Chalkbeat

Shootings are falling in Philly, but kids make up a growing share of gun-violence victims

2026-04-09T10:00:00+00:00

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The number of Philadelphia kids injured by gunfire is falling — but it’s not falling as fast as the total number of shooting victims.

In 2020, children who were injured by gunfire but not killed made up about 8% of Philly’s 2,245 shooting victims, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of data from the city’s Office of the Controller. But they made up 11% of that category in the city last year, when 939 people were shot.

The toll of the last few years has left an excruciating mark on the city, even as the numbers have begun to fall. And community experts and physicians say the rising share of those victims who are kids stems from the problem that unlike adults, young people are more susceptible to peer and social-media pressure to wield guns.

All across the city, children are recovering from bullet wounds. There have been 852 nonfatal shootings of people ages 17 and under since 2021, according to city data.

“The kids are just infatuated with this gun violence,” said Tone Barr, director of victim services for the Anti-Violence Partnership of Philadelphia. “Until we get a hold on that you’re still going to see this turmoil, this trauma.”

Barr shared those comments at a press conference last Thursday, following the April 1 shooting of a 3-year-old boy in a South Philadelphia home. The child has a head wound and was in critical condition as of late last week. His 17-year-old uncle has been charged with a felony weapons offense.

A “ghost gun” — a type of firearm that’s hard to trace and easy to order online — was found under the teen’s bed, officials said. They noted a different weapon was used in the shooting.

“Please check bookbags, check rooms,” Barr pleaded. “This is a tragedy that shouldn’t have happened. We can’t normalize reckless behavior.”

Activists like Ant Brown say the key to combatting the trend is reaching teens through different media.

“If the music is all death culture, is negative, how do we expect for these young kids to act?” he said, adding that many “bouls” — Philly slang for young boys or young men — “want to be street dudes.”

He and a few other organizers recently teamed up with the University of Pennsylvania to launch Creators for Community Safety, which trains social media influencers on anti-violence messaging. A similar project in Chicago taps into social media to emphasize that guns are dangerous, not cool.

“I feel like it’s up to content creators to get involved, in how they push out content to young people that can also ease their mind in a way,” Brown said. “When we talk about the arts, we got to figure out a way where we’re not just re-traumatizing young people.”

City faces grim reality: ‘Guns are plentiful’

Two children have been killed by gunfire in Philadelphia in 2026. A 13-year-old was fatally shot in the city’s West Oak Lane section Tuesday night. And in January, a 16-year-old Imhotep Institute Charter High School student, Khyon Smith-Tate, was fatally shot in North Philadelphia.

During the height of the gun-violence crisis after the pandemic, Philadelphia’s students were shot while walking to school, at bus stops, and at football games.

At the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, ICU physician Dr. Anireddy Reddy treats traumatic brain injuries, abdomen wounds, and other complex physical trauma caused by bullets.

It’s part of why she and her colleague’s in the hospital’s Center for Violence Prevention now counsel families about safe firearm storage and provide gun locks.

“We know that access to a firearm significantly increases a child or a teen’s risk of either accidental injury, death by suicide, or other injury within the home,” she said.

Victoria Wylie, who started working to prevent gun violence after her 20-year-old brother was killed in 2008, said easy access to guns is especially dangerous in Philadelphia’s lowest-income communities.

“Guns are plentiful, and we’re dealing with a more traumatized society,” said Wylie, who cofounded the Donte Wylie Foundation support group for adults with long-term gunshot injuries, like people who use wheelchairs. “There’s more PTSD, there’s more anger in communities. And problems result in violence because of it.”

Even though gun violence in Philadelphia has declined recently, each shooting sends a ripple of grief and fear through entire school communities, said Nora Gross, an assistant professor of education at Barnard College.

In 2020, Gross spent significant time at a Philadelphia high school and collaborated with several young men on a short film, “Our Philadelphia,” about losing classmates to gun violence.

She argues schools should give students more grace and space to process their feelings after a student is shot. That might mean easing up on discipline and providing extra counselors after such incidents.

When gun violence happens, teachers and other adults step up, often without getting formal training beforehand, Gross said.

“There’s a lot of adults in school buildings who are doing this hidden emotional labor,” she said. “People like the secretaries in the main office, the security guards, the janitors, the lunch people.”

The School District of Philadelphia contracts with multiple violence prevention nonprofits to provide grief and trauma services. However, pending budget cuts could mean fewer adults are available to help kids affected by gun violence.

This story is part of a collaboration between Chalkbeat Philadelphia and The New York Times’s Headway Initiative, supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) via the Local Media Foundation.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

How a Philadelphia high school is fighting AI slop and internet lies

2026-03-10T18:20:09+00:00

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Nine Kensington Health Science Academy seniors are waging war on misinformation and disinformation in their Philadelphia high school hallways — and they say it’s working.

They know the social media algorithms they spend hours scrolling are feeding them AI slop, medical lies, and political rhetoric customized to confuse and anger their classmates and family members.

They’ve seen loved ones fall for fake videos, and have unintentionally shared some themselves.

Now, these students are on a mission to give their classmates tools to spot internet lies.

“People are trying to control what you think and see,” senior Apollo Sunun told Chalkbeat.

Through a student-powered initiative called Project FACTS, nine Kensington Health Science Academy seniors are teaching their classmates how to spot AI slop, medical misinformation, and political lies before they hit “share.”

In the wake of the 2024 presidential election, KHSA Principal Nimet Eren told Chalkbeat she launched Project FACTS. It stands for “find out where a post is from, analyze it, challenge it, think for yourself before you share.” Eren said FACTS is a nonpartisan effort to teach students how to think for themselves and question the information they’re being presented with.

Media literacy classes have gained momentum in recent years as educators channel their desire to help young people decipher fact from fiction online.

Sunun and eight other seniors quickly joined in the effort: Rafael Rosario, Antonio Edwards, Ian Santiago, Jalyssa Moll, Saniya Salcedo, Carlos Perez, Arianna Cartagena, and Solange Jean.

Eren and those students built FACTS into a curriculum and incorporated it into lesson units for classes to conduct during homeroom and advisory periods. The message became more powerful when students led the charge, Eren said.

In February, Kensington Health Sciences Academy High School seniors presented their FACTS curriculum process at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education Ethnography Forum.

The nine seniors started a FACTS club, meeting weekly during lunch to read articles, social media posts, and other sources of information to interrogate what they’re encountering online and develop informed opinions.

“It’s definitely encouraged me to be more careful with the things I see,” Cartagena said.

Then, they presented their findings to their peers. The students designed fake texts and emails and held assemblies for the wider student population. They talked to their friends about limiting screen time and had discussions about how social media pulls them away from reality.

Eren said before FACTS, the school didn’t have a curriculum to address social media, algorithms, and “everything that was happening online.” Now, she often overhears students in between classes asking each other to “check their facts.”

“I definitely hear kids use the FACTS acronym around the school, and it lets me know people really understand,” Salcedo said.

The key to reaching teenagers? Acknowledging the positives about social media in addition to the drawbacks, the students said.

“We didn’t want to focus too much on the negative, because that would have caused especially people our age, to tune out of what we were talking about,” Cartagena said. “We weren’t trying to persuade them into just thinking that social media was negative, but to make them think about how using social media may impact their lives.”

The students also try to tailor their work to their school. In April 2025, the students delved into medical disinformation around ongoing measles outbreaks across the country. KHSA is a neighborhood high school with a special focus on health sciences so it was a natural fit, Eren said. Students conducted their own research and hosted a panel of doctors, nurses, and reporters who helped them navigate truth from fiction about vaccination fears.

Ahead of the midterm elections, they’re ramping up their efforts again. Several of the FACTS seniors will be old enough to vote in November and they said they’re worried about their classmates — and older loved ones — making political decisions based on bad information.

“If somebody spreads something totally false about one of the candidates that’s running, and somebody believes it, now their mind is swayed to vote for somebody else,” Moll said.

Cartagena said it’s not just about educating teenagers. The adults in their lives need help navigating online spaces — sometimes even more than students do. Salcedo said she’s aware of the scams that target older people and she’s seen her loved ones fall for them.

“It’s kind of scary because [they] can vote,” Salcedo said.

Cartagena said she hopes their FACTS curriculum will inspire students — and parents — to think more deeply about what they’re encountering online. Eren said she wants FACTS to be a national model.

“I think parents, they understand and they know the dangers of social media, but a lot of the time they’re not actively seeking to stop it,” Cartagena said. “I just think hearing and seeing it coming from us, it may encourage parents to be more on top of their kids and their social media.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Effort to adapt Philly schools to rising temperatures threatened by Trump

2025-04-07T18:59:46+00:00

This is the first story in a two-part series examining climate change and Philadelphia schools. It was originally published by Green Philly, a media outlet that connects readers with sustainable solutions, and Climate Central, a nonadvocacy science and news group. Read part two here.

On hot days, Jaimie Fortin’s first grade daughter comes home from school at Henry H. Houston Elementary in Mount Airy, frustrated and uncomfortable.

“Her sensitivity is incredibly high,” Fortin said of her daughter, whose autism makes her vulnerable to sensory overload and other impacts from physical discomfort. “She’s already inattentive and hyperactive, but the heat makes it worse. She’ll say things like, ‘My skin feels bad. I can’t read.’ She’ll cry.”

As pollution traps heat and temperatures rise, public schools across Philadelphia and the nation are facing more extreme weather and growing needs for air conditioning. The funding needs are so dire that even Eagles Quarterback Jalen Hurts has stepped in to donate $200,000 to air conditioning units. Yet many Philadelphia schools face enormous maintenance backlogs, making it harder to adapt to the changing climate.

Federal programs created under the Inflation Reduction Act were starting to help area schools meet steep costs of installing renewable energy systems and other building improvements to address health concerns exacerbated by climate change. The Trump administration has put those funds in jeopardy after just a few schools were able to move quickly enough to access their benefits.

When it gets hot enough that Philadelphia’s schools close early and send kids home, Fortin, who owns a hair salon, faces a tough decision. She can call six to eight clients to reschedule the rest of her day, potentially losing that business, or keep her child with her in the salon, which is challenging for her daughter, her customers, and herself.

“I have to weigh what will hurt the business less,” Fortin said. “We need the money.”

Tax credit-like rebates available through the federal Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden, were helping schools plan for and transition to cleaner energy with cash reimbursements of at least 30%. Those upgrades could include electric school buses and charging infrastructure, which produce no tailpipe emissions, solar panels, industrial batteries and geothermal systems to provide electricity and heat without releasing pollution that harms the climate and damages children’s health.

When the Trump administration ordered a freeze on federal grants in late January, that freeze affected energy tax credits for schools. While the freeze was rescinded a day later, the future of the entire IRA remains unclear. The program was enacted by Congress and can technically only be rescinded by Congress, which is currently controlled by Republicans. Some Republicans have voiced support for the investment and job-creation some IRA components spurred in their districts, but benefits to schools haven’t been mentioned among the policies they might be hesitant to reverse.

Fighting off the heat

Looking after kids when it’s too hot for school can put severe pressures on their families, particularly for working-class and lower-income families. After-school programs occasionally offer a place for Philadelphia’s kids to stay after an unexpected early dismissal, but only for certain programs on certain days, said Lauren Wiley, a parent of a fifth grader at Henry H. Houston Elementary.

Families often coordinate to provide child care for multiple families when cancellations or early dismissals are called on hot days.

“If school starts before Labor Day, we hold our breath, and just figure that there will be a few days that are early release or it’s going to be canceled,” Wiley said.

At the end of 2024, Philadelphia had 57 schools without adequate air conditioning, according to the school district. Kids at those schools were sent home early when average temperatures on Aug. 27 exceeded historic averages by more than 7 degrees, reaching temperatures made three times more likely by climate change, analysis using Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index shows.

Last year, excessive heat prompted early dismissal at dozens of schools in the School District of Philadelphia, sending kids home before noon. Again this August, kids in schools without adequate air conditioning were sent home hours early.

Hot classrooms aren’t just uncomfortable. As Fortin’s daughter has noted, high temperatures make it harder to learn.

A study of 10 million students linked a one-degree Fahrenheit rise in temperatures with a 1% decline in that year’s learning. Warmer classrooms disproportionately impact minority students. Black and Hispanic students are less likely to attend schools with adequate air conditioning, and research has linked those hot classrooms with achievement gaps that see those students often left behind.

Children are also among the most vulnerable to heat-related illnesses.

Philadelphia schools aren’t alone. Half of schools in the United States need to upgrade or repair at least two major systems, such as heating, ventilation, air conditioning, or plumbing, according to the Government Accountability Office.

“Kids spend more time on school campuses than any other place—awake—and many campuses are not prepared for extreme heat and wildfire smoke and other forms of extreme weather,” said Jonathan Klein, a co-founder of UndauntedK12, a nonprofit that advocates for climate-adapted and clean-powered schools.

Now, he said, climate change could widen the infrastructure gaps that often leave minority students behind.

“In our most historically marginalized communities, kids are in the buildings least prepared to keep them safe and learning,” he said.

These uncapped and noncompetitive IRA funds were expected to be available until the early to mid-2030s if the program continued to see federal support. Some school districts are expecting sizable checks: A district in Manchester, Connecticut, is slated to see $2.5 million. Seattle Public Schools received $7.9 million.

Uncertainty for money-saving eco-upgrades

Fort Washington Elementary, in Upper Dublin Township, could rank among the first schools in Pennsylvania to see one of these checks — provided the Internal Revenue Service continues to reimburse them. A tornado tore through the township in the fall of 2021, damaging more than 100 homes and ripping the roof off several classrooms at the elementary school.

As the school moved to rebuild and renovate after the storm, which spun off from the remnants of Hurricane Ida, Upper Dublin School District leadership decided to use the opportunity to add a geothermal well field at Fort Washington. They looked to the success of a geothermal system in place at a nearby high school since 2012.

Geothermal systems transfer energy from deep within the ground, which hold a consistent temperature of 55 degrees year-round. At Fort Washington Elementary, construction involved boring 60 wells as deep as 500 to 600 feet, according to Ed Doll, project manager with CMTA, Inc., the energy and engineering firm working with Upper Dublin School District on its renewable energy upgrades.

Up-front costs are particularly high for installing geothermal systems due to the extensive construction of the wellfield. But some of those costs would be mitigated by the forthcoming rebate made available through the IRA.

Governor Josh Shapiro’s office reached out to tell district staff they were eligible for IRA funding in the summer of 2023. The school board agreed to apply for the rebate, but doing so has meant seeking additional support during the process by hiring a tax professional to complete their rebate application. The benefits are expected to outweigh the costs of hiring help, said Andrew Lechman, Upper Dublin School District’s chief financial officer.

“The process is more detailed and complex than other grant programs we’ve dealt with before,” Lechman said. “We could not have done this on our own.”

Since public schools do not pay taxes, they could not file for the kinds of credits long provided to other kinds of organizations to encourage renewable energy projects.

“That funding was available before, but it wasn’t available for tax-exempt entities,” Doll said. The Fort Washington Elementary geothermal wellfield is part of a larger contract for energy efficiency projects in the school district.

Despite the up-front costs, Doll said he will continue to vouch for geothermal energy for school districts that can afford it.

“It just makes too much sense,” he said, pointing to the low maintenance costs and high energy efficiency of systems. “Nothing outperforms geothermal.”

The transition to cleaner power has some parents excited.

“Renewable energy is super important to me,” said Katie Reilly, former president of the Fort Washington Elementary PTA, and with a fifth grader still in school there. She called the school’s move to install a geothermal wellfield “very forward-thinking.”

Because schools cover installation costs, then wait to receive reimbursement, there’s concern among clean energy advocates nationwide that these projects will amplify longstanding inequities.

“It would make perfect sense to me that the deployment of IRA tax credits would reflect the broader inequities in school funding,” said Sara Ross, co-founder of UndauntedK12, which is tracking schools taking advantage of these incentives across the country.

Upper Dublin fits that model, with a median household income of $158,000 in 2022 for the township, compared to $58,000 in neighboring Philadelphia. Other school districts in Pennsylvania that UndauntedK12 has seen pursuing IRA benefits include Phoenixville, where a new STEM-focused school will be built with a rooftop solar array and an additional panel in the courtyard for teaching purposes, and Huntingdon, where solar panels and energy efficiency upgrades could save the district $5.8 million in operating costs over the next 20 years.

The Octorara Area School District school board voted in September to pursue transitioning the district’s energy to solar power, but expected that move to begin late this year or in early 2026. With the energy credits, the district expected to receive $2.7 million in additional revenue and pay off the installation costs in about seven years.

At least 300 schools across 38 states have moved to take advantage of this program, according to UndauntedK12. But the Trump Administration has already created uncertainty around whether the promised reimbursements will really appear and what fate projects constructed this year might see when it comes time to file for rebates next year.

Philadelphia parents demanding more joy in schools bring campaign to City Council

2025-04-04T17:19:35+00:00

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A group of Philadelphia parents and caregivers say they’re sick of schools that they allege disproportionately discipline Black students, restrict access to recess or restrooms as a form of punishment, and fail to meet students’ emotional needs.

What do they say would help reduce those problems? A joy chief.

Advocates with Lift Every Voice, a Black-led parent and community organizing group, packed City Council chambers during Friday’s joint committee meeting waving metallic magenta pom-poms and demanding city and district leaders do more to make schools places that students are excited to attend.

They and their supporters have been urging school district and city leaders to take student joy seriously for more than a year. Among other things, they’re renewing their calls for the City Council and school district to hire a “Chief of Joy” who would audit school culture across the district and recommend policies to support students’ mental and physical health.

Several councilmembers expressed their strong support for the campaign.

“If we want better outcomes, if we want our kids to show up and succeed, we have to make sure our schools are places where they feel safe, supported and valued,” Councilmember Kendra Brooks said. “Joy is a serious intervention. Joy is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.”

Students joined Lift Every Voice advocates in City Council on Friday to ask for more recess and opportunities to express joy at school.

Amid a fiery national debate over education that often focuses on parental rights, eliminating social-emotional learning, and eradicating programs that support diversity, equity, and inclusion, Philly parents who support Lift Every Voice’s mission say those are things schools desperately need more of, not less.

Amy Furling, a district parent and Lift Every Voice advocate, said the group has been meeting regularly with the school district to discuss standardizing a 20-minute minimum recess policy, but she told the City Council “that’s clearly not enough.”

“There’s a lot more that we need to do and a lot more that we expect and demand of the district,” she said.

Jayme Banks, the school district’s deputy chief of prevention, trauma and intervention, told City Council members the district is in “active partnership” with Lift Every Voice. She also said the district supports the group’s calls for programs and systems that “promote respectful and inclusive practices, affirm student dignity, and elevate student voices.”

Banks outlined how the district has focused on restorative justice practices when students misbehave, and that students should not have their access to food, water, and restrooms restricted as a form of punishment. Banks said the district has held professional training about appropriate discipline policies and is “leaning into schools” to examine their own discipline data.

Lift Every Voice hasn’t attached a specific funding demand to its requests. But Banks cautioned staffing shortages and budget constraints limit the district’s ability to make sure its own policies are adequately followed everywhere. The Trump administration’s threats to withhold federal funding from schools that use DEI policies further complicates the district’s budget projections.

With additional funding, the district could hire more counselors and climate staff members, and expand access to art and music programs like Lift Every Voice is calling for, district officials have said.

Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas did signal that education funding increases may be coming in the City Council’s proposed budget this year. Mayor Cherelle Parker proposed increasing the school district’s share of the city’s property tax revenue from 56% to 56.5% in fiscal 2030 to pay for teacher salary increases. Thomas said the council will be proposing to move that up to fiscal 2026.

“I pray that before we leave office that we are able to raise our hands and say we fixed the education crisis in the city,” Thomas said.

But parent advocate Keisha Nicholson said underfunding is only part of the problem.

“Disinvestment is violence and too often, poor Black parents are left to pay the price and shoulder the blame for broken systems,” Nicholson said. “We want you to carry our stories — our grief, our rage, our hope, and our clarity — into the budget process.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philly schools traumatized by opioid crisis use settlement money to remind kids ‘they’re special’

2024-12-05T11:00:00+00:00

This story was reported in partnership with Kensington Voice and made possible by the Philadelphia Journalism Collaborative.

Kensington’s Willard Elementary School is getting its first playground. It’s also getting something less whimsical: a bullet-resistant fence.

Both have an unusual funding source: drug companies that fueled the opioid crisis in the school’s backyard.

Willard Principal Diana Garcia said that every child across Philadelphia should get 30 minutes of play time outside. But students in Kensington miss out. The neighborhood lacks safe, green spaces. Instead, face-to-face with the city’s opioid crisis in one of its most impoverished neighborhoods, students are surrounded by gun violence, drug use, trash, and used needles.

Garcia has a blunt way of putting the situation: Kids in Kensington “don’t have basic human rights.” But the play space will help “students feel safe, reminding them that they are kids, that they’re special,” she said.

The crisis that schools in the neighborhood are enduring and trying to redress is traumatizing students. As drugs have ravaged the community, many families have chosen to send their kids to schools outside the neighborhood.

Enrollment in the district as a whole has dropped by about 16% since 2013. But the fall has been even more steep in Kensington schools: Enrollment at Russell Conwell Middle School, for example, fell by 80% from 2014 to 2023. Willard’s enrollment has dropped by half.

Staff and students leave Frances E. Willard Elementary School after dismissal.

Six schools in Kensington are purchasing a variety of improvements using money from multiple lawsuits filed by state and local governments against drug manufacturers and distributors for their role in generating the opioid crisis. They’re using the money to pay for safety fencing, a new fitness center, playground updates, a bilingual climate specialist, and more. The school leaders hope these changes will provide more secure and beautiful environments for students who have had to endure so much. They also hope the money will help students succeed in school and beyond.

These Kensington schools are receiving about $333,000 each out of the $20 million that Philadelphia received in 2023. In addition to Willard and Conwell, the schools receiving this funding are Gloria Casarez Elementary School, Lewis Elkin Elementary School, Jules E. Mastbaum High School, and John H. Webster Elementary School.

All six schools enroll mostly Black and Latino students, and 100% of students at these schools are economically disadvantaged.

An initial vote this summer by a state trust overseeing how local governments use opioid settlement dollars said the plan for money earmarked for Kensington schools didn’t comply with national guidelines.

Philadelphia officials defended the plan during an October hearing. Keli McLoyd, director of Philadelphia’s Overdose Response Unit, argued that Kensington children are particularly vulnerable to the risk of opioid use and overdose.

State Sen. Greg Rothman, a Republican who is on the state trust, voted against the Kensington school spending in the summer. But after touring the neighborhood, he said he felt differently.

“If you had asked me this morning how many kids live in Kensington, I would’ve said, ‘There are no kids in Kensington,’” he said. “I just saw [a school] a half a block from where we were walking.”

Ultimately, the state officials reversed course and agreed to the spending on schools. Still, school principals in Kensington say the funding is a drop in the bucket for what students need.

“The kids in this neighborhood deserve every penny that comes their way to make anything better for their lives,” Garcia said. “I don’t know if the folks who make decisions understand what our five to nine year olds have to endure just to make it to school.”

Schools want families to be safer in Kensington

After gathering input from parents, students, and educators, and feasibility studies by the school district, each school devised individual spending plans.

Awilda Balbuena, the principal of Gloria Casarez Elementary, said because the opioid settlement money represented one-time aid, they had to spend on items that don’t require ongoing funding.

Garcia said her number one priority was increasing safety.

In addition to a new playground, Willard is using a large chunk of the settlement money on a new fencing made from material resistant to bullets and high enough to deter trespassing and encampments.

The new fencing, Garcia said, will help make families feel safer “and that’ll help relieve some burdens and some trauma, that will allow them to learn better.”

Casarez Elementary is expanding its playground, replacing cement with AstroTurf, and planting trees in its school yard. It’s also getting a cover over its play structure to protect kids from the rain. The trees and seating underneath will offer respite in a school yard with no shade, said Balbuena.

Balbuena said her families say they don’t go to the nearest park, McVeigh Recreation Center, out of safety concerns. And whenever she asks for feedback from her families, they say, “‘We need a bigger schoolyard. Our kids need a place to play,’” Balbuena said.

Witnessing the schoolyard expand, Balbuena said, “They can feel that their voices were heard. That’s empowering.”

Casarez is also building a sensory wellness room — a space designed to calm kids who are exposed to trauma and chronic stress and students with sensory needs like those with ADHD and autism.

While Balbuena expressed gratitude for the funding, she said it’s not enough.

“I hope no one thinks for one minute that the $2 million that was awarded to the six schools is going to, for one minute, erase what our kids have seen during this opioid epidemic,” Balbuena said. “This is a band aid to an open chest wound.”

Vivian Virola-Romero, the new climate specialist, left, and Principal Sherri Arabia in the office at John H. Webster School.

At Webster Elementary, Principal Sherri Arabia has myriad plans for the settlement money.

Most of the school’s opioid settlement funds is paying for a bilingual climate specialist for the next two years. The role was filled by a climate support staff member, Vivian Virola-Romero, who already has relationships with several parents.

The climate specialist’s overarching goal is to get more parents involved at the school. That includes pulling in more parent volunteers to be in the school building and to act as crossing guards, increasing use of the family resource room, and increasing the 20% attendance rate for back to school night, according to Arabia.

In addition, Virola-Romero will organize so-called “walking buses” — parents that escort groups of students to school and back.

The settlement dollars will turn into gift cards for parents to serve as stipends for helping out. That strategy worked before the pandemic, according to Arabia.

“We’ve been trying to get volunteers, and we have nothing to offer them to volunteer at our school,” she said.

It’s hard to get parents in the building, Arabia said, because “they’re working. A lot of children get picked up by babysitters, grandparents.”

Students head home from Frances E. Willard Elementary School after dismissal.

But Arabia has high hopes for Virola-Romero, who will greet parents as they walk in the building and show them what the school has to offer.

Webster is also using the opioid funds for a Saturday school program. Like the other principals, Arabia said the intent is to give students safe spaces, help them learn a bit more, and “making sure our students are safe and loved,” Arabia said.

Arabia said her plan is to keep the climate specialist position beyond the two years that will be paid for using the opioid settlement money. But it depends on the school’s budget.

Vivian Virola-Romero, the new climate specialist, poses in her office at John H. Webster School.

Money will help students discover careers, healthy habits

Mastbaum High School used to enroll more kids from other parts of the city. No longer.

“We just kind of slipped out of mind with a lot of the community,” Said David Lon, Mastbaum principal.

Mastbaum is funding a new drum line for students. It’s also building a new fitness center in its old locker room. The previous fitness center is full of broken gym equipment. Lon said students need more spaces where they can practice healthy habits.

Mastbaum has also hired three staff members for three years through the Kensington nonprofit 12PLUS. They will help students get jobs, apply to college and financial aid, and provide mentorship for two years after they graduate.

Principal David Lon discusses plans for opioid settlement funding at Jules E. Mastbaum High School's current locker room, which will be transformed into a new fitness center.

The 12PLUS staff will provide the logistical support that many families need, Lon said.

It’s difficult just to get students to graduate, and then Mastbaum mostly loses touch with them once they do, Lon said. So hiring the new staff members is like an “investment in their future.”

“To be able to place a student upon graduation into the Navy shipyard, and right off the bat, they’re making $30 an hour, on a pathway to ... a six-figure salary,” Lon said. “This will be an intensive layer of support to ensure that they are getting critical scaffolds to reach those dreams that they have.”

Overall Lon said his plan for the opioid dollars was aligned with “the spirit of recovery.”

“That’s the spirit of providing beautiful utility to students that walk through a community where many aspects of beauty have been stripped out of it,” Lon said. “And is it all of the money that we would maybe deserve in an ideal universe? Probably not, but it’s a start, and we’re thankful for that start.”

This story has been updated to clarify that the funding was the result of multiple lawsuits by state and local governments.

Pennsylvania changes culturally responsive teaching guidelines, raising concerns

2024-11-27T21:30:17+00:00

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The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s recent decision to rescind guidelines about culturally relevant teaching practices has some Black educators in Philadelphia worried about the impact on teacher recruitment in a district where the student body is already far more diverse than its mostly white teaching force.

Earlier this month, the state settled a lawsuit with a conservative advocacy group by agreeing that prospective and practicing teachers will no longer be required to adhere to guidelines that included developing awareness of how their own “unconscious biases” could affect their approach to teaching and their expectations of students.

The settlement didn’t ban cultural competence training, and the department promptly issued new – albeit optional – guidelines that preserve much of what existed before. The new guidelines also expand the recommended training for teachers to include trauma awareness and technological competencies.

But Black educators in Philadelphia say the settlement agreement has them concerned their state is moving backwards even as members of the incoming Trump administration have threatened to withhold federal aid from districts that engage in any initiatives that could be construed as promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, known as DEI, which is a frequent target of the right.

Crystal Edwards, principal of the W.D. Kelley Elementary School in North Philadelphia, sees the state’s move as yet another attack on learning about and appreciating the history of African Americans – a situation that is only likely to get worse during a Trump administration, she said.

“Teachers don’t have to learn to respect Black children, and America voted for that,” she said.

Aliya Catanch-Bradley, principal of Bethune Elementary School, said that educators must “make sure the history and cultures of students we serve are in the literature and books they read and in the media that surrounds them so they can see themselves in the educational context.”

Leaving culturally-responsive teaching practices up to individual districts “is unfortunate in a state that has so many small districts and a high incidence of book banning of international and multicultural texts,” Catanch-Bradley said.

Sharif El-Mekki, head of the Center for Black Educator Development, said the Pennsylvania settlement could be an unfortunate harbinger of what to expect during a second Trump administration.

“It’s the same playbook they use all around the country,” he said, “they try to erase progress.”

However, districts such as Philadelphia say they will continue to build culturally relevant practices into their professional development programs. Monique Braxton, a spokesperson for the district. said in a statement the old guidelines were “never officially released to school districts to implement.”

Despite the settlement, Braxton said “our curriculum and professional learning will continue to be focused on the implementation of high quality instructional resources to accelerate student achievement … and being inclusive of the students that we serve in Philadelphia.”

Conservative group calls settlement a ‘triumph’

The settlement reached last week was a result of an April 2023 lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Society on behalf of three school districts and several parents and students. The suit challenged the state’s “Culturally-Relevant and Sustaining Education Program Framework Guidelines,” known as CS-RE, which were adopted in November 2022 after a long campaign by the Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium.

CS-RE was meant to require school districts to actively consider “what does it mean for underrepresented groups in the state to feel more included in educator systems,” El-Mekki said.

But the lawsuit alleged that the mandated guidelines were part of a “woke” curriculum and violated teacher First Amendment rights. In its complaint, the plaintiffs said that making teachers aware of their “unconscious biases” was a “highly ideological belief” and represented “compelled speech.”

The Thomas More Society described the settlement as a ‘triumph.”

Conservative groups have often gone to court to force changes in education policy, including a campaign to ban any explicit DEI initiatives in school districts and to limit affirmative action in college admission.

The settlement agreement also comes as Philadelphia — and the rest of the country — struggles with a teacher shortage crisis. Philly schools have hundreds of positions still unfilled on a permanent basis months into the school year and another 1,100 teachers with emergency certifications, meaning they are not fully qualified in the subjects or grade levels they are teaching.

One of the drivers of this crisis has been a steady decline in the number and proportion of teachers in Philadelphia who are Black. More than 50% of city students are Black, but less than a quarter of teachers are, and just 4% are Black men – although that number is twice the national figure of 2%.

El-Mekki said that among Black males who go to college, education is among the most popular majors. The problem is that inequities in K-12 education have impacted Black males to a greater degree than other segments of the population. A recent study by the Schott foundation found that while more Black students are graduating from high school, fewer are attending college, especially males.

That, he said, is due in part to how they feel they are treated during their own education.

“There is a reason” that more African Americans don’t go into teaching, El-Mekki said. What they experience during their own schooling makes them less likely to enter the teaching profession themselves. And the attrition rate among Black teachers is higher than for other groups, he said.

“That speaks to how educators of color experience their colleagues and supervisors,” he said. “We all have to take collective responsibility, and not just assume people of color aren’t interested. There are reasons, and we have to be mindful of how we listen and how we act.”

The Center for Black Educator Development has been working for more than a decade to increase the number of Black teachers in the country. The group has run its annual conference in Philadelphia since 2015.

Culturally-responsive teaching is valuable for everyone, Black educators say

Training about cultural differences is valuable for all teachers, not just those who are white. Makiah Burroughs, who is Black, grew up in Philadelphia and attended mostly charters; El-Mekki was her principal at Mastery-Shoemaker. Burroughs said she’s seen the need for culturally responsive teaching firsthand.

During her own schooling in Philadelphia, she said, most of her teachers were white. “A lot of the teachers quit,” she said. “They were overwhelmed. They couldn’t understand the kids.”

Fortunately, she said, her own teacher education at the University of Virginia included training on being culturally aware, which she said was invaluable “in helping me be the best teacher I could be.” Most of the children she worked with during her student teaching were white and from rural areas.

“It was a big process for me, putting all that effort to align with those students in Virginia and being able to understand them culturally, socially, and emotionally,” she said.

Now, Burroughs is a freshly-minted educator, teaching literacy skills to second graders at Mastery Mann Elementary School in West Philadelphia. “To come back to Philadelphia and for culturally relevant training to not be a requirement my state of Pennsylvania seems crazy to me,” she said.

She and other Black educators are wary of what may happen during the second Trump administration.

Ismael Jimenez, the Philadelphia’s director of social studies curriculum, said he feared the Trump administration and Republican majorities in Congress could try to use a threat to withhold federal education aid as a “cudgel” on districts that maintain DEI initiatives or continue to promote culturally relevant teaching

The Pennsylvania case making culturally relevant teaching optional, along with a newly emboldened federal government “might create an atmosphere of fear and self-censorship” among educators here, he said.

“The culturally relevant piece, even the symbolism of that history being taught, is a threat to many within the society,” Jimenez said. The “triumph” here, he said referring to the Thomas More society’s statement, seemed to be the right for teachers to avoid being self-aware.

While promoting equitable teaching practices is part of the Philadelphia Board of Education’s Goals and Guardrails, Jimenez noted, the city is “still venturing into the waters” of culturally relevant education.

It did so after discovering that “one of the major concerns of parents and community members” was a lack of cultural sensitivity on the part of some people who work in the district’s schools.

“In a city like Philadelphia half the demographic is Black students,” said Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, Philadelphia’s chief of curriculum. “We can never not teach about who they are. It’s going to make it difficult if there are no spaces to learn about the students you are responsible for educating,”

Edwards, the Kelley principal, did hit on a note of optimism: “We have a long way to go, and we’ve come a long way, and it’s important to acknowledge how many victories we have won.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat’s guide to back-to-school-night meetings

2024-09-03T21:36:55+00:00

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Back-to-school-night meetings can be exciting for educators and parents. They are opportunities to form meaningful relationships, share goals for the new school year, and get everyone on the same page before classes kick into high gear.

But the start of a new school year can also bring some anxiety and uncertainty. Teachers are learning new names and personalities along with their mandatory curriculum requirements. Families are juggling school, work, and extracurriculars.

So we want to make this year’s back-to-school-night a little less daunting.

Chalkbeat asked more than a dozen teachers and parents: What makes a successful back-to-school meeting? What should parents be asking their child’s teachers? What do educators want parents to know?

Above all, Philadelphia families and educators said: Go in with an open mind, give each other grace, bring a pen and paper, and always leave with reliable contact information.

Here’s a guide and some conversation starters to hopefully make the best of your back-to-school-night:

Questions parents can ask teachers

What is your preferred communication method? How can I best reach you? Do you hold office hours?

Educators and parents are often on different schedules and have different levels of internet access or other connectivity. While it may not be possible to always adhere to everyone’s perfect scenario for getting in touch, Maritza Guridy, a parent with kids at Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School in the Nicetown neighborhood, recommended setting some clear guidelines: Do you prefer texting? Phone calls? Emails? Are there hours of the day when you will be unreachable except for emergencies?

What is your view on homework? How long should my child be spending on at-home assignments?

Teachers often have very different philosophies and expectations about homework. It’s good to know early if your child’s teacher has strict late policies, flexibility around absences, and how involved parents or caregivers should be with bigger projects and assignments.

How do you deal with discipline in the classroom? How can I be a partner in helping monitor my child’s behavior?

Knowing how your child’s teacher — and their school — approaches discipline is important. Many parents said it’s helpful to know at the start of the school year how an educator manages their classroom, consequences for late work, or misbehavior. Elaine Wells, a parent and grandparent, said caregivers and teachers can work in partnership to keep kids focused and motivated in class and at home.

How can I stay updated on my child’s progress without overwhelming you?

Wells said she’s a very involved parent and doesn’t just want to hear from a teacher when there’s been an incident or “when things are bad.” She said if her child or grandchild has done something really positive either academically or socially in the classroom, she would love to hear about it. If something concerning happens, Wells said she’d prefer to know early before she sees a failing grade on a report card or gets a call about consistent misbehavior.

Is there anything else I can do that will help you support my child?

Several parents told us they understand how overworked teachers may be — they’re often managing large class sizes, crumbling school buildings, and a lack of resources. There will likely be obstacles this school year and challenges to overcome. Parents and teachers should work together to support students through the difficult times — whether that’s school closures due to damaged asbestos, or implementing a new curriculum.

“I recognize that it’s not just on our teachers,” Wells said. “It’s about building a partnership.”

Toya Algarin, a teaching aide in the district and grandparent of seven, said the most important research a parent can do to help their child succeed in class is to get to know them, Algarin said. “Find out what makes them happy and what makes them tick,” she suggested. Then, share that information with their teacher as they’re getting to know your child.

