treatment for over a year began revealing family difficulties that they (and their parents) had kept protected until the therapist was able to “be in their home” virtually. While the treatment had been slow to progress during in-person sessions, the family dynamics were more distinctly revealed during virtual sessions, and the treatment started progressing in a more targeted way towards healing and repair.

“Being invited to our clients’ homes” also allows us to observe our clients’ experiences in their natural environments, rather than relying on reports and different perceptions. This proved to be highly valuable not only for our clinical assessments, but also for our ability to more accurately understand some of the environmental context as we witnessed some of these events and relationship dynamics first-hand. While these benefits became clear as we witnessed more and more therapeutic progress in our clients, we also had many hurdles to overcome; especially when it came to enhancing the efficacy and children’s (and parents’) willingness to engage in virtual therapy.

Challenges of Virtual Therapy

The transition to online sessions posed some significant challenges to the three main areas we consider to be crucial for the establishment of the sense of safety and trust that are at the root of the therapeutic relationship: How would a child feel connected, represented, and reflected with two screens and many miles between us?

Based on our training and previous experience, it seemed inconceivable to us that an authentic, trusting therapeutic connection could be created when the therapist and the client were not sharing the same physical space. A strong sense of connection reduces cortisol and increases dopamine, promoting client’s availability for therapeutic processing as well as resource- and skill-building. Many of the modalities we had been using for the purpose of promoting such a sense of connection (such as Theraplay®, sensory motor therapy, somatic therapy, expressive therapy, nature therapy, and animal-assisted therapy) are based on the therapist’s ability to incorporate playfulness, presence, eye contact, and touch. While we quickly found ways to be playful and engaging on a virtual platform, not sharing the same physical space made it challenging to demonstrate attuned presence, while use of eye contact and touch became impossible.

The physical distance, combined with the limited ability to notice important nervous system signals such as subtle nonverbal cues including the breath and the energy level of our clients, posed significant barriers to our ability to “accurately read” our clients’ mental state in order to effectively connect and intervene.    

Furthermore, the materials we had selected to share with clients in our office had been carefully selected and designed to demonstrate positive representations of our clients, their unique attributes, cultural diversity, different abilities, mobilities, areas of strengths and needs, and areas of interests. Research shows that self-representation leads to an increase in:

• Self-esteem;
• Sense of belonging and comfort in social settings;
• Understanding of self and others;
• Pride in your own identity; and
• Capacity for learning.

We wondered if seeing our clients virtually would allow them to feel welcomed and represented in the same ways. Infusing diverse representation requires a level of attention to details that did not seem to be as widely available in the commonly used online therapy tools. According to NAEYC.org, a social setting that doesn’t reflect and validate children’s diverse identity may lead children to feel invisible, unimportant, incompetent, and ashamed of who they are. These feelings stand in complete contrast to what we work so hard to foster in our safe, affirming, and normalizing therapy settings.

Techniques such as reflective statements, head nods, eye movement, and synchronized breathing are widely used in therapy to foster a sense of security and safety between a therapist and a client. This careful and intentional reflection by the therapist will provide them with the supportive messages of, “my feelings make sense and are ok to feel.”  By paying close attention to both their nonverbal and verbal communication and attempting to reflect it back, we can co-regulate our client’s nervous system and help them feel seen, heard, understood, and contained, which enables children to form an organized and integrated framework for processing and articulating their experiences and internal worlds.

This response to reflections can be explained by mirror neurons, which are a group of neurons that activate in our brain when we perform an action that mirrors another person’s action, or when we see our own action being performed by others. These neurons are active in human babies from birth and are considered crucial for our species’ survival. As Dan Siegel explains, a predictable sequence of motor actions being perceived by a series of sensory inputs creates a clear neuro-mapping of behavioral intentions that will determine the level of safety and security that a person can feel during an interaction with another person. Since virtual platforms limit our view of each other’s body language, and with connection through mirror neurons being necessary in order to build empathy, reciprocity, theory of mind, and other skills that are foundational for our capacity to form human connections and foster a sense of security in relationships, it was clear that we would need to find ways to “fire up” our mirror neurons within the limitations of the square screen.

Once we were able to identify these possible barriers in using virtual platforms for therapy with children, we were determined to find tools that would enable us to continue practicing in ways that address what we consider to be at the root of the therapeutic relationship: connection, reflection, and representation. Here is a list of some of the tools we found to be highly effective in overcoming these barriers. 

