Emotionally Ready for Academics
Yoga helps Diana get emotionally ready for her days (Taken December 2022)
Call it Maslow’s. Call it Bloom’s. You can call it whatever you want, and the fact remains that many of our students are not emotionally ready to fully participate in their academics. Over the past three years, stressors from the pandemic, political climate, economy, racial injustice, community violence, and countless other worries have permeated the K-12 system, and left our staff and students wobbly. Young people are perceptive and socially intelligent (all my K 12 people won’t be shocked by this), and they are really good at reading adult emotions … and internalizing them. While some students certainly thrived during the height of COVID, many struggled with abrupt changes in routines and social isolation, and many of the younger students weren’t even developmentally able to appropriately process and contextualize the changes around them. This boils down to a lot of stressed-out students. We’ll serve our students’ academic needs best when we first recognize and address the fact that the past few years (despite the heroic efforts of educators) led to trauma for many of our students … and our staff. I’ll need another whole blog to talk about the impact of the pandemic on our amazing educators.
When I talk to educators, the vast majority tell me that school is not the same. Our students are struggling emotionally, behaviorally and academically. When we discuss this current school culture, they ask me really hard questions like: Are our students scarred for life? Is “this” the new normal everyone is talking about? How can I cope? What can we do? I honestly believe that the answer is no – this is not the end point of our new normal, this will be several years of hard work as we transition towards a more stable environment, and yes, we can do a lot. We have an opportunity (and responsibility) to help our students thrive again.
So, what will it take? To get our students emotionally ready to engage effectively in their academics, we need to commit to intentional shifts in school culture. This starts with supporting the emotional well-being of our staff, and then moving out from there to create a positive and inclusive school culture, with a social-emotional focus. It also requires that we disrupt much of the institution-centered K-12 system and instead double down on creating schools that center the student in all of our decision-making. And not a one-size-fits-all student model, but tiered and differentiated supports that meet the needs of every student in a school building. Will it be easy? No, but it will reap real benefits for students. Will it be cheap? No, but schools have ESSER funds that must be spent by September 30, 2024, so use what you’ve got before it runs out. Commit yourself and your school to helping our students come out ready to thrive in their academics and meet life’s challenges outside of school.
We must rebuild school as a safe place for students and staff to navigate the trauma they’ve experienced and focus on building sustainable, positive relationships that will support students beyond the walls of their local K-12—putting students back in desks and continuing as if nothing ever happened ignores the emotional needs of both students and staff. Moreover, I promise that if your students and staff are still processing their trauma, it’s next to impossible to expect any learning to occur.
Enough with the grand gestures, Diana. Specifically, what do we do? Increasing counseling staff and mental health support is very much needed, and in the public health sphere, we could call these tier 2 (targeted) and tier 3 (intensive) supports. Yet, our health system has shown that there are simply not enough mental health counselors to meet the current demand. So be creative and generous as you attract talent, and explore telehealth as a supplement. I also see schools using their ESSER funds towards more tutoring and academic support. Love that! But we still need more! I’m hearing from schools that they need more universal support, or tier 1 in public health lingo, interventions for everyone – develop/adopt and implement a whole-child, whole-school school culture program that includes intensive staff training and support. I’ve been fortunate to work with several schools this year on just these types of initiatives, and I’ve seen both staff and students respond positively.
Through universal supports for all students, we must focus on the emotional well-being of our students. How? Through social-emotional learning. We need to reset what normal looks like. We need to rebuild school culture. This will look different for every school - because every school is different. Adding clubs and activities for students to find belonging, training staff (and re-training) on SEL classroom strategies, reducing bias, and creating a welcoming environment, and most of all, remembering that there were a lot of things about school that weren’t so great before Covid-19 as well. Now is your chance to rethink class schedules, archaic discipline policies that punish students when healing would be more effective, and outdoor learning – the sky is truly the limit.
This is a golden opportunity for educators as we prepare our students to be emotionally ready to engage in their academics. Don't be afraid to shake up the system to support your students. Spending the time to rebuild and reset your school’s culture is worth the effort and any associated risk. I guarantee that once your students and staff begin to feel that sense of community, belonging, and safety, the test scores will follow.