However, if your child has important health or behavioral needs that impact their safety or ability to learn, it’s important to mention those to their teacher early.

And don’t forget to bring an apple, she said, to show you appreciate their efforts.

Questions educators can ask parents

What is the most reliable way to reach you?

The first step to staying connected to your child’s school is to make sure the phone number, email address, or other contact information is up to date and consistent. If you know you change numbers frequently, or you don’t always check your email, make sure the school has the number or email address of someone you trust who can pass along any important information.

If parents or caregivers are separated, make sure you inform your child’s school that they should be sending information to multiple people.

Do you know how to access and use the school’s communication tool, like ClassDojo app, Parent Portal, or Google Classroom?

Educators said they spend a lot of time making sure their apps are updated with grades, syllabuses, and often, many parents’ questions can be answered by checking that portal. If you’re uncomfortable using the app or need some help to navigate it, parents should ask if there are any resources or IT people at the school who can provide assistance.

Many public library branches also offer computer access and may have staff able to help parents use their school’s preferred communication platform.

Wells said she knows grandparents like her can sometimes struggle with new technology. Her advice is to try to log in to your school’s system before back-to-school night, so that if you encounter any issues you can resolve those early.

Can we make another appointment if we need an in-depth conversation about your child?

Philadelphia school district educator and parent Andrew Saltz said back-to-school night comes early in the year and requires teachers to have a lot of time-restricted introductory meetings. Saltz said parents should come prepared with general questions about classroom etiquette and expectations, but they should be wary of asking anything too specific about their child — their teacher may have only had a few days to get to know them. If parents have specific concerns or want a more in-depth, individualized conversation, they should bring their calendar and ask to set up a time for a more robust talk.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Why Pennsylvania’s efforts to regulate kids’ social media accounts have failed so far

2024-04-03T18:20:40+00:00

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HARRISBURG — Despite bipartisan interest in setting ground rules for social media companies, Pennsylvania lawmakers are struggling to reach a consensus amid privacy and other concerns that don’t neatly break down along party lines.

In recent months, the legislature has debated bills that would mandate disclosure of artificial intelligence-generated images, ban TikTok from state-owned phones, and require monitoring of minors’ social media. The debate around the latter most clearly demonstrates the balancing act legislators are trying to achieve.

Social media can help young people find community, but can also expose them to disinformation and hate speech, and encourage them to self-harm, according to the American Psychological Association.

From California to Ohio, red and blue states alike have passed laws that attempt to combat this by requiring age verification and parental consent to use apps.

NetChoice, a tech industry group whose members include Meta, TikTok, and X, has challenged many of these laws in federal court, sometimes with the backing of civil liberties groups like the ACLU. Several suits have succeeded.

In one, a federal judge last August issued an injunction blocking an Arkansas parental consent law from going into effect until the courts settled the matter.

In his opinion, U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks wrote that NetChoice was likely to succeed in its First Amendment challenge. He added there was no evidence that the law would “protect minors from materials or interactions that could harm them online.”

Regulating speech is tricky under the First Amendment, says Megan Iorio, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonpartisan advocacy group in Washington, D.C. In a March interview with Marketplace, she argued there is “no privacy-protective way” to verify a user’s age.

But placing the onus on parents to mitigate the harm of opaque social media algorithms is also “not how things should work,” she added.

“The government should be able to pass regulations to prevent harms to kids,” Iorio said.

Parents versus privacy

This session, legislative leaders in Pennsylvania have attempted to thread this needle with two bipartisan bills. But both efforts have stalled amid tech lobbying and a wide swath of concerns from both major parties.

In March, state House Democrats advanced a bill sponsored by state Rep. Brian Munroe, D-Bucks, who represents a suburban Philadelphia swing district.

Like other states’ proposals, the bill would require social media companies to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent before anyone 16 or younger opens an account. It would also allow parents to restrict how much their children use an app by allowing parents to view their kids’ privacy settings or set time limits on an account’s use.

Additionally, it would prohibit the collection or sale of a minor’s browsing history, require that such users opt in to algorithmic recommendations, and make it unlawful for a social media network to “intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or negligently cause or encourage a minor to access content which the social media company knows or should have known subjects one or more minors to harm.” The provisions would be enforced by the state attorney general.

Munroe told Spotlight PA the idea for his proposal came from a project by local high school students on social media’s mental health impacts.

Parents, Munroe said, do give a level of consent to tech companies when they provide a phone to a child. But “once I give that to you, it’s a jungle,” he said.

“We need to be able to offer tools that are going to make it more mainstream for parents to be able to have a say in what their children are involved in,” Munroe added.

Controversially, the bill accomplishes this in part by requiring social media companies to monitor any group chats on their platforms that involve two or more individuals aged 16 or younger. If the company finds any “chats, posts, videos and images that are deemed sensitive or graphic” under a platform’s terms of use, the company must report the content to the minor’s parent or legal guardian.

That provision drew the opposition of the Pennsylvania chapter of the ACLU, which argued in a memo to lawmakers that the bill would “invite parental surveillance,” define harm in “broad, subjective, and unenforceable ways,” and “likely have dire consequences for young people.”

One of tech’s biggest lobbies, TechNet, also opposed the language. In a statement, Margaret Durkin, the group’s mid-Atlantic executive director, told Spotlight PA that the bill will have “unintended consequences that could jeopardize Pennsylvanians’ privacy and data.”

Beyond allowing parents or legal guardians to access direct messages between users, social media platforms might “overregulate and remove accounts that could undermine the free speech rights of users” when attempting to comply with the law, Durkin wrote.

Despite these concerns, a state House committee advanced the proposal in March with bipartisan support.

State House Majority Leader Matt Bradford, D-Montgomery, planned to bring the bill up for a vote by the full chamber a week later, according to a schedule shared by his spokesperson at the time. But in a closed-door meeting, progressive Democrats raised concerns about the chat-monitoring provision, legislative sources told Spotlight PA.

In response, Bradford urged lawmakers to stick together despite their concerns, sources said.

But that evening, health care provider Planned Parenthood PA announced its opposition in an email to state House Democratic lawmakers, arguing that the proposal threatened youth’s free speech and access to information on their sexual and reproductive health.

That seemed to sink the bill. Bradford took it off the voting calendar the next day, and state House Democrats canceled a related news conference to tout the proposal scheduled for that week.

A spokesperson for Bradford did not reply to a request for comment.

Munroe told Spotlight PA that he has since convened a working group with Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and his progressive colleagues to find a compromise. He suggested lowering the age for chat monitoring to 13, or removing the provision altogether while leaving the data protections, parental controls, and age verification in place.

Both groups, he noted, are OK with the bill’s intent but disagree on the language. He plans to keep working on the issue.

“I don’t represent the ACLU. I don’t represent Planned Parenthood. I represent the parents and the citizens of 144th District in this commonwealth,” Munroe said. “And I can tell you, from all the conversations I’ve had, they want something done.”

A similar bill has also struggled in the state Senate.

A proposal nearly identical to Munroe’s, minus chat monitoring, advanced out of a state Senate committee with unanimous support last year. Republican leadership, however, has not brought the legislation up for a final vote.

“We were having difficulty crafting language that was going to get the support of the majority of our colleagues,” state Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill, R-York, a member of the GOP leadership team and the prime Republican sponsor of the bill, told Spotlight PA.

She added that members of both major parties have opposed it, with some arguing it goes too far and others arguing it doesn’t go far enough. Those positions don’t break down along party lines, she added.

“If you’re more of a libertarian … on the Republican side, you may express some of the similar concerns as we heard by some of our most progressive colleagues in the House,” Phillips-Hill told Spotlight PA.

The chat-monitoring provision is also opposed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, said his spokesperson Manuel Bonder.

Noting that nothing is close to reaching the governor’s desk, Bonder still said that there are “some pretty serious concerns with that bill.”

Overall, Bonder added, Shapiro “believes we have to take action to lean in on innovation and approach these technologies in a way that is responsible and ethical.”

The TikTok split

There appears to be more agreement in the General Assembly on another tech issue: banning TikTok from state devices. Shapiro has so far been opposed.

The popular app is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. Pennsylvania billionaire Jeffrey Yass, a major Republican donor, has a personal stake in the company, as does Susquehanna International Group, which he co-founded.

Some national security experts worry the Chinese government could demand the company turn over user data.

Under a bill sponsored by Phillips-Hill, any app owned by a “foreign adversary” would be banned from devices owned by public agencies, including school districts. The bill as originally drafted applied specifically to TikTok and passed the state Senate unanimously.

In a bipartisan vote, the state House agreed to amend the bill to expand its scope in late March. The proposal has not come up for a full, final vote in the chamber.

The bill would affect the Shapiro administration, which uses TikTok to tout the governor’s agenda to almost 43,000 followers. A February video in which Shapiro promised to protect abortion rights set to Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” had garnered 1.7 million views as of April 2.

“We try and balance the need to reach people where they are, but also take the necessary precautions that the IT department has advised us on,” Shapiro told PennLive in a March interview.

Those precautions, Bonder said, include having TikTok on a single device that does not connect to the state’s WiFi network or have any other apps or data on it. That phone is used only to create the governor’s official TikTok videos, Bonder added.

“The governor has talked many times about how he believes there should be no wrong door for accessing state government,” Bonder told Spotlight PA.

“For some people that’ll mean coming to the Capitol and having a meeting. For some that’s sending an email. And for some, that’s engaging on social media.”

In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson echoed that sentiment, arguing that “bans on state government devices and networks prevent state agencies from reaching a wider audience.”

“Bills like these are being pushed through without regard for the facts,” the spokesperson added.

The legislation is mostly redundant. The Office of Administration — effectively the commonwealth’s human resources and IT department for tens of thousands of state employees — currently blocks TikTok’s URL on its WiFi network, and the app cannot be downloaded from the state’s application portal, according to a Shapiro administration memo to lawmakers viewed by Spotlight PA.

However, the governor’s administration said it opposed the bill, citing a need for flexibility that it achieves through executive orders or management directives instead of waiting for legislation.

“Today the issue is TikTok. In three months, six months, or a year, it could be another app that needs to be addressed,” the memo said.

Shapiro isn’t the only skeptic. State Rep. Tarik Khan, D-Philadelphia, was one of two Democrats to vote no on the updated TikTok ban. He argued that the language set a precedent of guilt by association that “we should not be establishing in the commonwealth.”

But Khan, who has introduced bipartisan legislation that would ban the use of AI to misrepresent “the words, actions or beliefs of the current or former candidate,” also argued that inaction is not an option.

“We have to be nimble, and we have to be ready to set guardrails,” Khan told Spotlight PA. “And the worst thing we can do is just do nothing.”

BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.

Chalkbeat readers share priorities for Philly’s new superintendent Tony Watlington

2022-04-27T18:51:39+00:00

Tony B. Watlington Sr. is coming to Philadelphia to lead a 120,000-student school district that’s facing significant teacher resignations, crumbling buildings, and high dropout rates. He will inherit these and other pressing issues when he takes over one of the nation’s 20 largest school districts in what is considered the poorest big city in the U.S.

Though his superintendency begins June 16, Watlington is currently spending two days a week visiting the city either in person or remotely so he can acclimate to Philadelphia schools. For now, he’s still employed as superintendent of North Carolina’s Rowan-Salisbury school district northeast of Charlotte.

Watlington has acknowledged that he knows little about Philadelphia, yet he is “looking forward to listening and learning.” After his appointment, Chalkbeat asked students, parents, and educators to tell us what Watlington should know about their schools and what his priorities should be. Around 40 people responded.

Their top concerns ranged from more mental health resources for students to improving the working environment for teachers. They also highlighted the importance of improving low standardized test scores, re-establishing trust, and community engagement. School start times and busing were also points of concern.

Watlington will take over a district dealing with learning loss and other pandemic-related education issues; aging and deteriorating buildings; gun violence; teacher turnover; a constant battle for adequate funding; and revisions of its admissions policy for selective high schools.

During his discussions with parent and student groups before the district hired him, Watlington said he views “high-quality teachers” as key to improving schools, and believes teachers should be paid more. Teachers in Chalkbeat’s callout, however, spoke of eliminating large class sizes, providing more support for special education, and addressing verbal and physical threats from parents and students.

In their response, students expressed concerns about building safety, especially around asbestos, and keeping fellow classmates safe from gun violence.

Q: What is one issue you are facing at your school that you want Watlington to prioritize addressing in his first year?

“We know from research that the student-teacher relationship has a huge impact on both social-emotional and academic outcomes for students. Prioritizing a smaller class and smaller ratios will help both staff and students to do well,” — Kirstin Peth, parent at Fanny Jackson Coppin School

Jemair McKay will graduate high school this year from Roxborough High School.

“I also want to know how Dr. Watlington plans to keep students safe from the outrageous gun violence,” — Jemair McKay, a senior at Roxborough High School

“This year we have had six teachers quit. We have received no teachers to replace them. This puts a tremendous burden on the staff to support children who do not have a teacher. We need policies around pay, teacher training, and teacher support that will allow more teachers to feel successful in their classrooms and stay at their schools,” — Katy Egan, educator and school leader at a Philadelphia elementary school

“Addressing gun violence and the over-policing of students in schools. Expanding extracurriculars and creative arts courses in neighborhood schools,” — Fatima Hmada, community member in Philadelphia

“Schools are struggling and the district cut roles, again. Fight the state tooth and nail for equitable funding. I’m excited to see what the new superintendent will do,” — Phil Walton, parent of a Philadelphia student

Q: What is one action Watlington could take as leader of Philadelphia schools that would improve learning for you and/or students?

“This pertains to our entire district, not my school specifically. We need more special education support, as about 15 percent of our student body has a disability classification. Specifically, we need something similar to the district’s Equity Coalition for special education, where the district directly prioritizes equity for students with disabilities and creates resources for teachers and students that support inclusion. We also need to take into account that so many of our students share multiple marginalized identities. It would be great if the district supplied materials that specifically address equity for students who share multiple identities including disability — for example students who are both Black and autistic, queer and intellectually disabled, deaf and English language learners.,” — Tamara Sepe, speech language pathologist at Charles W. Henry School

“Actually clean and disinfect, especially when we know COVID and its many variants are still out there,” — Gwen Blackshear, educator at a high school in Philadelphia

“Building repairs, specifically ventilation improvements. Acknowledge the deficiencies of our infrastructure and funding,” — Lizzie Rothwell, parent at Henry Lea Elementary School

Lizzie Rothwell poses for a photo with her children, Luke Beauregard and Ursula Rothwell. Luke is in third grade and Ursula will be starting kindergarten.

“Focus on all kids in Philadelphia reading on grade level by third grade and make things easier on schools. Support schools across the district in adopting evidence-based language arts curriculums, ensure all schools have reading support specialists, and provide teacher training and resources in line with the science of reading,” — Patty Slutsky, parent at Nebinger Elementary School

“I would like there to be a review of the quality of services, or lack of quality, for English language learners, particularly for high-school-age learners coming from countries where they have had very limited education,” — Cheri Micheau, community member in Philadelphia and previous administrator in the district’s Office of Multilingual Curriculum and Programs

“Disability Accommodations. Many students, including some of my friends, have received a lesser educational experience because they do not have adequate accommodations for their physical or learning disabilities,” — Eleanor Zdancewic, student in Philadelphia

Q: How could Watlington help restore or strengthen your trust in the school system and leadership?

“Mr. Watlington can visit the schools and speak with the staff, parents, and students to understand the school dynamics, needs, and concerns. Partnerships are key to having a successful school district,” — Teeyona Crumpton, parent and school leader at W.B. Saul High School and First Philadelphia Preparatory Charter School

Teeyona Crumpton is a parent and school leader at W.B. Saul High School and First Philadelphia Preparatory Charter School.

“I hope our new superintendent will have integrity: if we say we value student mental health, let’s actually act like it by putting resources in place that follow through on that. If we value achievement, lower class size so teachers can differentiate,” — Kirstin Peth, parent at Fanny Jackson Coppin School

“Increase student voice involvement on major decisions. Honestly and genuinely make a connection with students compared to speaking to us like a politician,” — Eleanor Zdancewic, student in Philadelphia

Edwin Thomas Minguela is an elementary school educator in the Philadelphia school district.

“Listen to educators as we are the ones who work with the children the most on a daily basis during the school year. Many educators feel leadership, from district level to school level, does not trust us to do our jobs and listen to our input. There’s no sense of collaboration or togetherness when educators are pushed to the side,” — Edwin Thomas Minguela, elementary school educator in Philadelphia

“If our new superintendent is not able to bring in the voices of community members, teachers, and parents, he will not gain the necessary trust,” — Cheri Micheau, community member in Philadelphia

“Create transparency in all these financial contracts to outside consultants,” — Michele Rossi, parent at Thomas Mifflin K-8 School

Caroline Bauman connects Chalkbeat journalists with our readers as the community engagement manager and previously reported at Chalkbeat Tennessee. Connect with Caroline at cbauman@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Hite calls for ‘difficult conversations’ in schools around systemic racism

2020-06-02T00:27:15+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

UPDATED 6/2 with letter from Hite to staff and statement from Board of Education

NEW UPDATE with comment from president of principals’ union

As Philadelphia remains convulsed in protest after the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, Superintendent William Hite joined Mayor Kenney and other city officials Monday to say that “our school communities are in mourning right now” and that educators stand ready to help students in any way they can.

He also said that it may be time for “difficult conversations” in schools, apparently referring to systemic racism and inequity that many Philadelphia public school students live with.

“It goes without saying that this has been an extremely painful week, and a challenging few months for us all. As an African American man, a grandfather, a father, I understand the hopelessness that individuals acted upon this weekend,” Hite said in a brief statement. “And I’m aware of the trauma children may experience when they see reports of a black or brown person whose life seems to have little or no value. And I understand that fear may come with seeing neighborhoods they know and love destroyed.”

Noting that teachers and students are now only communicating online due to school closures as a result of the pandemic, Hite said it was really important for educators to “create the opportunity for [students] to connect, and to respond, and to share their feelings with adults. We want to be very intentional about our staffs providing safe spaces for children, even if it’s virtual.”

And he added: “We know full well that by ignoring this matter, we will not make it go away. Perhaps shying away from these very difficult conversations has been a part of the problem all along. The actions that we’ve seen over the last few days are actions by individuals who are among our most vulnerable. It is our intention to do what we’ve always done, serve our students, empower them with information and resources that will prepare them to become citizens.”

UPDATE In a letter to school staff sent Monday, Hite reinforced his message, urging “every School District employee to continue talking with one another and having real conversations about institutional racism, social injustice, and all the ways we are alike as human beings. Only by continuing to have honest conversations about these issues can we move forward as a school district, a city and a country.”

The Board of Education also issued a statement Tuesday morning on social media postponing a public hearing that had been scheduled for Thursday. The board is required by the City Charter to hold two general public hearings annually.

While also calling for “difficult conversations,” the board said that the “trauma our students, teachers, families and staff are experiencing makes a scheduled hearing inappropriate at this time.”

“At this point in history, we find ourselves wondering how we begin to shift centuries of racism, discrimination and prejudice,” the statement said. “And how we can use the anger, frustration and collective resolve as fuel for change.”

NEW UPDATE

Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators (CASA) added her voice to the calls for schools to be forthright about racism.

“We will continue to stamp out racism, by first, acknowledging its existence, by educating ourselves, our colleagues, and our students on the devastating impact of racism, and by implementing and teaching using culturally responsive resources,” she wrote. “It is imperative that we understand that right now students that we teach and adults that we claim as friends, colleagues, and co-workers are and have been experiencing trauma that has affected them to their very core and may never breathe a word for fear of being ostracized in the workplace by their peers.”

END UPDATE

The superintendent reminded students and families that the District has set up the Philly HopeLine for those who need support for their emotional health and urged young people to “please, please” stay safe and adhere to social distancing guidelines as well as obeying curfews designed to curb the unrest.

Hite had been implicitly criticized over the weekend by Board of Education member Mallory Fix Lopez, who wanted District leaders to be more forthright in providing guidance for teachers to deal with the deaths of George Floyd and other African Americans at the hands of police around the country.

On Monday, Fix Lopez, who is white, said she owed Hite an apology and suggested she had been insensitive to his personal pain as an African American person. She said her original tweet had received pushback, which “helped me understand.”

After talking w @TamirDHarper I realized my previous tweet saw Superintendent before Black. I also realized that was a privileged view and understand the hurt I caused @SDPHite and others. I appreciate the push back to help me come to this understanding. We need dialogue
— Mallory Fix Lopez (@FixMallory) June 1, 2020

She agreed with Hite on the need to be more open about these issues.

“I appreciate Dr. Hite’s guidance and support and apologize for any pain I have caused. I think this serves as an example for me why we need to discuss race more explicitly and make sure our talk as a board turns into action. Dialogue is needed for progress.”

Philly HopeLine, staffed by trained therapists, is available by calling or texting 833-745-4674. The HopeLine is available from noon to 9 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, and on weekends from noon to 4 p.m.

Educators face task of helping students cope with turmoil gripping city, nation

2020-06-01T01:39:59+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

As school resumes this week after a distressing weekend when violence broke out in Philadelphia and elsewhere in response to police killings of African Americans, teachers and education leaders are working on how to best discuss the issues and help students process what has been happening.

Superintendent William Hite said Sunday night that teachers will receive materials to guide them in talking to students Monday about the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and others. The task will be more difficult because classes and communication are being done remotely due to the pandemic. According to teachers, Hite sent an email to staff at 8:36 p.m. that includes some resources.

The topics are big, important ones — social justice, institutional racism, and nonviolent and violent protest. The events of the past week and weekend have made these issues impossible to ignore, in much the same way that the limits of online learning have thrust systemic educational inequity to the forefront.

Board of Education member Mallory Fix Lopez used Twitter to take the District to task for not being more proactive in responding to the crisis.

Apparently @PHLschools won’t be talking about it tomorrow. Or they will, but staff won’t have leadership and guidance from @SDPHite on navigating conversations. silence is acceptance https://t.co/4symPfjFpV via @Chalkbeat — Mallory Fix Lopez (@FixMallory) May 31, 2020

Fix Lopez, who teaches at Community College of Philadelphia, also cited a message from the college’s president, Donald Generals, as an example.

“I have spent the last few days like many of you, compelled to consume news I can hardly bear to read or watch,” the letter from Generals said. “Once again, America’s original sin – racism – has reared its ugly head. The events unfolding in Minneapolis after the death of another Black man – George Floyd – is a reminder that our plea for social and racial equality continues to fall on deaf ears.

“Knowing that racism permeates our culture and civic life is hard enough to accept, but seeing it carried out and sanctioned by a justice system that purports to serve and protect makes us all hold our breath, waiting for the next tragic murder of a Black person for driving, jogging, sleeping or living a normal life. Yes, none of us can breathe until we are all allowed to breathe freely from the horrors of racism. Those of us with Black children and grandchildren are forced to live with this pain, and fear, as part of our daily lives.”

Enough is enough. Read below for a statement from President @GuyGenerals and @CCPedu:

I have spent the last few days like many of you, compelled to consume news I can hardly bear to read or watch. Once again, America’s original sin – racism – has reared its ugly head.
— Community College of Philadelphia (@CCPedu) May 31, 2020

Generals offered sympathy to the families of people killed by police “and all of those who are mourning his murder. I also want to echo and amplify their fury.”

Generals said that CCP was preparing a virtual teach-in and town hall meeting on the issue and that details would be announced shortly.

Hite made a statement on Twitter around 9 p.m. Sunday, saying the deaths of George Floyd and others are a consequence of “systemic racism and social injustice” and noting that it is important to confront these injustices “courageously” but “peacefully.”

The tragic deaths of George Floyd and far too many others in recent months continue to highlight the very real consequences of systemic racism and social injustice that persist across our nation.
— Dr. William Hite (@SDPHite) June 1, 2020

He said the District’s headquarters at 440 N. Broad St. and the Parent and Family Technology Support Center at the Fitzpatrick Annex Building, 4101 Chalfont Dr., would be closed Monday due to the unrest. Remote learning will go on as scheduled, and all staff are expected to work remotely as they are able, he said.

All city services and Philadelphia government operations — except for public safety — will be closed tomorrow. City-run meal-distribution sites normally open on Mondays have been postponed to Tuesday.

Some Philadelphia principals have sent messages to their school communities.

Mary Libby and Stacey Burnley, the principals of Chester Arthur and E.M. Stanton, both in South Philadelphia, put a joint statement on Facebook.

“Staying silent is not an option,” the message said. “All voices and lives matter! … Together we are taking a stand against the racial injustices that are affecting our students, our neighborhoods, our city, and our nation.”

Science Leadership Academy principal Chris Lehmann sent a letter after Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, addressing the “anger and hurt” and saying “we are here for you” to members of the community who are hurting.

“Once again, we are confronted with the very real impact that systemic racism has on Black Americans.”

The letter lists actions and materials for students and teachers to consult, including anti-racism resources for white people. Lehmann also suggested donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which works for racial justice and investigates hate groups, and emphasized the need to vote.

The Philadelphia School District’s enrollment is about 85% students of color. Two-thirds of the teachers are white, and the proportion of African American teachers has been declining.

Charlie McGeehan, a humanities teacher at the U School, said white educators like him need to read and reflect to understand what is happening in the city and why.

“What we are seeing now is connected to a long history of racism and deep inequity in our city and society – and we need to familiarize ourselves with that, as well as what’s happening right at this moment,” he said. “And, most importantly, we need to open space and listen to our students – and even be willing to admit when we don’t know something.”

Philly educators from the Caucus of Working Educators and the Teacher Action Group, including McGeehan, have been at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action nationwide and also formed a group called Building Anti-Racist White Educators. In 2018, this work was recognized by the national organization Teaching Tolerance, a branch of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“We’ve been making a major push for racial justice – and teaching about racism and white supremacy – in our schools for years and have a lot of expertise and resources to offer,” McGeehan said. “This seems like an amazing moment for the District to draw on the expertise of its educators.”

Building Anti-Racist White Educators just received a grant from the Southern Poverty Law Center to work more closely with the Melanated Educators Collective (MEC), a Philadelphia group whose mission is to empower teachers of color and increase their numbers.

Ismael Jimenez of MEC said he agreed with Fix Lopez and called for a more specific anti-racist focus.

“The District has a responsibility to address specific issues of systemic and institutional racism as an organization that educates primarily students of color,” Jimenez said. “Unfortunately, this society has not reconciled the inequality set in motion at the nation’s founding.”

Specifically, Jimenez said, “anti-racist education and orientation is the only thing teachers should be focused on professionally right now. We are in a historic moment that can go several ways, and our society’s contradictions are coming to a head. Educators should have purposeful conversations with their students, focusing on student voice. … If teachers are not discussing and learning about the context of police brutality, they are complicit. Moreover, teachers should be educating themselves about the racist history of American society.”

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, has also publicly made strong statements decrying racism and described George Floyd’s death as “a horrifying example of the life-threatening consequences of being black in America.”

The criminalization of blackness is an ever-present scourge on our nation. The murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police is a horrifying example of the life-threatening consequences of being black in America. #GeorgeFloyd (1/5)
— Jerry T. Jordan (@jerrytjordan) May 28, 2020

Research for Action, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that does research on education with the aim of driving social change, also issued a statement. It expressed its “solidarity with communities of color, particularly Black communities, in our home city of Philadelphia and across America as they confront the trauma of systemic racism at America’s foundation.”

RFA quoted Bayard Rustin, the civil rights activist who was an adviser to Martin Luther King Jr.: “Let us be enraged about injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it.”

“In that spirit,” the statement said, “RFA reaffirms its commitment to working in solidarity with all who are dedicated to eliminating racism, and to raising the voices of the educators, students, and advocates engaged in the struggle to advance solutions. Ensuring the right to a just and equitable education is a cornerstone of that work.”

The Notebook also learned Sunday that Avi Wolfman-Arent, a WHYY education reporter and one of our longtime collaborators, was arrested while covering a protest near Independence Hall, for allegedly failing to follow a dispersal order. He had identified himself as a member of the press.

Im a reporter with ⁦@WHYYNews⁩ in Philly. Yes, I was just arrested. A very brief explanation below: pic.twitter.com/5u5h4A7erS
— Avi Wolfman-Arent (@Avi_WA) May 31, 2020

“A communal trauma:” Counselors help students combat stress amid pandemic

2020-05-28T14:15:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Faced with the hospitalization of loved ones and uncertainty about their future, it’s not surprising that many students feel immense stress amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

At Masterman High School, juniors and seniors fret over the constantly changing college landscape. At Carver High School of Engineering & Science, many students worry about their financial aid packages. And at Strawberry Mansion High School, some students have run away from home because of unstable family situations.

Helping students navigate these issues is the mission of their school counselors.

A counselor’s job has always been a delicate balancing act between offering students the right emotional support and handing out tips for academic success. But for many counselors, like Tatiana Olmedo, a counselor at Carver, the pandemic has made their jobs harder. Olmedo said reinventing ways of communicating with students has been a challenge.

“If I needed to talk to a student, I used to be able to just pull them out of class,” Olmedo said. “But now I have to rely on their willingness to answer an email or a phone call.”

Many counselors in the District aimed to do weekly check ins with students via phone or video conferencing. Now, simply getting in touch with some students has become a collaborative effort between teachers, counselors and other school staff. Olmedo said that at Carver, school staff have weekly meetings where they exchange contact information for students they haven’t been able to reach.

Olmedo’s not quite sure how many students at Carver are unaccounted for, but District-wide, that number has reached 1,500, according to District Chief of Staff Naomi Wyatt. About three-quarters of students in middle and high school are participating in online school, though the District’s methods for measuring class participation don’t include check-ins with counselors.

Offering emotional support

At Masterman High School, the top-ranked public school in the state, students are usually feverishly concerned about their academics. But in the age of COVID-19, counselor Heather Marcus cares less about whether students are logging on for class every day and more about their emotional well-being, as some families in the Masterman community have tested positive for the virus.

“If we have a student who’s not attending class, our first question is not ‘why aren’t you doing your work?’ It’s ‘are you OK and are you safe?’” Marcus said. “Sometimes the answer is, ‘I’m waking up late and not getting to class on time,’ but sometimes it’s ‘my family member works in healthcare and I’m worried.’”

When school buildings closed for good on March 13, Marcus and other counselors sprung into action designing resources to send out to students and families. Immediately, on the Friday that schools closed, Masterman counselors began offering office hours via Google Meet. (Zoom has been banned in a lot of public schools because the meetings can be hacked).

Masterman counselors also distributed resources that parents could use to talk to their children about the coronavirus, followed by a list of tips to manage stress. Several of the resource pages developed by Masterman counselors have circulated throughout the District via the group Philly School Counselors United, so counselors don’t have to “reinvent the wheel” when giving out advice to students and families.

But those resources aren’t a blanket solution. The needs of many students in the District differ drastically from those at Masterman, where the students worry mostly about their academics and not unstable home lives.

At Strawberry Mansion, the picture of need is much different than at special admission schools, according to Lakisha James, a counselor at Mansion.

“Some of these kids are going through things you wouldn’t believe,” James said.

Many Mansion students are raised by their grandparents, because their parents aren’t able to care for them. Others languish in the foster care system and have problems with behavior and academic performance.

One of James’s students almost became homeless before the pandemic began — his mother had made the decision to move to a different house, and he no longer wanted to live with her. That student would routinely act out and use obscene language with teachers, and school officials often had to discipline him for his behavior. But the conflict with his mother was resolved shortly before the pandemic began — they both decided to remain in their house — and, with James’s assistance, he began seeing a therapist outside of school. He’s been one of the success stories at Mansion this year, James said.Nowadays, drug prices are high and therefore many people prefer to buy generic drugs.

During the pandemic, James said the main concern has been ensuring that kids are safe at home, since many don’t come from ideal living situations. “Some of them appreciate the break, but I think some of them are missing their outlet to get out and get away from home, because home isn’t always the best environment.”

Since the pandemic began, James and school staff have routinely done check-ins to make sure Mansion students are safe and reasonably comfortable at home. They exchange regular phone calls and text messages with students, and in cases where students aren’t reachable, they’ll sometimes venture out to the home to see if everything’s OK.

Compared to magnet schools, neighborhood schools also have lower rates of internet access, so videoconferencing has been off the table for some members of the community.

As many as 80% of Mansion students had to borrow Chromebooks from the District and take advantage of two months of free internet that Comcast is making available to low-income families in the Philadelphia area. But the transition to online learning has been successful at Mansion so far — 75% of students are participating in their classes and only five out of the school’s 185 students are unaccounted for, according to James.

Seventy-five percent participation is the average for middle and high school kids. But it’s good that Mansion is hitting that mark now, since it consistently ranks far below the District average when it comes to performance, attendance and graduation rates.

Mansion has been relatively successful in coping with COVID-19, James said, because the virus itself is more of an afterthought compared to the students’ everyday experience of trauma. Luckily, not many students have reported that their families are personally affected even though low-income communities of color have been disproportionately hit.

And unlike at selective admission schools, where the pandemic has made communication harder, James said she now has an easier time connecting with her students, because she texts them instead of pulling them out of class.

“Texting is their world,” James said. “When you talk to students in the way they prefer, you’re going to have a lot more success.”

James manages to reach about three-quarters of her students once a week, which she said is more than she was able to regularly stay in touch with before the pandemic began.

But one issue with communicating with students at home instead of in school is confidentiality, according to Dr. Christina Green, a counselor at Farrell Elementary and Middle School in Northeast Philadelphia. Green said that she and a lot of counselors are avoiding videoconferencing because children can take screenshots, or other family members can listen in on the session. Counselors don’t want to be held liable for the potential breach of confidentiality associated with video-calling.

“We don’t know who’s in the room or who might be hearing [the conversation],” Green said.

This is true even if the communication is over the phone, and that’s been a challenge for Green.

“A lot of our communication [in school] is nonverbal,” Green said. “If you’re not having those video sessions that’s really cutting down on the messages you’re able to receive from kids about their wellness.”

Elementary school counseling is generally more focused on the personal and social aspects of a child’s life, as opposed to the academic development and college planning typical in high school. Green likes to hold group sessions with collections of students who are facing similar roadblocks in their academic or personal lives. With concerns about confidentiality and videoconferencing, however, that’s now impossible.

Despite the newfound technological difficulties and emotional challenges associated with the pandemic, counselors told the Notebook they’re not getting an influx of calls from students in need of emotional support — and they’re not quite sure why that’s the case.

“I don’t think the volume of calls has been higher,” Marcus said. “But that could mean that students aren’t reaching out for support when they need it.”

Brenae Warner, a junior at Academy at Palumbo, which is also a special admission high school, said she has several friends and family members who have tested positive for COVID-19. She said it can be difficult to focus on schoolwork when her loved ones are in and out of the hospital.

As a result, she sometimes feels she isn’t getting from counselors what she really needs.

They “send their regards and say ‘I understand we’re going through this pandemic,’” Warner said. But given her main concerns right now, she feels counselors “are disregarding the emotional aspect and focusing more on academics.”

Though Marcus is a counselor at Masterman, not Palumbo, she said it can be difficult to tell when students need mental health support, especially when they don’t explicitly ask for it.

“With high school there’s often more of a focus on academics and college planning,” Marcus said.

College plans up in the air

College is a major point of stress for many high school students right now.

“There’s just so much uncertainty,” said Olmedo of Carver.

Most colleges closed for the rest of the year in March — students vacated their dorms, classes went online — and many institutions haven’t yet announced if they’ll be online in the fall. The uncertainty has led some students to consider a gap year. Other students have also considered taking classes at Community College of Philadelphia.

“If schools are going online anyway, you might want to save money and just take classes at CCP,” Marcus said.

“One of the main jobs of a counselor is to advise students about financial aid packages,” Olmedo said. But now there is something else to consider: “Do you really want to take out all those loans when you’re not going to get the on-campus experience.”

The school closures have made deciding where to go to college harder for students, Marcus said, because they can no longer visit college campuses. But some colleges offer virtual tours. The website, You Visit, offers free virtual tours of more than 600 colleges. That can be a game changer for economically disadvantaged students, who can’t necessarily afford to visit every college on their list in person.

Olmedo said Carver has given students the assignment of taking one or two virtual college tours. Masterman has also provided access to virtual tours on its Distance Counseling for Juniors page.

But with cancelled standardized tests, the pandemic has caused possibly more stress for juniors who still have to apply for colleges in the fall and winter. The College Board cancelled all SATs for the spring in March around the time schools closed. As a result, a lot of schools, like Cornell, that usually require standardized tests, have now gone test optional. So far, however, Pitt, Drexel and UPenn, all popular choices for District students, still require the SAT or ACT. Temple has been test-optional since 2014.

Palumbo student Warner said the cancellations are unfortunate for students who have spent several hours a week preparing for standardized tests. “Yes, some schools are going test optional, but it doesn’t really feel like we have an option if we never get to take the SAT.”

The pandemic has also affected the College Board’s AP exams, which got off to a rocky start on May 11. The College Board put the exams online this year and nixed the multiple choice section, only giving students 45 minutes for the free-response. The exams are also open book this year — they’re usually closed book.

But the start of the exams was marked by widespread server crashes and evidence that students were relying on Google searches for test answers — a practice not banned, but strongly discouraged by the College Board.

Warner also worries that some colleges on her list, which includes NYU, Drexel and Temple, won’t accept AP credit because of the exams’ untested new format and problematic rollout. Pitt, Temple and UPenn say that so far there have been no changes to their AP credit policy, but they haven’t necessarily finalized a decision yet.

