Teacher Tom: To Continue Becoming

Teacher Tom: To Continue Becoming

To Continue Becoming

A few days ago, a medical doctor was being interviewed on CNN about the psychological impact of the pandemic on children. She provided several caveats along the way, but her bottom line response was "I expect that kids will bounce back."

It's a hopeful answer and one that is, in some fashion, true. More to the point, however, it's what we all want to hear. Perhaps in some ways, we need to hear it because, I suppose, we too hope to "bounce back" from our negative experiences. But no matter how hard we hope, over a half million people in the US died and it's estimated that 40,000 children lost a parent to this plague. I'd very much like for us all to "bounce back," but it hardly seems an appropriate wish, especially for these poor children. A young child doesn't simply bounce back from a parent's death. Indeed, the concept of bouncing back seems far more appropriate to, say, dealing with the loss of a baseball game, than the cruel lessons of life itself.

The doctor, of course, wasn't talking about these children, nor is she talking about the children who suffered themselves, or those who have spent the pandemic trapped in a household CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: To Continue Becoming

Teacher Tom: Their Play is Not Evidence That They are Fine

Teacher Tom: Their Play is Not Evidence That They are Fine

Their Play is Not Evidence That They are Fine

We've all seen recordings of children playing in refugee camps and in war zones. In Peter Gray's book Free to Learn, he tells about the games Jewish children played even in concentration camps. They were games of survival, for the most part, like challenging one another to touch an electrified fence, but they were games and it was play. Children play with or without toys. They play with or without freedom. They play alone and together. They play when afraid. They play when they're sad. They play when they're confused.

We point to the irrepressibility of childhood play as evidence of the resilience of children, and they certainly are resilient, but we make a mistake when we point to their play as evidence that they are "fine."

Children don't play because they are fine: they play because play is how children instinctively process (or, in other words, learn about) the world around them. I watched children who could only have been frightened and confused (because we were all frightened and confused) fly their toy airplanes into block towers over and over in the weeks after 9/11. My CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Their Play is Not Evidence That They are Fine

Tired of butting heads with kids? Scolding them? Bossing them around? Do you feel like they just don't listen? Sign up now for my new 6-part e-course, The Technology of Speaking With Children So They Can Think, in which I pull the curtain back on the magic that comes from treating children like fully formed human beings. This course is for educators, parents, and anyone else who works with young children. It's the culmination of more than 20 years of research and practice. I've been speaking on this topic around the world for the past decade and know that it can be transformative both for adults and children. For more information and to register, click here. Thank you!

NANCY BAILEY: How Has School Privatization Contributed to Mental Illness in Students Before and During Covid-19?

How Has School Privatization Contributed to Mental Illness in Students Before and During Covid-19?

How Has School Privatization Contributed to Mental Illness in Students Before and During Covid-19?

Mental illness in children existed before Covid-19. How many students are struggling with it during the pandemic? How did school privatization contribute to this phenomenon?

Before Covid-19

A 2018 survey conducted by the National Association of Elementary School Principals noted that their top concern is the rising numbers of students with emotional problems and mental health needs. This was not the case ten years ago. What changed?

Increasingly, a harsh school environment with unbridled high-stakes standardized testing, a pushdown to what’s expected of the youngest learners, an overemphasis on impersonal screens and addiction to social media, and a dramatic increase and focus on college expectations of middle and high school students have dominated how students live. While these factors don’t necessarily cause mental illness, they don’t help students who struggle with it.

According to Kauffman and Bader in The Scandalous Neglect of Children’s Mental Health, the school can be the first place a child’s mental illness is discovered. Unfortunately, out of the 5 percent of children who have a mental illness, only CONTINUE READING: How Has School Privatization Contributed to Mental Illness in Students Before and During Covid-19?

America's children are facing a mental health crisis that no one is talking about | Salon.com

America's children are facing a mental health crisis that no one is talking about | Salon.com

America's children are facing a mental health crisis that no one is talking about

Mental health-related hospital visits for children are way up, as kids’ lives are disrupted by the pandemic

With a third wave of COVID-19 infections sweeping the United States and widespread infection around the world, some schools are grappling with how to stay open safely, while others remain shuttered with remote learning curricula. 

For many children, this new wave of infections will mean additional disruptions to their daily lives: reduced access to nutritious food, less physical activity, perhaps even limits on playtime with friends. Taken together, these and other overlapping impacts affect both their physical and mental health.

