Saturday, May 30, 2020

Preparing NOW to Address Students’ Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Needs Before They Transition Back to School (Part II)


Let’s Use Caring and Common Sense as Our Post-Pandemic Guides (A Bonus Podcast Included)

[CLICK HERE for the Full Blog Message]

Introduction

   Last time, in Part I of this Blog Series, I discussed concerns that some in the (popular) press are priming our schools for a post-pandemic rush of child and adolescent post-traumatic stress syndrome.

[CLICK HERE for Part I of this Blog Series]

   This sensationalism is being projected without objective data or past comparable experience.  As such, it creates a negative, perhaps self-fulfilling, search-for-the-deficits mindset, and it may result in a defensive, pathology-driven climate as our students walk back into their schools for the first time in five, six, or more months.

   As a school psychologist wanting to objectify the school re-entry process, I recommend—based, in part, on the Part I discussion, that—in August, September, or whenever our students return—educators need to:
  • Plan from a strength-based perspective that recognizes and utilizes students’ social, emotional, and behavioral strengths. . . leaning in and building on these assets;
  • Recognize the importance of creating immediate and sustained safe and supportive climates—from staff to students, students to students, and school to home;
  • Allow students to discuss and debrief the pandemic’s past and present effects on their lives, to socially and emotionally re-connect with their peers and staff, and to (re-)establish the supportive interpersonal and academic routines and protocols that will help them successfully navigate the re-entry process and beyond;
  • Realize that we will still be living in the shadow and context of the pandemic, that students (and staff) will need ongoing understanding and support, and that everyone has their own “timeline” relative to emotional response, recovery, and “normalization;”
  • Prepare to formally or informally screen students for social, emotional, and/or behavioral distress. . . but ensure that such screenings involve multiple, objective, data-based assessments (including student interviews and observations) reflecting multiple school settings taken from multiple validating sources;
  • Have a continuum of in-school and community-based social, emotional, and behavioral services, supports, strategies, and interventions prepared for students who demonstrate significant or persistent challenges (before and) during the post-pandemic transition back to school; and
  • Understand that this “new normal” post-pandemic school and schooling world includes a “new normal” relative to the social, emotional, and behavioral status and needs of students (and staff)—and that these new norms will vary by students’ age, gender, culture, race, socio-economic backgrounds, home and family supports, and presence of medical conditions and other disabilities.
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   Critically, districts and schools need to begin (or continue their) planning right now to address these recommendations.

   But in doing so, they also need to recognize that there are no (social, emotional, behavioral, or SEL) programs to purchase or download to accomplish these tasks.

   Success here will require planning and implementing effective practices that are individualized to the students, staff, and families in everyone’s respective district or school.

   Success will not be accomplished by purchasing or downloading a generic program that has not been field-tested or proven for these conditions, and that may miss, be insensitive to, or exacerbate your needs.
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   Recall the point made in Part I of this Blog series. There are more than 40 different SEL frameworks—most that have never been extensively field-tested, and most that have not objectively demonstrated their ability to produce meaningful, observable student-centered success. . . much less sustained student social, emotional, or behavioral success.

   Indeed, in the last Blog, we quoted a Harvard Graduate School of Education group doing research in this area. They note on their website:

Throughout its history, the field of social and emotional learning (SEL) has been defined or characterized in a variety of ways. In some respects, the term SEL serves as an umbrella for many subfields with which many educators, researchers, and policy-makers are familiar (e.g., bullying prevention, civic and character education and development, conflict resolution, social skills training, life skills, “soft” or “non-cognitive” skills, 21st century skills). However, discussion of this broad non-academic domain lacks clarity about what we mean and is beset by dilemmas about how best to measure and promote skills in this area. Underlying this challenge, and in some ways compounding it, is the fact that the field more generally is structured around a large number of organizational systems or frameworks that often use different or even conflicting terminology to talk about a similar set of skills.
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Identifying Student Groups for Your Post-Pandemic Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Plan

   Districts and schools need to immediately begin (or continue) the planning for how to address students’ social, emotional, and behavioral post-pandemic transition and Fall re-entry back into school.

   This should involve administrators, related service personnel (i.e., counselors, school psychologists, social workers, and relevant community-based professionals), general and special education teacher representatives, and important others.

   Using a multi-tiered approach, the initial discussion should focus on preparing the services, supports, strategies, and interventions for students who had social, emotional, behavioral, or mental health needs prior to the January/February, 2020 “start” of the pandemic.