Every changed or cancelled standardized test contributes to an atmosphere of uncertainty surrounding the college process, as does not knowing whether or not colleges will be online or in-person in the fall. Students say they’re stressed, but counselors across the District say they are equipped to handle it.

While the District is “pumping out chromebooks” and wants “students to log in and do their work,” Olmedo said, “we have to remember that we’re suffering a communal trauma here. We have to step back and really make sure the children are doing OK emotionally.”

District sets up a hotline for high school seniors, announces virtual graduation

2020-05-13T19:44:25+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

In order to provide further support for high school seniors in the age of COVID-19, the School District of Philadelphia has created a hotline specifically for them.

The hotline will be available from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, starting May 12. During those times, District experts in applying to colleges, jobs, and technical education facilities will provide advice to seniors who call in. Seniors can access the hotline by calling 215-400-4130 or by emailing collegeandcareer@philasd.org. A language line will also be provided for non-English speakers.

Superintendent William Hite also announced that the District is planning a virtual high school graduation at 11 a.m. June 9.

In his weekly Facebook Live appearance Wednesday, Hite said the event would include a surprise keynote speaker, as well as student contributions. Students are helping to plan the event, he said. It will be available on PSTV, the District’s public access TV channel, as well as on social media and other platforms.

The event will include participation from Mayor Kenney and others, and the keynote speaker will be “very special,” he added.

In a statement about the hotline, Chief Academic Supports Officer Malika Savoy-Brooks said it would provide an additional layer of support for students, who should already be receiving advice virtually from counselors and teachers.

The hotline provides live support for high school seniors and their families and then refers callers to someone else for continued support. In many cases, that referral will be made to a counselor or official in the student’s school. Hotline staffers have experience in handling questions related to obtaining work papers, finalizing paperwork for college, and pursuing financial aid.

“We understand that school closure dramatically impacts students’ access to resources that may have been readily available to them in their school buildings,” said District spokesperson Monica Lewis.

“Our goal is to connect students with resources in the District, at their school, and in the community,” Savoy-Brooks said.

Staffers will be able to advise seniors on college applications and enrollment, financial aid documents like FAFSA, and job opportunities in the Philadelphia area.

Jamir Babb, a senior at the Workshop School, said he wouldn’t use the hotline himself because he has his college plans figured out, but a lot of his senior classmates aren’t sure what to do about college. He said some of them would attend Community College of Philadelphia due to concerns about money and COVID-19, and others have considered taking a gap year or deferring for a semester.

“I think a service like that would be helpful, especially for a lot of my classmates who don’t know what they’re doing [about college] yet,” he said.

The District isn’t sure yet how long the hotline will continue. Lewis said District officials would monitor demand among seniors and make adjustments accordingly.

This new hotline comes less than a week after the District launched a mental health hotline, called Philly Hopeline, for students and families that aims to assist callers with the stress and grief related to continued isolation, loss of resources, and the death of loved ones. Families can reach Philly Hopeline at 1-833-PHLHOPE (1-833-745-4673) every Monday-Friday from noon to 9 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m.

District starts mental health hotline for students and families

2020-05-07T20:50:04+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The School District of Philadelphia will launch a mental health hotline called Philly HopeLine on Monday for children and families. It will be staffed by counselors from the Uplift Center for Grieving Children, a nonprofit that grew out of the bereavement center at St. Christopher’s Hospital.

“In speaking with families and students over the past few months, they’ve shared how difficult this period of time it is for them,” said Dr. Jayme Banks, the District’s director of trauma-informed school practices. “They have shared they feel isolated, disconnected, that they have worries about all of the unknowns. Some of our students have shared they have been feeling disappointed regarding activities or events they have not been able to partake in.”

Philly Hopeline can be accessed at 1-833-PHLHOPE (1-833-745-4673) every Monday-Friday from noon to 9 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m.

Uplift has had a relationship with the District for 20 years offering grief services and post-crisis support, said Meghan Szafran, its director of school and community services.

“We know that there is a need for mental health and emotional support at this time when kids are isolated, families are isolated. There’s a lot of worry and anxiety and a lot of grief for things that are lost, whether its resources, safety, security, routine, or death of a loved one, which is still happening,” she said. “So we will be able to provide emotional support for children and families. They’ll be able to reach out if they’re feeling lonely, if they’re feeling anxious, if they’re just not sure where to turn.”

Superintendent William Hite spoke about the program on a call with reporters on Thursday. He said the cost of the program is being underwritten by a donor, but did not specify the amount.

The mental health service is in addition to its hotlines for families who need help with basic information such as meal distribution and with navigating digital learning, including tech support for District-distributed Chromebooks. The District is operating these hotlines in 10 languages.

The District has also launched a virtual Family Academy that provides webinars for families on several subjects, including how to use Google Classroom and how to manage stress.

The Family Academy was first launched in 2017 with seminars that families could attend in person, but it has now been reformatted to virtual webinars “as a way to stay engaged with families,” Hite said.

Assessing week one

On the call, Hite said that the District would have a full report on Monday on participation during its first week of official online learning. The District spent a month ramping up its digital capacity by developing guidelines, training teachers, and producing digital workbooks for every grade and subject. On May 4, teachers started to take attendance, introduce new material, and give students grades.

On the subject of grading, Hite reiterated that the intent is to keep students engaged and, as much as possible, prevent backsliding in their progress. The priority is not necessarily the quality of the work they complete.

The District has kept open the third marking period; the material that started this week is what would have been offered in the fourth marking period.

“It is graded, and the grades could be anything – and we talked a lot about this – from participation, to just turning things in, to texting a teacher, to sending a picture of themselves working on an assignment, in some cases just logging in,” he said.

Similarly, methods for determining attendance vary, he said, and can include texting with a teacher as well as logging in to Google Classroom and completing work. So far, he said, attendance across the city has varied widely, with one area reporting higher attendance rates than when schools were open while other areas do not come near to accounting for a number of their students.

Later, when asked how the District is measuring its success right now – given the absence of standardized testing or any other more typical measures – Hite said that for him, it is mostly about reducing regression and keeping up connections with students.

It is already known that students’ skills atrophy during the summer, a phenomenon called “summer slide.” This year, that problem will undoubtedly be worse.

“Because we’ve been out of school since March 15, that regression could actually start a lot earlier, which could mean that children could actually go backwards,” Hite said. “So we’re trying to reduce that to the best extent possible by making sure we’re covering previously covered material and introducing new material.”

But even more important, he said, “success for me is if we are able to make contact with children during this period of time and if we’re able to determine if they are well [and] have what they need in terms of the basic necessities. … For me, this is more about us making connection with children who are experiencing something they haven’t experienced before.”

He noted that many districts around the country have chosen to change the grading system to pass/fail for the remainder of the year, an approach that emphasizes that what’s important now is the maintenance of connection and the nurturing of relationships “so that [students] don’t feel lost. For me, that is success.”

No contact yet with 500 students

Hite said that the District is still working on contacting students and their families. About 500 students are basically unaccounted for.

These are students who have never been in contact with teachers or other staff since schools closed – not by phone, text, or logging on to the District’s site for classwork. Some families have picked up Chromebooks, but never used them, he said.

Many families move frequently during the year, and the District and schools need to scramble to maintain contact.

“We don’t want to lose families in this process,” he said. The District is working with various city agencies like the Department of Human Services and the Office of Children and Families on this endeavor.

An unknown number of families still don’t have internet access, Hite said, disclosing that the District has purchased 2,500 hotspots at $185 each that are good for a year. They are being distributed on a first-come, first-served basis to needy families.

But the so-called “digital divide” is “not a problem that the District is going to be able to solve given our financial forecast,” Hite said, referencing the loss of tax revenue caused by the pandemic. Districts across the country are working on the issue of internet access, he said.

No more snow days?

Finally, Hite suggested that snow days might be a thing of the past. Now that students have the technology needed to do schoolwork from home and teachers have training in virtual learning, it is possible to continue learning from home instead of having a day off.

In addition, he said, the District could change its approach to instruction during environmental cleanup in its aging buildings. This school year, before the pandemic, weeks of instruction were lost in some schools while needed work was done on cleaning up asbestos, lead paint, or other building hazards.

“Nobody’s talking about the environmental stuff. … We see that differently as well,” he said. “More people have technology that didn’t before.”

Tackling trauma requires partnerships and community support

2020-02-14T16:45:05+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Proponents of trauma-informed education emphasize that the approach is not simply an additional program that fits into an existing school structure. Rather, it is an entirely new systemic approach that affects every aspect of school operations and personal interactions.

In 2004, a lawyer and former special education teacher named Susan Cole was concerned by a wave of student expulsions in Massachusetts public schools. To help address it, she helped found the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI), a collaboration between Massachusetts Advocates for Children and Harvard Law School.

Many of the expelled students came from neighborhoods and backgrounds affected by trauma and violence, and in many cases, Cole said, these issues were being overlooked.

In the years since, TLPI has worked to help schools across Massachusetts create trauma-sensitive environments, advocated for legislative support for this goal, and engaged in a public education campaign “to teach policymakers, educators, administrators, health and mental health providers and parents about the impact of trauma on learning and the need for trauma-sensitive schools.”

TLPI helped bring about the passage of a law in 2014 to establish a statewide “safe and supportive schools framework.”

“There are problems inherent in larger systems,” Cole said. “It’s not ‘step one, two, three.’ It’s spreading it slowly, school by school. It’s community-building.”

Although the task of scaling up trauma-informed education by definition falls most heavily on school districts, states and universities are also playing a vital role.

Partnering with a university

Brockton, Mass., public schools, which have gained a national reputation in trauma-informed education, have a partnership with Lesley University, a leading teacher training college in nearby Cambridge, to provide continuing education for school personnel.

The district has established a Trauma Advisory Board, which includes not just educational and social services representatives, but also the District Attorney’s Office.

Sal Terrrasi, the district’s executive director of pupil personnel services, cautions, however, that there is no formula that works for every school or classroom. And he said that efforts to impose one will mostly result in the “de-skilling” of teachers, in which they will run their classrooms according to strict rules rather than using their best judgment to respond to specific situations.

In Pennsylvania, several Philadelphia public schools have formed partnerships with the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University.

The Philadelphia Healthy and Safe Schools initiative at Temple University lists short-term goals such as creating a positive school climate, reducing student behavioral outbursts, and reducing suspensions.

Longer-term goals include reducing the dropout rate, improving the college acceptance rate, and improving academic performance.

At Drexel University, the Dornsife School of Public Health and Sandra Bloom, an associate professor of health management and policy, have provided intellectual leadership in trauma-informed education. The university is also designing a manual for school police officers.

Pennsylvania moves toward trauma training

Last year, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed legislation mandating training in trauma-informed education for school employees.

“People now are just more receptive,” said State Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Philadelphia Democrat who had been advocating on the issue for several sessions.

Dana Milakovic, a mental health specialist with the state Department of Education, said that a working group tasked with developing specific steps that the department will take under the law plans to release its report in the spring.

And the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency’s grant program now covers trauma-informed education.

Research for Action’s 2019 report called Trauma-Informed Schools in Pennsylvania found that “despite the documentation of the prevalence and impact of trauma among children, there is little independent research on established intervention models.”

Advocates know that they will fare better in the battle for scarce resources once they have studied the effectiveness of trauma-informed education programs.

Community-wide approaches

In Pottstown, Pa., researchers supported by the Scattergood Foundation and the Yale School of Medicine are exploring the impact of community-wide approaches to trauma that mesh with the education sector.

The research team, led by Samantha Matlin of the Scattergood Foundation, found that “despite intense interest and activity in seeking to build resilient, trauma-informed communities, there is little or no empirical evidence to do so. … The effort to build resilient, trauma-informed communities is in its earliest stages.”

This, they said, was in sharp contrast to trauma-informed approaches “for specific trauma-related clinical disorders.”

Another approach is being taken in a collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania and four School District of Philadelphia schools supported by the National Institute of Justice.

Evaluations of trauma training have often involved teachers and other school personnel simply reporting how what they have learned has affected them. This study aims to go beyond that.

Researcher Ryan Fink is with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. (Photo: Paul Jablow)

The lead researcher, Ryan Fink, of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at Penn, said that much of the effort is designed to determine what classroom strategies are feasible to adopt and what it takes to bring about changes in classroom practice.

At one of the schools, Sheridan Elementary, principal Awilda Balbuena said that in classrooms where teachers reported a high incidence of behavioral issues, observers found that trauma-sensitive language was not being used.

The project will evaluate how the videos they have developed, individual coaching, and other types of training are translated into what happens in the classroom.

“So much of it is about implementation,” Fink said. “Is it feasible to have schools do this? Which part is feasible? What would it take them to do it?

“Did anybody watch the videos? Did anybody do anything with it? Do you think it’s effective? Could you see yourself continuing to do this?

“And in the end, we’ll look at [student] achievement … climate, attendance, suspensions.”

The Notebook is one of 19 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the city’s push toward economic justice. Read more at https://brokeinphilly.org and follow us on twitter @BrokeInPhilly.

A look inside how trauma-informed practices work in districts and schools

2020-02-12T22:00:32+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

In a March 2019 report, Philadelphia-based Research for Action cited several examples of successful strides toward trauma-informed education. These included the Pottstown School District and the Mastery Schools charter network.

On a Monday afternoon as dusk is settling, about 50 of the newer teachers in the Pottstown School District sit in the high school cafeteria getting their introduction to trauma-informed education.

Laurie Kolka, the district’s director of curriculum and educational programs, and two parent trainers, Kizmect Meade and Mercedez Jackson, go over topics such as brain biology and its effect on learning, and how trauma can affect classroom behaviors such as aggression, defiance, and withdrawal.

Asked for takeaways, teachers offered such statements as “Remember where our kids come from” and “Create the safe environment they might not get at home.”

The training sessions are the tip of an educational iceberg. Trauma has been recognized as an issue reaching from the classroom to the boardroom in Pottstown, a post-industrial city 33 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Almost 22% of Pottstown residents had an income below the poverty level in 2017, as compared to 12.5% at that income level for the state as a whole. Pottstown Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez estimates that 80% of the district’s students are in households below the poverty level.

The move toward trauma-informed education started around 2008 when teachers and administrators in the district began noticing an outbreak of disruptive behavior among its 3,800 students, even among children as young as pre-kindergarten.

The district established the Pottstown Early Action for Kindergarten Readiness to work with providers, family members and other stakeholders around the issues of ACEs – Adverse Childhood Experiences – and trauma.

In 2014, the efforts spread more widely in the community with the convening of the Pottstown Trauma Informed Community Connection, a coalition that stretched from educational and social service organizations into areas such as housing and employment organizations, and law enforcement.

Rodriguez said that a strong public information campaign has been key to the program’s success, starting with one school in the 2017-18 academic year and spreading to all six district elementary schools the following year.

Rodriguez said that he has been able to make acceptance of trauma-informed education a mantra of the district. “Principals have to demonstrate that they’re committed” to it,” he said.

And teachers “have to want it or it’s just one more thing you’re jamming down their throats.”

First-grade teacher Kathy Eagle does. “It’s definitely helped my classroom management because the children buy into it,” she said. “We start talking about empathy for others, coping skills, belly breaths.”

To emphasize their importance, the district factors social and emotional learning practices into teacher ratings.

Rodriguez also cites the Pottstown district’s partnership with Yale University on research into the effects of trauma-informed education on classroom behavior, school climate, and academic achievement.

And he identifies two challenges facing the district: making sure parents and caregivers understand the effects of trauma, and providing continuing education on the subject for teachers.

Jeff Sparagana, Rodriguez’s predecessor as superintendent and an early advocate of trauma-informed education, noted: “If you’re teaching the children one thing in school and they’re getting something else at home, you have a problem.”

Teacher training and support at Mastery

At the Mastery Schools charter network in the Philadelphia area, Karen McCain supervises trauma-informed practices. She said that “a one-shot training doesn’t do much.”

“We modify or change the exercises,” she said. “I get something out of it even with 25 years in the field.”

The Mastery network consists of 25 schools with more than 14,000 students. Like all truly trauma-informed schools, everyone who has contact with a student receives trauma training, including custodians and cafeteria personnel.

Trauma-informed strategies “are baked into teacher evaluations,” McCain said, and teachers receive 20 hours of training a year, some of it in small learning communities.

In addition to dealing with the effects of trauma on students, teachers work on their own emotional resilience.

“They build the things you need to buffer against stress,” McCain said. “Understanding their own emotions, mindfulness, acceptance of change, knowing their own biases.”

For Sheridan Elementary, confronting trauma helps stabilize staff

Philip H. Sheridan Elementary School, with about 555 students, is in Philadelphia’s Kensington section. The hulking fortress of a building was constructed in 1899-1900 and is the second oldest in the School District of Philadelphia.

But 10-year-veteran principal Awilda Balbuena tries to ensure that the school’s interior is not equally forbidding.

Sheridan is one of four District schools partnering with the University of Pennsylvania in a comprehensive school safety initiative supported by the National Institute of Justice.

Trauma-informed education plays a major role in the initiative, and Balbuena said it pervades the building: “There’s no one here that works in a silo.”

Awilda Balbuena is the principal at Sheridan Elementary in Philadelphia.

At Sheridan, Balbuena said, two keys to success are hiring practices and, not surprisingly, resources.

“In my first three years here, there was lots of turnover,” she said.

Last year, she said, she lost two teachers who took positions closer to their homes, but two others left because they couldn’t deal with the pressures of teaching in a high-poverty school with a transient student population.

Experts on trauma-informed education say high teacher turnover makes it far more difficult, because training goes out the door and because it works against building strong teacher-pupil relationships.

“If you’re creating a trauma-informed environment, it’s going to be a place where teachers and administrators want to stay,” said Leslie Lieberman, senior director of special initiatives and consulting at the Health Federation of Philadelphia.

“Little by little, we’ve been able to select the right people,” Balbuena said. “Just because you have a teacher certification, it doesn’t mean you can work here.

“In interviews, we ask those questions that dig at your ‘stick-to-itiveness.’ We tell them it’s going to get tough.”

In terms of resources, Balbuena has at least three people on her staff who have no specific classroom assignments and coach the teaching of math and literacy with attention to trauma-informed methods and social and emotional learning.

Sheridan is also one of 44 schools with the District’s Second Step program and one of 22 with a four-member STEP team.

Second Step is designed to teach students in kindergarten through middle school “how to understand and manage their emotions, control their reactions, be aware of others’ feelings, and have the skills to problem-solve and make responsible decisions.”

STEP teams, a partnership between the District and Community Behavioral Health, are designed to identify behavioral health issues early and “connect children and families to appropriate resources.”

This semester, the school will institute Playworks, a national program providing coaches to encourage “safe and inclusive play” at lunch, recess, and after school.

Balbuena said that after the school’s first application was rejected, she personally lobbied hard on the second try. “I don’t knock on doors,” she said jokingly. “I knock them down.”

In North Philadelphia, Bethune partners with Temple

It’s a short walk in North Philadelphia to Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School from the office where Kathleen Reeves directs the Center for Urban Bioethics at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine. But the geographic closeness tells almost none of the story.

“In the past decade,” said Reeves, a pediatrician, “the chasm between educational opportunities for kids in the suburbs and the city has widened. Violence has gone up in our communities. Gentrification is pushing people into denser communities.”

Just two years ago, only 1% of Bethune’s students were at grade level in math, she said, while at her daughter’s public school in West Chester, 98% were proficient. Out of 1,526 K-8 schools in Pennsylvania, Bethune ranked at 1,523.

The bioethics center’s Philadelphia Cure Violence Philadelphia (formerly Philadelphia CeaseFire), a gun violence prevention program, was already active in the neighborhood.

But Reeves felt it was the university’s responsibility to go well beyond that. So in 2018, she led the formation of the Healthy and Safe Schools Initiative (HSSI), a trauma-informed collaborative at Bethune and another neighborhood school, Kenderton Elementary.

Over 45% of the adults living in the schools’ zip code reported having experienced four or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and “significant episodes of violence” in the schools put children in danger of being re-traumatized there as well as outside the buildings.

Teachers and staff receive real-time coaching in trauma-informed practices on a daily basis, and calming restoration areas – a must for trauma-informed schools – are provided for students and teachers alike.

Temple tries to improve parents’ understanding of trauma and its effects by sending cohorts of them to national trauma conferences.

And Reeves said results show that although the climb is steep, it’s not impossible: Math proficiency at Bethune is now at 5 percent.

“We’re catching up, ” said principal Aliya Catanch-Bradley.

Bradley and other school and program officials say that there are other basic initiatives that schools in high-poverty areas can try to supplement trauma-informed education.

At Bethune, two of them are a full kitchen and laundry facilities for students who come to school without clean clothes.

Bradley said that after she successfully lobbied the School District for the kitchen, students who may not have had a decent breakfast at home are more likely to come in for eggs and other fresh offerings.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” she said.

For the yearly $350,000 per school that the program costs Temple, Reeves said, “I think we can save a lot of money in reactive mental health care.”

Tomorrow: A closer look at what the research says about trauma-informed approaches in schools.

What is social and emotional learning?

2020-02-11T19:53:40+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Two developments in the mid-1990s brought the term social and emotional learning (SEL) into widespread use in the education world.

In 1994, an organization called Collaboration to Advance Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) was created, and its first conference was widely attended by both researchers and educators.

The term essentially entered the public domain in 1995 with the publication of psychologist Daniel Goleman’s best-selling book Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ.

CASEL, which started at Yale University and is now based in Chicago, defines SEL as “the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.”

Trauma-informed education is a method of promoting social and emotional learning. It has its roots in the groundbreaking 1998 ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) study by the Kaiser Permanente health maintenance organization in California and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

District finds that creating more trauma-informed schools requires a change of culture

The study found that adverse childhood experiences such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, having an incarcerated household member, and domestic violence led to adverse health outcomes.

The study population involved a largely middle-class population, but educators found the study particularly relevant for high-poverty areas where students tended to have high “ACE scores.”

To cite just one example, a 2011 study headed by California pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris showed a high correlation between ACEs and learning problems.

Two years earlier, a study of Spokane public school students directed by Washington State University researcher Chris Blodgett found that “the 248 kids with three or more ACEs had three times the rate of academic failure, six times the rate of school behavior problems, and four times the rate of poor health compared with children with no known trauma.”

Proponents of trauma-informed education talk about replacing the question “What’s wrong with you?” with “What happened to you?” if a child is displaying behavior issues or learning problems.

More recently, educators have additionally placed emphasis on creating entire trauma-informed schools, including coping with secondary trauma that teachers may suffer from dealing with a highly traumatized student population. In other words, they are seeking better solutions to teacher stress than a broom closet.

As Research for Action stated in its 2019 report: “Proponents of trauma-informed education emphasize that the approach is not simply an additional program that fits on top of or into an existing school structure. Rather, it is an entirely new systemic approach that impacts every aspect of school operations and personal interactions. “

District finds that creating more trauma-informed schools requires a change of culture

2020-02-11T19:51:54+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Joanna Schwartz, a 2nd-grade teacher at Eliza B. Kirkbride Elementary School, was about to take a scheduled break and desperately needed a place to have peace and quiet.

But the only place she could find was a broom closet.

A few years earlier, in another school, Schwartz said teachers were baffled by a 3rd grader who continually fell asleep in class. Was he bored? Hostile? Disrespectful?

None of the three, as it turned out.

His mother had been found dead in a field, and this made him afraid to fall asleep. “So he stayed up all night watching videos.”

To prevent scenes like these from happening, schools around the country are turning to trauma-informed education, creating an atmosphere that makes it easier for students to learn and teachers to teach.

In a trauma-informed school, Schwartz would have had a place to recharge her batteries and the source of the 3rd grader’s sleepiness would have been discerned much earlier.

A challenge for urban districts

But in large urban districts, particularly those like the School District of Philadelphia that have high rates of poverty, creating so-called trauma-informed schools is proving to be a challenge.

“It’s something that urban districts across the country are trying to learn,” said Abigail Gray, deputy chief of the District’s Office of Climate and Safety. “In under-resourced settings with not enough adults, too many kids, where trauma affects 70% of your kids, the challenges are gigantic.”

What is social and emotional learning?

Jayme Banks, who joined the District in May as director of trauma services, said that the District soon will release a comprehensive plan for spreading trauma-informed education through the school system.

The plan will be based on a “whole school approach,” she said, a change from the District’s earlier plan of simply training as many personnel as possible in the principles of trauma-informed education.

Community Behavioral Health, which provides some school-based services, will also be unveiling changes in its school-based services for 2020-21 that will place greater emphasis on evidence-based treatments. Officials there say they are also placing greater emphasis on trauma-informed education.

From August 2017 to the start of this year, 89 District schools have participated in trauma training run by the Lakeside Global Institute. But this is less than half of the District’s 250 schools.

All told, Lakeside has also provided training to more than 9,000 individuals in the city – teachers, administrators, non-teaching personnel and some parents – much of it with financial support from United Way of Greater Philadelphia and New Jersey.

But teachers have often had to attend on their own time instead of accessing the training during paid professional development sessions at schools.

Beth Hall, director of administration at Lakeside, said that in most cases, schools that are offered the training “have been positive and receptive and jumped on it.”

Not in all cases, however. She said that 32 schools didn’t respond to emails.

Addressing trauma helps academics

And acceptance is not universal.

“What I hear from teachers,” said Tawanna Jones, a school psychologist at Abraham Lincoln High School in Northeast Philadelphia, “is that if they’re implementing trauma-informed practices, they could be penalized. If you come in and see students meditating [a common trauma-informed practice], it doesn’t look like curriculum.”

Tawanna Jones, school psychologist at Lincoln High School

A former District official who asked not to be identified said that although they felt that Superintendent William Hite is a strong supporter of trauma-informed education, “it hasn’t really penetrated the [administrative] layers between Hite and the individual schools.”

The former official said that with some District principals and other leaders, the emphasis remains strictly on “how to get the test scores up.”

Karyn T. Lynch, the District’s chief of support services, said last week that “within schools, we have varying degrees of readiness for a trauma-informed approach to learning and supports.

“To say that every single school, given the exact same treatment, is going to have the same result, that is not the case.”

But Lynch says that the vocabulary of social-emotional learning and trauma-informed education has been implanted in every school and that “we have more today than we have had in the past.”

She also cites the presence of more clinical coordinators and family peer coordinators in the schools.

She noted that the District’s full-court press on increasing attendance has reaped results. In School Progress Reports for last year, which were released Feb. 10, many of the overall improvements were due to better climate scores, which includes attendance.

And one way to increase attendance is to make schools places where students feel nurtured and want to be, Lynch and experts on trauma-informed education say. She adds that better attendance is a necessary condition for academic progress.

Hite shares this message in regular meetings with principals and other school leaders, she said. Plus, he has gotten feedback from students themselves, who have said it is “extremely important” for schools to pay attention to their mental health issues. A group of students held a rally before the January Board of Education meeting to give the issue more visibility.

“We know this is important,” Lynch said. “Once a child is able to self-regulate, has good relationships within a school, then a child is able to recognize, ‘this is a place I want to be,’ attendance is increased, and then you have the opportunity to educate the child.”

To help teachers better connect the dots between addressing trauma and improving academic achievement, she said, the District has tracked policies implemented elsewhere. For instance, some districts include social and emotional learning practices in their formal educator evaluations.

“We have looked at models that have been successful in other places in the country, and we recognize the benefits of those models and moving in that direction,” she said.

Still, an obstacle – in Philadelphia and elsewhere – is the relative newness of the concepts of trauma-informed education and the larger subject of social and emotional learning, or SEL.

For educators, “the world of thinking about trauma, the importance of school climate and SEL is 20, 30, 40 years behind the world of instruction,” said Gray, of the District’s climate office.

“The institutional investment at this level is nowhere near the level of the instructional sides. We have to be social and emotional providers to our kids, and that’s something new.”

Plus, “The ed schools don’t teach this stuff.”

Schwartz – who also has a social work background – has assembled an informal group of teachers in her school that meets weekly to discuss trauma and SEL issues.

But on the whole, she said, “The teachers I work with don’t know much about trauma. … You need continuing coaching. Not a one-and-done thing.”

* * * *

In a March 2019 report, Philadelphia-based Research for Action cited several examples of successful trauma-informed education efforts, including the Pottstown School District, the Mastery Schools charter network and, on a state level, Massachusetts.

Tomorrow: A look inside a district and a charter network that have successfully implemented trauma-informed education.

Dale Mezzacappa contributed reporting.

Students demand more mental health services; city and District outline plans

2020-01-31T15:45:12+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The youth of Philadelphia are not settling for the bare minimum when it comes to their mental health.

In a rally outside School District headquarters before Thursday’s Board of Education meeting, students organized by Youth United for Change demanded more access to school-based mental health services and they later spoke before the board to press their point.

“We’ve been talking with the District about changing the mental health culture in schools,” said Aniya Timberlake, a YUC leader and student at Bodine High School, in an interview. “We want them to know that our mental health matters, but they brush it off to the side.”

Specifically, she said, “We want transparent resources: If a student is having trouble and they feel like they want to see a therapist, we want them to be able to go to the front office and find places based on where they live.”

The students also want limits on standardized testing and school-based mental health suites, which they said would be useful in alleviating stress that they face in high school.

The protests come at a time that the city of Philadelphia has allocated $100 million for Student Behavioral Health Services that will operate under the new Office of Children and Families. The city is issuing a “request for proposals” for mental health services in schools that will start operating in the 2020-21 school year.

At the meeting, Tamra Williams from Community Behavioral Health made a presentation on how CBH is planning to allocate the $100 million. She said the program would start in the fall and place higher-trained professionals directly into the school system who are “both culturally and linguistically competent” to deal with student needs, using an “evidence-based … systems of care approach that is strength-based and family-centered.”

Training for personnel began in May and will continue through 2023, she said.

“We recognize that without the proper mental health, that our students will struggle, and that’s why we have been working on this for years,” said Superintendent William Hite.

He said the board wants youth input; it is putting together a youth advisory board on mental health and already works closely with YUC.

Williams told the board that the state is revamping its mental health infrastructure and that Intensive Behavioral Health Services (IBHS) will replace what was previously known as Behavioral Health Rehabilitation Services (BHRS) and School Therapeutic Service (STS). Under the new structure, all schools will be able to access school-based mental health services, there will be opportunities for individual and group therapy, and providers will support teachers and “coordinate services across home and community settings.”

Rebecca Baret, a student involved in YUC, told the board that the services she could access in school now to meet her mental health needs are minimal.

“Whenever I go to a counselor’s office, I expect there to be materials that allow students to explore their options on how to cope with certain things,” she said. “But when I went, all I saw were pamphlets defining what mental health is, instead of what to do.”

Going to school in Kensington amid drug crisis: ‘We need to be beacons of hope’

2019-10-22T15:25:05+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

In a conference room at Lewis Elkin Elementary School, principal Charlotte Maddox stood at a laptop, flipping through photos that she projected on a screen in front of her — pictures of things not typically associated with grade school.

Used syringes collected in a jar. A man sprawled unconscious on the playground. The shattered window of a teacher’s car, which had been hit by a stray bullet. Slide after slide collected images of a school under siege by the opioid crisis.

Beginning at 6 a.m. each school day, Maddox explained, custodial staff and a school police officer scour the school grounds, dispersing homeless people who spend the night there, picking up discarded syringes, and sometimes cleaning up human feces.

Lewis Elkin Elementary School in Kensington. (Bastiaan Slabbers for WHYY)

Elkin Elementary is in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, where children step over discarded needles and see people injecting drugs on a daily basis. Schools at the epicenter of the city’s opioid crisis struggle to insulate themselves from the problems outside their walls, while also working to help kids cope with the emotional trauma they carry inside.

“With all of this that’s happening on the outside of the building, we need to be beacons of hope on the inside of the building,” Maddox said.

Charlotte Maddox, principal of Lewis Elkin Elementary School. (Bastiaan Slabbers for WHYY)

She strives to make the school a refuge for neighborhood kids.

Still, some parents whose children attend Elkin have concerns about conditions around the school.

“What worries us is we don’t see much security, like police officers or people from the school or the school district helping us in terms of security,” Cristina Garay, whose 9-year-old daughter is a student there, said in Spanish.

Four-foot-tall fencing surrounds parts of the campus of Lewis Elkin Elementary School. (Bastiaan Slabbers for WHYY)

In addition to the morning cleanup crew, Maddox said, the school police officer and another staff member patrol Elkin’s grounds during recess. But she acknowledged that the school could use more resources to keep the block clean and safe. The campus is only partially gated, she noted, and most of the fencing is only a few feet high. The conditions in the neighborhood are causing some families to move away, contributing to a decline in enrollment at Elkin. Overall enrollment there is down by nearly 100 this year, Maddox said. Some of those students transferred to charter schools. Maddox couldn’t say how much of the decline was due to concerns about safety and quality of life in the area, but she said she had spoken with a number of families who were moving away for those reasons.

“It’s not about the school,” she said. “It’s about what’s happening in the neighborhood.”

When classes let out for the day, students are again surrounded by the fallout of addiction. Once they get home, some are under orders from their parents to remain indoors. Others, like Christia Leiva, a fourth grader at Elkin, are afraid to go outside.

“I tell him to go out to play on the street with the other kids, and he says, ‘No, too much drugs, Mom,’” said Maria Cardona, Christia’s mother, speaking in Spanish. “‘I don’t like it here’ he says. ‘Let’s leave.’ That’s a theme with him, ‘Vámanos.’”

He also asks questions she’s not always sure how to answer.

“Sometimes,” Cardona said, “when he sees people injecting themselves, he says, ‘Mom, what is that they’re putting in themselves?’”

Elkin teachers such as Chelsea Trainor work to address children’s fears about the violence and drug use they witness outside. Each classroom begins the day with a morning meeting, where the teacher invites students to share anything that’s bothering them.

Chelsea Trainor, a third-grade teacher at Lewis Elkin Elementary School. (Bastiaan Slabbers for WHYY)

“They’re kind of focused on that in their minds,” Trainor said. “So when it comes time to read, it’s hard for them to look at the words on the page and read because they’re more worried about what happened at home last night, what happened outside their house, what happened on the way to school that morning.” The meetings also help her learn about serious problems at home she can refer to a school social worker.

A middle school serving children from Kensington uses a similar approach with older students whose understanding of the trauma they experience is growing.

On a recent afternoon at Memphis Street Academy, a charter school for grades five through eight, a dozen students sat in a circle. School counselor Zita Collins led them in a discussion.

“Can I hear a ‘yea’ from anyone who’s been impacted by drugs in this community?” Collins asked.

A staggered chorus of voices chimed in.

“Everyone’s a ‘yea,’” Collins noted.

Daily classroom talks like this are part of a learning effort that supports social and emotional development. The idea is to provide a space where students can share what’s weighing on their minds.

Eighth-grader Benjamin Holt talked about a man who overdosed across the street from his home. He watched as paramedics loaded the dead man’s body onto a stretcher.

“It’s hard to explain the way they just picked him up and threw him on,” Benjamin said. “Personally, I don’t want to see that ever again.”

“That would be hard for even any adult to see,” Collins said.

Eighth-grader Laquan Harrison (left) talks about his experiences during a group meeting with counselor Zita Collins. (Emma Lee/WHYY)

Seeing something, and saying something about it

Collins listened sympathetically as students described other experiences: family members dying of overdoses; screams outside at night that made it impossible to sleep; drug dealers soliciting them on the street; and accidentally stumbling into someone who was injecting drugs in public.

Traumatic experiences like these can lead to behavior problems and depression in students, school counselors said.

“At the root of all of that is not knowing how to cope with emotions and having to deal with pretty big emotions at a pretty young age,” said Brittany Buchanan, a fifth-grade counselor at Memphis Street Academy.

Buchanan said she spends a lot of her time teaching students how to communicate feelings and techniques like deep breathing and yoga to calm them down.

During the classroom discussion, school CEO Na’imah Holliday-Wimberly encouraged students to join a sports team or a club to extend their stay at school each day. The library would also stay open until 5:30 p.m. to give them a quiet place to get help with their homework, she said.

“We want this place to be a safe haven for you, a place where you can come and just escape all the worries of the world, all the worries of Kensington, all the worries of your neighborhood,” Holliday-Wimberly said.

Memphis Street Academy and Elkin Elementary School are among a couple dozen schools in Kensington grappling with the impact of the opioid crisis. The School District of Philadelphia created a task force last year that meets weekly to support 18 of the most-affected schools.

Currently, the district is working with the city to put taller fencing around Elkin School. Neither the school district nor the city could say when the extended, 8-foot fence would be installed.

“The Managing Director’s Office is in the process of procuring a temporary structure” in the interim, said city spokeswoman Deana Gamble.

Maddox, the principal, said Elkin would welcome all the extra help and resources it could get to beat back the collateral effects of opioid addiction that wash onto school property like a tide each morning.

“It’s not over,” she said of the neighborhood’s drug crisis. “I want to make that clear to everyone, that it’s not over.”

Mighty Writers brings mindfulness training to its students

2019-04-15T15:40:49+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Mindfulness is a buzzword used more and more frequently in youth programs, but what does it really mean?

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines mindfulness as “the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something,” but for Amy Perez, the new mindfulness director at Mighty Writers, it is a lot more than that.

“For me, mindfulness is a way of being. While it can be defined as a tool to help with mental focus, presence, and awareness, mindfulness also embodies the presence of the body. Being mindful means being present, in the moment, and not being overly reactive or getting overwhelmed with things in the past or future,” Perez said.

Mighty Writers is an after-school program that offers free writing programs to neighborhood children, from toddlers to teenagers. It has seven locations — six in the greater Philadelphia area and one in Camden, New Jersey.

Mighty Writers uses practices such as journaling, yoga, and meditation during its programs to help the students focus.

