The AASD Board of Education met 10/26/2020. After an opening update and discussion about coronavirus, the administration staff gave a presentation on Social and Emotional Learning in the district during these unprecedented times.
Poyee Xiang, a member of the school climate team as well as a 6th grade teacher in the Elementary Virtual School, talked about how she runs her Social and Emotional Learning lessons.
[Here it should be pointed out that only a fraction of elementary students are enrolled in Elementary Virtual School. Most are enrolled in the regular schools which are (theoretically) only temporarily virtual, and it is not clear in the presentation how much if at all the practices she outlined are being implemented in the regular schools.]
Poyee stated she implements CASEL’s 3 signature practices (View CASEL’s website here: https://casel.org/). Those three practices are
1. Welcoming Rituals – Activities For Inclusions
2. Engaging Practices – Sense Making/Engagement and “Brain Breaks”
3. Optimistic Closures – Reflections and Looking Forward
They also utilize a social and emotional learning program called Second Step. (You can see Second Step’s website here: https://www.secondstep.org/) The purpose of the program is to make social and emotional learning intentional and meaningful and to provide students with opportunities, themes, skills, and context. They don’t want kids just practicing social and emotional learning in a once and done fashion, but to be working on those skills throughout the day.
Second Step is a resource they use to support the teaching of social and emotional skills and is aligned with CASEL’s “competency domains” (which are Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Responsible Decision-Making, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills).
In August the district provided professional development training to teachers on how to implement these practices both in-person and virtually [but, based on how the virtual schooling has gone it’s not clear to me that a majority of teachers are actually implementing these practices in a useful manner.]
Poyee gave examples of how she implements these practices..
1. Welcoming Rituals – When she starts her day she has the kids fill in a “Morning Check In” form while she’s taking attendance. It helps her know how her kids are doing mentally/emotionally when they start the day and if there’s anyone she needs to check in with one-on-one
2. Engaging Practices – They do various Brain Breaks throughout the day which might be teacher guided meditation, calm down Yoga, or something like jumping jacks or pushups to get the wiggles out.
3. Optimistic Closures – She leads an end of day reflection in which she has her students complete a survey every day at the end of the day. They identify how they felt about their day and set a goal for the next day. They also let her know if there’s anything they’re worried about or struggling with. She also closes with a Second Step Lesson a couple times a week.
The presentation then went back to Polly Vanden Boogart who discussed how the district is planning to move forward with Social and Emotional Learning.
They are ready to launch the much vaunted Panorama survey (of which you can read more here: https://www.facebook.com/AllThingsAppleton/posts/116919563487810) on November 4 for all 3rd-12th grade students. In theory, that will give them an idea of how the students are feeling in terms of their sense of belonging and their overall social and emotional state. AASD administration believes that themes and patterns of needs will emerge from this survey that they will then be able to target via small groups and other means.
[To editorialize again, my mind is a little blown that the administration is putting so much stock in this student survey when, at the same time, they are minimizing if not outright ignoring the many letters they have received from parents informing them plainly that their children are struggling and suffering both academically and emotionally due to the lack of in-person educational interaction.]
The AASD administration will be looking to identify students for whom virtual small groups are not having the desired impact and seeing how they can provide some in-person small group Social and Emotional Learning supports.
They’re also creating some virtual enhancements. For example, they’ve had “some” counselors “choose” to join students virtually for lunch like how they would do while at in-person school. Many teachers do this also. [I don’t understand why it’s only “some” counselors who “choose” to do this when they make it sound like this was normal policy prior to schools going all virtual. Why are counselors not required to maintain their normal level of interaction during virtual school?]
The district has also resumed home visits and support, which had been paused at the beginning of the school year. They have a safeguarding matrix in place for the staff who are conducting those home visits.
They’re working on a matrix for identifying students who need additional support. They’ll utilize Panorama survey data, as well as the results of the Studer Pulse survey they’ll be conducting. (Read more about Studer Pulse Surveys here: https://www.studereducation.com/staying-aware-pulse-check-stakeholders/) Samaritan Counselling is in the process of conducting its normal wellness screens, and the Student Service department will have information from its contacts with students and parents. All of that will give the administration the data to identify at risk students and bring them in for additional small group support.
[As an aside, it is so hard to keep track of all the different consulting companies AASD is working with and what those consulting firms do. I thought Studer was more focused on employees, but apparently AASD will be using it to identify emotionally troubled students.]
The presentation segued into an overview of the wellness screens that are conducted by Samaritan Counselling. Samaritan has been conducting these screens since 2012/2013. The purpose is to have early identification of any mental health issues so they can help students/parents get connected to mental health resources.
Two of Samaritan’s employees went over the process to the Board.
- Wellness Screen offered to parents/guardians of all 3rd grade students
- Throughout the school year
- Electronic and paper options offered
- Wellness Screen offered to all 11th grade students (Semester 1)
- Wellness Screen offered to all 9th grade students (semester 2)
- Wellness Screen offered to middle level by referral/parent permissions
A universal wellness screen is offered as a matter of course to all 3rd, 9th, and 11th grade students, but the wellness screen is not offered to students in other grades.
The elementary schools are divided into four cohorts composed of around 5 schools. They conduct 3rd grade screenings in one cohort before moving onto the next cohort. The screening surveys are filled out by the parents/guardians of the 3rd graders–not by the students themselves–and are offered electronically both on Infinite Campus and via texting. Samaritan also provides a paper copy of the screening survey to anyone who did not participate in the electronic option. All of the screening information goes directly to Samaritan Counseling–not through AASD. Samaritan then reviews the completed reports and provides the case management and referrals.