Activities for Connection and Reflection While Apart

Theraplay© activities focus on four different dimensions of the parent-child relationships: engagement, challenge, structure, and nurture. These activities allow us to work with clients of all ages from prenatal to adolescents, along with siblings and caregivers by targeting the areas of needs in their relationships and enhancing the areas of strengths. Since we know that in-person Theraplay® activities are designed to activate our mirror neurons in order to facilitate deep connections and enhance attachments, we turned to these activities for our virtual sessions. In fact, in the spring of 2020 the Theraplay® Institute quickly rolled out modified virtual versions of attachment and connection enhancement activities which also included synchronicity as a newly discussed key element of connection.

One especially effective activity is the mirror game, where the therapist and client take turns moving their hands, head, and even facial expression as the “leader” while the other follows as the “mirror.” We also built special handshakes by bumping our fists, noses or elbows to the camera. These, along with other Theraplay© activities, are now part of our routines for opening and closing virtual sessions in order to establish and maintain reflection and connection with our clients. For example, a 6-year-old who had difficulty feeling connected on the virtual platform kept her camera off and stayed muted during school. She was enrolled in our virtual connection therapy group due to her severe anxiety about participating on screen. After observing her group peers creating their special handshake, each adding a new move to make it longer and more challenging, the screen came on with a monkey stuffed animal face, rather than the client’s face. The “monkey” joined in the handshake!

After three weeks of participating via the monkey, the client felt comfortable and connected enough to join the handshake, and soon after that, to join the entire group session. Not only did the client make these gains in the therapy group, but when we informed her teacher about this connection strategy, it enabled the client to increase participation and decrease anxiety during the difficult days of virtual school. One of her parents even started using the special handshake with her first thing in the morning to start the day off feeling connected!                                   

Virtual Tool for Expression and Representation

Pixton is an online comic creator that offers children an opportunity to design their virtual characters (aka avatars) and create comics, stories, and narratives in fun and engaging ways. This type of tool allows clients the ability to explore different experiences with an enhanced sense of safety that is created by each child’s ability to choose their own comfort level with the emotional distance from their characters and the narrative they represent.

For example, some children are comfortable being direct and using their own character and experiences, while others might feel a need to create additional layers of emotional safety by writing about a different character or an imaginative experience. In addition, because it provides character templates and pre-made backgrounds, Pixton allows children to tell their stories without the artistic skills limitations that so often become a barrier to children’s self-expression.

Furthermore, Pixton offers a highly diverse and inclusive array of options for the creation of characters that enable all children to feel fully and accurately represented. Options include non-binary gender expression, assistive technology and mobility devices, culturally diverse articles of clothing, diverse religious settings and symbols, many skin tones, different body shapes, and unlimited options for family structures.

By using Pixton during virtual sessions, we quickly saw clients making choices to represent themselves as they are, as they hoped to be, or as they might fear to be perceived by others. One of our adolescent clients shared that he fears being perceived as feminine through designing his Pixton avatar to look feminine and choosing non-binary clothing. This client’s experience of representation led the way to further exploring his gender, sexuality, and self-identity as well as his social anxiety as it relates to his identity—a significant breakthrough in his treatment. One of our 5-year-old clients with significant mobility and physical limitations accurately represented herself using a wheelchair, and then created her avatar to look like a powerful superhero! Her experience of representation allowed her to process and explore both her limitations and her unique strengths and resources. 

Creating Your Virtual Therapy Setting to Foster Connection, Reflection, and Representation

In many cultures “mental health is often perceived as a harmonious balance between a person’s internal and external influences. Thus, a person is intrinsically linked to their environment and vice versa.” What you surround yourself with on your virtual screen matters! Put careful thought into designing your virtual setting in a way that will be engaging to your clients and to represent their internal world. Your background will set the tone for how connected, reflected, and represented your clients feel during their virtual sessions. Ensure that your camera is not facing a door, as doors represent possibility for disruption and might decrease your clients’ sense of containment, and therefore can hinder their sense of connection. 

Consider intentionally placing interactive toys like a Kimochi with a wide array of feelings that can be experienced at the same time, a Feisty Pet that shows anger, and books, posters, and toys that reflect meaningful representations of differences. Tools and toys for representation are available from stores such as Toy Like Me, Multicultural Classroom Materials & Diverse Toys for Preschool, Representation Matters in Toys, and Best Anti-Racist Toys for Kids.

Ensure that your background meets the unique needs of each of your clients by placing and even replacing items that could facilitate processing relevant experiences to each client’s individualized therapeutic goals. For a client who is working on understanding their anxiety, you might choose to place different toy models of the brain and a Worry Monster; for clients experiencing or recovering from medical trauma or anticipating an upcoming medical procedure, you can place toy models of the body or different body organs.