“The kids come in to us during after-school hours, or after 3 p.m., and when they are coming in from a long day of school and being there for eight hours, they tend to come in scattered,” said Perez. She says that the mindfulness helps to make the students “a bit happier” and “enhances their views of the world around them.”

The Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP) is a national, not-for-profit organization aiming “to improve the lives of a generation of children and young people by making a genuine, positive difference to their mental health and well being.” MiSP says that mindfulness can be used to help reduce stress and prevent recurrent depression.

Perez echoed this and added that for students, practicing mindfulness “is a new way to feel, it’s a new way to see and to listen to themselves. It really does allow them to understand the concept of compassion, kindness, stillness, and acceptance as well.”

Although many people associate mindfulness with yoga and meditation, Perez emphasized that it “can be practiced anywhere at any time. While it can certainly be practiced under meditation, I recommend [always] being fully aware of your thoughts and open to whatever arises.”

Mighty Writers added these programs as research about the benefits of mindfulness grew stronger and more conclusive. Additionally, they said that their participants’ parents wanted it more and more. According to Perez, there are positive changes happening for the students, and parents are noticing.

She highlighted that some introverted students were talking more and that some were taking on more leadership because of their newfound sense of self.

Besides Mighty Writers, schools all over the country are trying to emphasize the core concepts of awareness, as well as stopping and stepping back.

MiSP argues that “being able to step back from the busyness of habitual activity and the relentless chatter of the mind” provides “greater space and clarity to make choices that support well-being in many ways.”

Said Perez: “Mindfulness is a practice that becomes natural after some time. … If [mindfulness] is practiced every day, it will unleash curiosity.”

Gompers Elementary School focuses on mental health

2019-04-12T17:02:42+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Mora-Lee Moore, an 8th-grade class representative at Gompers Elementary School in Wynnefield, put it succinctly: Mental health is the “most deeply cared-about issue in our community,” she said.

Student Council member Roger Stone added his own take. At Gompers, he said, “Everyone’s always on edge and can’t let loose because they’re afraid that people won’t like what they have to say or won’t listen to them.”

Because of this, the Student Council, advised by counselor Akeesha Washington, hosted a Youth Mental Health Week dedicated to supporting students and raising awareness of this crucial issue.

Besides daily special events, teachers implemented mental health exercises into their everyday rituals. For instance, they began each day during the week with a lesson from Second Step, which “provides instruction in social and emotional learning with units on skills for learning, empathy, emotion management, friendship skills, and problem-solving,” according to its website. At the end of each day, teachers chose a closing reflection; the options included journal writing, group discussion, or practicing a coping skill.

For kindergarten through 4th grade, the week began with building a coping toolbox. Inside are coping tools to help with regulating emotions and calming down students at school. The students add to the toolbox throughout the week, and they will be stored in the classroom for students to use to help cope with emotions.

The younger students and parents were invited to create coping toys such as stress balls and inspiration stones, do yoga, and create a coping plan for the upcoming state standardized tests. At the end of the week, the kindergartners through 4th graders were featured in a talent show.

Gompers 2nd grader Nyla Casey with her coping toolbox, which includes a stress ball and other objects that can promote calming activities. (Photo: Kelsey Green)

All students also participated in creating the Inspired Wall, modeled after the Paris Padlocks of Love. Instead of love messages, the wall was festooned with ribbons, stars, and padlocks with inspirational messages on them.

The culmination of the week was the reveal of the Inspired Wall, which actually is on a gate that separates the Gompers playground from the campus of St. Joseph’s University.

The 5th through 8th graders started the week by participating in a High School and Resource Fair. This was not Gompers’ first fair of this kind, but it was by far the largest. At last year’s fair, 20 different schools and organizations were represented, and this year there were 30, according to Washington.

Heather Marcus, a school counselor at Masterman High School who attended the fair, said she was really excited to reach out to students from different sections of the city. According to Marcus, Masterman is trying to be representative of Philadephia, so fairs like the one at Gompers are a great opportunity to talk to students from different zip codes.

Organizations that attended included summer camps, community centers, and other programs meant to aid students with their mental health. Some of these were Jewish Family Community Service, Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services, Center for Autism, YMCA West Philly, and Eat Right Philly.

The school fair included public, charter, and private high schools so that 5th through 8th graders could get a jump on thinking about their futures. Eighth graders should already know where they are going next year.

The rest of the week features activities that follow key themes such as “What is Mental Health?,” “Coping with Mental Health”, and “Test Anxiety and Kids’ Health,” culminating in a community celebration.

New study pushes Pa. to embrace trauma-informed education

2019-04-02T11:20:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Research suggests that about half of the county’s children experience at least one traumatic event before the age of 17.

These adverse childhood experiences — known as ACES — include experiencing or witnessing violence; living in poverty; or having a parent go to jail.

Even as school districts across the country become more aware of how these traumas can affect learning, there’s been little concrete policy on the state or federal level for how schools should prepare.

A new study from the nonprofit Research for Action highlights “promising models” nationwide and calls on state lawmakers to implement a comprehensive approach in Pennsylvania.

“There are two areas where the research is extremely clear. Childhood trauma is an extremely common experience, and traumatic stress can have a wide range of negative consequences for children,” said Rachel Comly, a senior analyst at Research for Action.

The study recommends that schools provide professional development that reflects the complexity and sensitivity of trauma.

Philly students, teachers say more counselors needed to deal with trauma from gun violence

2019-02-14T17:26:32+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Thursday marks one year since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 people and set off a wave of activism across the country. Students called for more gun control and safer schools.

Young people in Philadelphia and other urban areas seized the opportunity to bring long-awaited attention to gun violence and trauma that affects them on a regular basis.

But some activists, students, and teachers say that one year later, not much has changed in the way of investments to fully address students’ needs.

Ismael Jimenez, a teacher at Kensington CAPA High School, was one of six panelists at a discussion forum on gun violence and trauma in schools and communities. The forum, on Sunday evening, was hosted by the Caucus of Working Educators at Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia.

“The hope is that we can really start a real conversation that can be extended into future activities and collaboration with folks that are really into changing the circumstances that produce so much trauma in our society,” said Jimenez, a member of the group.

The number of people shot in Philadelphia rose 10 percent in 2018 to 1,376, according to data from The Philadelphia Inquirer. About 10 percent of victims were under age 18, and almost 40 percent were between 18 and 25.

Educators and students say these statistics don’t tell the whole story, including the impact that shootings have on the young people who witness or experience loss from gun violence. Research has shown that these traumatic experiences can lead to behavior problems that diminish academic performance.

‘Sometimes, just your presence matters’

2018-12-21T00:22:40+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Mayor Kenney sat on the edge of the auditorium’s stage Wednesday at Kensington Creative & Performing Arts High School, speaking to young people about Philadelphia’s increasing homicide rate.

“One homicide is one homicide too many,” Kenney said. “A lot of this has to do with the economy and the fact that, even though the city is doing better, on a certain level, folks are not experiencing the benefits of a growing economy.”

He spoke at an event hosted by the city’s Youth Commission that was focused on preventing violence in neighborhoods.

People are driven to earn money through crime, Kenney said, “when you don’t have work at all – or work that can pay your bills and take care of your kids. As they say, you’ve still got to eat.”

After the opening speeches in the auditorium, students chose among smaller sessions on trauma, preventing violence, and the city’s new violence-prevention plan.

“We need to hear your ideas on what we could be doing better,” Kenney said to the students. He spoke about the pain of burying his father two weeks ago, but his father lived to be 83 and died of natural causes. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose a child or a grandchild.”

As mayor, he said, “one of the most difficult things to deal with … is when you get up in the morning, reach over to the nightstand to look at your phone, and you see what’s happened last night,” he said.

The seats filled quickly for a panel about prevention and intervention. Panelists ranged from city officials to a former inmate from Kensington who now works with students to mediate conflicts and prevent violence.

Edwin Desamour went to prison for third-degree murder as a 16-year-old. He was tried as an adult, and prosecutors pushed for the death penalty. Desamour was sentenced to 20 years, but was released after eight years. He decided to spend the rest of his life working directly with young people. He’s now a dean at John B. Stetson Charter, a middle school run by ASPIRA.

“I’m a dean at the school where I got kicked out by the dean. … As a child, I was exposed to violence early through family members, on the streets, just walking out the door,” Desamour said. “I witnessed my father, who ran an area dealing drugs; [I saw] what it took to take over an area.” He also had uncles and cousins who made their living dealing drugs.

“There’s nothing right about what they did, but as a young person, you look up to those men,” he said. As a young man, “you feel like nobody sees me. Nobody knows who I am. But when you see this guy who comes out of nowhere and picks up a gun … there’s some strange respect that happens toward that individual. It’s not really respect, and the kid doesn’t understand that it’s really fear.

“So a young person turns around and says: I want that type of attention. No one is messing with this person … but at the same time, it’s trauma-related.”

Edwin Desamour, a dean at John B. Stetson Charter School, speaks on a panel about violence prevention at Kensington Creative & Performing Arts High School. (Photo: Greg Windle)

After someone has grown up around so much violence, trauma inflicts fear.

“And to this day, I really am a scared person,” Desamour said, hands raised. “But I played that role – I wanted to be tough. I wanted to be this macho guy because that was the image I felt I had to put up.”

Also on the panel was a young man whom Desamour mentored for years; neither of them was expecting it. Ryan Rivera, 23, grew up in Kensington, as Desamour did. They met when Rivera was 14. He attended a talk that Desamour organized between police and teenagers in his neighborhood.

Rivera grew up with violence in his house and outside his home, and he said he was often harassed by police while sitting on his own front steps.

“My brother got stopped and frisked because they said he was dressed like a drug user,” Rivera said. “Growing up, we weren’t rich. We were poor. So my brother had hand-me-down clothes on. Maybe they weren’t clean at the time.

“When we try to tell them we’re just going home, they say if we want to argue, we can go down to the district.”

Rivera attended the forums as a young teenager but eventually stopped going. When he got older, he started running forums himself. He tries to bring them to schools that haven’t typically hosted them.

“I make sure I’m building connections so these kids can have their voices heard,” he said. “I’m trying to mend the relationships between police and young adults.”

Ryan Rivera speaks as a panelist at the session about preventing violence. Rivera, 23, has known Desamour since he was 14. (Photo: Greg Windle)

Panel moderator Jude Husein, 20, a member of the Youth Commission, asked panelists how to create more opportunities for mentorships. Neither Rivera nor Desamour knew it when they met, but Rivera is the son of Desamour’s close friend, who passed away when Rivera was 6.

“He pulled me out of class and told me no matter what you do or what you go through, I’m going to make sure you graduate high school,” Rivera said. “That was the first time I had a man say something like that.”

Rivera said he didn’t realize Desamour was his mentor until he became an adult and looked back on his life. “As a kid, you don’t go out looking for a mentor.”

Desamour said that you can find mentors anywhere – you don’t need an organization to do it.

“Sometimes they’re the people you least expect,” he said. “A teacher, that neighbor on the block.”

Desamour runs afterschool classes at Waterloo playground and is also on the board of Nelson playground, which was renovated earlier this year.

“There’s a new basketball court there,” he said. “Over the summer, we just showed up. I brought a case of water, sat at the bench, and conversations happen while they’re playing basketball. You don’t have to force them into another program.

“Sometimes, just your presence matters.”

Ryan Rivera with his mentor Edwin Desamour at the panel discussion about violence prevention. (Photo: Greg Windle)

Uplift Center for Grieving Children’s 8-week curriculum

2018-11-20T17:03:57+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Week 1. Introductions: Definition of grief. Play ice-breaker game with grief questions incorporated.

Week 2. Games: Play familiar games with grief-related questions added to help students begin to share about the death.

Week 3. Feelings: Identify feelings associated with grief.

Week 4. Coping skills: Identify various coping skills and use age-appropriate journals as a coping skill.

Week 5. Continuing bonds: Students discuss objects linked to the deceased and create a memory project to discuss how to continue the relationship with the person who died.

Week 6. Memories: Discussion of memories. Age-appropriate project on memories, writing of memory book.

Week 7. Expectations and looking forward: Timeline of grief is explored, and a grief self-portrait is created.

Week 8. Closing: Final student evaluations completed. Discussion of group ending and balloon-release ceremony outside.

Read: ‘Almost every kid has been exposed.’ Schools that seek out grief counseling

Read: Grief groups help children deal with all-too-common trauma and violence

‘Almost every kid has been exposed’ to trauma from violence, school staffer says

2018-11-19T14:35:07+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

At Smedley Elementary School in Frankford, as in many Philadelphia schools in high-crime areas, faculty and administrators work to make sure that they give students a safe harbor from potential violence outside.

The building has only one entrance, lockdowns are practiced, and students can wait indoors at dismissal time. If an incident occurs near the school, parents are notified by text when possible.

And to help students deal with what they or their friends and relatives may have experienced outside, Smedley, a former District school that is now operated by Mastery Charters, works with the Uplift Center for Grieving Children to help students deal with trauma resulting from violence.

“Almost every kid has been exposed,” says social worker Nicole Enriquez. “It’s wild.”

At Boys’ Latin High School in West Philadelphia, in a less-violent neighborhood, counselor Yolanda Morales hadn’t thought of having the center offer workshops.

But after two students were killed last year in their neighborhoods – the charter school draws its enrollment from around the city – Morales brought in the center’s staff to help.

“It was a heavy hit for us,” Morales says. “We knew we had to act fast.”

Read: Grief groups help children cope with all-too-common trauma and violence

Meghan Szafran, the center’s director of community-based planning, says the agency has added staff and increased its offerings in response to two realities of education in Philadelphia:

Only in very few schools are students untouched by neighborhood violence.
No matter how safe the school might be, the violence that students may experience in their neighborhoods causes trauma that makes teaching and learning harder.

Grief discussion groups are part of an overall strategy to help schools and students deal with the effects of neighborhood violence.

“The groups are powerful because it’s a place for the students to find they’re not alone,” Szafran says.

Other elements are:

Being alert from the opening bell about any child coming into school dealing with a particularly difficult issue.
Making sure that every student has at least one adult in the school that he or she can confide in.
Being particularly careful to take a trauma-sensitive approach to students scarred by the effects of violence.

“The first thing we do is check in with our kids in the morning when they’re walking in the door,” says Sara Schwartz, director of social services at CB Community School. “If they’re not ready to learn, we’re understanding why. Often that can be from violence in the community.”

School counselors and psychologists say that finding a trusted adult in the schools is important because for many students, that’s the best option.

Messer spoke of a student who bonded with one teacher. “When she was in close proximity to that person, you could just see the stress reduce,” she said.

Read: The Center for Grieving Children’s eight-week curriculum

Lauren Wheeler, lead clinician at Ludlow Elementary School, says that the person might not be a teacher or counselor. “It could be the lunch lady.”

Meghan Smith, a counselor at Ludlow, says that even if the child is living with an intact family, they may not be discussing the impact of violence there.

“It may be stigma,” she says. “A lot of times, a family will say, ‘We’ll deal with it in our own way. We don’t need outsiders telling us what do.’

“A lot of families think that talking about it may make the grieving worse. But that’s not the case. I’ve never seen [the effects of trauma] get worse by talking.”

Smith says she reached out to the center four years ago after a 3rd-grade girl’s brother was killed.

Students are encouraged to bring in mementos of their loved one to put in a memory box.

When students in the grief groups fill the memory boxes, Smith says, “It gives us an insight into what they lost. “

One student brought a funeral program, another his late father’s sunglasses, she says. “It gives us an insight into who they are.”

Grief groups help students cope with all-too-common trauma and violence

2018-11-19T14:34:44+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

He doesn’t know why it happened or who did it, but Semaj Brazzle remembers the exact date: June 12, 2018.

That was the day when a friend of his, a high school basketball star who had a scholarship to college, was shot to death in North Philadelphia as he sat in his car.

For Brazzle, a 17-year-old junior at CB Community School in Roxborough, it was a variation on an unfortunately common story. He estimates that in the last year or so, 20 friends of his have been shot.

“Some survived and some didn’t,” he says in a calm, matter-of-fact voice. “It’s getting out of hand.”

Moments later, Brazzle leaves the school conference room to join fellow students in a group designed to help them process the pain and, hopefully, allow him to thrive in and out of school.

Similar groups are offered in more than 100 schools around the city by the Uplift Center for Grieving Children, a nonprofit agency that seeks to combine peer and adult support to reduce the isolation and loneliness that children often feel about the loss of a loved one.

Read: ‘Almost every kid has been exposed.’ Schools that seek out grief counseling

Although the groups include children whose caregivers or friends have died from natural causes, Meghan Szafran, the center’s director of community-based planning, says that an increasing percentage of the children they serve – now about half – are grieving the loss of someone through homicide.

Meghan Szafran is the director of community-based planning at the Uplift Center for Grieving Children. (Photo courtesy of the Center)

This year, for the first time, the center is offering groups dealing strictly with the effects of homicide.

“It’s lonely being a kid who’s grieving,” Szafran says. “It might be the first time they’ve said it out loud, acknowledging that this person is dead.

“The group gives them a place to dump all those feelings and thoughts [that] might really upset people at home.”

Although the agency started in 1995, only since 2013 has it moved into the schools.

Less than four years ago, Szafran recalls, “We were begging schools to let us in. Now the line is increasing.” The organization is adding schools as fast as it can.

The center also offers grief groups for both children and parents at four sites throughout the city. Participants must register to participate.

Szafran and clinical director Kevin Carter say that taking the workshops to the schools offers two advantages.

One, of course, is avoiding transportation issues.

But more important is the fact that the schools offer adult support as well as peer support and in some cases might be the best place to deal with trauma issues.

Understanding toxic stress

“The word is spreading about toxic stress and trauma,” says Michele Messer, a psychologist at Ludlow and Moffet Elementary Schools. “It’s been very empowering for people to see that schools can be the catalyst for change for the individual child and for the community as a whole.”

The center’s eight-week workshops usually have four to 10 students and are regularly attended by a counselor from the school as well as the center’s facilitators.

Sara Schwartz is CB Community School’s director of social services. (Paul Jablow)

“Kids aren’t really available for learning if they’re going through traumatic experiences,” says Julia Cuccaro-Green, crisis intervention coordinator for the center.

She says that there is less reluctance now from school principals and administrators to give up academic time to deal directly with trauma and its effects.

The groups are based on discussions of loss and grief, but they also include activities geared to these issues.

The students are encouraged to bring mementos of the person they lost to put in “memory boxes.” Smaller children get illustrated journals and older children blank journals.

“We talk about making meaning out of their death, doing things that honor them,” Szafran says. “We have them do a portrait of them. It’s sometimes easier for kids to draw rather than just talking.

“We encourage them to develop rituals to commemorate the person, maybe going to the cemetery.”

And if a student wants to just be silent and listen, that’s OK, too. “Sometimes they say nothing for eight weeks,” Szafran says. “And if they want to re-enroll in another group later on, they can.

“You’re going to grieve your whole life for the person, but that doesn’t mean you have to be incapacitated.”

‘A new level of caring’

Facilitators also stress physical activity during the sessions, making it easier for students to release feelings.

Rachel Kemp, whose fiancé was shot to death in 2012 while sitting in his car, said that her son, Rahmeir Kern-Aspy, who was 8 at the time and attending Kearny Elementary School, “became defiant and withdrawn after the incident … not listening to teachers. If a kid would say something, that would be the trigger.”

But since attending a grief group, she said, “He’s gotten better at dealing with it.”

She said her son “really liked the memory boxes” and put in a picture of tools because her fiancé had been a car mechanic.

Read: The Center for Grieving Children’s eight-week curriculum

Facilitators say that children who lost a friend or relative to violence are, in general, more likely to act out and be involved in physical altercations in school than if the loss were due to natural causes.

“I see a new level of caring, the ability to be empathetic from the kids who have gone through the grief groups, a tolerance, a love, a care for others,” said Sara Schwartz, director of social services at CB Community.

‘”Everybody grieves in a different way,” says Trinity Griffin, 17, a CB Community School junior who joined a grief group after losing two grandmothers to natural causes. “Some show emotion. Some don’t.

“You can say what you want, and no one takes offense. Everybody’s been through the same thing.”

Semaj Brazzle says he has found it easier at first to talk about the loss of a cousin from natural causes but that soon, “I’ll be able to talk about gun violence.”

“I’ve got my friends there,” he says of the group. “They know what I’m going through. It’s about understanding.”

And he feels that the people he lost somehow know how he is trying to cope with his grief.

“It’ll make them proud,” he says, “the people who passed away.”

How schools can reduce sexual violence

2018-11-13T21:49:58+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

No one ever shows up at brunch and says, “Oh my gosh, I was so sober last night!”

Risky behavior draws attention. As a result, people tend to assume that everyone else is doing it more than they really are.

But, over the last two decades, research on college campuses has shown that giving students the real facts about their peers reduces unsafe drinking. This approach is called positive social norms. It works because of a basic truth of human nature: People want to do what others are doing.

Now, that research is starting to be applied to a novel area: preventing sexual assault and harassment. A 2011 survey suggests that more than half of young women and almost half of young men have experienced sexual harassment before age 18, ranging from an unwanted comment on the street to groping in the hallways at school.

And about 8 percent of girls experience rape or attempted rape by that age, a 2012 survey indicated.

Since the #MeToo movement started, six states have introduced or passed bills to require teaching about consent in K-12 sex ed classes. But there’s not much research yet on what kind of education actually works to shift teens’ attitudes and actions.

Sandra Malone directs prevention and training at Day One, a nonprofit in Providence, R.I., that offers both education and rape crisis services. Her program has been among the first to try to move teens to seek consent and build healthier sexual relationships by harnessing peer pressure.

She says she can remember from her own teenage years that “Their peers are so important to them. Those are powerful years where you don’t want to make yourself vulnerable and stand out.”

Read the rest of this story and listen at WHYY News

With new proposal, trauma-informed care could become standard in Pa. schools

2018-09-04T22:17:09+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

If a pair of powerful Pennsylvania state senators get their way, a burgeoning approach to managing student behavior could become a mandate.

State Sens. Pat Browne (R-Lehigh) and Vincent Hughes (D-Philadelphia), announced a proposal last week to create a “trauma-informed system of education.” The central plank of their proposal is a requirement that all teachers, school board members, and school employees “with direct contact with students” receive trauma-informed training.

The details don’t go much further than that, and the proposal hasn’t been turned into a bill yet.

The plan is likely to have legs, though, based on the politicians promoting it.

Browne and Hughes co-chair the Senate’s Appropriations Committee. In the last legislative term, their school safety bill enabled the creation of a new $60 million fund for school safety upgrades.

Plus, this topic has been gaining wider attention. A 2017 review by the National Conference of State Legislators found a spike nationwide in legislation related to trauma-informed care.

This latest proposal represents another evolution in Pennsylvania’s approach to school safety, an issue pushed into the spotlight after deadly school shootings earlier this year. Although much of the debate since then has revolved around whether districts should allow some teachers to carry guns in school, there’s also been bipartisan momentum around the need to focus more on behavioral health.

Read the rest of this story at WHYY News

Teaching to the tempo of mental health

2018-07-20T13:51:08+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

On Tuesday night, six Benjamin Rush High School students and recent graduates met at Drexel University to perform at the last minute for a conference. They gathered around a table talking about how they had pulled together arrangements in the last 24 hours. They had very little time to practice.

In the center was Suzanne Spencer, reassuring them. “I knew you were up to the challenge. I know you can do this,” she said.

Spencer has been a music teacher at Rush for the last 10 years. She said that when she was hired, she was tasked with building the program from the ground up. Along with teaching quarter notes, scales, and harmonies, she said, it is important to weave in lessons about self-worth, community, and reflection.

“Artists are really emotional people,” she said. “Some of these kids have the most traumatic childhood stories and not the most amazing home lives. So, it was really important for me to create a community and a family in my program.”

“You could be in the worst mood or have a terrible home situation, and you come in and walk into that room and you can’t be upset,” said Lauren Farrell, a recent graduate of Rush. “Everyone knows each other, everyone cares about everyone, everyone knows each other’s strengths and weaknesses and is rooting for each other.”

Spencer said she feels mental health is inherently intertwined with music education.

“When you have a mental illness, you feel disconnected. You want to connect, and music is such an easy way to do that,” she said.

Farrell said she was in a “really bad place” when she was Spencer’s student, and Spencer listened and helped her through it.

“It wasn’t her job to take care of me, and I didn’t want to bother her with it. The mental health and well-being of her students is something she feels is part of her job as a teacher,” Farrell said. “She went through everything that we’re going through, and she wants us to understand that we’re not alone. She’s genuine. It changed and saved my life.”

Spencer struggled with depression and body issues as a high schooler. She said that surrounding herself with “as much music as possible” helped her manage.

“I used music and art to get out of my depression. Whenever I’m feeling that way, music is the first thing that gets me out. This is my escape, this is how I get out of my bad place,” she said.

“I’ve been super honest and open with [my students] about my anxiety and depression. I think that helps them realize it’s OK to talk about. I really like to stress that it’s OK to have some mental health problems. It doesn’t mean you’re crazy. There’s that whole stigma around mental health.”

Spencer said that although she’s proud of what she’s been able to accomplish as an educator in regard to mental health, she thinks schools should provide more resources and support staff.

“I feel like I am the school psychologist, and I am not trained for that,” she said.

Spencer also said that she would love to pass on her outlook that music education can be more than just technical.

“We need to listen to the kids more, not just follow the curriculum,” she added.

On Tuesday night, Spencer’s students performed the two songs they had prepared to big applause.

“We were so willing to get together and do this for her,” Deb Sarmarini, one of the performers, said. “She’s not just a teacher. She’s a friend.”

Watch the students of Benjamin Rush perform here and here.

Stories about the influence of outstanding teachers are made possible by a grant from the Lindback Foundation.

Psychologist says shame is not an effective way to educate

2018-05-24T20:53:09+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

“For kids to benefit,” said Christopher Blodgett, a noted clinical psychologist, on Thursday, “adults will have to change.” In particular, he was referring to adults in front of a classroom or in the principal’s office during his keynote speech at a symposium on “Creating Trauma-Informed Schools.”

“We are good at enthusiastic starts,” he said, “but not so good on sustaining what we build.”

Blodgett addressed a group made up largely of educators, social service providers, and mental health professionals in a session at WHYY in Center City, urging that success in the use of trauma-informed education become routine in U.S. schools.

The symposium was organized by the Scattergood Foundation, the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center, and the School District of Philadelphia.

In addition to obvious obstacles such as lack of resources and a school schedule that leaves little time for reflection, Blodgett cited the lack of pre-service training for teachers about trauma and the persistence of punishment and shaming in many schools.

“We think of shame as an effective way to educate,” he said. “Punishment teaches nothing. It [just] suppresses behavior. … We have to come at it from a different lens.”

For Blodgett, the director of the Child and Family Research Unit at Washington State University, the different lens is often restorative practices, which, in an educational context, stresses positive discipline and relationship-building.

This can mean using something as simple as “giving kids jobs, things to do” as a way to change behavior.

What it can’t mean, he said, is practices such as sending a child to the school office and having him or her come back with a pink slip.

If one assumes that the child’s outburst was triggered by trauma, he said, “The kid is doing a ‘perp walk.’ It’s a shaming process. You’ve triggered the kid again. It’s a vicious cycle.”

Blodgett emphasized that trauma-informed care is not a slow or easy process.

“I view trauma-informed care as brick-laying,” he said, given that children often suffer traumatic experiences when they are too young to understand them, express their feelings about them, or do anything about them.

“Early adversity gets coded biologically,” he said.

“Who you love is who you may not be able to count on. Children will develop their own structures [for safety] when adults can’t meet their needs. … Trauma steals safety.”

And he said that what might be suitable or necessary during the pre-school years can be anything but that when a child starts school.

As an example, he cited a preschooler who had food security issues from home and expressed them by stealing food from classmates’ backpacks and hiding it in various locations around the school.

Blodgett said that only a small percentage of discipline issues arise over issues threatening health or safety. In most cases, they involve less-urgent issues such as disrespect.

All told, he had an optimistic message for his audience of about 250.

“We are built tough as human beings,” he said. “Every one of us is a trauma survivor.”

The Notebook’s reporting on trauma and behavioral health is made possible by a grant from the Van Ameringen Foundation.

Trauma conference to feature noted clinical psychologist and documentary filmmaker as keynote speakers

2018-05-24T19:41:28+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

A noted clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a documentary filmmaker and author will be keynote speakers at the 2nd annual Philadelphia Trauma Training Conference.

It will be held July 23-25, with post-conference workshops July 26, at the East Falls Philadelphia Campus of Thomas Jefferson University.

Howard Stevenson is Constance Clayton Professor of Urban Education at Penn’s Graduate School of Education. Lee Mun Wah is a community educator and diversity trainer who heads the San Francisco firm of StirFry Seminars & Consulting.

They will address social service providers, educators, health practitioners and community members at the conference, “Preventing Childhood Trauma and its Impact Across the Lifespan.”

Lead conference organizer Jeanne Felter said that although the conference will once again cover the basics of dealing with trauma, those workshops will be condensed to allow more emphasis on trauma prevention.

It will also concentrate on preventing vicarious trauma, a frequent problem for teachers, social workers, and others dealing with traumatized individuals.

For more information on the seminar, including continuing education credits, click here.

Transforming Cramp Elementary into a cheery learning environment on a rainy Saturday morning

2018-05-20T21:53:34+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Fourth grader Jorge Soto had an important job Saturday at William Cramp Elementary School – and he executed it perfectly.

Jorge held the door for the mayor, the school principal, some politicians and nonprofit leaders, the school superintendent, a handful of bank executives from Wells Fargo, a couple of TV camera operators, a newspaper reporter, and a photographer, all of them on a tour to see what $200,000 from the bank and 325 volunteers from the bank and City Year could do on one rainy Saturday morning to transform Jorge’s school.

“I love it,” Jorge said, as he carefully waited for every last person to pass.

Here’s what the tour group saw:

The new library had freshly painted walls and was ready to receive shelves and books, which were packed in boxes nearby. An old, messy storage area had been converted into a faculty room, where teachers could relax and refresh. In the gym, volunteers painted jerseys from every Philadelphia team on the walls, including one from the William Cramp Elementary School sports teams, along with silhouettes of basketball and tennis players. Others assembled bicycles to be awarded to children with perfect attendance.

Every staircase had new paint in triangles of turquoise and blue, making the experience of climbing from floor to floor akin to swimming through a sun-dappled ocean – perhaps evoking the career of the shipbuilder for whom the school was named.

Every wall displayed a mural, freshly painted that day: One hallway showed a review of the parts of speech. In another corner was an explanation of angles – acute, obtuse. Over there, a diagram of a volcano, each molten layer a different color, and on another wall, the elements of a story, from setting to solution.

Jorge painted an inspirational saying on a green mural, brushing in yellow letters: “Every Accomplishment Starts with The Decision to Try.”

At Cramp, the decision has been to try to make a better world for the 520 kindergarten through 5th graders who attend this school, where the children’s families make so little money that every child qualifies for free breakfast and lunch.

“People call this area the Badlands,” said principal Deanda Logan, now in her seventh year at the school. “We’re in the camp of believing that these are Good lands.

Cramp principal Deanda Logan talks with a City Year volunteer at the Wells Fargo Day of Service on Saturday. Logan says that although the children at her school face high levels of trauma and adversity, they just want to learn and to be loved. (Photo by I. George Bilyk)

“We get the best children,” said Logan, an unabashed booster whose throat often catches with emotion.

Yes, reading and mathematics proficiency rates are low – in the 20 percent range – but they are improving. Cramp’s SPR score (the school progress report index that combines factors such as academic scores with statistics measuring attendance and suspensions) was at 22 in 2013, and it has risen to 41 on a scale of 100. Most of Cramp’s students speak Spanish as a first language, and the testing system requires grade-level competency in English by their second year in school.

“We have some children here with some really profound issues, not of their making. So it’s important to us that our children are happy,” she said.

“You can’t say enough good things about how resilient they are. They have suffered trauma with a capital T many times. What they have to deal with on a daily basis outside of school would make even the strongest person collapse under the weight of such difficulty. But they don’t. They are so strong.

“All they want is attention. They just want someone to notice them, to acknowledge them. ”

You might have thought that Logan slipped these talking points to Mayor Kenney, because he said almost exactly the same thing two hours later, describing Cramp’s children:

“They are smart. They are curious,” he said, after grabbing a seat at one of the new cafeteria tables that Wells Fargo donated. “They just want to be loved and paid attention to.”

Saturday’s efforts, he said, “are terrific and about time. People are starting to understand that we’re not forgetting them. They feel that someone cares about them. We’re trying to bring a level of equity into the system.”

For Kenney, the event provided an opportunity to make his pitch for raising taxes to support the schools. He said the city is trying to help “people who are stuck and mired in poverty and can’t move” and to retain young families who move out of the city when it’s time for their children to go to school.

Property taxes are higher in the suburbs, he said, but families are willing to pay that price – just not in Philadelphia. That has to change, he said, with better schools and better funding.

“I don’t care what the complainers say,” he said. “When I go to these schools, I know I’m right.”

The energy in the building was palpable. Every corridor had a boom box going – sometimes salsa, sometimes hip hop, sometimes old-school or rock and roll. The biggest challenge was to avoid dancing while holding a paintbrush. Besides the 325 volunteers from the bank and City Year, parents, students, school staffers and volunteers from nonprofits such as Philadelphia Mural Arts participated.

For months, school leaders and bank representatives had met to figure out the priorities for the day. For weeks before Saturday’s event, crews from Philadelphia City Year had laid the groundwork, stenciling the outlines of murals on the wall, and taping up doorways and covering floors to protect them from paint splatters.

Similar to the Peace Corps, City Year AmeriCorps members, aged 18 to 25, apply to serve a year in a city, usually working in schools. Known for their trademark red jackets, they receive a modest stipend and scholarship help.

On Saturday, after the Wells Fargo volunteers left, 100 City Year members stayed behind finishing undone murals, cleaning brushes, washing floors, and getting the school ready for the students.

Wells Fargo regional president Joseph Kirk spent most of Saturday morning painting a green stripe on a large butterfly’s wing for a mural in the cafeteria.

Most days, he oversees about 80 bank branches in Philadelphia, Bucks, and parts of Montgomery County, including 38 in the city. Wells Fargo employs 5,000 in the wider five-county region, he said, and has been one of the largest corporate funders of Kenney’s community school program.

In his position, Kirk is fully aware of Wells Fargo’s efforts to climb out of the scandals that have enmeshed the bank, one of the nation’s largest – problems with mortgage and auto loans and the creation of as many as two million fake accounts to bolster the books.

But no one was thinking about that on Saturday during Wells Fargo’s annual volunteer event – the Signature Day of Service.

“What you see here is the face of Wells Fargo team members who live and work in this community,” he said.

Kirk said that Wells Fargo’s efforts don’t end when its 225 volunteers go home, paint-splattered and tired. The bank will continue to back this school and others with money and manpower, teaching courses in financial literacy at Cramp and other schools, for example.

“We use this day as a way of building relationships,” said Aldustus Jordan, senior vice president of community relations. The day also builds relationships within the bank, he said, as employees “who work in their silos” bond over brushes and paint.

Upstairs, Wells Fargo volunteer Carmen Rodriguez, 53, an administrative assistant, was dabbing gold paint on a mural that will be hung outdoors. She attended Cramp as a 5th grader.

“I’m so happy that Wells Fargo is giving back to the community, especially to a school I went to years ago,” she said.

“I love that we are painting and fixing up my school. I would love to see the kids’ faces when they come here on Monday morning.”

Arts therapies have deep roots, but still resonate today

2018-04-10T11:03:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Creative arts therapies have roots that go back hundreds of years, but now are being used to deal with 21st-century problems.

“The creative arts go back to shamanic times,” says Lisa Kay, an art therapist and associate professor at Temple University. “A lot of cultures use the arts as a form of healing. The arts emerge as soul medicine.”

More recently, says Natalie Carlton, director of art therapy and counseling at Drexel University’s College of Nursing and Health Professions, creative arts therapies in the United States were rooted in community activism before migrating a few decades ago into the academic world.

Drexel, for example, established its master’s program combining the arts and therapy in 1974.

Michael O’Bryan, a prominent community educator and organizer, has used the arts to deal with issues in neighborhoods affected by violence and other traumas.

”Play teaches empathy and other social-emotional skills,” he says. For youth, “it provides spaces to mess up and try again with adults around them. An art-based environment provides structure and connectivity.”

O’Bryan, who has led workshops on trauma-informed care for a variety of clinical and non-clinical groups, says he takes a public health approach and deals with trauma that affects entire neighborhoods.

He says that the current political environment makes it particularly challenging for neighborhoods with large numbers of undocumented immigrants. “If you’re dealing with a parent who’s likely to be deported, that’s a lot of stress to bring into the classroom.”

Kay says that another trauma that therapists of all kinds now deal with results from shootings in schools and malls.

“We’re all really vulnerable, we really are,” she says. “Kids are always on high alert.”

Creative arts therapists tap into the ‘antidote to anxiety’

2018-04-09T14:42:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Her dance/movement therapy class at Mastery Charter School’s Shoemaker Campus had just started when Amy Hunter asked the seven high-schoolers to say and show how they were feeling.

“Tense,” said one. “Tired,” said another, as several took slumping poses.

Soon Hunter had the group, gathered in a circle, doing lively exercises — rocking in their seats, passing and throwing a fabric ball, and bouncing small objects on a circular cloth that looked like a parachute.

When the hour was up and she asked the seven to describe their mental states, the adjectives were very different: “Happy.” “Great.” “Proud.”