11th graders are screened during the 1st semester, and 9th graders are screened during the 2nd semester. Middle schoolers are not universally screened but the option is available by referral and parent permission. If teachers/staff see a student who is struggling they could reach out to the parent and offer a screening as an option.
They use the Pediatric Symptom Checklist–the parent-completed one for 3rd graders and the youth, self-reporting version for the older children. (See an example of the check list here.) Samaritan also works with Lawrence University to go beyond standard questions and look at suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, self harm, and generally feelings of belongingness, burdensomeness, capability, as well as depression and anxiety.
Prior to the pandemic they would typically come into school buildings and do the screenings in small groups. They would look at the results and have a master level clinician follow up with anyone who has concerning results and help them get connected to resources. The screening tool doesn’t provide any diagnostics, so if something is concerning, the student/parent would need to follow up with a provider for a formal exam. But Samaritan can get a good idea of what’s going on with the screening tools they use and recommend that they see a professional therapist or help them get involved in support groups, NAMI, and mentoring.
This year, Samaritan is trying to mirror their typical process even though they are all virtual. Teacher will host Google Meets, then the teacher will turn things over to a Zoom meeting with the Samaritan representative who will be available on Zoom during the screening. Once the students have completed the assessment they are allowed to log out of the Zoom meeting. Parents and students have the option to opt out. If a student opts out but the parents wants them to participate Samaritan will contact the student again.
Samaritan is doing telehealth now instead of in-person meetings, so they will schedule virtual appointments with students who have concerning results so that they still get one on one interaction even if they’re virtual. They make recommendations and connect with the families per their normal procedure and are trying to adhere as closely as possible to their normal processes eventhough they are doing it virtually.
They are currently 6 weeks into the screening process. Last year’s participation rate at the high school level was 78.7%. This year, due to students not being in the building, it’s only 27.6%. [They’re claiming a 33.6% rate, but that would include the 24 students who refused to participate.]
25.8% of the students who participated had results that indicated some kind of mental health concern. That is in-line with other years and is not abnormally high.
At the 3rd grade level, there has been a 32.5% participation which is fairly close to last year’s rate of 38% and that is before they send out paper copies to parents who did not participate electronically. 21.9% of the screenings indicated issues.
The presentation then moved back to an AASD employee who went over the district’s plans to provide mental health supports moving forward.
They have started conducting essential home visits. 50% of all administrators have shared that they’ve done at least 15 essential home visits this fall. One highschool has conducted more than 100. Those home visits have resulted in 75% of the contacted students coming back to virtual learning because they now know that AASD teachers and staff care about them. [This was not discussed, but to me it seems very alarming that one of the high schools had at least 100 students not participating in classes.]
They have guidelines in place for home visits which include wearing PPE, meeting for less than 15 minutes, staff members going in separate cars instead of carpooling, staying outside, and staying 6 feet away from students and other family members.
When transmission rates decrease, employees will be allowed to enter homes, but remaining outside will still be preferable, and visits should still be less than 15 minutes.
AASD is also starting small groups, both in-person and virtual. These will be focused not just on delivering academic support but also on providing social/emotional support. All of the home messages the district sends out include a link to school counselors. Parents typically go to teachers first, but they have been reaching out to Student Services staff more. They’re working on a parent request process that will allow parents who feel their children are struggling with social, emotional, or mental health issues to ask the schools for help.
They then opened things up for questions from the Board.
Deb Truymann was concerned that the survey response rate was only 33%. She was concerned about the other 66%.
Those students will be given a second chance to participate. If high schoolers don’t participate after 2 offers then their parents are contacted and informed that the screening is available.
Deb was worried about students potentially being suicidal or having other mental health issues and strongly wanted more effort to be made to reach out to students who had not participated in the screening.
AASD’s response rate is higher than the other district that’s fully virtual which Samaritan is working with. It was reiterated that in a normal year Samaritan would expect between 20%-25% of students to display mental health problems and historically AASD’s rates have been in that range so this year’s rate of 25.8% is not abnormal. A little further on, it was mentioned that, anecdotally, Samaritan is seeing increased anxiety around virtual learning and managing virtual learning–particularly managing learning along with things like work and preparing for college.
Deb expressed concern as to whether the district administration really has a gauge on what is happening with students’ mental well being.
She was told that the high school level has been very intentional about focusing on social and emotional well-being. Their Sources of Strenghth program, which is a peer to peer suicide prevention program, is in its 3rd or 4th year. There’s a strong effort among students to support each other and “see something say something”. Staff has been working at seeing which students are not engaged or who do not seem the same as they were last year. Staff are collaborating with each other to keep those concerns at the forefront and reach out to student services for help.
Per Amy D’Addario, the Samaritan representative, the teacher engagement at AASD has remained phenomenal, and the teachers have a lot of buy-in around the mental health screening which is why the program has been successful. Even in this virtual model the teachers remain engaged. They don’t see that at every school district.
Barry O’Connell wondered if Samaritan had seen an increase in suicide attempts or ideation.
The Samaritan representative did not have specific figures available off hand but that info should be available and can be looked up. What she’s heard anecdotally is that there is not a change from last year to this year, but it’s only been 5 weeks and the sample size is small.
There was a final discussion between Deb and administration staff in which Deb reiterated her desire that the district do more to reach out to students who have not responded to the survey and thus ended the presentation and discussion about social and emotional learning and support at AASD during coronavirus.
You can view the entire Board of Education meeting here: https://youtu.be/ti5oQf2Twr0
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