Back-to-School Blog [Pt. 1 of 3] Let’s Set Expectations: In-Person Teaching Amid COVID-19
As summer 2021 ends kids and adults alike are preparing to go back-to-school, pandemic-style. Whatever your school’s situation is – in-person, remote learning or a hybrid of the two – these tips to prioritize mental health pertain to everyone navigating our new sense of normal.
Mental Health Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic & Current Events
The last year-plus has been a very difficult time for everyone in different ways. It has posed some unique and resounding challenges for one particular group – educators and their students.
“The pandemic has had a direct and severe impact on mental health. Rates of anxiety and depression are continuing to rise, as are reports of suicidal ideation and the incidence of deaths by suicide,” explained Jenene Slatt (LMFT), licensed marriage and family therapist and co-founder of Well Beyond Academics, who interviewed in tandem with her business co-founder, Jen Krasner (LCSW), who is also a licensed clinical social worker.
In addition to isolation, loss and family stress there are other major factors impacting youth directly related to current events – friendships may have shifted or rifts may have risen in relationships as we form different beliefs about the pandemic and different ways of dealing with precautions, which can strain relationships and cause increased anxiety about being reunited in class or school.
Kristin Slye (AMFT) is a therapist who works with kids in the North Tahoe area experiencing moderate to severe mental health challenges and crises. She works for Uplift Family services, one of the largest behavioral health treatment providers in California helping 35,000 children and family members annually. Because she works with severe mental health cases, she’s also witnessed some of the most extreme impacts of COVID-19 on our youth’s mental health. For this blog, she conferred with some of her colleagues who work with normative to moderate youth challenges, to make sure her opinions were not skewed toward an outlier experience.
Slye explained that kids’ feelings are compounded by the fact that a child’s experience of time is different than it is for adults. A year seems a lot longer to someone who has lived for 10 years than someone who has lived for 50.
“Kids are experiencing a lot of grief for what’s been lost – sports, time with friends and the feeling of general safety in navigating the world,” she said.
Whether they’ve dealt with chronic stress over the past year-plus or they’re experiencing emotional distress over re-entering school, the high cortisol levels in the brain caused by long-term stress can make focus and retention of information difficult to process.
“If parents or teachers notice resistance, irritability and/or complaining about going back, they should avoid minimizing the child’s experience. It may not seem like a big deal but to them it is. Don’t bypass their feelings, help to process them. In order to work through any fears they might have, ask questions like, ‘How safe do you feel at school?’ or ‘Are you worried about catching COVID-19?’ Also, try to help the child recognize the good things about going back that their anxiety may have masked them from registering. Ask specific questions like, ‘What was the most fun part of your day today?’ or ‘What’s something that made you smile or laugh today?’,” Slye said.
Educators’ #1 Area of Focus: Putting Students First
We know that student’s wellbeing must take priority. Don’t move too fast to try and make up for lost time. Instead, focus on rebuilding interpersonal relationships with and among your students and build the foundation for learning and retention. Realize that in-person learning stamina needs to be built up again and it will come faster for some students than others.
“Look for signs of fatigue (heavy eyelids, slumped bodies, staring out in space, side talk) and take individual or group reboot breaks such as 10 jumping jacks, running around the building, or one minute of silence with eyes closed,” Slye said.
Academic learning takes place in the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that is still under construction during adolescence and well into our 20s. When an individual is experiencing trauma, they’re living in the limbic brain, the area responsible for what we call our fight-or-flight response. This is the emotional center, the space where most adolescents are typically acting from.
“If we hope to engage youth in academics, athletics, extracurriculars and social interactions, we must first heal the emotional distress our kids are experiencing, address the over-activation of their limbic system before asking them to perform on tests, and so forth,” Slatt said. “Increase help-seeking behaviors by talking about things like anxiety, depression and suicide. Transparent discussion around how this past year has impacted and changed us is necessary for students. Suggestions for concrete coping strategies and trusting spaces to access support must be made available to all students.
Three Tips for Teachers to Connect with Students & Families:
Facilitation of social interactions and cultivation of an excitement for in-person learning must come first. Do not attempt to pick up where you left off or try to make up for lost time by racing toward achievement of academic milestones.
After a year of being apart, bringing kids together in a comfortable and supportive environment should be at the forefront of all educators’ lesson planning.
Facilitate student relationships by actively engaging the class in group activities and project-based learning to help them focus, retain information and heal the consequences of prolonged isolation.
Check out national PBLWorks for equity-driven best practices for project-based learning.
Remember to continuously acknowledge the social-emotional side of learning and that all students will be returning with varying degrees of preparedness.
Educators should be mindful, patient and prepared to pivot if students are not yet able to engage with curriculum in ways they once were.
The last year-plus has been traumatic and everyone experienced it differently; it’s important to center our most marginalized and vulnerable students.
Begin the school year with an open line of communication with families.
Lead with empathy for all that families have had to endure, especially working parents.
Educators must make a fierce commitment to their own self-care to avoid burnout as they continue to roll with educating during a pandemic. Often those in healing professions put their own health and wellbeing last but it’s impossible to pour from an empty cup. Learn more about what educators can do to prepare their classrooms and their own wellbeing to begin the school year under completely different circumstances in our next Back-to-School blog, the second in our three-part series.
“Be patient – with yourself, with the kids, with each other. It’s not just the kids who need to adjust, we’re all readjusting to another phase in this pandemic,” Slye said.
An Important Reminder: Check-In, Check Often & Ask About their Friends
“Professionally I’ve seen that COVID-19 has amplified any pre-existing mental health challenges in almost every case I work with,” Slye added. If a kid had moderate anxiety, depression or suicidality before COVID-19, it got turned up to 10. If the family system was stressed or dysfunctional in any way, school was often a safe escape. Without in-person learning, many kids have spent a lot of time in those taxing environments and it’s taken a toll. My agency, Uplift Family Services, just released some data noting that 56% of young adults report anxiety or depression, 25% report substance abuse and 26% report suicidal thoughts. Additionally, four in 10 adults report anxiety and/or depression, a four-fold increase since 2019.”
Even if your child seems to be relatively stable, caregivers and teachers must also remain vigilant and aware of the effects of COVID on the friends and peers around our children. If your child encounters another youth online or in-person expressing suicidal ideation, especially with a plan and means, tell your child to take the other child seriously, communicate with kindness and offer a helpline (National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255 or Text 741-741), call 911 if they know the location of the other person, and/or report suicide and/or self-harm to the social media platform if the encounter was online. Always direct them to get an adult involved.