“It makes me feel safe here,” 10th grader Naeem Scott said after the class. “I can be myself here.”

Reaching students at a ‘pre-verbal’ level

Hunter is one of a small but growing number of creative arts therapists working in schools, using dance/movement, music, and art to reach students in ways that words alone often can’t.

The goals range from improving students’ social skills and ability to work together to working on serious behavioral health issues.

“A lot of things are experienced at a pre-verbal level,” says Rena Kornblum, a Wisconsin-based dance/movement therapist whose curriculum for schools is used around the country.

Lisa Kay, an art therapist and associate professor at Temple University who has written extensively on creative arts therapies and trauma, says: “The act of creating can get deeper into those experiences before words can be put to those experiences. People need to be physical; they need to be tactile; they need to be aural.”

Kornblum relates the story of a 2nd grader who repeatedly had tantrums in her regular classrooms. Working with Kornblum, she lay on a gym floor, looking as if she were trying to claw her way up. Kornblum eventually found that the student was trying to get to the mother who had virtually abandoned her.

Natalie Carlton, director of art therapy and counseling at Drexel University’s College of Nursing and Health Professions, calls it “unpacking the symbolism.”

She cites the case of a boy who was constantly erasing parts of his drawings and redoing them. He turned out to be expressing his sadness and frustration at having plans repeatedly canceled by his divorced parents.

And when a child has had a traumatic experience before age 4 or so, she says, he or she may not be able to get to the root of it with only verbal therapy.

‘A huge missing piece’

Even when the child is old enough to talk about traumatic experiences, a creative arts approach might be more helpful than a purely verbal one, says Lindsay Edwards, who directs creative arts therapy programs at Drexel’s 11th Street Family Health Services Center. “They aren’t talking about themselves; they’re talking about the artwork. It doesn’t seem as scary. Improvisation, I think, is the antidote to anxiety.”

For the most part, creative arts therapies are used in behavioral health agencies or community settings rather than schools, a situation that “is not ideal,” says Scott Horowitz, a music therapist who heads the student internship program at Drexel’s College of Nursing and Health Professions.

“The schools can address [a student’s] challenges in the moment, in partnership with the teacher, the counselor, and other people in the school,” he says. “It could be integrated into” an Individualized Education Plan for special education students.

In the schools, “it’s a huge missing piece,” Edwards says.

Schools sometimes ask her about sending students to the 11th Street center, but she doesn’t have the capacity to meet the demand.

Art therapy and special education

Drexel offers a master’s degree in art therapy and counseling. It sends students in that program into the schools as interns and finds the demand high. (There are only 11 in schools this year.)

Ivy Welshans, special education liaison at Parkway West High School, says that when the Drexel students started coming to the school in 2015, she thought, “Oh, no. One more thing for me to manage.”

Now, she says, “I fight for one every year. It’s been amazing. I’ve seen students who had trouble making eye contact making great strides.”

Kathryn Snyder, whose center called Parent to Child & Therapy Associates works with individuals and in schools, says there is only limited use of creative arts therapies in Philadelphia and around the country.

Philadelphia school officials declined to make anyone available at the District level to discuss the use of art therapy. Now, almost all art therapy in District schools is the result of individual teacher initiative and private fundraising.

Lauren Magee, a special education teacher at Penrose Elementary School in Southwest Philadelphia, said that she researched the subject on her own and that the school won a grant from the Delaware Valley Fairness Project, a small local foundation, to put a music therapist in the school one day a week for the spring semester.

The project will reach 40 of the school’s 100 special education students.

“I’m hoping to see an increase in their alertness, improvement in hand/visual attention, more hand-eye coordination,” Magee says.

Snyder says that, even if a school cannot afford a creative arts therapist on a regular basis, there are techniques that staff can pick up that will help, particularly for special needs students.

Art teachers “know they are seeing kids who are disregulated and disruptive and it all spills out in the art room,” she says.

“The training we need is in the red flags to look for in the artwork. We can be alert to the signs that somebody is needing help” and raise the issue with counselors.

Pass the picture

In the art therapy room at Southwark Elementary School in South Philadelphia, art therapist Kristin Rashid was leading four 1st graders in a game called “pass the picture.”

She encouraged each of them to draw any picture they wanted and then pass it to the class member to their right.

“See if you can add something positive to the next picture,” she said.

Rashid works for Parent to Child & Therapy Associates, and her work at Southwark is the result of the improvised financing that often supports creative arts therapies in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

“I’ve done most of the fundraising,” says Kathryn Snyder, who heads the agency. “For this year, we have funding through the Pennsylvania Arts in Education Partnership and are receiving funding through the Community Schools initiative. Southwark is a community school.

“I’m working on further fundraising through grants and a fundraiser with a local clothing designer who works in the Bok building across the street from Southwark.”

In the classroom, the 1st graders were doing their own improvising, guessing what their classmate had drawn before adding to it.

“Take your best guess,” Rashid said.

There were houses, people, a zeppelin.

“What was it like to have things added?” she asked one of the children.

“I like the house,” he said.

“Say a little more than ‘it’s nice,’” Rashid coaxed.

Afterward, Rashid repeated what could be a mantra for creative arts therapists: It’s never just about the art itself.

Of her group work, Rashid said: “There’s always a component of sharing. It’s being confident that you can put your own ideas out there.”

Gun violence summit grapples with where to go from here

2018-03-28T10:27:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Sixth-grader Samantha Sandhaus’ question was so innocent – simple and logical – that, for one brief moment, it silenced two seasoned, and loquacious, politicians.

Why, the 12-year-old wondered, if the city of Philadelphia can’t legally make laws to curb access to guns, then “why doesn’t the federal government do it?”

Aaah, why indeed? Where to even begin?

That was the look that crossed the faces of State Rep. Jordan Harris (D, Phila.) and Philadelphia City Councilman Kenyatta Johnson. The two had been tapped to deliver a primer on gun laws Tuesday at #PHLYouthTalks: Gun Violence from Parkland to Philly, a gathering at South Philadelphia High School.

The session, which was sponsored by the Philadelphia Youth Commission and the Mayor’s Millennial Advisory Committee and took place three days after the anti-gun violence march in Center City, drew about 80 people; about half of them were students. They listened to the politicians, including Mayor Kenney, before dividing into smaller sessions on trauma, creating safe spaces, and anti-violence programs — all in response to the Valentine’s Day shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Harris gamely took the first stab at answering Sandhaus’ question, talking about finding ways to shut off the access that people have to guns. Johnson chimed in, urging Sandhaus and others to mobilize against the National Rifle Association.

“No child should worry about being shot in school,” the mayor had said earlier, pointing out that “so many students grow up with violence and trauma that they don’t know any other way to deal with it but to get stuck in that cycle themselves.”

“Together,” he said, “we are stronger than the gun lobby,” particularly as young people assume leadership. “I’ll feel very confident that you folks are in charge,” he said, describing the generation of high school students as diverse, respectful, and willing to help each other.

Johnson and Harris outlined the city’s track record of gun violence – pointing out that Philadelphia ranks second among major cities in the nation in the percentage of homicides caused by guns. They urged audience members to get involved in government action and anti-violence groups. They advised students to learn about signs that classmates were struggling with mental issues and to take their concerns to adults.

And they said that although they respected the activism of the students in Parkland, Florida, they needed to see some of the same outraged response to the daily gun violence that claims the lives of black and brown people in Philadelphia. “People are dying on a daily basis from gun violence,” Johnson said.

But nothing they said seemed to really address what was on Sandhaus’ mind. It came up as she almost curled in on herself, sitting on the floor with the others during the breakout session on trauma held on the high school’s stage behind a movie screen.

A student at New Foundations Charter School in Northeast Philadelphia, she said she’s scared, afraid to go to school. “You don’t want to go to school, [worrying that] this is our last day,” she said.

She defined trauma as “the fear in the back of your head. You can’t escape the fear and you feel like it might happen again.”

In the group of about two dozen, three-quarters of them raised their hands when asked whether they personally knew someone or had heard of someone who had been involved in gun violence.

They aren’t sure where to go to find help. Maybe they would turn to their counselors, one high school student said, if more of them were black like he is. But even then, he said, there’s a risk. By law, he said, they have to report abuse. So, if something’s going on at home, students may feel they can’t confide, he said, for fear the counselor will alert government officials who might break up their families.

It seems, one student said during the breakout session, that no one really cares about the steady devastation that gun violence causes each day in Philadelphia. The mass killings in a suburban Florida school got the headlines, deservedly, but when gun violence happens in Philadelphia, the broadcasters say, “A black teen in Philly dies, and now, here’s the weather,'” she said.

Youth Commission member and group moderator Tatiana Amaya, 17, a junior at Mastery Charter’s Shoemaker campus, had an uncle who was shot and killed last year. She said the experience made her even more determined to fight against gun violence because it gave her a deeper understanding of the impact on victims.

“Take what you learned here and apply it outside this group,” she urged at the end of the session. “Don’t let this conversation be the end of it. Expand it, grow it, learn about politics, learn about the political process and hold your elected officials accountable.”

The van Ameringen Foundation is supporting two years of Notebook reporting on trauma-informed education and behavioral health. This article is part of that reporting.

In Anchorage, principal first focused on the staff

2018-03-21T18:29:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Over the last two decades, educators across the country have increasingly seen the value of recognizing how trauma affects their students and their ability to learn.

Estimates indicate that between half and two-thirds of all children experience some sort of trauma, according to the Education Law Center.

Trauma-informed practices can be as simple as the way a teacher approaches a single student who is acting out, or as comprehensive as a whole school, from extracurricular activities to lesson plans, that is based on the science behind trauma and brain development.

To try to understand the range of trauma-informed practices, we talked to people across the country about how these practices have worked in their own schools and communities and the impact they have had.

For one elementary school in Anchorage, Alaska, ensuring that schools are trauma-informed means focusing on the staff first and the students second.

A decade ago, Deanna Beck was an elementary special education teacher when she noticed that some of her students would make continuous progress on reading assessments and then suddenly drop off, a change that seemingly came out of nowhere.

“I just started asking them questions, like, OK so what happened last night?” she said.

Students replied with stories about fluid and unstable parent relationships, issues of homelessness, and struggles with hunger.

Beck kept asking questions, trying to better understand her students, and in the process built strong bonds with them, which made for a better classroom dynamic and taught her how to better serve them.

She had never heard of the groundbreaking 1998 ACES study that showed how adverse childhood experiences affect learning. She had never heard of trauma-informed education. She was simply trying to better understand her students and their needs.

But then in 2012, when Beck became the principal of Northwood ABC Elementary School in Anchorage, she realized that the issues she was seeing with her students pervaded the school – both student and staff.

So her first move was not to focus on the students and their needs; rather, she focused on the needs of the staff she was now leading.

She focused on team-building, team morale, empathy among staff members, and how to make the school an enjoyable and positive workplace. She wants her staff members to be not only colleagues, but also friends. The logic is that, without a healthy staff that feels supported, empowered, and heard, she couldn’t get that mentality to trickle down to their students.

“A teacher can definitely do this work in his or her classroom without the administrative support, but the administrator can’t do it without their teachers’ support,” Beck said.

Building that sense of community among teachers is also crucial to avoid burnout.

“There’s so much on teachers’ plates, and we’re asking them to do more and not take anything else off their plates. It’s hard. … I ask a lot of my staff and I know I do, to do this work, so I would say that would probably be a [downside], but the rewards are huge,” Beck said.

By her second year as principal, Beck had become familiar with the ACES study and the science behind what she had already discovered anecdotally through her teaching: that traumatic events during childhood affect brain development and students’ capacity to learn.

So the second year, she focused more on the students and their needs. She had trainings with teachers about how to use trauma-informed practices in the classroom and decided to start a formalized “adopt a student” strategy, where teachers would go down the entire list of students, marking the names of those with whom they had a close relationship.

After every teacher did that, they noted all of the children who had one or zero check marks. Different teachers “adopted” those kids, making a concerted effort to forge a relationship with that student, so that every child felt as if they had a caring adult and an advocate in the building.

After three years of these schoolwide practices, the school is seeing real academic growth. It took a couple of years, which Beck called “discouraging,” but this year produced significant growth in academic achievement, even with the introduction of a new curriculum.

“With the new curriculum adoption, [the District] didn’t expect to have as much growth or even fall back a little bit. But my school was showing growth overall, and so they asked me what we do differently, and I was able to point to the trauma-informed practices as being one of the things that we do differently,” Beck said.

About 80 percent of students now report on surveys that there are five or more adults who care about them in the school, up from around half. Parents have also reported significant increases in their satisfaction with the school.

After seeing the success of trauma-informed education at Northwood, the Anchorage School District has started to have districtwide workshops on trauma and education.

Beck still believes the focus on staff is the key to the school’s success. Staff members do regular team-building activities, a social team organizes opportunities for teachers to get together outside of school hours, they read books together and watch films about resilience and education, and Beck has made the commitment to trauma-informed practices a hiring priority when looking for new teachers.

The teachers “really look at that work being a social place for them as well, which I think is great, to have that mentality. That they look at the school as a family. Because we know, again, teachers aren’t getting paid a lot. You want to make sure work is enjoyable to them,” Beck said. “Teacher retention is an issue nationwide.”

There is no trauma-informed school without the buy-in from trauma-informed teachers. Additionally, teacher turnover affects student achievement.

“When students feel safe and that they can have relationships, the academics come. That’s the self-actualization piece,” Beck said.

Lakeside offers trauma-informed education online

2018-03-21T18:23:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Koosh balls, silly putty, ball-bearings, small stuffed toys. These are some of the tools used to defuse emotional outbursts or erratic behavior at Samuel Powel Elementary, K-4 school in West Philadelphia.

They’re referred to as fidgets, amd they’re part of a list of strategies designed to address possible trauma by engaging students’ brain functions.

“It’s very relaxing,” said Sinaya McCants, a second-grade student at Powel. “It calms me down and helps me control my anger so I don’t hit anybody or hurt anybody.” She never actually hit or hurt anyone before, she said, but she uses the strategies “just in case.”

Pamela Turner-Bunyon, the school’s counselor, said Sinaya used to be sent to her office multiple times a day due to emotional outbursts that were difficult to de-escalate. But now, thanks to tools such as fidgets, days go by before Sinaya winds up in her office. And usually it’s for “treats” like candy or hugs.

“It’s not because I don’t want to see her, but because she’s using the strategies,” Turner-Bunyon said.

Such strategies come from Lakeside’s Neurologic Initiative, where teachers receive training on trauma-informed education. Powel, one of the seven schools to receive a Promise Neighborhood Grant, is among a handful of schools in the District to receive training through the initiative.

And now in an effort to expand their reach to more schools, Lakeside is offering training through an online video course.

“We only have so many hours in the day, schools have only so many professional development days, which is really where our program is laser focused on,” said Josh MacNeill, director of the Neurologic Initiative, who does the bulk of the teacher training. “So trying to get that information to them as quickly and easily as possible is the goal here.”

Lakeside is offering concepts designed to help calm students in various situations and prepare their brains for learning through two online video courses. The first is a four-hour intensive to introduce educators to a trauma-informed approach to teaching, where the specifics of brain function are explained along with practical methods of application in the classroom. The other is an eight-hour course that builds on the concepts from the intensive.

The courses offer 10-25 minute tutorials that first teach the science and impact of trauma on the brain. Then they explore strategies such as brain breaks, exercises that calm students and prepare their minds for learning; regulation areas, a space where students can calm themselves down while still participating in class–peace corners, for example; and fidgets, handheld toys and trinkets that allow students to… fidget.

The courses cost a total of $400, making it a cost-effective alternative for schools on a budget.

“If I could clone us and go out and do tons of training and make it extremely inexpensive, I’d do that in a second,” said MacNeill. “But that’s not practical, so this is the next best thing.”

The courses are still in the early stages of their release so it’s too early for feedback, but the training itself is proving to have a significant impact for teachers who’ve bought in.

Powel teacher Tara Shaw said she has seen significant changes since implementing Neurologic’s strategies in her classroom. Last year she’d have to send students to Bunyon’s office almost daily, she said, but since taking the training this year, she has yet to do so.

The exercises allow students to develop a sense of emotional intelligence they can tap into when they feel themselves getting worked up, so it is typical for students to go to the peace corner with a fidget on their own volition.

In Shaw’s room, the peace corner has about three feet of wall space dedicated to signs that help students identify how they feel, a wobble chair, and a basket of fidgets. While wobbling and fidgeting the students let off steam and while still participating in class.

“It made me be more reflective about my interaction with students, so that I’m calm with the students and they’re calm, so they can think about what they need to do,” Shaw said.

Turner-Bunyon said this is the case in other classrooms where teachers have adopted the new approach. She said of those teachers who use Neurologic’s strategies, she hasn’t had many of their students sent to her office.

Despite such results, she said the biggest challenge is getting other teachers to change their ways. One of the reasons, Turner-Bunyon said, is since the program is very trauma-centered, it requires educators to look within themselves in order to empathize with their students, which may prove difficult for some.

“You’re processing your own pain to be able to be present with children,” Turner-Bunyon said. “It’s about the adults being more intentional. So the roadblocks are real because we’re all humans. We’re all involved in this human experience and we all have to be willing to make those changes to then go forward.”

MacNeill said teacher pushback is the biggest hurdle the initiative faces, especially from those who’ve been teaching for a long time. It isn’t an easy process to change the paradigm of the classroom, but he assures the mission of the Neurologic Initiative is to provide schools with the tools they need to stay the course.

“Students are changing, the culture is constantly changing. It’s a long-term process to become that,” he said. “We kind of condensed ourselves for teachers, for professionals to get that core information that foundational information that needs to be there…and just create a hub of resources for people.”

For more information about the Neurologic Initiative visit www. lakesidelink.com.

Ways to steer away from behavior issues

2018-03-21T18:16:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Want to develop good parenting skills and help your child avoid behavioral problems? Here are some of the tips developed by pediatricians and researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PriCARE program.

• Attention is what children crave the most. Use the precious commodity of your attention to praise good behavior. Strategically ignore negative behavior, as long as there aren’t any major safety issues.

• Practice “labeled” praising. Be specific. Instead of saying, “Good job,” say, “I like how you put on your jacket so quickly.”

• Give clear, authoritative commands: “Mason, please put on your jacket.” Don’t muddy instructions with phrasing like, “Mason, Mommy really needs you to put on your jacket.”

• Play with each child for five minutes a day. Don’t do instructive activities, such as puzzles or model-building, where there is a right or wrong way. Instead, allow the child to take the lead and make comments on his actions, such as “I see you used the blue Lego.” Children blossom with this attention.

• When a tantrum happens over, for example, a refusal to put on a jacket, try to ignore it. However, watch for the slightest sign of compliance. If the child sticks even a hand in the sleeve of the jacket, praise that: “I like how you are listening to Mommy and putting on your jacket.”

• Try to remember that it’s not personal. Children can get tired and overwhelmed.

• If a child has had a traumatic experience, it may take a little longer for his or her brain to process commands. Be patient.

• Think about ways, such as deep breathing, to decrease your own stress.

Parents learn to use positive methods

2018-03-21T18:14:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Why do children of a certain age wait until the shopping cart is full and then proceed to throw an ear-splitting, face-reddening temper tantrum that is so loud and so embarrassing that a parent’s most fervent wish is for the floor to open and swallow the child, the shopping cart, the parent, and, yes, even the orange cheese puffs, twice denied, that started the whole screaming fiasco?

Maybe pediatrician Joanne N. Wood, director of research at Safe Place: Center for Child Protection and Health at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, asked herself that question when her daughter, then age 2½, freaked out at high volume over cheese puffs at Costco.

Possible responses: yelling, threatening to take away SpongeBob for life, or perhaps, in desperation, just giving up and handing over the cheese puffs, all three pounds of them. Or maybe just abandon the cart and walk out the door. With or without the child.

Instead, Wood, 41, followed the advice given weekly to members of a successful program that she and her team developed to train parents and caregivers to avert behavioral problems among 2- to 6-year-olds.

So how did Wood deal with her daughter, who is now 10, on that dreadful day in Costco?

She ignored her.

“We teach ignoring mild misbehaviors,” Wood said. “But you feel judged, and that’s hard in a public place.”

It didn’t take long (although it seemed an eternity at the time) before her child calmed down, minus the cheese puffs.

Children’s Hospital offered its first PriCARE class to parents and caregivers (such as grandparents and foster parents) in May 2014. About eight to 12 parents or caregivers per class attend six weeks of sessions at Children’s Hospital’s primary care clinics in South and West Philadelphia, where they learn “positive parenting” methods and stress-reduction techniques.

Perhaps, with training, parents can nip issues in the bud at an early age, before behavior problems affect the children’s education in school, setting off a course of difficult consequences.

During the sessions, babysitters watch over the children in another room and adults take turns pretending to be toddlers. Role-playing, they practice new ways of interacting with their children.

They learn about child development and receive encouragement and acknowledgment that parenting can be difficult, challenging, and sometimes lonely. They support each other, and the trainers give them tips on ways to reduce their own stress.

Leigh Wilson, project manager for PriCARE and a trainer for the program, said: “Anytime we can offer support to the parent, it is a huge gift to the child. When parents and caregivers do better, children do better. I really believe in that philosophy..

“Children don’t live in a vacuum. They live in a family.”

‘A patient I never met’

What makes the program unique is that the classes take place in their pediatricians’ offices, “considered a trusted, safe place by parents,” said Wood, who developed the program with her team at the hospital’s PolicyLab.

“I was drawn into the multidisciplinary approach with families, social workers, and organizations outside the hospital, not just focusing on a medical problem, but also on the social and emotional needs of children,” she said.

What piqued her interest in behavioral health, child abuse, and child maltreatment was the case of “a patient I never met,” she said.

While in medical school, she helped a colleague preparing to testify in a legal case about the patient, a little boy who had suffered so much abuse at the hands of his mother’s boyfriend that he died.

“I was young and a medical student and I wanted to fix things,” she said. She later became a specialist in trauma, child abuse, child maltreatment, and harsh parenting.

Her work connected her with children in foster care, many of whom had suffered a lot of trauma in their young lives. Nearly all went through more trauma as they were removed from their parents’ care.

Their foster parents “voiced that they didn’t have the tools they needed” to cope with the behavioral problems that often came with their young charges, Wood said.

Behavior health disorders

Research indicates that 11 to 20 percent of U.S. children could be diagnosed with a behavioral health disorder at any time.

Children who have behavioral problems start school at a disadvantage, with lower language, motor, social and school readiness skills.Behavioral problems are also linked with other issues – anxiety disorders, attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder and suicide.

“You can develop the cycle of increasing attention to negative behaviors, which in turn leads to more of those behaviors,” Wood said.

Children with behavioral problems are more at risk for abuse and harsh parenting, including corporal punishment and mean, belittling talk.

Many of the behaviors are common to most children – tantrums, hitting, spitting, maybe cursing. What’s different with children who have behavioral issues is the intensity, frequency, and duration.

Trying to work out how to change those behaviors led Wood to an existing intervention that’s called Child- Adult Relationship Enhancement, or CARE.

The idea is to, as much as possible, specifically praise and reinforce positive behavior, ignore mild negative behavior, and spend at least three to five minutes per day with each child in non-instructional play activities where the child sets the tone and calls the shots.

“We sort of fell in love with the intervention,” Wood said. “These are core skills that any parent could use. And as a parent, they were helpful to me.”

More empathy

Wood and her colleagues at both Safe Place and the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Children’s Hospital modified the CARE program for use at primary care centers – hence the name PriCARE.

They also did testing. They enrolled 120 families, placing some in the program and putting others on a waiting list. They compared answers to well-known screening questions that

answers given by parents in the PriCARE program, who were surveyed before and after the class.

The research, published in the January-February 2017 issue of the journal called Academic Pediatrics, demonstrated that PriCARE graduates had developed more empathy toward their children and were less likely to rely on corporal punishment.

“A lot of parents value the empathy they get from the other parents in the group,” said clinical research coordinator Devon Kratchman. “It’s recognizing that other parents are in the same situation.”

25 groups trained

Groups 24 and 25 finished their sessions at the end of February, and groups 26 and 27 began in early March. So far, about 190 caregivers have taken the course. Of these, nearly four in 10 are eligible for Medicaid.

Over time, the staff has learned the importance of providing child care, a modest meal of pizza and salad, and bus fare. When parents drop out, it’s often because of family emergencies.

The class costs the Policy Lab $300 to $400 per caregiver, plus additional staff time. The Pew Charitable Trusts, Oscar G. & Elsa S. Mayer Family Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and a private donor have supported the development, implementation, expansion, and evaluation of the PriCARE program.

Referrals come from doctors at Children’s Hospital, who are prompted by a reminder in the hospital’s computerized medical records whenever they enter any information about a patient’s behavioral issues.

Currently PriCARE is only offered to patients within the CHOP primary care network. Parents can connect with PriCARE directly via phone 267-318-1707 or email to pricare@email.chop.edu.

Screeners talk to parents about their stress levels and depression and also refer serious behavioral problems to clinicians who can provide the necessary individual care.

Staffers at the center are working on expanding the training to include caregivers and educators at early childhood centers. And because the PolicyLab’s mission is to find ways to expand proven programs through policy, staffers are also researching how more widespread funding can be made available to more parents.

One goal of the training, Wood said, is to normalize children’s behaviors and adults’ reactions that seem, in the heat of the moment, overwhelming.

“We recognize and acknowledge the stress,” she said. “We talk to parents about what they can do to manage their own stress. And kids do know how to push your buttons.

“But it’s not a personal attack. It’s a normal childhood reaction. We’re helping parents frame these incidents.”

Participants learn to be able to view the child with more understanding of her situation. Sometimes, Wood said, a tantrum happens.

“It doesn’t mean that she’s a bad child,” Wood said. “She’s tired. She’s an overtired child, who has had a long day.

“And then she sees the cheese puffs.”

Jane M. Von Bergen is a freelance writer and former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who regularly contributes to the Notebook.

Teachers strategize to avoid burnout

2018-03-21T17:37:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

In recent months, teacher Hanako Franz’s students have suffered multiple blows: two lost brothers to gun violence; another lost his best friend; other students were coping with sexual assaults or were kicked out of the house after arguments.

“So many of my students are coming in with all these other things on their minds, it’s really hard for them to focus. You can’t teach the lesson in a vacuum; you have to think about how to support your students,” said Franz, a teacher at Paul Robeson High School for Human Services in the University City neighborhood.

She has learned that she has to think about how to care for herself, as well.

Franz’s students trust her, she said, and she’s gratified by that. But, responding to their needs leaves her exhausted and takes a toll on her own well-being.

She exercises and does drumming with a group; she has joined workshops and professional groups. And she makes sure she makes “time for the people I love.”

Still, she said, “it’s hard to turn off the emotional response when I know my students are having such a hard time.”

Teachers in urban schools are essential in efforts to support children suffering trauma due to poverty, family turmoil, and violence in their neighborhoods. They are akin to first responders in the realm of education and, as such, may be susceptible to vicarious traumatic stress, if not full-fledged psychic trauma, in the course of their work.

In that regard, they have much in common with professionals in victim services, emergency medical services, fire services and law enforcement.

Teacher burnout

“Compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma – however you want to say it – seems to be pretty universal, and it’s not something that is commonly discussed,” said Juliet LeBlanc, assistant director of the Institute for Trauma Sensitivity at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.

New teachers in particular need to “learn what we can control and what we can’t,” LeBlanc said.

“We’re not the social worker, the guidance counselor, the psychologist, but we can create an environment and a culture of resiliency and peace in the classroom. We can create that culture.”

She said, however, that the causes, symptoms and remedies are not commonly taught at the undergraduate level, though more attention is being paid in some graduate programs.

Said one teacher, a Temple University graduate who recently earned a master’s degree and teaches English in the Bronx, “They teach us what to do with a student who is drumming his pencil, who’s fidgety, but not how to handle the student who wants to throw a chair at you. Traumatic stress, yeah, it’s real.”

Kerri McGinley agrees. She’s a former teacher, principal and mentor for new teachers in the District. She witnessed burnout among teachers relatively new to the job, and too many confided they were taking medication for anxiety and stress.

“I was taken aback,” said McGinley, now assistant superintendent of the Atlantic County (N.J.) Special Services District. (Her brother, Chris, is a member of Philadelphia’s School Reform Commission.)

“Teachers are on the front lines. They’re dealing with poverty, violence, addictions, children in difficult environments. We have to ask, how do we promote healthy, long-term careers without burnout, without teachers needing medication, without physical consequences?”

‘Self-care’

The manifestations of severe stress are varied and can include physical and/ or emotional exhaustion, impatience and irritability with students and colleagues, frequent absences, and lack of organization.

Teachers tend to talk about “burning out” or, as one teacher described it, “icing out” – becoming drained of emotion.

The term of art in helping teachers tamp down traumatic stress is “self-care.” Exercise and a healthy diet, meditation and building relationships are recommended by experts and teachers alike.

Franz finds satisfaction in the exhilaration and physicality of drumming.

Angela Crawford, a longtime teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. High School, relies on strengthening and cardio exercises, aromatherapy and healing circles – routines she calls “nonnegotiables.”

“People deal with stress in various ways, sometimes with negativity. Some overeat, some drink too much. For me, exercise is my stress reliever,” said Crawford. “I can’t bring my stress into my house because then it wouldn’t affect just me; it would affect everyone I live with.”

She cited a “data-driven, document-driven, punitive kind of environment” as a significant stressor, besides the needs of students. “The well-being of your staff is important in making sure students are achieving,” she said.

Leslie Fanning, a counselor and teacher at Science Leadership Academy- Beeber, offers this suggestion to teachers needing to calm themselves: Make a list of five things to calm yourself in the short term and five things to do long-term.

Short-term methods might be taking a walk, listening to music, “whatever it is that helps you slow down and come back to yourself,” Fanning said. Long-term suggestions might include regular exercise, therapy, and meditation.

“Sometimes, a problem is too big for me,” she said. “That’s what I tell students and staff. I’m not a clinician, I don’t diagnose, I don’t medicate, but I will help you find the resources you need.”

Mindfulness practice

Heather Marcus, a counselor at Julia R. Masterman School, and Brendon Jobs, who taught in the District for eight years, said they benefited from learning to practice mindfulness through workshops sponsored by the Inner Strength Foundation of Philadelphia.

That group, founded by Amy Edelstein, runs programs for students and teachers with a focus on meditation, self-care, and active listening.

“You need to feel like you’ve been heard, that you’ve been able to articulate that issue that’s on your mind so that you’re not carrying it on your own,” Edelstein said.

In professional development sessions, she encourages teachers to pair up “to offload some things on their mind.” She cautioned, though, that commiserating can take a negative turn: “In a lot of office cultures, unstructured time together can be more of a complaint-fest, where everyone offloads their complaints and nobody feels better afterwards.”

Her group has published an online “tool kit” of ways to deal with stress. The institute at Lesley has published a similar guide: lesley.edu/article/six-ways-for-educators-to-avoid-compassion-fatigue.

Jobs, who now teaches history at the Haverford School, extolled the benefits of practicing mindfulness – of learning to focus on the present, to be in the moment.

“Teachers always talk about how there’s not enough time, how there’s always one more thing to do,” Jobs said. This approach helps him “engage with students in a way that is meaningful to them, that makes them feel like they’re seen, they’re heard, they’re known.”

And in a city school, where he was seeing upward of 130 students a day, that presence of mind can make a big difference, he said, for his students and for his own peace of mind.

Marcus said she has found meditation to be very effective in responding to stressful situations, along with self-care. “We have to make sure we take some time for ourselves.”

Students share so much with teachers and counselors, Marcus said. “You hear about everything under the sun, and certainly, some of it is extremely upsetting. You’re walking a fine line. You are there as a professional, and yet you’re also a human being.”

Shooting raises anxiety

The mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and calls in the aftermath for teachers to be armed have raised teacher anxiety levels to new heights.

“I’m in online forums in Philadelphia and across the United States. We’re all a bit scared because we never know when something could happen,” Marcus said.

She took one proactive, low-tech step that is now something of a trend: She purchased two rubber doorstops – the type shaped like a wedge. “I read about it and thought I might as well buy it, and I might as well keep it in my office.”

And she’s frustrated that there may be funding for security, but not for staffing.

“Everybody that’s part of the education team – the psychologists and counselors and paraprofessionals and people we used to have more of, the non-teaching assistants and the noontime cafeteria aides – all these people would form relationships with kids, and these positions have been cut,” Marcus said.

“It’s another adult you can form a relationship with, an adult you can talk to and count on. Those are the people who aren’t there any longer.”

The responsibilities of instructing 100-plus students and tending to the emotional needs of many of them, plus the longstanding salary freeze, ultimately were too much for Jobs.

“People don’t leave because they don’t care; they leave because they’re exhausted, and that’s in part because they absorb their students’ traumas,” he said.

“By the time I left the District, I was thinking about leaving education altogether. I’m just grateful I didn’t.”

Connie Langland

Teacher ed, with trauma in mind

2018-03-21T16:59:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

First-grade teacher Katie Sia, fresh out of the Drexel University School of Education, was baffled.

One of her students at Russell Byers Charter School was frequently lashing out at fellow students who brushed against him, even accidentally.

“He thought they were coming for him,” she said. “It scared me, safety-wise.”

Sensing that there might be something in the student’s background triggering the behavior, she teamed up with the school’s counselors and brought in the boy’s parents.

Together they got to the root of the problem: The parents were separated, the child lived with his mother, and he craved adult male attention.

So Sia began contacting the boy’s father throughout the day, sometimes having the boy speak with him. Males on the Byers staff were careful to praise him. And the boy became less aggressive physically.

Just a few years ago, Sia and other young teachers like her might have treated the situation as simply a discipline problem. But an emphasis on making teachers aware of the impact of trauma on students is helping them deal with problems like that of Sia’s student and, in some cases, far more serious ones.

Barriers to learning

The mantra of trauma-informed education is not “what’s wrong with you?” but “what happened to you?” It emphasizes social and emotional components of learning, and barriers to learning – not just content.

In theory, the philosophy has nothing to do with the type of school in which it’s employed. But few doubt that behavioral health challenges are more likely in high-poverty areas like Philadelphia.

And although the philosophy goes back to the 1980s, it has started making its way into teacher-education curricula only in recent years.

“It’s hard to change the curriculum in higher education,” says Jeanne Felter, director of the master’s degree program in community and trauma counseling at Thomas Jefferson University. “There hasn’t been enough motivation at the upper levels.”

“We have to rebuild teacher ed,” says Kate Kinney Grossman, who heads the University of Pennsylvania’s teacher education program.

M.J. DeCarlo, an associate professor at Drexel and one of Sia’s instructors, says that, when she designed the course on trauma-informed education two years ago, “trauma wasn’t as much of a buzzword as it is now.”

“We’re starting to understand realities in kids’ lives that were invisible to us,” she says. “These kids’ lives are much more complicated than we realize.”

And the fact that Philadelphia is the poorest large city in the United States makes young lives even more complicated.

“How do you, as a teacher, support students who may not have had breakfast or dinner the day before?” asks Kristina Najera, assistant dean at the Temple University College of Education.

Along with Jean Boyer, an associate professor and a psychologist by training, Najera is revising Temple’s curriculum to incorporate more material on social and emotional learning into the school’s teacher education courses.

Faculty at Drexel and Penn have also moved in recent years to broaden their offerings in these areas.

‘Turnaround Teachers’

At Drexel, professor Dominic Gullo has developed a unit on “Turnaround Teachers” that looks at factors such as poverty, trauma, and ADHD that affect a child’s ability to learn.

At Penn, Caroline Watts, director of school and community engagement at the Graduate School of Education, has designed a “Teaching Diverse Learners” course that encourages “classroom communities where all children feel comfortable and accepted.”

“All the teachers coming to us are interested in working in an urban context,” says Kinney Grossman. “They come because they’re thinking of the whole student,” not just teaching a subject.

Student teachers spend much of the summer before their first field assignments immersing themselves in the neighborhoods where they will be teaching.

Penn emphasizes cross-disciplinary work in which teachers, counselors, psychologists and nurses work together and learn about each others’ roles.

And Drexel’s DeCarlo says this may be a necessity rather than a luxury. Given Philadelphia’s budget difficulties, she tells her student teachers to be prepared to deal with classroom challenges without immediate help from other professionals.

What teachers learn

“While you’re teaching, you’re also learning from your students,” says Marsha Richardson, a clinical psychologist who teaches at Penn’s Graduate School of Education.

Few young teachers at Penn and elsewhere would disagree.

Although students coming to Philadelphia may be seeking an urban setting, they often come from a very different background themselves and must work to adjust.

Cheyenne Brown, who grew up on Long Island, N.Y., and is now a student teacher at Albert M. Greenfield School in Center City, has dealt with students who are tougher in some ways than those she went to school with, and more fragile in other ways.

One of her first lessons was that “if they’re disruptive, it’s not personal to you. [New] teachers have to learn that.”

She also recalls a near-meltdown of her class when her 3rd-graders were having trouble mastering long division.

“We had children freaking out,” she says. “We had three kids crying. We had to take a step back and talk about why it was OK to not understand things right away.”

‘Complicated, rich life’

Kristian Ogungbemi grew up in suburban Cincinnati, the child of two civil engineers who sought out the best suburban district they could find for her – “Olympic-sized pool, every elective you could imagine.”

Now, as a graduate student at Penn and a student teacher at Kensington Health Sciences Academy, she sees that her 12th-grade advanced government and civics class might include students facing “dysfunctional situations at home, the electric being turned off, lots of different guardians who are not their parents.”