   Added to this preparation should be students known to develop similar needs during or due to the mid-March closing of school and/or to the concurrent sequestration or related COVID-19 events at home. These events might involve issues related to hunger and food insecurity, parental unemployment, nuclear or extended family members or friends becoming ill or hospitalized due to COVID-19, isolation from peers or the death of relative, or anxiety around school and academic standing.

   Finally, the planning should involve how to prepare, train, motivate, guide, and support all school staff in the activities and interactions that will, in turn, support students’ successful social, emotional, and behavioral transitions back to school, as well as their stability and progress beyond the first days and weeks.
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Important Activities to Include in Your Post-Pandemic Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Plan

   Beyond identifying—as recommended above—the different groups of students that will need services, supports, strategies, and interventions, some additional activities need to be included in the planning and preparation process.

   Here, both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) have provided great resources and guidance that districts and schools should integrate into their plans. Many of these resources are specific to the current pandemic, while others adapt long-standing work in how to assist students involved in medical and other large-scale crises or disasters.

   In one section, the CDC and NASP recommendations—as well as others—have been integrated into recommendations to help districts and schools best prepare for the first days and weeks when staff and students physically return to school—and then for the following second and third months.

[CLICK HERE for the Full Blog Message]

   In order to accomplish these activities, districts need to (a) have memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with agencies that have support personnel to help provide continuous social, emotional, behavioral, or mental health services; (b) systematically review the data from the data management tracking system discussed above; (c) continue to provide both individual and group services and interventions so that students can process and share their experiences in appropriate and supportive formats and settings; and (d) maintain effective communications with individual and groups of parents and other community leaders.
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Planning Resources: Talking with Students About the Pandemic during the School Re-Entry Process, and Helping Them Cope

   In a second and third section, the Full Blog Message provides links to and synthesizes the CDC and NASP resources and handouts—outlining the developmental differences across different student groups, what activities should occur, how to talk with students, and how to best help them cope with the social, emotional, and behavioral conditions that they are experiencing.

   In addition, the Full Blog Message provides an “advanced screening” of an upcoming podcast that I recently taped with Dr. Christopher Balow, the Chief Academic Officer at SchoolMint.

   The title of the podcast is:

Re-Opening Schools During the Pandemic: Students’ Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Needs

[CLICK HERE for the Full Blog Message]
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Summary

   In Part I of this Blog Series, we discussed concerns that some in the (popular) press are priming our schools for a post-pandemic rush of child and adolescent post-traumatic stress syndrome, but that such projections were not based on objective data or past comparable experiences.

[CLICK HERE for Part I of this Blog Series]

   In this Blog Part II, we provide detailed blueprints or check-lists on what district and school personnel need to (continue to) do now to plan and prepare staff for the most effective ways to address students’ social, emotional, and behavioral post-pandemic transition and Fall re-entry back into school.

   These blueprints include (a) how to identify different groups of students with social, emotional, behavioral, or mental health needs; (b) important activities that need to be included in the post-pandemic social, emotional, and behavioral plan; and (c) how to approach and talk with students during the initial re-entry process and thereafter.

   Critically, the recommended plans should involve how to prepare, train, motivate, guide, and support all school staff in the activities and interactions that will, in turn, support students’ successful social, emotional, and behavioral transitions back to school. . . as well as their stability and progress beyond the first days and weeks.
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   I hope that these two Blog messages are helpful to you. As an underlying theme, I want to emphasize that, while we need to prepare for this social, emotional, and behavioral transition on behalf of our students, we need to take an objective, developmentally-sensitive, and data-based perspective in how we plan and eventually respond to the real behaviors and needs that our students exhibit.

   Related to this is an emphasis that districts and schools need to prepare and implement effective, locally-sensitive, and student-focused practices. . . not global, canned, untested, or heavily marketed and frameworks or programs. And, once again, that the planning needs to occur now. . . so that the resources, preparation, and training can occur before our students come back.
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   As always, I appreciate the time that you invest in reading these Blogs, and your dedication to your students, your colleagues, and effective school and schooling practices—especially in the face of the challenges and competing priorities that we all are experiencing.

   Please feel free to send me your thoughts and questions. 

   And please know that I am always available to you through Zoom calls. . . if and when you need me. Contact me at any time.

Best,

Howie

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