One of our 9-year-old clients who had been experiencing a chronic medical condition requiring continued procedures and several major surgeries, was excited to notice different models of the human body and share their experiences in detail, allowing them to explore the body with a sense of control and process their traumas.

Final Thoughts on Virtual Therapy

While it was a long and challenging journey to adjust our expressive and experiential therapeutic modalities to a virtual platform, we now advocate for its high effectiveness. In fact, it is currently often our preferred platform for treating children and families. Not only do we see the benefits of the virtual tools we are using with our clients, but when given the choice, it seems that even parents who were once the biggest skeptics are opting for virtual therapy because they appreciate the flexibility, ease of access and evidence of progress in their families. Virtual therapy is not going away, and neither is the need to foster connection, reflection, and representation in every therapeutic setting.

As a school administrator, you’re faced with a range of challenges every day. One of the most common at the moment is mitigating the negative impacts of teacher shortages. After all, without a consistent and functional faculty, the quality of students’ education is likely to suffer.

Therefore, it’s important to examine the elements that affect teacher retention. Some of the key influencers here tend to be those related to educators’ wellness. Teachers often report experiencing extremely stressful conditions–not to mention that various pressures of their careers often see them on the road to burnout.

It’s no wonder, then, that establishing methods to prioritize teacher well-being can help your school retain talent. Let’s take a closer look at some key areas of focus in this regard.

Providing Resources

One of the most important considerations for prioritizing teachers’ well-being is the provision of resources. With the median high school teacher salary being around $62,870, educators often don’t have a lot of leeway to pay for physical and mental wellness resources themselves. While all administrators should consider it a priority to arrange fair pay, it’s also important to look at what other resources you can offer.

This should certainly begin with a more robust employee wellness program. Your approach could include providing subsidized access to local gyms and organic food suppliers. It should certainly involve arranging appropriate mental health services, given the level of stress and pressure educators experience. Consider subsidizing telehealth counseling that more effectively fits into teachers’ schedules.

Related:
Teacher burnout remains educators’ top concern
5 ways to support educator well-being this school year

These efforts can have a tangible impact on retention because they’re geared toward actively improving teachers’ quality of life. The resources make it practical for them to maintain their wellness, which also mitigates absenteeism. Educators can also see that your school’s investment in these resources acts as a meaningful recognition of your responsibility to positively impact their health. As such, they may be more likely to stay with a school that is committed to keeping them well.

Encouraging Communication

One of the common points of concern for many teachers is the lack of meaningful communication with administrators. This isn’t just on a practical working basis. It can also leave educators feeling isolated and unsupported. In turn, the communicative distance can have a negative impact on their experiences of stress, depression, and anxiety in the workplace. Encouraging open and regular communication among your faculty can, therefore, improve teachers’ well-being.

Your approach here should certainly include building a culture of openness around mental health. Normalizing discussions about mental wellness can be instrumental in minimizing stigma on the subject and reducing the hurdles to addressing challenges. It’s important to make sure the tools are in place to facilitate open conversations, though. All staff should be educated to approach such conversations with empathy and compassion. There must also be a commitment to using language during discussions that humanizes people living with mental illness.

So, why does this focus on open and supportive communication make a difference in the retention of educators and help mitigate the impact of the Great Resignation? Well, it gives teachers who may be struggling with workplace stress a comfortable avenue to discuss and address their concerns. In schools where communication isn’t prioritized, teachers may be more likely to simply resign without an explanation or an attempt to resolve such challenges.

Support Boundaries

Teachers undoubtedly play a pivotal role in community life. As such, there is often a tendency for the boundaries between their careers and their personal lives to be blurred. Indeed, teachers are expected to go much further beyond the limits of their duties than many other professionals. This isn’t necessarily good for their physical or mental wellness. As such, it is vital that you encourage and support teachers in creating healthy boundaries.

Perhaps one of the most important boundaries to set is that of their working hours. Establish protocols within your school that minimize the amount of administrative and extracurricular work educators are expected to do beyond their teaching hours. There should also be a focus on creating boundaries around teachers’ financial burdens. Provide budgets that ensure your staff doesn’t feel obligated to pay for class materials, as has become increasingly common as of late. This can reduce stress and ensure teachers can spend their salaries on items that support their and their families’ wellness.

This can have a significant impact on the retention of teachers in the long term. After all, it demonstrates you understand that teachers need to maintain a healthy work-life balance. A recent Pew Research study found that 53 percent of people who quit their jobs found new employment that made it easier to keep this balance. As such, your encouragement of clear boundaries can be both empowering to teachers and create a stronger faculty base for your school.