One student has no internet, no computer, and no library within walking distance.

“It hurts,” she says. “You want to make it better for them.”

But she adds that “the students are surprisingly resilient.”

Maddie Luebbert, a recent Penn grad at Kensington, agrees. While many students face serious challenges, “you can’t think all of our kids are messed up,” she says. “Each child has a complicated, rich life we need to consider.”

She says she is “100 percent a different kind of teacher” than she would have been without the trauma-informed courses at Penn.

Luebbert graduated from John W. Hallahan Catholic Girls’ High School in Philadelphia. She grew up in the Fairmount section of the city, but has moved to Kensington and become part of the school’s neighborhood.

Like Ogungbemi’s suburban Cincinnati public school, Hallahan offered a far different experience from an inner-city public school that may require a different teaching style, with more flexible rules.

Ogungbemi cites a question that one of her professors says it’s important for teachers to ask themselves before establishing a classroom rule:

“Is it about control or is it about learning?”

“I have a lot less concern [now] about [students] wearing hats or walking around” in class, she says. “I teach people, not just content.”

Luebbert says teaching in an urban district “requires a special mix of self-awareness, awareness of the student, and almost freakish calmness.”

But she’s happy where she is.

“I’ll stay as long as they’ll have me,” she says. “I feel like I hit the lottery.”

Chill-out rooms, trauma training, and more

2018-03-21T16:45:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Janelle Harper knew that South Philadelphia High’s new “chill-out room” was working before the paint was even dry. “A student came by and said, ‘I need a reset!’” Harper said. “So I told her to grab a paintbrush, and I said, ‘What happened?’”

The student said she had gotten in trouble for answering her phone in class – hardly unusual, but Harper suspected that there was more to the story. Once a therapist for SPHS students through the city’s community behavioral health system, Harper is now the school’s community schools coordinator, working through the Mayor’s Office of Education.

She knows that when students break rules or act out, it can be a sign of deeper stress, and even trauma. Harper soon found out that she’d guessed right.

“It turned out that her brother had just been shot,” Harper said. “And the person who called was the same one who’d told her that her brother was murdered. So when she gets a phone call from that person, it automatically triggers her. She’s not thinking, ‘I’m in class, I can’t answer.’ It’s an emergency.”

After a little time painting and talking in South Philly’s “Ram Reset Room” – a sunny corner space named for the school mascot with a few tables, some yoga mats, a computer, and a view of miles of rowhouses – the student relaxed and went back to class.

No trip to the dean’s office needed and no disciplinary action. That may seem like a modest achievement. But it represents one of the core goals of Mayor Kenney’s community schools initiative: to use trauma-informed techniques to keep students’ little problems from mushrooming into big ones.

“South Philadelphia is really leading this,” and not just with its reset room, said Susan Gobreski, director of the city’s community schools initiative. Through staff and partners, South Philly now offers a growing suite of trauma-informed services: workshops and training for parents and staff, “mindfulness classes” where students learn to defuse stress, counseling and therapy for the neediest, and even help with insurance issues.

This is the kind of “synergy” that Gobreski hopes to soon see in community schools citywide. After almost two years, time that has largely been dominated by needs assessments and planning, she said, programs like South Philly’s are just beginning to take shape. But over the next few years, Gobreski hopes to see a host of comprehensive school-based efforts with solid, sustainable community roots.

“You’re more likely to take a stress workshop if you trust the people,” she said. “Maintaining the stability of the effort is incredibly important.”

A holistic approach

Experts agree: Wherever poverty is pervasive, so is student stress and anxiety. Schools can’t handle trauma piecemeal in cities like Philadelphia.

“More and more studies suggest that a holistic approach has to be taken,” said Tomea Sippio-Smith, director of K-12 policy at Public Citizens for Children & Youth. “Kids come in with everything that’s weighing on them; schools have to take that into account.”

Practitioners also agree that the challenge for the Mayor’s Office won’t just be to organize initiatives, but to sustain them.

“We need people to know they can trust us,” said Natalie Dallard of the Joseph J. Peters Institute, which is providing trauma counseling at another community school, Gideon Elementary. “[With] so many grants, the people come in, the grant ends, and then you don’t hear from them again.”

Dallard’s project is a good example of the way things are developing. Last year, the Peters Institute independently teamed up with a community group called SMASH – Strawberry Mansion Sanctuary for Hope – to win a state grant to bring trauma-related services to the violence-plagued North Philadelphia neighborhood. The Peters Institute staff soon met the mayor’s community schools staff at a Gideon meeting, which led to a “referral pathway,” through which a handful of Gideon students now get counseling at a neighborhood church.

Dallard hopes to eventually expand the Peters Institute’s reach, and she’d like to see Gideon get the kind of in-school programming now offered at South Philly: trauma training for staff and mindfulness classes for students. She’s encouraged by the growing collaboration she sees.

“Every time I go to one thing, I meet another person and another,” she said. “We’re able to connect with good people who want to do this work.”

Can it be sustained?

Colleen McCauley, health director for Public Citizens for Children & Youth, said she too is pleased to see a citywide rise in interest in trauma-related work. She just joined the advisory board of a new Temple University project that will bring trauma-informed initiatives to Bethune Elementary, near Gideon.

“These are the kids who are more at risk for not finishing school, incarceration, becoming parents earlier than they intended to,” she said. But, like Dallard, she worries about sustainability. One of PCCY’s own mental-health initiatives stalled years ago for lack of funding.

Collaboration among agencies and nonprofits can help provide basic services, she said, but tapping into public and private health insurance is the key to reliably providing specialized counseling and therapy.

“A nut we’ve not been able to crack around Medicaid and behavioral health is, you need to have a diagnosis,” McCauley said. “We haven’t figured out how to reimburse for prevention.”

Gobreski knows that issue well: “Connecting families to their insurance” is one of her office’s key goals, she said, along with increasing schools’ connections to city services and building up their partnership networks. And although no two schools will have exactly the same offerings, Gobreski said, within the next two years, she’d like to see all 12 community schools develop a “tiered” range of services and resources: chill-out rooms and mindfulness classes, trained staff and counselors, weekend workshops and health screening, and targeted interventions for the neediest students.

The Mayor’s Office of Education will be working on everything from the big plans to the little things, Gobreski said: “We just got a grant of a bunch of yoga mats.” And meanwhile, community school coordinators at individual schools will be working on their own initiatives.

At Tilden Middle School in Southwest Philadelphia, coordinator Regina Young has her own “chill-out room” almost ready to go, helped by a grant from Cigna Health Insurance. “It’s going to be so amazing. I’m so excited,” said Young, standing in a bright, empty room that will soon be stocked with comfortable furniture and computers for working or relaxing to music. “I need to see this room being utilized by people who are in need,” she said. “If that means listening to smooth sounds, or doing yoga, or creating art – as long as they can figure out the best way to recalibrate, de-escalate, and refocus.”

The quest to help traumatized children learn

2018-03-21T16:03:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Greg Windle
Fifth-graders at the Richard R. Wright Elementary School in Strawberry Mansion start each day with a morning meeting. In Angela Masceri’s classroom on this March Monday, they sat in a circle, some in chairs, some balancing on stability balls.

Masceri asked, “How was your weekend?”

One by one, the students answered. Several told of seeing Black Panther (for the second or third time), of trudging home in the previous Friday’s snow (“We just cried. … The snow was falling sideways,” one deadpanned), of hanging with their cousins, going out to eat, chilling at home. Eyes widened when one girl said she traveled to Baltimore with her family to visit the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum.

There was laughter and camaraderie. But a few children kept their heads down and said, “pass” when it came their time to talk.

Masceri made a mental note. These are the children she would make sure to check in with during the day.

“Morning meeting” is one strategy that principal Jeannine Payne has brought to Wright as a way help counteract the impact that stress and trauma has on children’s lives in school.

“It’s a way to build relationships,” she said. “I felt it was needed here.”

Payne, 42, the daughter of Philadelphia educators, grew up in Mount Airy and attended Ivy Leaf, a now-closed private school, then Masterman and Central High. She feels connected to this North Philadelphia neighborhood – her father was a storied figure at Strawberry Mansion High School, amassing one of the winningest records in city history in 29 years as the basketball coach.

She started her own career as a teacher at Mansion, then became principal at nearby Gideon Elementary. Three years ago, she moved to Wright at 27th and Dauphin, a K-5 school with just under 400 students.

This neighborhood highly stressed – one of the poorest in the nation’s poorest big city. According to U.S. Census data, the median household income in the zip code is $23,000 and the poverty rate is 40 percent.

“If you don’t have money, stable housing, life is kind of tough,” Payne said.

Not uncommon for her students are the single traumatic events: relatives embroiled in violence, parents sent off to jail. Beyond that, however, is the steady drumbeat of stressors that accompany poverty. Students change schools frequently. Guardians abandon apartments when they can’t make the rent, or when they just decide they need to leave. Some children are in foster care. Some have responsibilities for younger siblings. They don’t have enough to eat and medicine.

Many are never allowed to go outside and play – parents fear for their safety.

“If you don’t know when you leave your house each day how safe you are, how does that feel?” Payne asked. “To not trust the space outside your door is a level of trauma.”

Payne is among the educators who have taken advantage of various opportunities offered by the District to understand what trauma is and how it affects students’ ability to function and advance academically. The trainings, to different degrees, also provide them with tools and strategies to cope, and that’s what educators crave the most. She also took the first of a three-part series of classes through Lakeside Global Initiative/Institute for Family Professionals, with each course delving deeper into the issue: first trauma sensitivity, then trauma awareness, and finally trauma informed, which offers some practical advice to use in classrooms. These courses are subsidized by the United Way. This training is part of the District’s efforts to meet one of Superintendent William Hite’s goals in his strategy blueprint, Action Plan 3.0, which is to equip school staff “to recognize and address students’ social-emotional and behavioral needs through trauma-informed practices.” Payne would like her entire staff to take the entire three-course sequence.

But there are obstacles: Although the United Way pays the expenses of the courses, teachers are not paid for their time. Payne estimates that it would cost $14,000 for all on her staff to complete the series. She is working on ways to incorporate some of it into regular professional development days.

The training, she said, helps teachers understand the biological and neurological response of the brain that is under constant stress and the triggers that may cause a student to be disruptive. It “changes your perspective and gives you a broader set of responses. Everything doesn’t have to be a hammer and a nail.”

She learned that with the common punitive response, she said, “You’ll never solve the problem. You’ll spin your wheels and run the risk of making things worse.” Children with physical needs like hunger and social-emotional needs brought on by trauma “can’t move up the hierarchy of abstract thought and acquire educational stamina,” she said.

“If you understand what a child is going through, you can help students regulate their brains, making sure students can learn.” Training options

More than 850 city teachers have taken one or more of the courses, on their own time, said Beth Hall, the director of administration for Lakeside Global Initiative. “The fact that so many have taken it shows they are valuable,” she said. Teachers come to District headquarters for the training; about 400 teachers have taken more than one of the courses, Hall said. Lakeside also offers a separate, school-based program called “neurologic” training, in which online courses are supplemented by periodic on-site coaching. It is almost entirely rooted in strategies that teachers can use in the classroom. “Clinicians and counselors want the deeper understanding; teachers prefer, ‘I need a strategy for tomorrow,’” said Josh MacNeil, director of the neurologic training. Ideally, these courses are complementary: The first three classes ground participants in foundational knowledge of how the brain works, leading to shifts in thinking and attitude changes among participants, and the neurologic training provides the practical solutions. But providing this is expensive.

Last April, Iesha Brown-Pygatt joined the District as the director of trauma-informed school practices. She is working to expand the offerings and make sure that staff members have access in schools and areas that need them the most.

Until now, the training has been largely driven by word of mouth and individual teacher and principal interest; occasionally, an entire school staff will request it. Brown-Pygatt said the District’s goal is to be more targeted.

“The way we implement what the trauma-informed care training looks like, we are being more targeted about the schools we are selecting to have particular training,” she said. “We are taking a deeper dive in those schools, assessing areas of need and meeting with leadership teams.”

Training is essential, especially now that the District plans to ban suspensions starting in September not just in kindergarten, which it did last year, but up through 2nd grade.

“In schools dealing with trauma that may need additional interventions and approaches, we want to give them tools they need to be successful,” Brown-Pygatt said. “One thing about trauma awareness, there has to be a level of buy-in from a person willing to even receive that type of approach. It is a paradigm shift on how to handle kids.”

The necessary paradigm shift goes beyond District workers.

Karyn Lynch, chief of student support services, said the District was working with city agencies “to approach our needs in common … to help children and families.”

She cited a new program with Community Behavioral Health to place social workers in 22 schools as a “huge investment. … As the community grows in understanding, that helps individuals grow in their approach to case management,” Lynch said. “This is a problem-solving opportunity – how to make processes better and systems more focused on individual children for better outcomes.”

Lynch said that overall in the District, suspensions have been reduced, no schools have received the state designation of “persistently dangerous,” attendance has improved, and parents and students report better feelings about school climate on surveys. She attributes this to District efforts to promote relationships in school communities and an evolving approach to discipline, sometimes including restorative practices, which focuses on having children take responsibility for their actions rather than on punitive discipline.

“We want people in schools to have the understanding how trauma can impact a child’s sense of worth and ability to learn,” she said.

Josh Leibovic, a teacher who went through some trauma-informed training when he was at W.D. Kelley Elementary, said it was valuable.

“It’s important to understand trauma can fundamentally impact brain wiring,” he said. “Teachers never fully understand the details of what happened to a student, but they can know the right question to be asking. Instead of asking, ‘What’s wrong with you,’ which unfortunately is what a lot of teachers still do, the better question is, ‘What happened to you?’ That lens opens up a different range of emotional responses.”

Morning meeting

Payne, the Wright principal, learned about the usefulness of morning meeting at a conflict resolution course offered by the District’s Office of Prevention and Intervention. None of the other staff now at Wright have received any of the formal trauma training. One other teacher took the Lakeside course with her, but she was “force-transferred” to another school at the end of last year. That points to another obstacle – teacher mobility can disrupt staff cohesion around trauma and impede the District in reaching its goal.

But leadership goes a long way. At Wright, Payne, who was honored last year with a Lindback Award as one of the District’s best principals, has adopted several practices on her own and cultivated like-minded teachers in the school like Masceri.

Masceri, who is in her ninth year teaching, all at Wright, is fully on board with Payne’s agenda. So is Caron Foreman, the other 5th-grade teacher; Masceri teaches them English and social studies, while Foreman teaches math and science, but for morning meeting, they are all together – more than 40 students in the same room.

“It helps to put us all on the same page and start with a fresh slate,” said Masceri. “Whatever did happen at home, in school you can set the reset button and make your time here enjoyable. By taking interest in the students’ lives, that definitely helps them get over what might be bothering them.”

Greg Windle Students agree

“It’s a way to get to see how everybody’s day is going and to get to know everybody more,” said 5th grader Mariyha Rice, 10. “It gets me energized. It interests me to know how everybody is feeling.”

Typical of Wright students, Mariyha, who lives with her parents and two siblings, has moved around: she was at Wright in 1st grade, then at Bethune through 4th grade, before returning to Wright. She adds: “Everybody is so calm after we do morning meeting.”

Sabrina Cannon, 12, has also moved around. She left Wright in 3rd grade and came back for 5th grade. In between, she spent a year at Andrew Hamilton in West Philadelphia. She lives with her mom, aunt, and siblings and cousins, including a new infant. Asked how many, she had to do a mental count. “Six, altogether,” she said.

“Morning meeting helps me start the day off. I like sitting around with Team 5 [5th grade] and hearing how everybody feels. “Sometimes I have a bad weekend,” she said. “Sometimes I’m not in the mood to play, and my little cousins bother me. Then I come to school and can talk about the positive things I did, and that makes me feel good about a weekend that wasn’t so good.”

Payne knows that other school policies are also important. The school offers universal breakfast, and students aren’t penalized if they arrive late. Some classes eat their breakfast in the cafeteria and others in their classroom. “I had children who were visibly upset if they missed breakfast,” she said.

She worked hard to get an instrumental music teacher for the school. Sabrina talked excitedly about being able to study the trombone; she can’t stay for afterschool clubs and activities because she has chores at home.

The other practice to support teacher-student relationships is looping in kindergarten through second grade: As much as possible, students have the same teacher for all three grades. “I thought that supporting those relationships produce a more academically receptive student,” Payne said.

Flexible seating

Masceri has not gotten traumainformed training, but has picked up ideas and strategies on her own, such as “flexible seating.” Her classroom has only two traditional desks. Instead, there are chairs, stability balls, and comfy soft chairs. There is even a teepee that serves as a reading nook.

“My kids are busy. They like to move around, talk, be social. I’m fine with that as long as they’re learning as well. Why can’t you be standing, sitting, lounging?” Making the choice, she said, “is empowering.”

She got her education degree at St. Joseph’s University, but said her pre-service training had nothing about trauma. “God, no. I don’t think anything that could have been taught could have prepared me for this experience. Nobody tells you how to deal with the kid who walked in and found her mom dead in bed. Nobody teaches you that.”

Payne says that people may be surprised to see that at Wright, the hallways are orderly, the children are learning, and academic indicators are improving. “Ultimately, we depend on the resilience of children,” she said. But there is so much more to do and learn. “I want to emphasize that we are at a level of trauma sensitivity and awareness,” she said. “We are still striving to be trauma-informed.”

This article is in the Notebook’s Spring 2018 edition: Teachers and Trauma: A view from the front lines and is made possible by a generous grant from the van Ameringen Foundation. The foundation is supporting two years of Notebook reporting on trauma-informed education and behavioral health.

To see all of the stories or to download a pdf of the edition, click here.

Panel says teachers aren’t prepared to deal with trauma in children

2018-01-26T13:51:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

A student who seems inattentive in class may not be inattentive at all, one of the area’s leading experts on trauma-informed education said yesterday.

“Maybe they’re just not attending to what you want them to attend to because they don’t feel safe,” said Jeanne M. Felter, director of the Community and Trauma Counseling at the East Falls campus of Thomas Jefferson University.

“Higher education is not preparing teachers well enough for this work.”

Wednesday’s "Community Conversation: The Impact of Trauma in Education" was designed to provide a bit of that preparation.

The conference at F. S. Edmonds Elementary School, sponsored by the Mayor’s Office of Education, touched on topics such as the theory of trauma, classroom management, and parenting techniques.

Childhood trauma is rarely a single event, Felter told the audience of about 100 at the East Mount Airy school. “It’s never just [one] experience,” she said. "It’s layer on top of layer of experiences.”

And the experiences can start even before birth if the mother is traumatized, said Natalie Dallard, director of prevention, community outreach, and training at the Joseph J. Peters Institute, a behavioral health provider specializing in dealing with post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD): “You’re having children born essentially traumatized.”

And it goes on from there, she said, asking the audience to envision a child “walking [to school] through a high-crime area and seeing bullet casings on the street.”

Michael O’Bryan, director of youth and adult programs at the Village of Arts and Humanities, warned of the difficulties of parents who are traumatized themselves, of “stress bleeding from the workplace into the house. …Parents do a poor job of regulating themselves.”

O’Bryan said that parents failing to really listen to adolescents is a major problem.

“We demonize adolescents into silence and [then] they make awful choices,” he said.

For younger children, Dallard suggested things like listening to the conversations they have when playing with dolls.

Felter said that in schools, “we don’t give teachers time to develop relationships. “

And she warned that “trauma [sometimes] occurs from relationships that are supposed to be supportive. … Traumatized kids are acutely aware of how you feel about them.”

Iesha Brown-Pygott, director of trauma-informed school practices at the School District of Philadelphia, stressed that although students may deal with any number of adults in a school, it is important for every student to have a particular contact person there whom they know well.

Panel participants and Susan Gobreski, director of the community schools program at the Mayor’s Office of Education, stressed that funding sources are proliferating for training educators, parents, and others in dealing with children’s trauma.

But “don’t wait for the money,” Felter said. “Don’t wait for the grants.”

Discipline that’s designed to be a learning experience

2018-01-05T08:02:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

At Lakeside School, there’s no such thing as simply being “sent to the principal’s office.”

Of course, from time to time, students must be removed from the classroom, if only to keep everyone’s learning from being disrupted.

But doing so sets in motion a process designed to make this a learning experience for the student.

“It’s meant to be a tool,” says Lakeside’s behavior management coordinator, Adam Sheaffer. “It’s about restoration.”

A teacher asking a student to leave the classroom will then immediately call and notify one of the school’s behavior managers about what happened. At least one behavior manager is always on duty.

The behavior manager then meets the student in what is called the “resolve room,” where the two dissect what happened and arrive at a “contract” that will enable the student to return to the classroom.

If the student is too excited to deal with the incident rationally, he or she is encouraged to use an exercise bike or walk around an adjacent track. The student’s heart rate is monitored to indicate when he or she is calm enough to return to class. Heart rate is an indication of whether the student’s cortex is in control.

“We have to help a kid regulate before they process,” Sheaffer says. “We have things to engage their whole brain, to get to a part of the brain that’s rational.

“My assumption is that the kids have never had a healthy reconciliation model in their lives. You have to take ownership. If they don’t identify what happened, they don’t move on.”

Sometimes, the process raises questions of whether the teacher overreacted or could have handled the situation better, Sheaffer says.

“They’re not used to hearing that an authority figure could have done something differently. It takes us away from being a cop.”

Did you miss Part 3 of our series on the Lakeside School and its approach to trauma-informed education? Click here.

Part 3: Giving students the tools they need to succeed

2018-01-05T07:25:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Melanie Bavaria from video
The tall, slender young man walked down from the podium in his cap and gown, the ovation from the audience triggered by the final words of his speech:

“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you couldn’t. ”

And in graduating from Lakeside School in Horsham Township, Ray Willey had done just that.

His mother, beaming, said, “I never thought this day would come. He put me through a lot.”

“It was like a dream come true,” Willey recalled months later, when he was already working at a construction job in Conshohocken.

“I never thought of myself doing that. I felt like it was all worth it.”

***

What drew Caroline Smith to work with students like those at Lakeside, a private school, probably isn’t that unusual: “I’ve always gravitated to the outsiders, the kids who were different, the underdogs,” she says. “I feel like I’m doing work that makes a difference to somebody who needs someone in their corner.”

But what has kept Smith at Lakeside for 18 years is a bit more complicated.

“It’s the way Lakeside supports their staff,” says Smith, who heads special education services for the Lakeside network.

She recalled an incident at a school where she had worked earlier. Upset about an issue in her classroom, she went to her supervisor and was told, “That’s the way it is in alternative education, and if you can’t take it, get out now.’”

At Lakeside, she says, “I’ve had the same kinds of moments, and my supervisor spent hours with me. She listened to everything I said and asked what she could do.

“She offered to come into my classroom and observe, to problem-solve with me. She challenged me and helped me grow, helped me to think about my own actions, my body language. It left me feeling not only supported, but empowered.”

Now, as a supervisor herself, she says, “One thing I really try not to do is solve problems for people. I try to allow them, with some guidance, to come to their own understanding. I try to be present with them in the moment, to ignore the phones and the pages and my emails."

Melanie Bavaria from video
Many Lakeside students have had brushes with the law, and some are on probation. Electronic ankle monitors are common enough that they don’t bring stares.

Part of principal Pete Dillard’s job is coordinating with the juvenile justice system to keep the student in school, if possible.

“If we have a student who’s doing great at Lakeside and struggling in the community, I’ll try to keep the student in school here and address the outside situation,” Dillard says.

“I’ve had probation officers come to the school. I might have to go to court and speak to the progress the student is making, [especially] if it’s a questionable offense. The probation officers and the judges trust us to meet the students’ needs.”

***

Although graduations are landmark events at Lakeside, which has a capacity of 150 students, quieter landmark events occur more frequently when students return to their home schools or school districts.

“You always love to have the [former Lakeside] students walk in our graduation and get a Bensalem High School diploma,” says Brian Cohen, director of special services for the Bensalem School District.

“But for some kids, [a school with] 2,000 students just isn’t going to work.”

What does he look for in deciding whether a student can be brought back?

“Discipline, attendance, grades … how often they need counseling,” Cohen says. “We just don’t have that level of counseling here.

“But we don’t want to do it cold turkey.”

Preventing that is one of Mary Wilkinson’s jobs.

As a Bensalem High School counselor supported by Lakeside, she carries a normal counseling load but pays special attention to students returning from alternative schools.

“I’m an as-needed drop-in counselor,” she says.

Returning, she says, is a real challenge logistically for a student who’s been in an alternative school.

“One thing we always talk about is how to make the school ‘smaller,’ perhaps by placement in smaller classes, perhaps just by being there when needed.”

Her office, with its fidgets and posters on self-regulation, could well have been taken straight from Lakeside.

“The students can really open up because they know they’re with a Lakeside person,” she says.

***

Zavier Bouayad-Ramey, 17, was one of the students who came back from Lakeside.

Wearing a gray hoodie, the slender youth sat at a table at a McDonald’s in Bristol Township to talk about his return to Bensalem High School after a year at Lakeside.

Before that, he had been suspended for threatening a teacher, spent a year in juvenile detention for theft, and lost a big sister whom he revered to a drug overdose. And his probation officer warned him that, if he were arrested again, he’d be tried as an adult.

“I know they’re watching me” at Bensalem, he said. “They don’t want me to make their school look bad. I knew there’d be a lot of pressure on me.

“It’s like I have a one-track mind in here. I don’t worry about what someone else is saying or what someone else is doing.”

He’s been passing his subjects and holding down a part-time job at an Estee Lauder warehouse in Bristol.

And he is grateful for the support he got from his Lakeside School counselor and from his mom, Christina Quesada, who told him that he was “going to graduate whether I wanted to or not.”

The counselor was Heidi Beatty, and “she set my goals to get me back to Bensalem,” Bouayad-Ramey says. ”Heidi kept telling me I could go back.”

Beatty recalls, “It was about setting very clear goals about suspension, classroom behavior, passing everything.

“He needed daily reminders. … It was getting him not to react when he was angry. We held him more accountable. There was some role-playing, talking through different scenarios. It took him a long time to trust us, to buy into what we were telling him. When we proved we cared for him, he took constructive criticism.”

Bouayad-Ramey worked in Lakeside’s greenhouse, passed his courses and learned, among other things, that “there were things you don’t say to a teacher.” (For a more detailed look at Lakeside’s philosophy of discipline, click here.)

And, slowly, Lakeside tightened the disciplinary reins on him to get him ready to return to Bensalem. Without that, he says, “they’d have been throwing me back in blindfolded.”

Christina Quesada is glad they didn’t, that there is more hope than she had ever felt for the young man whose school troubles had started in 4th grade and had shown no signs of disappearing.

“It’s hard to find people who do their jobs with their whole heart,” says Quesada.

“They give them the skills they need to succeed, not just to get by.”

***

Although he hasn’t settled on a career choice, Ray Willey already has larger goals.

“I want to give back to everyone who gave to me … buy my own house, start a family….

“I feel like a way-better man. I feel like I could bring a son into the world and teach him to grow up.”

Editor’s note: This is the final article in a three-part series about the students and staff at Lakeside School in Horsham and is made possible by funding from the Van Ameringen Foundation and the Reentry Project. To read all the stories and watch the videos, click here.

The Van Ameringen Foundation is supporting two years of Notebook reporting on trauma-informed education. The Notebook is one of 15 news organizations in The Reentry Project, a solutions-oriented project on the issues facing formerly incarcerated Philadelphians. The aim is to produce journalism – across the city and across media platforms – that speaks to the challenges of reentry and what can be done about them.

Dogs provide a calming presence at trauma-informed school

2018-01-04T08:05:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Heidi Beatty, a counselor at Lakeside for 11 years, explains that the proper title for Boomerang, the morning greeter, and the black Lab named Cobalt that she handles, is “facility dog.”

The dogs are trained specifically for use in facilities, rather than working with one person.

Lakeside educators say the dogs provide a general calming presence and can sometimes spot a student who is under stress and go over to them.

“They provide safety and trust,” says Beatty, who generally brings Cobalt to group counseling sessions.

With individual students, she says, “they’re a great conversation-starter.”

In one case, she recalls, a girl just starting at Lakeside was so withdrawn that she had to spend her first few hours alone in an office until Cobalt was able to coax her out.

“When he has that vest on,” Beatty says, “he knows he’s working.”

Says former Lakeside student Zavier Bouayad-Ramey, now back at Bensalem High School: “I can’t get mad or frustrated when I’m around the dogs.”

Did you miss "Part 2: At this school, it’s personal?" Click here.

Part 2: At this school, it’s personal

2018-01-04T08:05:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Ray Willey ducked into a Wawa and called his grandfather to pick him up.

“He was just wondering why I was running and doing all this nonsense and why I couldn’t stay at school,” Willey said. “I told him I had issues with the teachers. He yelled at me a little bit and asked why I couldn’t do better.”

And when he got to his home in Conshohocken, the welcome was less than enthusiastic.

“I was yelling,” his mother, Judy Willey, recalled. “I was p— off. … From 4th through 11th grade, he was in trouble. I was always being called to school. The cops were always at my house.”

It was the start of three frustrating years. He had an unsuccessful stay at an alternative school, finally dropping out when he turned 16. He was “happy and excited” at first because “I felt that school was worthless and pointless.”

With too much time on his hands, “I was being a knucklehead … stealing, fighting … selling [drugs].” He had a short stay in a juvenile detention facility, but also made unsuccessful attempts to find work and realized that, without a diploma, there might not be any. And friends of his were going to jail.

An argument with his girlfriend was the turning point:

“She felt like I didn’t have the guts to go back to school.”

A warmup for the brain

The choreography that starts the day at Lakeside School in Horsham Township, Montgomery County, is quite different from that of a conventional school.

Buses from throughout the area — some from Lakeside, some from districts that provide the transportation — are lined up. One by one, they discharge their passengers through a welcoming gantlet of principal Pete Dillard, educational supervisor Jen Fauske, and facility dog Boomerang and his handler, Ken Van Horn. (To see how the dogs play a role at the school, click here.)

Fauske checks off the students on her list, and the humans greet each by name. “Hey, Austin. Hi, Logan. …”

Once inside, the students scatter for a variety of non-academic activities — games, puzzles, pool, basketball. The theory about these activities’ benefits is similar to that of stretching before doing vigorous exercise.

Dillard calls them “brain-regulating activities.”

“The idea is to get the brain in a good state of mind,” he says. “To operate at their best, they have to be in a calm state. It’s like a warmup for the brain. And you don’t know what might have happened to them at home [that morning].”

Michael Paone of Norristown furiously attacks a punching bag, as physical education teacher David Sheaffer looks on. The punching allows Michael to expel some of his frustration rather than act out in the classroom.

Sasha Shallies, 17, a senior from Ambler, has the opportunity to relate to a supportive adult as she does a jigsaw puzzle with counselor Gwyn Robinson. She also gets a pep talk to help her start the day.

Dylan Pontaski, 16, an 11th grader from Norristown, bends himself into a pretzel position to make a difficult pool shot. He says he enjoys the pre-class period because “it gives me time to wake up.”

Inside the classroom

Other than the small size, there are few differences between what one might see in a classroom at Lakeside, a private school, and a regular public school classroom.

But those differences are significant.

Some of the students sit on flexible rocking seats or even beanbags. Some play with “fidgets,” small toy-like objects that allow them to work out stress without losing focus. And there are frequent “brain breaks,” exercises in place that serve the same purpose.

Cait-Lynn Lyle of Abington lounged in a beanbag chair for an English class team-taught by English teacher Tina Lewis and special education teacher Samantha Luciano.

This teaching configuration is common at Lakeside, largely because so many of the students — about 80 percent — are classified as special ed.

“I hated it here at first,” Lyle, 18, recalled. “I just thought it was some sort of weird school.”

But she had never had positive experiences at any school. And with a “really bad defiance disorder,” a house arrest for truancy, probation for theft, and a short stay in a juvenile facility with “beds like gym mats,” she soon came to see Lakeside as her best option.

“In a way, it helps, because [the students] have people they can relate to. It’s finding kids who also didn’t fit in [elsewhere]. They’re not the outcasts. I’ll meet people who had the same probation officer as me.”

Where Lyle felt a lack of attention at Abington High School, she said, “here it’s personalized for you.”

This is also a major plus for Logan Turner, who was sent to Lakeside by the Spring-Ford District.

“It’s the smaller classrooms, and they’re more hands-on about it,” he said. “Other schools didn’t care how my weekend was. Here I can’t just sit down at a desk all day long and not say anything to anybody.”

Melanie Bavaria from video
Turner, expelled from public school for reasons including a fight with a teacher, says Lakeside has “helped me to calm down instead of acting out of instinct, which is one of the worst things you can do.”

And if he does graduate in June, he will be accomplishing something his two brothers didn’t, although one got his GED in prison.

After lunch, Turner headed for the greenhouse, one of Lakeside’s unusual features.

Students learn horticulture, do all the campus planting and landscaping, and grow and prepare plants for sale. The last two years, Lakeside has entered exhibits in the Philadelphia Flower Show and won second place in its division. The school has been asked to come back this year as well.

“I try to give them a business environment,” says Jon Klinger, who heads the horticulture program in his 22d year at Lakeside. “I teach them good jobs skills … eye contact, speaking up.”

Ray Willey was one of his star pupils, Klinger said. “He was everything I was looking for in a student. … He really grew up in his two years here.”

•••

At the end of the school day, after the students have headed home by bus, a small group of staff members (teachers, counselors and behavior managers) gathers for a recap of the day.

It’s a chance to compare notes on which students are struggling, how, and perhaps why. And possibly to head off problems before they escalate.

On this day, the discussion started with a female student who was being teased.

“Be mindful of what the guys are saying about what she’s wearing,” said Jen Fauske.

Special education and English teacher Kevin Woolston and behavior manager Krysta Geissinger talked about a student with a bad habit of throwing doors open, in one case coming close to hitting a fellow student.

There was an incident on a bus that morning, involving a group of students who are regularly disruptive in the dining hall at lunchtime.

And one of the parents failed to show up at a scheduled meeting.

In another daily wrap-up meeting nearby, the staff is alerted to the fact that a student just lost a close relative.

There were no major incidents shared, as is often the case. But trouble may have been headed off.

Geissinger, who has been at Lakeside since 2005 and in her present job for nine years, says it isn’t a place to come for instant or dramatic results.

“These kids have so many issues,” she says. “It’s the little victories.”

This three-part series is made possible by funding from the Van Ameringen Foundation and the Reentry Project.

Did you miss the introduction and part 1 of our series? Click here.

The science behind trauma-informed education

2018-01-03T05:35:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Trauma-informed care “shifts the way you look at human problems from ‘what’s wrong with you?’ to ‘what happened to you?’ and ‘how can we help?’” says Sandra L. Bloom, an associate professor of public health at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Much of the research into trauma is based on the landmark 1998 Adverse Childhood Experiences study.

Adverse childhood experiences can range from experiencing sexual abuse and violence to witnessing violence or living with someone who is a substance abuser or mentally ill.

In a school, childhood trauma can often be a factor in poor academic performance and/or behavior problems and a lack of self-control.

Lakeside follows what is called the neurosequential model for dealing with trauma and how it affects learning in the classroom.

The approach, developed by psychiatrist Bruce Perry of the ChildTrauma Academy in Houston, essentially divides brain function into four areas:

The brainstem, which controls involuntary functions such as blood pressure and heart rate.

The midbrain, which controls functions such as motor skills, appetite, and sleep.

The limbic system, which controls relationships, sexual behavior, and emotional reactivity.

And the cortex, which controls abstract and concrete thought.

As explained by Josh MacNeill, Lakeside’s director of the NeuroLogic Initiative, a student who’s suffering from long-term or recent trauma may be operating mostly from his or her limbic system. For learning to take place, the student needs to be calmly guided into using the cortex.

A child who is extremely fidgety might, in effect, be stuck in the midbrain.

“When it comes to interventions, you start with the brain stem and work your way up,” says Kathy Van Horn, Lakeside’s executive vice president.

And although no intervention will work for all students, she says, none is harmful. And it’s not necessary to know exactly why a particular student is traumatized.

To deal with an immediate classroom situation, she says, “You don’t need to figure out what happened. You just have to assume that something happened.

“There are things that kind of point you in the right direction.”

This series is made possible by funding from the Van Ameringen Foundation and the Reentry Project.

Part 1: Coping with students who can’t cope with school

2018-01-03T05:34:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Ever since middle school, it had been building up to this for Ray Willey.

“Knucklehead stuff, talking out loud, attention-seeking,” he says. “… I was in the office every day, having it out with the principal. … I couldn’t get through one period.”

This time, sent once again to the office at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School in Plymouth Meeting, he cracked. Screaming, jumping around — “It was like a fire scene. … They called the cops.”

And, finally, running out of the building.

“I was just trying to get away. … I was running across the street, trying to dodge traffic, I cut through the golf course. … I felt like there was someone chasing me.”

***

Lakeside School, where Ray Willey would eventually wind up, sits on a bucolic, 40-acre Montgomery County campus in Horsham Township, a suburb of Philadelphia.

Since its founding in 1976, Lakeside — like other alternative programs — has dealt with the hardest cases, the kids who couldn’t cope with a regular school setting. And whose schools couldn’t cope with them.

The general term is “school maladjustment,” and it covers a wide range of issues, from truancy to sleeping in class to disruptive or oppositional behavior.

***

Lakeside School — one of four alternative schools in the Lakeside Educational Network — works with 35 school districts in the Philadelphia suburbs.

The school goes from 6th through 12th grade and has a capacity of 150 students. About 35 students graduate every year, but most return to their home districts for commencement. The average stay is about one year.