I've worked on health issues around the globe for decades, including during the Ebola epidemic and other crises. Though the pandemic has created global health challenges previously unseen, as president and CEO of UNICEF USA, I know that children are becoming the hidden victims of the pandemic.

A new CDC analysis finds that since 2019, the proportion of mental health-related emergency room visits for children aged 5 to 11 and 12 to 17 years increased approximately 24% and 31%, respectively. So why are more kids ending up in the emergency room for mental health issues? Part of the answer seems to be that critical mental health services, like counseling, are being disrupted by the pandemic. Indeed, a recent report found that 93% of countries worldwide are facing such disruptions. Many of those services are typically made available through schools and other community institutions, institutions that are now being forced to move online or adapt their programming.

I've seen firsthand — not just in the United States but in all corners of the globe, from Syrian refugees in Jordan to Sri Lanka — that psychosocial support for children in moments of crisis is the key to ensuring that critical years of learning are not lost. To help kids cope with this crisis today, and to reduce years of turmoil and future trauma and health impacts, governments, schools and nonprofit organizations must act urgently to expand equitable access to mental health services and other forms of psychosocial CONTINUE READING: America's children are facing a mental health crisis that no one is talking about | Salon.com

Schools bring mindfulness to the classroom to help kids right now

Schools bring mindfulness to the classroom to help kids right now

Schools bring mindfulness to the classroom to help kids in the Covid-19 crisis

Mindfulness in schools is increasingly being used to help students with mental health and academic performance, but research on its effectiveness is not yet conclusive

Doug Worthen guided his small class of ninth graders at Middlesex School through an exercise designed to focus their attention. On his screen, he saw the students sitting outside or at desks and lounging across their beds as they joined their weekly mindfulness class online. One by one the students clicked off their cameras, each square became a white and gray icon and Worthen began the meditation.

“Notice where your attention is,” he said, prompting them to guide their attention back to their “home base” — the sounds around them or body sensations — when it drifted.

At the end of the meditation, the students were guided to open their eyes. They turned their screens back on and Worthen posed a question to the group. “I learned that my attention isn’t very stable,” a student said. She estimated that her attention was focused on her home base 14 percent of the time.

In this required 12-week “Introduction to Mindfulness” course taught by Worthen, a full-time mindfulness instructor, students at the private boarding school in Concord, Massachusetts, will learn how to develop awareness of their thoughts and body sensations, sit with difficult CONTINUE READING: Schools bring mindfulness to the classroom to help kids right now

How To Prevent Suicide Among Tweens | HuffPost

How To Prevent Suicide Among Tweens | HuffPost

How To Prevent Suicide Among Tweens

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for children ages 10 to 14, who are online more than ever before. A center in New Mexico is working to change that.

SANTA FE, N.M. ― As with most after-school clubs, the meeting inside Ortiz Middle School begins with kids bumping and jostling into a classroom. A boy with green hair grabs a bag of chips off a table, taking a seat next to a girl. He invites her to share the snack. Another student adjusts the tie-dye bandana she’s using as a headband and shows her friend a funny meme on her phone.

The adult advisers, Robert Kristy and Katrina Koehler, ask everyone to take a seat on the floor in a circle, assuring them that pizza has been ordered and will be delivered shortly.

Koehler asks, “So, on a scale of happy to crappy, how’s your suicide?”

Forget the volleyball team or chess club. This group, which has been meeting weekly since 2015, was formed in the spirit of Project Semicolon, an international movement that began when activist Amy Bleuel shared her mental health struggles on social media. “[E]veryone who self harms, is suicidal, depressed, has anxiety, is unhappy, going through a broken heart, just lost a loved one, etc. draw a semicolon on your wrist,” she posted to Twitter in 2013. “[A] semicolon represents a sentence the author could’ve ended, but chose not to. [T]he author is you and the sentence is your life.”

All over the world, people embraced the punctuation mark, with many acquiring real semicolon tattoos. The Sky Center, an independent mental health clinic that operates out of Ortiz Middle School, also adopted the semicolon for a suicide survivors group created as part of its effort to provide free, in-person support to a growing number of distressed young people.

For years, experts across the United States have been working to address the mental health crisis among teens and young adults. But a growing number of indicators suggest that the same emotional problems ― anxiety, depression and even suicide ― are affecting children at increasingly younger ages.