As an administrator, it is vital to understand how teachers’ wellness is linked to retention. This allows you to implement measures that both support teachers and mitigate the impact of staff shortages. Your efforts should include providing robust wellness resources, encouraging open communication, and empowering teachers to achieve a healthy work-life balance. By prioritizing teacher well-being in a sustainable way, educators, students, and the entire community stand to benefit.

According to a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) study, the number of children aged 3 to 17 diagnosed with anxiety increased by 29 percent between 2016 and 2020, while those diagnosed with depression increased by 27 percent.

The situation worsened with the pandemic. And now, stressed students are hurting others and themselves.

There’s a dire need for safety in schools and other educational institutions — it’s time for strategies that help create safe learning environments.

A nationally representative survey of nearly 700 pre-K-12 teachers found that social-emotional learning (SEL) was a popular safety solution for 91 percent of all the teachers surveyed.

Social-emotional learning is a long-term solution for making students and adults more socially and emotionally well-rounded, but what makes it an effective and critical solution for pressing issues such as safety in learning institutions?

Social-emotional learning: Foregrounding emotional and mental safety

While safety is most visibly threatened by physical acts such as bullying and school violence, the roots of such threats take us to social, emotional, and structural issues that need to be addressed to effect change.

Consider some of the most common reasons for bullying. Bullies are often victims of bullying themselves, and as a result of their perception of what has happened to them, they frequently lack empathy.

In other cases, bullies don’t have any real friends, and they struggle to build relationships. To combat their loneliness, they seek social attention the wrong way. Moreover, bullies often lack psychological well-being, often comparing themselves to others, which leads to frustration and envy. As a result, they undermine other people with acts of aggression to level the playing field.

The core SEL competencies help develop good mental, emotional, and social health — three elements that can contribute immensely to dismantling safety issues such as bullying and creating safe learning spaces.

For one, social-emotional learning helps students understand how their decisions will impact others. It enables students to develop and demonstrate values such as compassion, empathy, respect, and intelligent behavior while making and navigating life decisions in and out of school. Increased empathy can reduce aggressive behavior, both verbal and physical, as well as bullying incidents.

SEL also fosters relationship building and a sense of belonging and inclusion. For example, when teachers implement identity-affirming and culturally-responsive SEL they create supportive and responsive learning climates that help prevent isolation and disengagement, and positively impact students’ behavior.

This is especially important among students who are systemically more prone to being marginalized and excluded from social groups due to their identities and backgrounds. If a school’s learning instruction reflects diverse cultural identities and personal experiences, it’s easier to develop a culture that supports the equitable treatment of all students, thereby helping to create a safer school environment.

Furthermore, SEL provides a reliable structure to the learning process, making it easier to promote a safe learning culture and address student experiences of anxiety, helplessness, and general insecurity.

Ultimately, social and emotional learning skills are crucial in connecting character and lifestyle decisions, helping to foreground and sustain emotional and social safety in learning institutions.

With SEL, we can foster emotional safety and mental wellness, and help reduce violence and risky behaviors among students. In so doing, we can nurture safe, positive learning environments, and equally important, harness the power of restorative practices.

Conflict and the power of restorative practices

Bullying, fighting, and violence may not have a simple or singular solution, but we can change the way we respond to these issues.

Instead of a discipline system that centers on punitive and exclusionary practices, which mostly seem to do more harm than good, it’s far more effective to have a restorative system.

Restorative practices encourage supportive and respectful behavior, placing the onus on an individual to be truly accountable for their actions and to make amends for any harm done to others as a result of those actions.

These practices can tackle a situation like bullying with sensitivity and understanding; in a way that improves outcomes for all individuals involved, instead of trying to serve one at the cost of another.

For example, instead of merely ostracizing and punishing a student who engages in problematic behavior, restorative practices seek to create a safe space in which the student can learn from their past unacceptable choices, understand their impact, and improve their ability to make better decisions.

Restorative practices have a student reflect on their conduct by addressing specific questions like: What choice did I make and how did it affect others? Is there another way I could have handled this situation? Would I make the same decision if I had a second chance, and why?

The idea behind restorative practices is that “when you know better, you can do better.”

Restorative practices have several benefits, including developing empathy and respect, fostering positive relationships, and improving decision-making. These are also some of the benefits of SEL. As such, SEL intersects with and can help strengthen restorative practices, which, in turn, enable students to make positive choices that lead to safer schools.

Per the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), the likelihood of positive outcomes in high schools — including improved school and classroom climates — is especially high due to the alignment of restorative practices and SEL in secondary settings.