About 80 percent are classified as “special needs,” usually with emotional and health issues, not necessarily learning disabilities. The districts provide the funding.

When Lakeside started, most of its students were sent by the Montgomery County court system. But over the years, it has gradually shifted to working with individual districts, although it does have some court-adjudicated students. Monitoring ankle bracelets have long ceased to attract attention.

Brian Dager, Lakeside’s senior vice president, says that of four organizations providing day treatment centers in Montgomery County, only Lakeside has survived.

“They have very good counselors and case managers,” says Ellen Reilly, home and school visitor for the Colonial School District, where Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School is located.

“They show they care about these kids,” Reilly says. “… Sometimes that’s all the kids need. … Our counselors might have 400-500 kids.”

Dager says that sometimes getting a student out of a regular public school has built-in advantages: “Our students are from very different backgrounds … but the one thing they have in common is that they weren’t successful in public school. That creates a little bit of a bonding.”

Although it may seem on the surface that no single technique is unique to Lakeside, the key is combining four main components, which most standard public schools can’t do in the same way:

Small classes.

Intensive counseling.

Low staff turnover.

Trauma-focused education.

The latter is particularly important, says Josh MacNeill, director of the school’s NeuroLogic Initiative.

The genesis of MacNeill’s rather exotic job title is rooted in his experiences in teaching high school English classes years ago.

“I found out early on that I was doing a pretty good job. … I was reaching a lot of my students, getting accolades, but there were always a couple of students who seemed to be slipping between the cracks.

“Maybe their behaviors escalated to the point they were being sent out of the classroom. I was getting frustrated. Part of me wanted to blame myself. Maybe I just wasn’t a good enough teacher and needed to keep growing.

“But there’s a part of you, too, that always wants to blame the students. And I didn’t like the idea of blaming students. I don’t think there’s anyone who enjoys failure. I don’t think there’s a student who wakes up and says, ‘I want to disappoint my teacher. I want to get kicked out of class.’”

Then he attended a training class where Kathy Van Horn, Lakeside’s executive vice president, introduced the idea of trauma-informed education.

Van Horn explained how different parts of the brain affect students’ ability to learn. If a student is operating in the lower regions of the brain, where the fight-or-flight response is triggered, they won’t be able to absorb new knowledge.

Earlier life experiences and the current situation both affect students’ brains and their behavior in the classroom.

”That was kind of the ‘lightbulb experience’ for me,” MacNeill says.

“I learned that I wasn’t a dreadful teacher and it wasn’t that my students hated learning, but that I needed to prepare my students’ brains to learn.”

(For further detail on the science behind trauma-informed education, click here)

So MacNeill introduced different furniture, “fidgets” — small objects that can be fiddled with to relieve tension — and “brain breaks” for the whole class. The results were dramatic. In the first year, he says, the number of times he had to send a student out of the classroom went down by 60 percent. In the following years, it was reduced by 90 percent. “It’s very hard to teach a student Shakespeare when they’re wondering where their next meal is coming from,” he said. “They might be wondering whether a person who’s locked up is going to be released soon. They may be wondering why someone they texted didn’t respond.

“When I can get their brain energy focused on something that’s fun and easy, I can transition into what I’m trying to get across in the class.

“Some of our students have gone through traumatic life experiences. … Many of them have seen a lot of violence in their homes.”

MacNeill recalled one incident in which a student had been kicked out of another class, was sent to the behavior manager’s office, and was tearing the place up, screaming, throwing desks and chairs, and shattering a wooden workstation.

MacNeill was called in to help because he had a good relationship with the student. But as soon as he saw what was happening, he realized that just ordering him to calm down would be useless.

“If I attempted to do that,” he said, “the next chair was coming my way.”

So he got two tall cups of water and offered them to the youth. “Hey, buddy, you look thirsty. Take small sips.”

Exhausted from his tantrum, the youth accepted the water.

“It might look like I was preparing him for his next round of furniture-throwing,” MacNeill said, “but my real goal was actually just to hydrate him. When you drink the water, the process slows down your breathing. I was slowly regulating the bottom regions of his brain.”

MacNeill started picking up the pieces of the workstation and asked the student to join him, which he did.

“I was trying to get him to use his large muscles. That regulates the brain. I could see him calming down. The muscles on his face were loosening up. I talked with him. … We joked around.”

A year ago, MacNeill left the classroom to train other teachers, at Lakeside and at schools throughout the region.

“It’s still new, it’s still up and coming,” he says. “But I believe we’re on the cutting edge of finding a model for working with the kind of kid that the typical school doesn’t educate very well.”

This three-part series is made possible by funding from the Van Ameringen Foundation and the Reentry Project.

Introduction: Here we’re not outcasts

2018-01-03T05:34:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Editor’s note: This three-part series of articles and videos about the students and staff at Lakeside School in Horsham is made possible by funding from the Van Ameringen Foundation and the Reentry Project.

***

Around graduation time at Lakeside School, senior vice president Brian Dager interviews each senior, and there are two questions he always asks:

“Did you ever expect to graduate from high school?”

And “Can you think of a time, prior to Lakeside, when you ever enjoyed school?”

In 90 percent of the cases, Dager says, the answer to the first question is “no.”

And in just about 100 percent of the cases, the answer to the second is “never.”

“We’re dealing with students who have experienced failure after failure after failure after failure,” Dager says.

And although the Horsham private school does not keep statistics, it has established an area-wide reputation over the years for working with students like Ray Willey of Conshohocken, who gave up on regular public schools. And vice versa.

The stakes are obvious. For one thing, the earnings of a high school graduate are about $10,000 a year higher than those of someone without a diploma.

And on a grimmer note, about 80 percent of the country’s incarcerated population are high school dropouts.

For Willey, a 19-year-old dropout and self-proclaimed “knucklehead,” Lakeside was a stop that he never expected.

Or, as his mother, Judy Willey, said at graduation, “I thought this day would never come.”

Click here to read Part 1.

Philly’s new head of behavioral health: We want to help improve grad rates

2017-09-07T11:38:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

David Jones, the new head of the city’s behavioral health system, has a two-word description of what will be at the top of his personal report card in evaluating his work with the city’s public schools: “Graduation rates.”

Jones, named in July as commissioner of the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services (DBHIDS), says he wants to keep expanding the department’s role beyond helping students with learning disabilities and mental health issues to include helping with overall school climate.

Graduation rates, he says, will be the best measure of success.

As part of this change, his department, the City of Philadelphia, and the School District of Philadelphia announced recently that full-time social workers would be placed in 22 public schools in a pilot program that would be expanded to include other behavioral health workers.

Although many city schools now contract with private providers who offer behavioral health services in the School Therapeutic Services (STS) program, their social workers generally focus on a subset of students in their program.

These new social workers, by contrast, are employed by the city. They will train staff and generally promote overall practices to improve student and teacher well-being, while also offering help when individual students exhibit problems.

Specifically, they will provide Tier 2 behavioral health interventions while STS provides Tier 3 interventions. District officials say they hope the pilot program will be better able to provide more prevention services and reduce the need for crisis responses.

Tier 3 interventions are directed at students with diagnosed behavioral health disorders or symptoms of them.

Tier 2 interventions are directed not only at those students, but also at students considered at higher risk than their peers of developing behavioral health disorders.

(Tier 1 interventions are directed at the entire class.)

Jones, who holds a master’s degree in community school/clinical child psychology from Southern Illinois University, had been serving as acting commissioner since February, when Arthur Evans left the department to head the American Psychological Association.

Jones came to Philadelphia from Montgomery County, Maryland, as deputy commissioner in 2013.

He says that efforts to boost school climate and student achievement can’t stop at the school building.

“We want to do even more prevention than we’ve been doing,” he said in a recent interview. “Looking at the entire family unit. The system is ripe for more change.”

Jones explained that the department’s funding is “primarily around treatment,” which means that a behavioral or psychiatric issue has to manifest before triggering intervention.

“We do have some portions of our funds that allow for prevention, intervening on education around [for example] substance abuse disorders."

But, he says, “It’s about more than emotional health. … It’s about stable housing, food security, financial management. So many things happen in the home, in the community. … We want to work with other partners and stakeholders.”

And he says it’s particularly important that the department’s efforts to combat substance abuse among adults – who can be parents or caregivers – connect to its efforts to help students.

“Healthy children tend to be connected to healthy adults,” he said. “We’re in the middle of an opioid epidemic. A number of those people who are experiencing a substance abuse disorder are parents. We have to have someone doing more coordinating work while that parent is getting the treatment they need."

That can involve getting another family member or responsible adult to “provide guidance and support for the child. … That’s something we’re looking to do more of in the future.”

One approach that might be expanded, he said, is the use of “care coordinators” to work with entire families. Many families have multiple providers. One child might have a learning disability, another a behavioral health issue. A parent or guardian could be a substance abuser or might have bipolar disorder or another issue requiring medication.

The coordinator can tie together all the services.

City Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez, a frequent critic of DBHIDS, cited this problem in a recent interview.

“A family can have three providers who aren’t speaking to each other. It’s totally unacceptable. No one’s monitoring what’s working,” she said.

The pilot deals with that issue by having the workers employed by the city and reporting directly to principals and the District.

Jones feels that the department has a “robust” system of evaluating its contracted providers that work inside the schools. But he adds that there is a need for an overall review of the main programs – including STS, Behavioral Health Rehabilitation Services, and Family Based Services – to take a fresh look at what is working and what isn’t.

“We’ll look at pay for performance,” he said. “We’ll look at consumer satisfaction surveys … what’s working in other school systems, what services should continue, what should evolve and change.”

Addressing problems before they become chronic

Before the latest initiative, which is called the Support Team for Educational Partnership (STEP) project, no new city behavioral health workers had been added to the school system, with the exception of a short-lived and unsuccessful pilot program (the Community and School Support Team Initiative) in five schools, according to Karyn Lynch, the District’s chief of student services.

Lynch said in an interview that she hoped that the District would be able to place more emphasis on “trying to address [student behavior] issues before they become chronic.”

Jones said he also wanted to expand training for school personnel in dealing with student behavioral issues through programs such as Mental Health First Aid.

He noted that School District Superintendent William Hite was recently added to the board of Community Behavioral Health, a division of DBHIDS that coordinates school behavioral health services.

“We have a great partnership with Dr. Hite right now,” he said.

He said that his department has behavioral health workers assigned to more than 100 District schools, a little less than half the total. Students in some other schools also receive behavioral health services, according to department officials, but these workers are not assigned to individual schools.

Jones said it was too soon to determine when and how the latest initiative might be expanded.

But school officials in Baltimore, whose programs Jones says he is very familiar with, have been pleased with the results of a recent pilot program putting behavioral health workers in schools full time.

Aimee Hoffman, a school-based mental health clinician in an elementary school in Baltimore, attributes her success partly to the fact that she is there every day, seeing children not just for weekly sessions but also to ask in the hallway how they are doing, encourage them, give them a pat on the back.

“It’s knowing [the children] more in-depth,” she said, “seeing how they interact. Being there full-time makes a huge difference.

“When you’re in a school part-time, you miss things and you’re not as visible to the teachers. When the teachers see you every day, you catch those extra opportunities to be supportive.”

Segregated and satisfied: Parents of special ed students blanch at calls for inclusion

2017-07-28T12:46:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Thirteen is a tricky age for many kids. But for Kayla Hinton, the past year has been downright hellish.

In November, a man shot and killed one of her closest friends just steps from her home in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. In May, her father died suddenly from a heart attack. In between, she’s endured multiple hospital stays and wrestled with suicidal thoughts.

"Right now, my daughter is lost," said her mother, Katherine Artuso.

Kayla is no stranger to setbacks.

She suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. In school, she struggles to focus and follow directions. When she was younger, she would spring out of her seat spontaneously and walk around class. Sometimes she’d lash out and leave the room altogether.

"People would look at me some type of way, like I was a creature or something," Kayla said.

Since moving to Philadelphia in 2013, Kayla has attended three different public schools. Each was supposed to be a better fit for students like her — students who need what’s known as emotional support. Like Kayla, many emotional support students live with a toxic brew of life trauma and mental instability. So far, her family says, none of the District’s remedies has worked.

Artuso wants Kayla to attend a special private school for students with emotional disabilities "because of the simple fact the School District has let me down multiple times already."

Artuso isn’t alone.

Read the rest of this story at NewsWorks

Explaining behavior: Professionals seek to address students’ trauma

2017-07-25T11:25:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The biological mother of “Jailyn” had turned her over to her cousins when she was several months old and they became her custodial parents. That is, until the custodial father fatally shot the mother while the girl was in the house.

Now living in foster care, she has angry outbursts in the classroom that include screaming at her teacher and kicking objects. When she hears a loud noise, she thinks it’s a gun.

Her 6th-grade teacher says she is slow to complete schoolwork, appears disorganized, and has difficulty regularly following classroom routines.

Discussing this fictional case study last week were Melissa Fox, a special education teacher; Kasey Thompson, a youth development consultant; Dina Mitchell, the parenting and early childhood director at an emergency shelter; and Soley Berrios, a college access counselor. They talked about ways that teachers, counselors, and other education professionals could help the Jailyns of the school system get past the traumas of their early years enough to succeed in school and in life.

“Find someone she trusts, hopefully,” Fox said as the group and others started a discussion that would continue throughout the day.

The groups were participating in the three-day Greater Philadelphia Trauma Training conference, held last week at Philadelphia University.

Jeanne Felter, director of the university’s Community and Trauma Counseling Program, said the conference was designed to promote interdisciplinary approaches for dealing with traumatized children by bringing together professionals who worked in mental health, education, medicine, and juvenile justice.

About 360 people from the Philadelphia area and across the Eastern seaboard attended, she said, and about of 100 of them work with K-12 students.

The first two days of the conference emphasized the basics of trauma-informed work with children from the vantage points of K-12 education, early childhood education, behavioral health, medicine, and juvenile justice.

In the K-12 workshop, instructors from Lakeside Global Institute discussed the effects of trauma on brain chemistry and development and how it affects everyday classroom situations.

Lectures dealt in detail with a well-known study about Adverse Childhood Experiences and how early childhood adversity affects health and well-being throughout a person’s lifetime.

The mantra of trauma-informed education is that the key question to ask a student who may be struggling or acting out is not “What’s wrong with you?” but “What happened to you?”

“It’s not excusing behavior – it’s explaining behavior,” said Lakeside instructor Marty Wolner.

He and other instructors discussed practical strategies such as taking “brain breaks” and using hand-held fidget devices to either stimulate or calm them.

Josh MacNeill, director of NeuroLogic Initiatives at Lakeside, said he became an effective English teacher only after he realized the importance of getting his students in the proper brain state to absorb the material. In some cases, he said, something as simple as offering a glass of water can defuse a tense situation.

Wolner cautioned that “We live in a very non-listening world. For a lot of people, listening is waiting for your turn to talk.” In many cases, he said, someone who thinks they are listening is really interrupting by reassuring, explaining, solving, sharing, or questioning.

Kathy Van Horn, executive vice president of Lakeside, stressed that neglect can be as traumatic as the violence in the fictional Jailyn case and that this was as true for educators as for children.

“If you’re not taking care of yourself,” Van Horn said, “you’re not taking care of them. Your students will mirror your brain state.”

The third day brought professionals of all groups together in small interprofessional teams to discuss Jailyn’s case.

All were sobered by the complexity of her problems but encouraged by the possibility that they could be better dealt with by increased coordination among different professionals and agencies.

“The whole family’s in crisis,” said Alexis Singleton, a behavioral health case manager for the Philadelphia Mental Health Care Corporation.

“Everybody in this picture needs some type of treatment,” said Kathryn Miller, a family and mental health counselor for the Philadelphia Children’s Alliance.

Tania Leonard, prevention and intervention liaison for the School District of Philadelphia, expressed concern that the case study showed little interaction between the girl’s school and other agencies.

The conference, whose major financial support came from the Scattergood Foundation, was billed as the “first annual” such event, and Felter said she hoped that future conferences could emphasize basic instruction less and practical application more.

But even participants well-versed in trauma-informed education said they found it valuable.

“You still get ‘aha moments,’” said Pamela Turner-Bunyon, a counselor at Samuel Powel Elementary School who runs workshops for teachers in the School District of Philadelphia.

Genevieve Byrd-Robinson, who heads Belmont Charter High School in Philadelphia, said she was thinking of instituting whole-school meditation practices.

Janet Billings, a counselor at a K-5 school in Easton, Pa., said her background in alternative education made her think that part of the required intake interview in alternative schools might involve getting the ACEs score of a student’s parents.

And Larry Russock, program director for St. John’s Community Services, which works with people with intellectual, developmental and other disabilities, saw trauma-informed care as helpful in preparing clients for employment and even for working with employers.

“Instead of firing them, have a conversation,” Russock said.

The conference turned to longer-range goals with the closing keynote by Sandra Bloom, an associate professor of health management and policy at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University and a pioneer in trauma-informed care.

“I’ve waited 30 years for this conference,” Bloom said. “It’s impossible to understand adults unless you know who they were as children.

“If telethons are held to highlight issues involving diseases, how about a telethon for kids who have been victims of gun violence?”

The effects of trauma and the importance of trauma-informed care “have to be common knowledge, like ‘you need seat belts ‘ or ‘smoking is bad for you,’” she said.

“If we had a Manhattan Project to create the bomb, how about a Philadelphia Project to save the lives of children?”

Paul Jablow is a freelance writer who contributes frequently to The Notebook and is anchoring our mental and behavioral health coverage, which is made possible by a grant from the Van Ameringen Foundation.

New strategy may place more social workers in schools by September

2017-07-14T14:20:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

More than 20 additional social workers could be assigned to District schools this fall under proposals being discussed by District officials, Community Behavioral Health, the Department of Human Services, and Mayor Kenney’s administration.

The discussions have been strongly encouraged by several City Council members and by the newest School Reform Commission member, Estelle Richman.

Under the program, the social workers would become part of school staff, helping educators recognize the effects that experiences such as trauma and hunger have on students and promoting a positive behavioral approach to discipline and classroom management.

According to some of those involved, the social workers would be assigned to three high schools and 19 K-8 schools.

Officials from Community Behavioral Health and the District declined to comment on the discussions, and the District refused to provide any details about the current complement of CBH workers.

But in testimony in May before City Council, Karyn Lynch, the District’s chief of student support services, said that “in the last five years at least, CBH has not added to the complement of services that exist within our schools, with the exception of a short pilot [that] existed for two years.”

Richman, who has served as the state secretary of welfare and as a top official in the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, said she saw the addition of full-time social workers in the schools as a key to mainstreaming more students out of private placements and into District schools.

The District is taking several steps to provide students who have behavioral challenges an education in regular school settings. In a separate move, the SRC just approved a $10 million contract with Catapult Learning to set up a program within the District that will serve students with emotional needs who were previously sent to private placements, including Wordsworth Academy, Inc.’s now-closed residential treatment facility.

“We need to keep that child with his or her non-disabled peers,” Richman said.

“All three of these systems [CBH, DHS and the District] need to work together. My role on the SRC is trying to bring them together.”

City Councilwoman Helen Gym said that better coordinating city behavioral health and social services with the District would encourage a “school-based approach rather than treating students’ problems as existing in isolation, especially in schools where 20 percent of the students might have behavioral health issues.”

There are social workers currently based in some schools, but they are there mainly through the Student Support Services program, sometimes called STS, which operates through contracted providers.

“CBH needs to allow principals and the District to have a greater voice in provider selection and increase access to trauma-informed interventions,” said City Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez. “A top-down approach that assigns one-size-fits-all STS support without input from school leaders is an inefficient strategy that could do more harm than good.”

She said that schools should have more control over which providers are assigned to their schools.

“A family can have three providers who aren’t speaking to each other. It’s totally unacceptable. No one’s monitoring what’s working.”

Quinones-Sanchez did praise the addition of District Superintendent William Hite and Cynthia Figueroa, commissioner of the Department of Human Services, to the CBH board as a good step toward improving coordination among the agencies.

An announcement of the new strategy is expected in August, after the details are worked out.

Experts will gather in Philly next week to discuss trauma and education

2017-07-11T09:51:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Mental health professionals, educators, and early childhood specialists from up and down the Eastern seaboard will gather here next week for a conference on trauma awareness and education.

The Greater Philadelphia Trauma Training Conference will be held July 19-21 at Philadelphia University, in the northwestern part of the city.

Jeanne Felter, director of the university’s Community and Trauma Counseling Program, said the conference was designed to promote interdisciplinary approaches for dealing with traumatized children by bringing together professionals in mental health, education, medicine, and juvenile justice.

Keynote speakers will include:

Sandra Bloom, a psychiatrist, associate professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at Drexel University and an internationally recognized authority on trauma.
John Rich, a physician and a professor at the Drexel University School of Public Health, whose work focuses on serving one of the nation’s most ignored and underserved populations — African American men in urban settings.
Frank Meeink, whose journey has taken him from being a teenage skinhead, to prison, to his present role as a speaker about tolerance and diversity.
Daniel Taylor, of St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children and Drexel University College of Medicine, who was named Pennsylvania’s 2016 Pediatrician of the Year by the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, will serve as a leader for a trauma training session.

Other workshops include “Philadelphia’s Response to Child Sexual Abuse Cases,” “Dating Violence,” and “Understanding Children’s Bereavement.”

The conference will be presented in association with the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center, Lakeside Educational Network, United Way of Greater Philadelphia & Southern New Jersey, and the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

Major funding for the conference is from the Scattergood Foundation.

Felter said that 250 people have registered, most from the Philadelphia area, with others from New Jersey, Delaware, New England states, and Virginia.

For further information and to register, click here.

The Notebook’s ongoing coverage of trauma and behavioral health issues is made possible by a grant from the Van Ameringen Foundation.

Increase in student suicide attempts troubles mental health experts

2017-07-06T10:53:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The incident occurred almost 20 years ago, but psychologist Matthew Wintersteen still remembers the broad outlines.

A 15-year-old girl, becoming increasingly disconnected from her peers and her parents, attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.

Luckily, the pills only sickened her, but when she recovered, she told her parents she’d had food poisoning. And they believed her.

The case was an extreme example of what Wintersteen and other experts on child suicide say is all too common: Educators and parents fail to spot the signs of serious behavioral problems or don’t know how to react when they do spot them.

But schools, local and state behavioral agencies, and nonprofit groups are pouring increasing resources into improving behavioral health IQs in both the classroom and the living room.

For example, Wintersteen is involved in a five-year, federally funded statewide program, the Youth Suicide Prevention Initiative, to raise awareness of the warning signs of suicide or other serious behavioral issues with an emphasis on training teachers, counselors, and school psychologists.

Halfway through the grant, said project director Perri Rosen, about 10,000 individuals have been trained, either directly or through train-the-trainer programs, including more than 3,500 who have received specialized training in assessing and managing suicide risk in youth.

Since 2014, Pennsylvania has required suicide-prevention training for all educational personnel working with grades 6-12. The School District of Philadelphia has met this requirement with a more detailed program than the state mandates, according to Lori Paster, the District’s deputy chief of prevention and intervention.

Number of suicide attempts up

According to the city Health Department, the number of completed suicides among youths ages 10-19 from 2013 to 2016 was eight or fewer. (The number rises sharply from ages 19-25).

In a stretch of little more than a week in May, three students in Philadelphia completed suicide. The students were from three different schools, and the incidents were apparently unrelated.

Mental health professionals also worry about the number of suicide attempts or thoughts of suicide.

According to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17.7 percent of U.S. high school students considered suicide in 2015 and 8.6 percent attempted it.

“We’re seeing an increased number of attempts,” said Tami Benton, chair of the department of child and adolescent psychiatry at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia,

Benton said that although “we’ve done a great job of gatekeeper training” in schools and at the provider level, “the biggest thing now is going to be education at the community level – teaching families how to talk about it and teaching kids how to talk about it.”

Stigma is a “major component ” blocking discussions of suicide, she said.

Melissa Harrison, an Ardmore-based therapist, attributes the increase in suicide attempts to general stress on youth in the 21st century and on the wealth of information about suicide methods now available online.

“The medicine cabinets are at home,” she said. “The guns are at home.”

Harrison and other professionals dealing with the subject say that two misconceptions can stand in the way of heading off a potential suicide.

One misconception is that raising the issue increases the likelihood that the child will do it.

“You don’t usually plant the idea in someone’s head,” Harrison said. "It’s probably there already.”

The other is that children won’t be responsive.

“We try to get them talking about it,” Paster said. “They want people to ask them. It’s a relief.”

Harrison cautions, however, that for a teacher, a counselor, or a parent, there’s a right way to broach the subject and a wrong way.

The right way: “I see that you’re struggling. Are you OK?”

The wrong way: “You’re not thinking of hurting yourself, are you?”

Look for the red flags

Harrison works frequently with Minding Your Mind, an area nonprofit that provides mental health education to youth, parents, teachers, and school administrators.

Its roster of speakers includes people who survived suicide attempts, and their stories have a common theme: missed signals by parents and educators.

“I was feeling so much pain in the moment and I wanted the pain to end,” said Drew Bergman, who attempted suicide at age 16 and again at 18, both times with pills and alcohol. “[As a teenager,] you don’t understand an accident can end your life.

“There were red flags. I could sleep all day. My mother had to literally push me out of bed. I was very withdrawn, sleeping in class.

“One teacher in 8th grade did say, ‘I see you’re hurting.’”

But for the most part, he was either punished when he acted out or ignored when he withdrew. Once, in middle school, when he raised his hand to answer a question, the teacher noticed the marks on his arms from cutting himself and asked about them in front of the whole class.

Jordan Burnham was also riding a behavioral health roller coaster, at times so ebullient in high school that he was called the class clown, at other times sleeping a lot, crying or staring off into space.

When he failed his driver’s license test at 16, he tore into the examiner verbally.

“My parents had never seen that side of me,” he said.

Two years later, he jumped out of his ninth-story bedroom window, luckily landing on one foot so he “only” got a shattered leg and other broken bones.

It was five days before the doctors could tell his parents he would live. He still walks with a limp.

Unlike many troubled youths, both Bergman and Burnham had parents who knew enough to seek professional help for their sons.

But there is a cautionary tale there: Getting a child to a mental health professional isn’t enough if they don’t develop a rapport.

“Therapy is like dating,” said Bergman, who recently graduated from Temple University.

Burnham was seeing a therapist before his suicide attempt, but it wasn’t working.

“I liked her, but I never really opened up to her,” he said. “I was always trying to outsmart her.”

Bergman eventually found a school psychologist with whom he worked well.

“I still keep in touch with him,” he said.

Resources

The American Federation for Suicide Prevention video guide. The organization has also produced a video, “It’s Real: College Students and Mental Health,” suited to students headed off to college.
The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has produced “More than Sad,” a guide for high schools. There is also a video.
A PowerPoint presentation by Matthew Wintersteen, PhD.
The Pennsylvania Youth Suicide Prevention Initiative website.
The Minding Your Mind website has many resources.

The Notebook’s ongoing coverage of behavioral health issues is made possible by a grant from the Van Ameringen Foundation.

Baltimore city schools respond to crisis with behavioral health programs

2017-06-13T11:53:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Editor’s note: The Notebook has a two-year grant from the van Ameringen Foundation of New York to cover behavioral health in schools.

Although most of our coverage will focus on Philadelphia, we will occasionally highlight programs in other areas where the work might be of interest to our readership.

In the first of these stories, we take a look at behavioral health services in some Baltimore City schools and the differences those services are making for students.

Almost immediately after starting her job in 2015 as Baltimore’s health commissioner, Leana Wen took a series of walking tours around the city, listening to residents’ concerns.

Much of what she heard was expected, but what she was told by public school students surprised her.

“I thought they’d ask about smoking or STDs,” Wen recalled. “But what every single one of them talked about was mental health.

“They talked about what it was like to grow up in a house where they were the only one to get up in the morning. Everyone else was on drugs.

“They saw moms, fathers, and uncles overdose. They saw their fathers being shot. They were talking about what I would call pervasive trauma.”

Three months later, as Wen worked with health officials, the schools, and other agencies to develop a strategy to deal with the problem, the death of Freddie Gray in April 2015 put a national spotlight on Baltimore.

Gray, 25, died from spinal injuries a week after he went into police custody, and his case led to more than a week of protests and rioting. Businesses were burned and looted, almost three dozen arrests were made, and 15 police officers were injured.

But the case also gave the schools and the Health Department a chance to concentrate behavioral health services in, essentially, three traumatized neighborhoods in West Baltimore.

Last September, the city school system received a two-year, $2.3 million Promoting Student Resilience grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Only two other cities – Chicago and St. Louis – got one of the grants, which are targeted for areas traumatized by civil unrest.

About the same time, the Health Department received a three-year, $5 million companion grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to provide trauma-informed community services in the neighborhoods.

“Our schools were experiencing trauma,” said James Padden, director of related services for the school district. “The whole city was experiencing trauma.”

Padden recalled the furious scramble to meet the application deadline. “We did it in 19 days … 11-hour days, nights, weekends.”

What emerged was a plan concentrating on 13 “focus schools” with more than 4,600 students in what would come to be called “the Freddie Gray neighborhoods” – Upton-Druid Heights, Sandtown-Winchester, and Penn North.

The plan included:

Putting a full-time mental health clinician in each of the 13 schools.

Hiring a full-time trauma manager and two full-time trauma trainers.

Increased training for all school personnel on the effects of trauma. Every person in every school now gets a 30-minute module on trauma-informed practices, sexual abuse, child abuse, and neglect. (To learn about training for school police and its effects, see “Baltimore school police help shift school climate”).

An evaluation by the University of Maryland Center for School Mental Health and Johns Hopkins University.

School officials and teachers see the effort not so much in terms of reinventing the wheel as in making sure seeing that all the wheels finally turn together.

“We’ve always had so many piecemeal responses,” said Megan Miskowski, a speech-language pathologist.

Sonja Santelises, CEO of the public school system, said, “Even with real, substantive efforts, the reality is that systems this large aren’t equipped to take a cohesive approach.”

Now, there is hope that this will happen.

“As bad as it was, [Freddie Gray’s case] brought us all together,” said Philip J. Leaf, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins and co-chair, with Padden, of the grant’s steering committee.

A battered city

In its application for the student resilience grant, the school system noted that for years, Baltimore has had one of the highest murder rates in the nation.

“In 2015,” the application stated, “29 percent of all homicides were of individuals aged 10 to 25 years.”

In the zip codes where the focus schools are located, the picture is equally grim. Twenty-five percent of the children live in extreme poverty.

In one of the neighborhoods – Upton-Druid Heights – the median household income is less than $16,000 a year.

Sixteen percent of the city’s high school students have seriously considered suicide, according to Baltimore Behavioral Health Systems (BBHS), which coordinates behavioral health programs for the school district and other city agencies.

Denise Wheatley-Rowe of BBHS estimates that at any one time, 2,300 of the system’s 84,000 students are homeless, living in shelters, or “couch surfing” with different friends or relatives.

A drive through the neighborhoods puts faces on the numbers. At the transit hub where the Freddie Gray rioting started, addicts wander aimlessly.

The commercial streets are lined with pawn shops, takeout joints, and cheap clothing stores.

“What you don’t see are banks,” said Andrew Masters, youth health and wellness coordinator for the Health Department.

There are no dentists, he noted, no eye doctors and, equally important, no police officers.

Social worker Henriette Taylor, who is the community school coordinator for the Promise Heights neighborhood, recalled two mothers who had each lost two children to violence forming a neighborhood trauma support group.

When the neighborhood received a donation of playground equipment, about 500 volunteers jumped in to assemble it.

On an unseasonably warm winter day, the playground was filled with kids. But the benches they had also assembled were missing, stolen by residents who needed furniture.

“We’re building the capacity to climb out of holes,” Masters said.

Serving those in need

Although the grants to the school system and the Health Department were from new federal programs, the school system had a considerable background in behavioral health.

Leaf noted that in the mid-1930s, Baltimore became one of the first U.S. cities to have social workers in the school system. Today it has more school psychologists than the Philadelphia system, which has more than 50 percent more students,

Since 1987, Baltimore has provided Expanded School Mental Services (ESMH) to supplement school social workers, psychologists, and guidance counselors.

The system now serves 120 public and charter schools. A 2008-09 program evaluation showed that students receiving ESMH made up about one-fifth of all students, and in most grades, they showed improved academic performance and attendance.

In addition to ESMH, the resilience grant will provide:

Training for all school staff in Restorative Practices, a framework for dealing with problem behaviors through parties taking responsibility for their actions and working to rebuild any damaged relationships.

*Kognito, an online avatar-based program that teaches adults to recognize and address psychological distress in youth, and Friend2Friend, a similar program for youth 14 to 18 on dealing with peers experiencing distress.

Mindfulness and yoga groups to which students may be referred.

And training for school-based behavioral health professionals on providing evidence-based trauma treatment for youth up to age 18 and their caregivers.

The schools are also experimenting with using tele-health options for short-term psychiatric treatment, sharply increasing the number of students who can be seen.

In addition, social worker Jennifer Cox said, “You’re in your school, where you’re comfortable.”

Psychiatrist Aronica Cotton said she finds the system to be working. The students are used to being in front of computers and it makes it easier for the schools to create a treatment team.

Speech pathologist Miskowski said that the team approach is one of the reasons she finds the new grants promising.

Even though she isn’t a behavioral health specialist, she said, someone in her position might be the first to notice mental health issues.

And in neighborhoods plagued by poverty, drugs, and violence, the school might be the best place to spot it.

“Often, it’s the safest place they can be.”

Paul Jablow is a freelance writer who contributes frequently to The Notebook and is anchoring our mental and behavioral health coverage.

Baltimore school police help shift school climate

2017-06-13T11:52:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Even before Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore and the federal grants stemming from it, the 103-officer Baltimore school police force had shifted its emphasis away from arresting students to helping maintain a better school climate.

“We’re arresting kids for only the most serious offenses … violence, possession of a handgun,” said Acting Chief Akil Hamm.

“We’re not there to tell kids to take off their hats or pull their pants up. A lot of our kids are very connected to the [school] police. They don’t look at us like the city police.”

Officers are taking training in mindfulness and yoga, coping skills and Mental Health First Aid – basically CPR for behavioral health issues.

About five years ago, Hamm said, school police were arresting about 500 children a year. Last year, it was down to 62.

He said that when the rioting broke out at the Mondawmin transit station in 2015, police from Baltimore City and several other jurisdictions were present, but only the school police came without riot gear.

Hearing a child crying out

2017-06-12T18:36:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The Notebook has a two-year grant from the van Ameringen foundation of New York to cover behavioral health in schools.

Although most of our coverage will be in Philadelphia, we will occasionally highlight programs in other areas where the work might be of interest to our readership.

We continue with this series, taking a look at behavioral health services in some Baltimore City schools and the differences those services are making for students.

Ebony Elliott had a stark, unflinching description of her West Baltimore neighborhood:

“Where life doesn’t matter any more.”

There is violence, drugs and despair. “The children have nothing,” she said. “They don’t even have a playground.”

One of those children is her nine-year-old son, Ishmael Neuville, and as she sat in a classroom at the John Eager Howard Elementary School, she talked about her struggles with him and a ray of hope for both of them.

Ishmael, diagnosed with ADHD, was oppositional, resisting authority, having difficulty with self-control. “My child was crying out,” his mother said.

So Elliott, 40, reached out to school officials and soon Ishmael was seeing Aimee Hoffman, a school-based mental health clinician, on a regular basis.

Hoffman is with Catholic Charities, a provider working with the school system. She is stationed at Howard every day with the support of a federal grant to increase behavioral health services in 13 schools in areas affected by the rioting following the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody in March 2015.

Elliott says that Ishmael has improved dramatically as he works with Hoffman. "His attitude, the way he thinks things out. I’ve cried [over] him,” she said.

And Hoffman attributes her success partly to the fact that she is there every day, seeing Ishmael not just for the weekly sessions but also to ask in the hallway how he is doing, encourage him, give him a pat on the back.

“It’s knowing (the children) more in depth,” she said, seeing how they interact. Being there full time makes a huge difference.

“When you’re in a school part-time, you miss things and you’re not as visible to the teachers. When the teachers see you every day, you catch those extra opportunities to be supportive.”

Denise Wheatley-Rowe, of Behavioral Health System Baltimore, who heads the Expanded School Mental Health program, agrees.

“It’s being fully integrated in the school’s culture,” she said. ”If you’re not here as often, you don’t impact the climate the same way.”

Making a difference

David Guzman, principal of Matthew Henson Elementary School in West Baltimore, shook his head as he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a box cutter taken from a fourth grade student.

“Some of these things are pretty staggering for an elementary school,” he said.

“This community is mired in so many challenges…violence, substance abuse, mental health issues. And even with no mental health issue, there’s a level of frustration.

“Every year we’ve had at least one parent be a victim of violence.”

Ten minutes later, though, his upbeat side showing, Guzman was addressing a Black History Month assembly, the audience dotted not just with students and teachers, but also with parents.

Guzman finds it a little easier to remain upbeat these days, partly due to the increased presence of behavioral health workers.

Five years ago – three years before he arrived – “We had a special ed teacher and that was about it.”

Now he has the equivalent of two full-time behavioral health workers, with a third on the way.

“It’s made a difference,” he said. There are things that used to fly under the radar.”

The additional help was sorely needed.

To take just one indicator, the zip code in which Henson is located -21217 – had the most incarcerated people of any zip code in Maryland, he said.

“You’ll sit in an IEP (Individualized Education Program) meeting with a second grader who’s already been in four or five different schools.”