Even before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, there were worrying signs. The number of anxiety disorders diagnosed by health care providers in children as young as 6 has gone up 17% in just five years, according to the most recent data.

Self-injury, or intentional cutting, scratching, burning or hitting, has been measured as high as 30% in some populations of girls, with the age of onset around 12 or 13.

These intentional self-harming behaviors ― often separate from suicidal intentions ― have become so widespread that a new disorder, non-suicidal self-injury (NSSID), was added to the 2013 DSM-5.

Bark, an app that alerts parents when their children encounter worrisome content online, analyzed the online activity of more than a million tweens in 2019. A staggering 55% of CONTINUE READING: How To Prevent Suicide Among Tweens | HuffPost

SSPI Issues Statement on CSA Report - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

SSPI Issues Statement on CSA Report - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Issues Statement on California State Auditor's Report on Youth Suicide Prevention

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond issued the following statement in response to the California State Auditor’s (CSA) Report on Youth Suicide Prevention on Tuesday:

“More and more of our youth are in crisis, and we must do all we can to help them when they need us the most. Students across California continue to struggle with increased feelings of isolation, anxiety, and depression that are only exacerbated by the pandemic, natural disasters, and social unrest.

“We appreciate the California State Auditor’s review of this important issue and concur with its recommendations. As educators, we understand the responsibility we have to support students’ mental health and emotional needs to combat the pressures of bullying, the impact of trauma, and other barriers to success. We remain committed to helping ensure schools across California have the support and resources necessary to lift up every student.”

See the California Department of Education’s (CDE) full response to the audit report on the CSA’s Reports web page.

In June, the State Superintendent began convening leaders from the California Association of School Counselors, the California Association of School Psychologists, the California Association of School Social Workers, and the California Alliance of Child and Family Services to begin identifying additional supports and resources for students in need.

The CDE continues to offer free Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) trainings to school, district, and county staff. YMHFA training is primarily designed for adults who regularly interact with young people. It provides child and youth-serving adults, including school and district staff, skills to recognize and support a school-aged child or adolescent who may be experiencing emotional distress, the onset of a mental illness, addiction challenge, or in crisis.

The State Superintendent and the CDE also announced in July, in collaboration with the San Diego County Office of Education, the launch of a free online suicide prevention training program available to middle and high school staff and students throughout the state.

Additionally, the CDE has numerous resources for educators, families, and students, including resources for students in crisis, students experiencing homelessness, and foster youth. CDE’s guidance for the safe reopening of schools also addresses ways to support the mental health and well-being of all.

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Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

SSPI Issues Statement on CSA Report - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

Restorative circles, online wellness rooms and grief training: How schools are preparing for the Covid mental health crisis - The Hechinger Report

Restorative circles, online wellness rooms and grief training: How schools are preparing for the Covid mental health crisis - The Hechinger Report

Restorative circles, online wellness rooms and grief training: How schools are preparing for the Covid mental health crisis
More students are experiencing anxiety and depression, forcing schools to prioritize mental health needs over academic work

The calls started at 6 a.m., and Patrick McCauley was ready, having retreated to the privacy of his garage where he sat waiting for Angelenos to share how they’re coping with the stresses of the coronavirus pandemic.

For the last 14 years, McCauley has worked as a mental health counselor and consultant in the Los Angeles Unified School District. In April, he began staffing a new hotline the district created to reach students, parents and teachers in need of mental health supports and other services as the virus forced people into isolation and cost jobs and lives.

One day he heard from a fifth grader who was terrified that her parents would catch the illness. Another day, a mother wanted advice on her once mild-mannered daughter, who had started throwing tantrums and yelling profanities after the quarantine began. Teachers wanted to know how to respond to students who appeared distraught during Zoom lessons, or what to do about the kids who didn’t log on at all.

McCauley, who has a soothing voice and a surfer’s unruffled mien, listened carefully and reassured the callers that they were experiencing understandable reactions to highly abnormal circumstances. Their testimony amounted to a warning, though, of what schools may face when they restart this fall: kids with a history of mental health problems whose symptoms have worsened, students who maybe experiencing anxiety or anger for the first time, children in households that have become CONTINUE READING: Restorative circles, online wellness rooms and grief training: How schools are preparing for the Covid mental health crisis - The Hechinger Report

Anxiety, depression hit students in underrepresented groups

Anxiety, depression hit students in underrepresented groups

OPINION: ‘Anxiety and depression among students have become central issues, and not all young people are affected equally’
The coronavirus's disproportionate effect on Black, Latino and Native American communities

The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox.