Granted, the problem of safety is a large and complex one, and building social and emotional skills alone won’t solve it, but social-emotional learning is a major step in the right direction that can have powerful consequences.

Related:
Teachers can’t keep up with the need for SEL
Parents are turning to schools for student mental health

Issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic continue to pop up as educators devote more time to student anxiety issues in the classroom. Frustrations mount as they attempt to manage both instructional requirements and a decrease in achievement from at-risk students.

In particular, teachers report escalating anxiety symptoms since the pandemic lockdowns, and data is now available to support their conclusions. The CDC recently declared a student mental health crisis, with 44 percent of high school students reporting sadness or hopelessness.

Dealing with struggling students can overwhelm teachers as they report spending more time attempting to support individuals while shortchanging the rest of the class. Diagnosing and remedying problems is essential.

Every teacher knows that certain cognitive functions must be present for students to learn. Students need:

• Concentration
• Motivation
• Initiative
• Interest
• Self-esteem/efficacy

When students battle the effects of anxiety, all learning pathways shut down, leaving students cognitively drained and consumed with negative thoughts.

Anxiety is not necessarily bad. Everyone experiences it occasionally. It’s common for students to feel a little anxious before a test or presentation. This excitable state can enhance performance. A high anxiety level–one that zaps a student’s concentration, motivation, and initiative–can result in a student shutting down. There are ways to break up an anxious cycle, starting with identifying negative behavior.

Related:
5 ways to help special education students manage testing anxiety
Effective ways to help students reduce stress and anxiety

Telling the difference between mild, transitory anxiety and anxiety that blocks learning over time is a little tricky. It can manifest in several ways. Here are a few common anxiety symptoms noticeable in class.

Identifying anxious behavior

Change in behavior

Have you noticed a student whose mood, energy, or demeanor has changed over time? Perhaps their academic performance dropped off for no apparent reason. This behavior change may be the beginning of an anxiety cycle, and it’s essential to address it as soon as possible before habits are ingrained.

Avoidance

Low participation in class or complete withdrawal can be a sign of student anxiety. Frequent somatic complaints like stomach issues or headaches may be an avoidance strategy. A student who often excuses himself for a bathroom break or asks to visit the nurse may exhibit avoidance. First, before labeling it as an anxiety tactic to get out of schoolwork, ensure the student has a medical checkup to alleviate other sources for the behavior.

Concentration or organizational issues

Difficulties with concentration, organization, or missed assignments may indicate a student is more focused on their feelings of anxiety than the work. The student is overwhelmed, and test anxiety is often a trigger.

Physical signs

Students who bite their nails, pull on their hair, shake their legs, etc., may be experiencing anxiety. Some may even go so far as self-injury, like digging a nail or a pushpin into their skin. Distractions like these provide them with a soothing sensory input, alleviating feelings of anxiety.

Oppositional behavior

Do you have a student that acts out in class? What may look like defiance might be an avoidance tactic. Acting out creates chaos in the classroom, setting up a diversion that gets them out of doing the work. If successful the first time, the student will continue this disruptive behavior.

Effective strategies to support anxious students

Identifying behaviors that block the learning process is the first step to helping students cope. A wide variety of stressors often trigger anxious behaviors. Problems at home can cause sadness or hopelessness, unrealistic expectations can lead to perfectionism and hidden disabilities can cause shame as students fall behind in class. All these factors can provoke undue stress and lead to problematic behaviors.

In the case of the Randolph School District in New Jersey, 40 percent of the students experienced severe anxiety and depression—many being high-achieving students. This prompted the school to launch a comprehensive mental health program to support at-risk students. Because of the overwhelming problems, the district opted for a more comprehensive support system and implemented student mental health workshops and training. The student success rate increased.

Connect with your students

A simple first step is to get to know your students. When questionable behaviors manifest, teachers need to determine what’s behind them before intervening effectively. Students who struggle are often unwilling to talk. Building trust can go a long way to opening a line of communication.

An effective strategy is “2/20.” If a student is disengaged or acting out, spend just two minutes a day for at least 20 days focusing on them. Start a conversation on anything but school and begin to build trust. As the student becomes more comfortable talking with you, they may eventually open up and talk about their issues. Once this is established, you can collaboratively create strategies to manage stressors.

Self-awareness exercises

Teaching students how to recognize anxiety symptoms goes a long way in preventing or diffusing an anxiety attack and helps the teacher manage the situation. If students learn to recognize that a stomachache, sweaty palms, or a racing heart are the start of an impending episode, they can take the next step and learn to self-regulate. A helpful technique is “How Does Your Engine Run?” This strategy helps them effectively identify their feelings and then teaches them to regulate their behavior.

Accommodations and the nature of anxiety (IEP)

If a student’s anxiety is overwhelming and an IEP is called for, teachers need to understand why the adjustments are important. Other students may view accommodations as unfair, like a decreased workload, a special seating assignment or an agreement to come to class late and leave early.

Understanding the changes and advocating for struggling students can go a long way in clearing a path to success. It’s about giving students what they need. It’s equitable, not equal.

With the recent increase in at-risk students, teachers are the first line of defense. Educators who strive to understand the nature of anxiety, how to spot the symptoms and learn a few strategies to support these students can change student lives profoundly. Being observant and proactive in mitigating student anxiety is essential for all teachers.

While teachers know their students need help developing social emotional skills, they rarely have time or adequate training to focus on them in the classroom, according to a survey from ReadTheory, an edtech company that helps students build reading comprehension skills.

The survey of nearly 1,700 teachers offers insights into the challenges of implementing social emotional learning (SEL) programs in today’s tumultuous educational environment.

In the wake of the disruption of the pandemic, U.S. students are struggling. In 2021, the Center for Disease Control revealed that 37 percent of high school students reported poor mental health during the pandemic, while 44 percent said they persistently felt sad or hopeless during the past year.

And with billions of dollars in federal ESSER funds available, schools are investing in SEL programs to help students–and teachers–cope. According to Simba Information, spending for SEL instructional materials was $1.725 billion for the 2021-2022 school year. 

While 63 percent of teachers responding to ReadTheory’s survey believe mental wellness throughout the pandemic adversely affected instruction, a third reported they rarely or never teach SEL skills. Lack of time in the school day and lack of support from school leadership are among the challenges teachers said they faced when attempting to implement SEL.

“What teachers told us provides a roadmap for the ways that school leaders, families and communities can help support social emotional learning for all students,” said Ron Kirschenbaum, managing partner, ReadTheory.

Other key findings of the survey include:

• Eighty percent of teachers indicated that some, most, or all students need support with social emotional needs.
• Nearly 60 percent of teachers said that the pandemic impacted their students’ motivation to learn.
• Teachers’ mental wellness throughout the pandemic affected their performance. More than 60 percent told ReadTheory their mental wellness impacted instruction.
• More than 50 percent of teachers said they had not received any SEL training.
• The home-school connection is not happening when it comes to SEL. Nearly 50 percent of teachers said families do not have the resources to teach SEL at home.

Related:
Our district is battling a loneliness epidemic
Children’s mental health remains a major concern

This press release originally appeared online.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

Chicago Public Schools is monitoring students’ social media posts for signs they might engage in violence on campus or harm themselves so that school staff — and in some cases police — can intervene. 

A Canada-based company the district hired started scouring public posts for threats and “cries for help” last month. District leaders say the program is key in efforts to prevent violence and self-harm as the district responds to an uptick in school shootings nationally and in the number of local students expressing suicidal thoughts.

The Chicago program – called “Supporting Our Students” – is part of a national trend, as more districts have started paying contractors for social media monitoring services in recent years.

So far, there is no independent research or other evidence showing that student social media monitoring programs are effective in preventing violence and self-harm. In a social media space full of fake accounts, anonymous posts, and grandstanding, civil rights advocates say they worry these programs might needlessly invade students’ privacy and feed into stubborn discipline disparities facing some students, especially Black boys and other students of color. 

Cassie Creswell of the nonprofit Illinois Families for Public Schools says surveying students online could undermine the district’s most important tool for getting information that helps avert violence. 

“Kids have to have good relationships and trust with adults in their school communities, and that’s how we prevent stuff from happening,” she said. “Spying on kids is not how we do that.”

But Jadine Chou, the district’s safety and security chief, said the new program is not meant to punish students, and the district will involve police only when staff believe a post signals an imminent threat to safety. Rather, district officials say, the program aims to help students amid a pandemic-era rise in youth mental health challenges, as social media has come to play a key role in fomenting conflict and bullying on campus.

“This is not about getting children in trouble,” Chou said in an interview with Chalkbeat. “This is about getting children support.”

Chicago Public Schools piloted a similar social media monitoring program in the mid-2010s. A University of Chicago study deemed the effort promising, with evidence that it helped reduce student misconduct incidents and suspensions. But data also showed Black and male students were more likely to get flagged for concerning behavior, and some advocates voiced concerns about the involvement of a Chicago Police Department school gang unit. 