The coronavirus pandemic has upended the American education system at all levels, and it is taking a serious toll on student mental health and well-being.

A recent survey from Active Minds, a mental health nonprofit, found that 80 percent of the high school and college students surveyed are having difficulty concentrating. Nearly half are facing financial challenges, with unemployment, financial aid and successful distance learning among the concerns of young people.

Anxiety and depression among students have become central issues, and not all young people are affected equally.

Because of the coronavirus’s disproportionate effect on Black, Latino, Native American and low-income communities, young people of color are likely to experience an uneven share of new burdens and financial pressures, as well as worry, grief and loss at home. This situation merits immediate attention and action.

According to an NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist national poll in April, 60 percent of respondents who identified as non-white said they or someone in their household lost work hours or a job due to the pandemic, compared to 43 percent of white respondents. This additional financial strain may make attending college unrealistic for many.

A Gates Foundation survey of parents in May found that for about 60 percent of Black and Latino high school students, the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted their postsecondary plans, compared with 43 percent of white high school students. (The Gates Foundation is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.) CONTINUE READING: Anxiety, depression hit students in underrepresented groups

Free Statewide Online Suicide Prevention Training - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

Free Statewide Online Suicide Prevention Training - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Announces Free Statewide Online Suicide Prevention Training Program

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced today that the California Department of Education (CDE), in collaboration with the San Diego County Office of Education, is launching a free online suicide prevention training program available to middle and high school staff and students throughout the state.

“The COVID-19 pandemic not only disrupted the academic lives of our students and families, but it may have contributed to emotional and mental health challenges that some of our students struggle with,” said Thurmond. “It is important that students know that they have someone to turn to within their school community when they are feeling overwhelmed. Providing this specialized training to school staff and peers can not only be utilized to support students in crisis during the critical time we are in now, but any time a student is feeling despondent, stressful, and alone.”

The funding for the program was secured by Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) and included in Assembly Bill 1808, which was passed in 2018.

“One of my biggest highlights of 2018 was securing $1.7 million dollars to fund online suicide prevention training for California middle and high school staff and students," said Assemblymember Berman. "I'm thankful that the training program is being launched across the state, particularly during this challenging and unprecedented time. As students cope with school closures and isolation, it's absolutely critical that administrators, teachers, and students know what to look for and how to respond to help prevent youth suicide.”

The online training program is called LivingWorks Start, an evidence-based program that is aligned with CDE’s Model Youth Suicide Prevention Policy to address the needs of high-risk populations. According to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the second leading cause of death for youth ages ten to twenty-four. For every youth who dies by suicide, an estimated 100 to 200 young people make suicide attempts.

“One thing that’s increasingly recognized in suicide prevention efforts is that you have to engage large numbers of people,” says Rick Trimp, president of LivingWorks. “When students are thinking about suicide, they’re likely to confide in a peer or a trusted teacher. Having students and teachers trained to recognize when someone is struggling and connect them to further help empowers the whole school community to come together and support those at risk.”

The San Diego County Office of Education was selected through a competitive application by the CDE to lead the effort and make the training available to local educational agencies (LEAs) through their respective county office of education. LEAs can choose to incorporate the program as an additional resource to an existing youth suicide prevention policy.

“This is not a one-size-fits-all solution,” said Dr. Paul Gothold, San Diego County Superintendent of Schools. “By working with all 58 county offices of education to distribute this online training to their areas of greatest need, we are honoring the expertise, resources, and needs of each community.”

The program will be rolled out in two phases, with school site staff trained first and students trained during the second phase, which will take place in September. Having trained school personnel in place will allow students to receive the proper support when they go through the program and will help them be better equipped to support students who may be experiencing thoughts of suicide. Some of the training topics include how to recognize when someone is having suicidal thoughts, intervention strategies, and connections to support services.

For questions or more information, visit the San Diego County Office of Education’s Student Support Services web page or email Program Specialist Heather Nemour at heather.nemour@sdcoe.net.

# # # #

Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

Free Statewide Online Suicide Prevention Training - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)