New social media program draws on pilot’s lessons

In 2020, Chicago Public Schools won a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to launch “Support Our Students,” through a federal program titled STOP School Violence.

It wasn’t until this April that the district put out a notice seeking proposals from companies to monitor student social media for “worrisome online behavior,” such as threats, suicidal ideation, and references to drugs, weapons, or gang activity. The document said the district was especially concerned about an almost 60% increase in reports of suicidal ideation in students over the previous school year, with about 300 such reports received since August 2021. It planned to spend $450,000 on the program over three years. 

Two companies, Safer Schools Together and GoGuardian, submitted proposals. The district selected SST, a firm based in Canada, with U.S. headquarters in Washington state. Officials said the company offered both a lower cost and better methodology for flagging concerning online behavior. In August, the school board approved an agreement with SST for up to $161,400 over 13 months.

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“Supporting Our Students” comes on the heels of a pre-pandemic student social monitoring pilot program called “Connect & Redirect to Respect,” which was also supported by a federal grant from the Department of Justice. 

That program involved random keyword searches of public social media profiles. In some cases, officers with CPD’s Gang School Safety Team met with students at their schools to discuss troubling posts. Staff referred students to mentoring, after-school, and summer programs and other services.

A report by the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab compared outcomes for students at schools participating in the program — about two dozen elementary and high schools, most of them on the city’s West and South sides — and for those at a control group of schools with similar demographics. The study found students at participating schools were at a lower risk of becoming a shooting victim, though the difference was not statistically significant. 

It did show these schools had significantly fewer misconduct incidents and suspensions and better attendance, while students were not any more likely to be arrested. Data in the report also shows that students flagged through the program were more likely to be Black and much more likely to be male than students referred for intervention by school staff. 

The researchers interviewed teachers and administrators who said many conflicts at school start out on social media, and some educators more informally monitor posts in hopes of warding off trouble on campus. 

But reporting by ProPublica and WBEZ highlighted concerns by advocates and experts who questioned the practice of pulling students into meetings with police officers based on information gleaned from a program that students and their families didn’t know about. 

The new program will be different in some key ways, officials said. The district’s earlier pilot initially used a software to flag posts, but, Chou said, “The algorithm did not catch a lot of the situations we are most concerned for.” 

SST’s proposal and the district’s contract with the company say it will use technology to scan posts, but Chou said it will ultimately rely on trained people to review them and flag any content as concerning. 

Thanks to SST’s involvement, the district said in a statement, the collection of information off social media will operate “at arm’s length” from the district, ensuring that it collects only data relevant to school safety. 

The company will also offer guidance to school safety teams on responding when it flags concerning posts. It will work closely with the district’s Office of Social and Emotional Learning and school-level behavioral health teams to intervene with students and engage their parents. The Chicago Police Department will play a more limited role this time, in keeping with a broader rethinking of the district’s relationship with police. 

As part of a district initiative, a growing number of high schools have stopped stationing police officers on campus in the past two years and used the money for restorative justice and other programs. But there will be times police will have to be involved, Chou said. 

“If there’s a gun in your video,” Chou said, “I’m going to need to pull in the police.”

Like the earlier program, only publicly posted information will be monitored and collected, and the district and company won’t “friend” or follow students. The contract with SST spells out some measurable goals for the program: decreasing serious infraction, suspensions, and expulsions by 10% each, and student arrests by 5%.

Chou says social media threats and bullying are top of mind for students and parents she’s spoken with about school safety. But the program will be one tool in a much broader district safety strategy, Chou said — with SST serving as “a partner in case something gets missed.”

“When we have strong relationships with students and families, that’s where we get our best information,” she said. 

Software ‘spying’ is no substitute for student support

Arseny Acosta, a junior at DeVry University Advantage Academy and an advocate with youth group Good Kids Mad City, said many students want to take a more active part in safeguarding safety on campus and beyond. She pointed to the group’s key role in a Dyett High School for the Arts restorative justice program and a social media “peace pledge” it penned as part of its “Peacebook” anti-violence proposal.

But monitoring students’ social media feels invasive, she said. It could add to mistrust among Black and Latino students, who feel they are still held to a higher discipline standard, Acosta said.

“This idea will most likely backfire, and make students more distrustful of CPS,” Acosta said. “CPS should be empowering and employing their student youth to create safety networks.”  

Some district officials have said that programs that monitor student social media for keywords produce an excess of “noisy data” that school staff have to sift through to find any credible threats, said Elizabeth Laird of the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology. 

Though some companies have touted case studies or data they have collected, she said, “There is no independent research or data that shows this service works — that it’s an effective strategy to keep students safe.” 

Some of those questions about effectiveness were rekindled by the May 24 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. That district had a social media monitoring program in place, but it apparently did not flag threatening social media posts by the shooter.

Meanwhile, advocates are concerned that these programs might disproportionately zero in on certain student groups, including students of color and LGBT students, and chill students’ free expression online. Districts have not been transparent enough about these programs and how they work, Baird said. The federal government recently cautioned school districts and other entities about using digital surveillance software that might exacerbate racial and other disparities. 

SST didn’t respond to an interview request, but on its site, the organization says it has “a proven record” of helping schools across North America reduce the risk of student violence. It says open-source social media posts it has flagged triggered “successful school/community interventions and full scale police investigations and prosecution.” 

The company’s proposal to the district, obtained by Chalkbeat, offers relatively few specifics about these successes. The proposal says its Worrisome Online Behavior reports are “well-received by our clients,” and quotes a safety official with the Lynwood Unified School District in California who says the reports have been an “essential tool” in ensuring school safety. The company has provided the reports to 80 districts in the past two years, consulting with districts on 1,600 interventions, its proposal says.

Under its contract with Chicago Public Schools, SST is required to submit biweekly reports on the number of “worrisome online behaviors” it flagged, the number of students involved in them, and the number of students receiving interventions as a result. 

But in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Chalkbeat, the district said these reports will not be made public. They contain “highly sensitive student information and outcries,” the district said, and their release would constitute a “clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” under FOIA and the state’s Student Online Personal Protection Act. 

Creswell, with Illinois Families for Public Schools, worked on the latest version of that state law.  She says she wants to know more about the specific circumstances under which information gleaned from the program will be shared with law enforcement. The district should be doing more to get word of the program to students and their families, and better explain how it will safeguard against racial and income disparities. 

Edward Vogel of the Lucy Parsons Labs, a Chicago-based nonprofit effort to advocate for digital rights, said he believes the district’s interest in supporting students is genuine. But young people often engage in grandstanding on social media, and he questioned the wisdom of tasking people who have no connection to students or their school communities with reviewing posts.   

“Social media is a tool that people in gangs use, but there are also lots of young people who say things on social media that are meaningless,” Vogel said. “It’s a murky area to use for assessing threats.”  

Given that many student accounts are private or don’t use students’ real names, Vogel said, how will SST even go about finding the right accounts to monitor? 

The district said that it’s paramount that the program not perpetuate racial disparities. SST staff have received implicit bias training “to ensure that this effort is not targeting any specific groups.”

Chou stressed the district is not turning over any student names to SST; the company searches instead for references to the district and its schools. Flagged accounts often don’t use students’ real names, so district and school staff work together to identify students who might need help, such as counseling, mentoring, and other support. 

She said the program has already had “a small number of successes where we have been able to intervene and support students,” though she declined to share any additional details. Chou said the district might be able to share aggregate data on the program’s results that better protects student privacy after the effort has been in place longer.   

Chou said the district has worked to get the word out about the program. The district has not sent emails or letters specifically about the program, but a back-to-school email from district CEO Pedro Martinez included a mention of it on a list of school safety measures. 

Chou also briefly mentions the program in a video posted on a revamped Office of Safety and Security website, in which she implores students and families to alert their schools or the district if they come across threats or other troubling content online.

“I want everyone to know,” Chou told Chalkbeat about the monitoring program. “This is not a secret.” 

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education.

School counselors and social workers, teachers, and administrators have always been integral to a parent’s support network. This is particularly true for children who struggle in class and have trouble accessing their curriculum.  Collaborative communication between a school and parents is critical for ensuring positive student outcomes.

Although clearly an issue before the pandemic, the pandemic has increased our collective awareness of children’s mental health issues and schools’ role in addressing those challenges. At the height of the pandemic, we were aware of the toll that the effects of the pandemic were taking on the nation’s school children, but we were functioning in a survival mode. As we emerge from this survival mode, it is clear that our school-age children are in crisis.

According to an October 30, 2022, Wall Street Journal article, “A mental-health crisis among children and teens that had been brewing for years worsened as routines were disrupted in the pandemic and many kids faced isolation and loss.”

Parents Looking to Schools for Mental Health Resources

Parents are increasingly turning to schools for support. According to a new nationwide survey of more than 1,100 parents of children between the ages of five and 18, 83% of surveyed parents said schools and healthcare providers should do more to provide better mental health services.

This is not surprising – parents have historically turned to schools for support when it comes to finding resources for children who struggle in the classroom and at home.

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