The school’s alumni include Freddie Gray, and Guzman noted ironically that Gray had stopped by about two years ago, hoping to talk to one of his former teachers.

Three months later, Gray was dead.

“Working here every day takes a toll on [the teachers’] mental health,” he said. “I know it takes a toll on me.”

He had an elliptical, a treadmill. and a stationary bike installed at the school so teachers can relieve stress with exercise. He had wifi installed on the top floor so he can work there instead of being cooped up in his office all the time.

And if progress at Henson comes in small increments, he can deal with that.

“We’ve done a good job making this school a safe place,” he said.

Benchmarks of Success

The evaluation for the U.S. Department of Education’s Promoting Student Resilience grant will be done by the University of Maryland’s Center for School Mental Health.

It will based on six factors: discipline, academics, attendance, promotion, test scores, and school climate.

School climate will be a self-report from teachers, behavioral health workers, principals and others involved in the grant. The others can be objectively measured.

Nancy Lever, an associate professor of psychiatry at the center, said that the evaluation has benefited from the wealth of student data that the district provided and from the fact that her team was involved from the beginning.

“We weren’t coming in after the fact,” she said.

Brittany Parham-Patterson, an assistant professor in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Center for School Mental Health, is also developing an online trauma training module for the coming years.

“You can’t continuously get these (federal) funds,” she said.

James Padden, director of related services for the school district, said that while he hopes statistics on discipline, academics and graduation will improve, success will also have to be defined in terms of intangibles.

“We’re looking for an environmental change, a cultural change, where students feel safe, empowered and connected to adults,” he said.

“Trauma takes away choices. Empowerment gives them back choices.”

When that happens, he said. “You can feel the climate, the culture when you walk in the door.”

Paul Jablow is a freelance writer who contributes frequently to The Notebook and is anchoring our mental and behavioral health coverage.

Schools focus on being more ‘trauma aware’

2017-04-18T07:43:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Harvey Finkle
Over the last several years, the School District has shifted its disciplinary approach and has trained school personnel to be more “trauma aware.” And aligning the city’s behavioral and mental health services better with schools and student needs is a major goal of the mayor’s community schools initiative. In separate interviews, the Notebook asked Superintendent William Hite and Mayor Kenney’s chief education officer, Otis Hackney, to talk about these initiatives. The interviews have been edited for space and clarity.

Q: Superintendent Hite, your administration has deliberately moved away from a zero tolerance policy on discipline to a trauma-informed approach that helps school personnel better understand and react to student behavior before applying consequences like suspension. Why did you do that?

Hite: You don’t get to better-performing schools by arresting, suspending and expelling students, but instead you have to create environments that are supportive and nurturing for young people. You have to think about the social and emotional aspects of the work, which involves more than just applying consequences for behavior.

Q: Has the shift been successful?

Hite: If you only look at the data, it suggests that schools are changing positively with respect to climate. Fewer children are being arrested, fewer suspended, and fewer expelled. And we are seeing increases in student attendance – at least we did last year. In our School Performance Reports, we found that scores for school climate had increased for 74 percent of our District schools. That is 160 schools.

Q: Can you give us some numbers?

Hite: Since we started our diversion program in the spring of 2014, arrests have gone down by 54 percent, from 1,580 to 725. In 2015-16, we saw an additional 10 percent drop in arrests [from 1580] to 570. And we’ve seen a 16 percent decline in serious incidents, which is really important. When I arrived, several District schools were designated as persistently dangerous by the state, and now there are none.

Q: Can you explain more about what has occurred in schools to lead to these outcomes?

Hite: It’s important for us as a district to think about creating school environments that promote positive learning environments and positive relationships with children and adults in the building. Students need to feel that there are adults that are concerned about their well-being in whom they can confide about problems they are having and issues they are facing. In schools now, we are being asked to educate children who are exposed to very traumatic situations. One thing we recognized is that until you address the cause of that trauma, it’s very hard to think students will be focused on learning to read or learning to do math or all the things we are asking them to do in school. Trauma is demonstrated through behaviors. The child’s behavior may be an indication that something more serious is happening in their lives. So now we’re not just saying, ‘you did something wrong and here’s the consequence.’ That promotes a vicious cycle of treating the child’s symptoms rather than employing a set of strategies that will help the child get through the episode they were experiencing. The key point here is we are trying to focus on reimagining school climate in moving from zero tolerance for bad behavior to one where we are trying to be more supportive and caring for children we serve.

Q: How do you get the adults in the school to change their responses to students’ behavior?

Hite: This work is about adopting new mindsets that help us distinguish between students acting out and behavioral health issues, where students need more supports. We’ve been focused for the last three years on building capacity and competency in addressing trauma throughout the District. We have to equip people with tools to manage student behavior so they feel comfortable in not just saying, ‘This child is acting out and needs to be punished.’ We have to think of tools as more than just a consequence.

Q: So you are training people?

Hite: We now have begun a training program working with the group, the Institute for Family Professionals. They have worked with two-thirds of our principals about trauma and the steps they need to take in their schools to address it. As of January, 453 staff members, including teachers, have taken one or more classes. This is done on a voluntary basis. Teachers are volunteering to do this work and so they have more tools in their toolbox to address these types of issues. For others, the training is required. All new school police officers must have this training. We’ve also done trauma awareness training in 18 schools, and we are in the process of scheduling more of those classes. And we have hired a new person, Aisha Brown-Pygatt, as a director of trauma informed school practices. She brings close to 15 years of experience in clinical and school-based trauma.

Q: How has the community schools initiative helped with this?

Hite: It is helpful in that it is attempting to focus city-based and community-based services to these issues as well. The better we can do that, the closer we can get to creating environments conducive to teaching and learning.

Hackney: We’re trying to work with [the District] to identify models and solutions that work within schools. Our coordinators are not mental health specialists or child behavioral specialists, but we can … help the coordinators and the principals to get the resources that they need in partnership with the District.

Q: All nine pilot community schools that submitted their strategic plans in March included a need for more social and emotional health services or resources to improve school climate. Were you surprised?

Hackney: No. We’re dealing with the realities of Philadelphia. The mayor speaks to it all the time. It’s not surprising if we’re dealing with a poverty rate of one out of every four kids; in some schools, you have a high concentration of children living in poverty. All the ill effects that come with living in poverty, or right above it, or close to it, they manifest themselves in schools. So I’m not surprised that we’re seeing this. So, how do we really grab hold of this as a city and in partnership with the District to really address the needs of children and provide some relief to teachers and principals that have to tackle these issues every day? So if community schools can help identify services, help coordinate services better, and create models that can be replicated across the district, it would be great, on top of what the District is already doing.

Q: Is what you are doing complementary to what the District is doing?

Hackney: We don’t just want to complement what the District is doing. It’s aligning [services] in a very strategic and intentional way in these particular schools to address that. Is it a complement? Yes, but it’s really at a much deeper level than that. That’s what we would like to see and what we would like to do, because we know about the severity of issues across the schools in the District. What we’ll see in the long term is much better systems to help support children and families around all of these issues, especially in partnership with the community schools. It’s something people are going to have to give us time to do so we get it right. We’ll have to do small things until we get systems built. But we’re in conversations with the [city] Department of Behavioral Health, the School District, DHS [Department of Human Services]. We’ve been directed by the mayor to make sure we address these issues. We want to make sure we put something in place that will support the children in the schools.

Contact Notebook contributing editor Dale Mezzacappa at dalem@thenotebook.org; on Twitter @dalemezz.

To get services, English learners face extra obstacles

2017-04-17T11:45:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

When Mi Phong arrived in Philadelphia in 2015 from Vietnam, she was a middle school student excited to start school, make new friends, and experience new things. But Phuong found herself being bullied by her classmates because of her accent.

When she went home, the criticism continued because Phong was hard on herself.

“I used to blame myself all the time because of my accent and how I’m not speaking English enough, not trying hard enough,” said Phong, now a senior at Girard Academic Music Program.

Some teachers tried to help, but she stayed mostly quiet during the school day.

“I couldn’t have access to teachers because I didn’t know how to express myself to them,” Phong said.

These experiences led to behavioral health issues.

“I was depressed,” Phong said. “I locked my door and hid in a closet every morning so my mom had to pull me out.”

But for Phong and many other English learner (EL) students attending Philadelphia public schools, obtaining access to behavioral health services can be a challenge. The reasons include a lack of appropriate services readily available in schools, community stigma, and isolation as a result of language and cultural barriers.

For students and families who need counseling and case management for their therapeutic needs, the process to obtain them is difficult. Not every school has psychologists, clinicians, and social workers.

Getting help

Joelle Bradley directs four case managers at Penn Medicine’s Hall-Mercer Behavioral Health Services, which serves as one of about 10 case management teams for Children’s Blended Case Management in the city. The service is underwritten by Medicaid through the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health. Teams throughout the city provide language-specific case managers or in-person interpreters to visit homes, set goals for parent and child together, and register them for appropriate treatment and recreational programs if necessary.

However, accessing these services requires an existing psychiatric evaluation, which can be hard for families like Phong’s to obtain.

The student might begin the process by seeing a social worker. If the school has no social worker, the student may go to a school counselor and be referred to a school psychologist. But school psychologists are overburdened; most serve several schools and are also responsible for testing for special education, speech therapy, EL programs, and therapeutic programs.

“A child who has a behavioral health diagnosis, through school programs or outpatient services, needs community linkages or support within the school to get appropriate services for that child,” Bradley said.

However, “those supports for students and teachers were eliminated because there was no money,” she said. Due to tight funding, many schools in the District don’t have on-site social workers, clinicians, and behavioral health counselors.

As a result, many students lack the necessary intermediary step between school referrals and services provided by the city’s Department of Behavioral Health.

Limited English proficiency makes it more difficult for EL students to access services in a complicated behavioral health system.

An Nguyen, a senior at South Philadelphia High School who was enrolled in the EL program during her junior year, said that behavioral health issues are not often discussed among her peers.

But she doesn’t doubt the prevalence of these issues.

“I’m sure there’s a lot [of EL students with behavioral health concerns] because I have some friends who speak little English and it’s really difficult to assimilate,” she said. “One of them is having mental health issues. She has to check with the doctor periodically.”

And her friend does it alone.

“Her teacher [who’s close to her] might know, but her parents don’t know a thing.

“She keeps it a secret.”

Identifying the barriers

For the many Limited English Proficiency (LEP) families who are working to help their children access behavioral health services, the lack of professionals such as bilingual counselors to help them proves to be a significant obstacle.

Alexandra Wolkoff hears about the effects of bilingual staff shortages from families with limited English proficiency at Southwark Elementary School. She said that there is a “long waiting list to work with the Spanish-speaking clinician.”

Wolkoff is education director of Puentes Hacia El Futuro, an afterschool program of the community health organization Puentes de Salud stationed at Southwark. As one of the nine community schools designated by the city, Southwark is aided by organizations like Puentes, which helps refer students to the school clinician and to therapeutic services out of school.

She says that “linguistic and cultural competency of the practitioner” are needed to effectively serve English learner clients.

“It’s important to have someone who’s bilingual working with a bilingual child and family,” said Wolkoff.

Distance and travel are also challenges.

“If there were more people and outlets to access locally, that would help immensely with [issues like] bad weather, juggling other kids, no bus,” Wolkoff said.

The cultural stigma of mental health issues can also be a barrier. Although Wolkoff said that she has seen changing and positive attitudes to mental health services, she also acknowledged the challenge of dealing with mental health stigma in Latinx communities.

“Mental health is less tangible [than physical health]. There is a perception of, ‘Why would you share your problems with a stranger? Why would I want my child to talk about our family dynamics with someone?’”

Such a stigma, which affects students of many racial and cultural backgrounds, makes it harder to navigate a system alone.

“I can never express all my feelings to my mother or family,” Phong said.

“You can’t go back to them and ask for help, because they can’t help you with anything.”

The role of schools

Schools have tremendous influence in addressing behavioral health concerns of EL students.

For one, the cohesiveness of an EL student community may be related to factors within a school’s EL program, such as whether there are enough students to form an EL classroom.

According to a June 2016 research brief published by the Philadelphia Education Research Consortium (PERC), both small and large numbers of EL students present academic challenges for the wide variety of EL programs in the District. Researchers stated that “a school’s capacity to establish a strong infrastructure for EL programs may be affected by the size of the population it serves, as the number of ELs enrolled is one factor considered in staffing decisions.”

In addition to the academic challenges in programming, Phong believes that the sense of isolation felt by some EL students can be due to lack of connection and meaningful interaction with students of similar backgrounds.

“Usually EL teachers sat next to me to help me or pull me out of class,” Phong said. “I didn’t find that helpful, especially in a small school.”

When she transferred to a school with a larger EL population, the change in learning structure led to emotional improvements for Phong.

“They gathered all the EL students and put them in one classroom,” she said. “Surrounding me were all EL students.I felt so safe there, and I felt connected with other people. That should happen to different EL programs.”

Teachers also help create that safe space, according to Phong.

“They say, ‘You are not lower than them. Don’t let them say that to you.’ It feels like a family in that classroom; everybody’s so nice to each other.”

Nguyen, the South Philadelphia High senior, suggested paying attention to EL students with lower English proficiency, “especially if they’re studying in an environment where most people don’t speak their native language.” She said that this contributes to “less encouragement to step outside of their comfort zone and join activities.”

Nguyen agreed with Phong that a critical mass of EL students, enough for a full class, positively affects behavioral health.

“Definitely, the lack of EL class would make students feel lonelier. They would feel inferior to native speakers,” Nguyen said.

Outside the classroom, others have brainstormed co-curricular ways to cultivate good behavioral health and well-being.

Wolkoff sees potential in art or movement-based therapy for EL students. Many students don’t need to see a clinician very week, but would benefit from occasional check-ins supplemented by such programs.

“Certainly there’s a lot of stress happening with [President] Trump and our political situation, stressors of being undocumented, in poverty, learning English as a child with [limited English proficient] parents – there’s a lot of general stress,” she said.

Some have dealt with stress, trauma, and isolation by participating in other initiatives focused on EL populations, including leadership development and social connections with peers.

For instance, Phong said that “with a lot of Vietnamese students, they keep stuff to themselves, but a lot of them step up to leadership roles.”

She speaks from experience. Phong joined the community organization VietLead less than two years ago and has since continued participating in the organization that helped her in the first steps in the long journey to good behavioral health.

“They made me realize that it’s not my fault. They changed my life.”

Amy Xu is an intern at the Notebook.

North Philly neighbors wrestle with stress

2017-04-13T12:11:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Darryl Murphy
After just five minutes of her first stress-management workshop, Debra Myrick said, “I should have been here 35 years ago.”

In her North Philadelphia community, Myrick said, raising a family meant non-stop worry.

“I was stressed about my children. I was scared about every little thing,” she said.

The shadow of serious trouble is never far from anyone, even a law-abiding construction worker like her son.

“When he goes out the door, I pray. I pray,” Myrick said. “Sometimes I pray all day long.”

Myrick was one of a half-dozen North Philadelphia residents who turned out at Strawberry Mansion High for the last of a series of workshops called the New Eyes program. Sponsored by the United Way and the Institute of Family Professionals, it teaches community members to “see stress with new eyes” and handle it in healthy ways.

She was delighted to sit with a group of neighbors to share stories and learn about the basics of stress: where it comes from, how it morphs from manageable to toxic, and how to defang it before it leads to traumas that can affect an entire family.

“One thing I like about this program … it makes people aware: ‘I’m not alone,’” said New Eyes instructor Colbert Partridge.

Altogether, almost 600 North Philadelphia residents attended one of the 27 New Eyes workshops, where they learned basic stress-management techniques such as relaxing with “belly breathing” or making a “safety list” of calming mental steps.

The techniques may be simple, Partridge said, but as a former probation officer, he knows the stakes are high. The stressed-out child who acts out in school can soon become the young adult with academic or legal problems. But when parents can handle their own stress, Partridge said, they can help break the cycle.

“If the parents model behavior, the children pick it up,” he said.

Myrick knows the cycle well – it can start as soon as the sun comes up. An overworked parent who lashes out at a child who can’t find his shoes or her homework can unwittingly disrupt an entire classroom, she said.

“Sending your child to school upset – they’ll have an attitude all day long,” said Myrick. “They’ll pick on other kids.”

Myrick’s friend Lenora Jackson, a mother and grandmother who works at the nearby Strawberry Mansion Neighborhood Action Center, has seen that far too many times.

“Early in the morning, when they just get to school, they’re just acting out with the teachers,” Jackson said. “I’m saying, ‘What could have happened?’”

From stress to trauma

Programs like New Eyes are the exception when it comes to dealing with stress, said Michael O’Bryan, an artist and youth advocate with North Philadelphia’s Village for the Arts and Humanities.

“Pockets of us get it. But overall we don’t really talk about it,” O’Bryan said. “Rich people, poor people, distressed communities – anybody talking about stress right now is kind of unheard of.”

O’Bryan has been involved with what he calls “trauma-informed community engagement” for about 10 years. He recently joined a project called the Trauma Informed Care Initiative, supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, whose goal is to bring the “Sanctuary Model” of trauma-informed advocacy to the Strawberry Mansion community.

The basic stress factors that North Philadelphians live with, he said, aren’t that different from those that affect any community – money, work, obligations to children and elders.

But add to that the combined effects of crime, violence, and underfunded schools and public institutions, and “chronic stressors” can soon become “complex and chronic trauma,” O’Bryan said, causing “an overload on the body, on the brain, on the immune system.”

“Think about the mornings people are having in the neighborhood. If a parent’s stressed, it’s probably not really because the kid can’t find their socks,” O’Bryan said. “It’s because they’re tired. They have to go work a 10-, 12-hour day” for little money.

Jackson, who works at the Neighborhood Action Center, said stress is so deeply woven into life in Strawberry Mansion that people take it for granted.

“A lot of our kids and families don’t know they’re in trauma,” she said. “They live it, but they don’t know how to address it. … It’s so normal. It’s just a way of life.”

Jackson’s neighbor Jacqueline White, who has three children and three grandchildren, agreed. She enjoyed the New Eyes workshop – “the breathing thing. I loved it!” she said – but she wished more of her friends had come, like one who’s raising nine children.

“She posted in Facebook, ‘Oh my, I’m so stressed out. I’m gonna have these kids, by myself, for the rest of my life,” said White.

She fears that her friend’s children will end up “just as mad as she is.”

“Whatever she puts on them, they’re going to do it to their little friends. The same thing.”

A healing center – and hugs

Parents are never too old to learn about stress management, said New Eyes trainer Janet Oesterling, and children are never too young.

“I have children I work with that are 3 years old,” she said. “I’ll sit down and talk to them. What can they do to make themselves feel a little bit calmer? That helps them. Because when we say ‘calm down’ to a child, what does that look like? How do I do that? We give them some concrete steps.”

But there’s only so much a family can do, Myrick said. Once children leave the house, they’re at the mercy of the community. For one of her grandchildren, a rowdy lunchroom alone can be traumatizing.

“She’s handicapped,” said Myrick. “I picked her up the other day, and she was upset, because another child got in her face. Somebody should be able to protect her. Who’s there for her? Just because another child’s stressed!”

That kind of institutional failing is the tip of the iceberg, said O’Bryan. When schools that can’t fully nurture their students graduate them into communities that don’t offer them jobs and opportunities, a certain level of crime, violence and trauma is bound to result.

“We want to heal trauma, but we don’t want to deal with the economic stressors that [become] biological stressors,” he said.

No one understands these dynamics better than North Philadelphia residents, he said. The solution that his Strawberry Mansion project has settled on is to create a kind of all-purpose trauma healing center, offering mental health services, arts programming, and access to job training and other economic opportunities.

The group hopes to house the center in the former L.P. Hill Elementary building, next door to Strawberry Mansion High. Its proposal is about 75 percent ready, he said.

“We’ve got to invest in those spaces more and more,” O’Bryan said. “I just want to expose people to as much knowledge as possible.”

In the meantime, the participants at New Eyes know it’s up to them to do what they can.

Lenora Jackson makes sure she’s always ready to hold a needy child.

“It’s just love. That’s why hugging is so important,” she said. “Especially the little ones. You ain’t gotta be cussin’ them out. A lot of times that’s all they hear.”

But Debra Myrick said it’s bound to be an uphill battle.

“When you live in the inner city, the streets’ll rip the kids up before you can even control it,” she said.

“If you don’t teach them in the house … the street’s going to teach them everything. That’s reality. I have nephews – my sister’s a good mother. But they think the streets showed them more love.”

Bill Hangley Jr. is a freelance contributor to the Notebook; on Twitter@BillHangley.

Blunt talk, from personal experience

2017-04-12T10:14:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Carl Antisell, 29, walked into Terry Wildman’s classroom at McClure Elementary School in the Hunting Park section of Philadelphia ready to talk about some serious issues in his life: anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse, and the ups and downs of his mental health.

The 4th graders, all about 10 years old, were ready to listen. And to ask some pointed questions.

“When you had anxiety, what did you worry most about?”

“Why did no one stop you from drinking alcohol?”

“What was your experience like when you stopped breathing?”

Antisell answered every question about the issues he struggled with in his youth. Undiagnosed anxiety as a youngster led him to destructive behavior, first drinking and then prescription drug abuse, he said. One night, his mother found him passed out on the lawn and got him to the emergency room.

“I had no idea you could drink a potentially fatal amount of alcohol in one bottle. And I did that in 45 minutes,” Antisell told the children, who sat rapt through his entire talk.

“If I hadn’t been in the hospital, I might not have made it.”

The blunt approach is a tactic that has kindled conversations and affected lives for the last decade, said Trish Larsen, executive director of Minding Your Mind.

The nonprofit group based in Ardmore, Pa., sends Antisell and other young adults into schools and other venues to talk candidly about their brushes with addiction, mood and eating disorders, and even suicide. They emphasize how they got treatment and got better — an upbeat message for youthful audiences.

Such sharing is “the most effective way to reduce stigma and normalize mental health issues,” said Larsen.

Speakers from Minding Your Mind did about 1,500 presentations last year in city and suburban schools and other venues, reaching tens of thousands of young people, according to Larsen.

Meanwhile, students and teachers in numerous schools are being trained in “mindfulness” – breathing and yoga or other slow-motion exercises – to counter commotion in the classroom and toxic stress in their lives.

“An abundance of research … supports the many benefits that mindfulness and yoga provide for children in school — improved self-regulation, improved memory retention, improved ability to learn, and self-awareness,” said Gail Silver, an author of mindfulness books for children. She also operates afterschool programs on yoga and mindfulness.

Her new group, the School Mindfulness Project, aims to do in-school training for teachers and students.

Another group, the Inner Strength Foundation, has provided in-class instruction reaching 1,200 students in nine District high schools in Philadelphia during the last several years. Syracuse University researchers are studying the impact on student self-regulation, with early positive results.

School climate

“I have seen the climate in entire schools change for the better,” said Amy Edelstein, founder of the nonprofit.

At McClure Elementary, Melissa Carlin’s 5th-grade class learned about the value of mindfulness as part of a service learning project.

“Every day after lunch, which is usually when they are most wild, we do mindful meditation,” a combination of deep breathing and exercise, Carlin said.

The students take their seats and as a group raise their arms slowly to the count of three, then lower their arms to the count of three, again and again, for two or more minutes, she said. Or they slowly sketch the top loop of a figure 8 in the air to the count of three, then the lower loop to the same count.

“It doesn’t matter how crazy they were in the cafeteria, they want to do the mindfulness practice,” Carlin said. “They are ready to get themselves calmed down.”

The 5th graders were motivated to take up the quiet exercises after learning about Robert W. Coleman Elementary School in Baltimore, which focuses on mindfulness and meditation instead of detention and suspension — and gained national publicity in the process. The principal told The Washington Post that practicing mindfulness helped students find relief from the stresses in their lives, including problems at home, violence on the streets, and conflicts with friends.

Creating a safe haven

Wildman’s 4th-grade class project on addiction also reflected stressors in the students’ lives. The children brainstormed about topics to research and decided to look at smoking, drinking, and other addictions.

“I asked, ‘Who in the classroom has been affected by drugs or alcohol?’ and everybody raised their hand. Everybody,” said Wildman.

Early in his remarks, Antisell asked whether anyone could tell him what anxiety feels like.

“It’s how you feel before a test,” one girl said.

“It’s when I’m talking to new people,” said another student.

“Sometimes when my grandma and my mom used to fight,” another quietly said.

Several times, Antisell encouraged the students to speak to someone — a teacher, a counselor, a parent — when they feel sad, or angry, or anxious.

“I was afraid to talk to somebody. I thought it would be a sign of weakness,” Antisell said. Then he added, “Asking for help is the strongest, bravest thing you can do.”

Antisell and other presenters are trained in how to respond to students who might share personal problems, and the presenters are “mandated reporters,” who must report to authorities whatever they learn of child abuse or neglect. The presenters alert a counselor or other school official anytime a student confides any disturbing intentions.

There’s reticence to share such private matters publicly, but a student can text the speaker rather than raising an issue aloud. And the speakers are available after the presentations to talk privately with any student who stays behind. The group’s goal is to educate, not counsel. The message to students is to confide in a teacher, counselor, coach, parent, or other trusted adult.

“Whether it’s depression, anxiety, mood swings, a lot of students just don’t feel comfortable about their feelings. And parents are not comfortable speaking about it and often ignore it or aren’t paying attention,” said Bruce Robinson, president of Neumann Goretti High, a Catholic school in South Philadelphia.

“Minding Your Mind has allowed us to tell this story. If you’re having these struggles, it is OK to reach out, and for friends who see someone struggling, to reach out and find help for their friend.”

At Haverford Middle School in Delaware County, an event earlier this year featuring speakers from Minding Your Mind had an immediate impact, said principal Dan Horan.

Conversation at home

The event “encouraged a lot of conversation at home, and that doesn’t happen so much with middle school kids. We got a lot of parent feedback – they had some really good conversations with their children on the topics we had covered that day,” Horan said. The school also did a half-day presentation on mindfulness and plans a session on substance abuse in May.

About 10 District schools have hosted Minding Your Mind speakers. The first program each year is free of charge, and the group requests a donation for ongoing programs. The group does fundraising to defray costs of going into schools that have limited means.

On a recent Monday, presenter Drew Bergman spent the day at Interboro High School in Delaware County, speaking to five successive health classes. In 2010, that school community was left reeling after two teens completed suicide together by stepping in front of an Amtrak train.

As an adolescent, Bergman said, he had two suicide attempts. The second time he was a sophomore and it was early on New Year’s Day 2010. He described how a high school counselor helped him turn his life around and talked about how he had learned positive coping skills, including sports, hanging with friends, positive self-talk, working out, and eating out.

“I don’t know how to turn on a stove,” he said, to chuckles.

Early in his talk, he asked the class of 16 freshmen whether they personally knew of anyone who had committed or attempted to commit suicide. Across the room, timidly at first, then almost as a group, virtually every hand went up.

One in four people will be diagnosed with a mental health issue, and suicide is the second-leading cause of death among young people, Bergman said. He urged the students to identify one to three adults they can confide in and to embrace at least three to five positive coping skills.

“Our mental health, if not treated, can impact and can end our lives,” Bergman said. “So we need to make our mental health our first priority.”

Connie Langland is a freelance writer on education issues.

Courses on trauma-informed care

2017-04-11T10:04:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The Institute for Family Professionals (IFP) offers these three courses, which must be taken in sequence, to teachers, counselors and others in the School District:

1. “Enhancing Trauma Awareness,” which the IFP says brings participants to the level of “trauma-informed.”

2. “Deepening Trauma Awareness,” leading to the level of “trauma-sensitive.”

3. “Applying Trauma Principles,” leading to the level of “trauma-competent.”

The IFP also offers a two-hour workshop, held at a school’s location. Called “An Overview of Trauma-Informed Care,” this class brings participants to the level of “trauma-aware.”

Other courses offered “may at times include some trauma information as appropriate to the topic,” said Beth Hall, IFP director of administration.

As of March 31, all professional educators in buildings with 6th-12th graders were trained in suicide awareness and prevention in compliance with Pennsylvania Act 71.

All new employees will be required to take online suicide-prevention training equivalent to that before starting work. The District also plans two hours of refresher training on suicide awareness and prevention every other year.

In addition, about 1,500 District employees are trained in Mental Health First Aid, which essentially is CPR for behavioral health.

Learning how to help kids with trauma

2017-04-11T10:04:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

When Yoselin Ocasio was hired two years ago as the climate manager at Lewis Elkin Elementary School in Kensington, she says, “I felt that with 15 years in social work, I was ready.”

But once on the job, Ocasio said, she realized that she wasn’t.

“It’s been very, very challenging. The walkie-talkie doesn’t stop.”

The neighborhood is plagued with substance abuse, neglect, and violence, she says, “and the kids come to school with that.”

At the end of the school day, says principal Evelyn Nunez, “they go back into that same environment and the healing process hasn’t even begun.”

“The majority of the students have suffered some kind of trauma. … Many have experienced loss in a very dramatic way.”

Nunez, who is in her second year as principal, reached out to the School District for a presentation at the school on the effects of trauma and how to deal with it in the classroom.

Since William Hite became superintendent in 2012, the District has moved away from a zero-tolerance discipline philosophy and toward “trauma-informed practices.” These deal with troubled students by shifting the focus from “what’s wrong with you?” to “what happened to you?”

“We can’t arrest our way to higher achievement,” Hite said at a principals’ summit in August 2012. “We can’t arrest or suspend our way to safer schools.

“These things are the result of climates, environments, and cultures that are established by the adults and between the adults and the young people they serve.”

Playing a key role in the shift has been the Institute for Family Professionals (IFP), which offers workshops and courses on trauma to District personnel.

Since 2014, the IFP, with financial support from United Way of Greater Philadelphia & Southern New Jersey, has provided training courses to more than 300 teachers, counselors, and other classroom personnel from 137 schools. Everyone takes the courses on their own time.

Thirty-eight people have completed “Applying Trauma Principles,” the third and final course in the sequence.

This year, the District hired a clinician, Lori Paster, to fill the new position of deputy chief, prevention and intervention. It has also hired Aisha Brown-Pygatt as a director of trauma informed practices.

The goal, says United Way education manager Suzanne O’Connor, is to see the trauma-informed practices become a permanent feature of the city’s educational landscape.

“We don’t want this to be a fad,” O’Connor says. “It’s a process. We’re becoming more strategic. We’re committed for the long haul.”

Paster and Jody Greenblatt, the District’s deputy superintendent for climate and safety, say one goal is to have enough teachers, principals, and counselors trained so they can spread this knowledge and have a fully “trauma-informed school.”

But this, they say, is still in the future, particularly with training that is voluntary.

Still, the classes are fully subscribed, with waiting lists.

“We want to continue as long as United Way is willing to fund it,” Greenblatt says.

Lessons in trauma care

The workday had ended for most of the School District of Philadelphia, but not for the eight teachers gathered in a conference room at District headquarters.

On their own time, they were taking the second-level trauma course taught by IFP, learning and comparing classroom strategies for dealing with some of the school system’s most troubled youths.

The course is based largely on the landmark Adverse Childhood Experiences study, done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente, beginning in 1995. This research identifies trauma indicators, including experiencing abuse, neglect or bullying, witnessing violence, and living in an unsafe neighborhood.

Many Philadelphia students have several of the indicators, and dealing with them can test even the most experienced, sensitive, and dedicated teacher.

“I’ve got two or three who go home and never feel safe,” said Cheryl Copeland, a life-skills support teacher for grades 3-5 at Julia de Burgos Elementary. ”I don’t know why they don’t feel safe, but I know who they are.”

Course facilitator Pamela Bunyon, an IFP staff member who is also a counselor at Samuel Powel Elementary, explained that reaching traumatized students can be difficult and that “you have to be forgiving of yourself at all times.”

In some cases, she said, traumatized students will be disruptive because they’re creating the only kind of atmosphere in which they find it easy to function.

“If you’re used to chaos,” she said “being calm isn’t comfortable. … If you’re not used to a compliment, it will set you off.”

The key, Bunyon and fellow facilitator Robin Jones said, is calming the student before trying to get to the root of his or her acting out.

Teachers are also encouraged to teach relaxation strategies, including mindfulness techniques and exercise or stretching breaks, and to be alert to the effects of hunger or sleeplessness on classroom performance.

Strategies that work

At Elkin, where about 100 of the 900-plus students have been found to need behavioral health support, the staff seems to have taken the course’s lessons to heart.

“I find I look at the bigger picture,” says climate manager Charlotte Maddox. “I’ve learned a lot. I’ve become more empathetic.”

Nunez says, “A lot of the students have a hard time with change, emotionally connecting with adults, with each other.’’

“There’s a greater understanding now by my staff, being more patient. Even when they’re planning their lessons, they have to know the students individually. Some children respond to me as the principal. Some respond best to a male figure.”

Experts in trauma-informed education say that one reason to have a fully trauma-trained staff is that a student might relate best to anyone in the building, including a school police officer or a janitor.

Nunez mentioned one case where a teacher would turn out the lights and have her whole class lower their heads. But this triggered something in one child, who became upset. The teacher dealt with the immediate issue by not doing this in class.

But in subsequent meetings with his family and behavioral health providers, they were able to get at the deeper roots of his fear.

Echoing the lessons from the IFP course, Nunez points out that when a student is misbehaving, “It’s not the time to discuss what’s wrong. You have to bring them down before you can discuss what’s inappropriate.

“It’s human nature for us to get excited also. I’ve learned that the best practice is to bring down my voice.”

To make this easier, the school has established a “reflection room,” staffed by a behavioral health worker, where a student engaging in disruptive behavior can be sent to calm down.

“Whatever is happening, I know I have to remain calm and give them time,” Maddox said. “The students will subconsciously mirror my breathing. They’ll mirror my tone.”

The trauma courses involve biology as well as psychology, because trauma has both short-term and long-term effects on brain function. Maddox learned that a child having a meltdown is just physically unable to communicate.

To show how the course has benefited her, Ocasio cited the example of a 3rd grader who was hitting himself in class. After taking him to an empty room, she told him to take a deep breath and calm down. She asked him whether it was all right to touch him, and when he said it was, she reached out and took a hand to stop the hitting.

Eventually she was able to get to what was really bothering him. The boy lived with his grandmother, but his biological mother had been physically abusing him during visits.

“He blamed himself and he was feeling rejected,” Ocasio said.

The grandmother was notified, and the boy received additional behavioral health help.

“The trauma training helped me understand him and respect his space,” Ocasio said. “It gave him time. What was different for me was being more calm and being more sensitive.”

Paul Jablow is a regular freelance contributor to the Notebook.

Organizations that deal with mental health issues

2017-04-11T10:02:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Minding Your Mind
Ardmore, PA
(610) 642-3879
mindingyourmind.org

School Mindfulness Project
Yoga Child afterschool programing
Philadelphia
(215) 500-0498
info@schoolmindfulness.org
schoolmindfulness.org
yogachild.net

Inner Strength Foundation
Philadelphia
innerstrengthfoundation.net

Relax, heal, learn

2017-04-11T07:51:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Darryl Murphy
Pam Bunyon faced the 4th graders, some splayed in chairs but most arrayed on the rug before her. On the whiteboard, she showed them the outline of a human head.

Next to it were some big words for the 9- and 10-year-olds: Cortex. Amygdala. Brain stem.

Bunyon, the counselor at Powel Elementary School, was using science to help students understand their impulses and give them strategies to deal with them. “So we don’t flip out,” as she and the class put it.

A few weeks later, in a classroom at South Philadelphia High School, Amy Edelstein watched a clutch of laconic 9th graders shuffle their way into a 9:13 a.m. class. It was third period, and the music classroom was tiered and set up for an orchestra, not a small group. Several students climbed to the top and took pains to park themselves at the farthest reaches of the space.

“Please, come down closer, to the center,” she said. Reluctantly and slowly, they complied.

This was the Wednesday morning mindfulness class. For this period, the students would learn about the adolescent brain instead of social studies. They would develop strategies for enhancing their ability to focus, controlling their anger, and dealing with peer conflict through talking, not fighting.

Bunyon and Edelstein are part of the School District’s stepped-up efforts to insulate students with what are known as “protective factors” in mental and behavioral health circles – activities that help young people feel empowered and in control. Those factors include classes like these, but also a range of activities where they can express themselves or work off energy, including music and art, recess and sports.

“It’s important for whole communities, including schools, to address the social and emotional health of all children,” said Joseph Pyle, president of the Thomas Scattergood Foundation, which is focused on mental health issues. Besides access to effective treatment, he said, it requires a culture that puts child well-being at the center.

“Since children spend so much time in schools, schools play an important role,” he said. “Teachers and other school staff … need to have strategies and tools to accomplish this goal [and] address stress and adversity.”

That is what Bunyon realized as a District counselor. She spent several years at Feltonville Middle School, where almost all the students live in poverty and where there is a large immigrant community. Stress was rampant.

“I was doing crisis management all the time,” she said.

She was among those laid off in 2013 when the District decimated its counseling staff in reaction to slashed state aid and the end of federal stimulus funds.

But the layoff was the impetus for her to join a group of counselors seeking to upgrade their training and to attend workshops for educators run by the Institute for Family Professionals. She said those workshops changed her whole approach to teaching.

Bunyon took classes on anger, understanding the teen brain, discipline strategies, and trauma. All imparted a trauma-sensitive approach and were driven by brain science.

When Bunyon and most of her colleagues were hired back in 2014, the District started offering those workshops through the institute.

“We really ate them up and got certified as trauma professionals,” said Bunyon, who became a trainer herself.

“I use what I learned in everything I do,” she said. “It totally transformed the way I deal with children.”

Before the training, she said, when children were upset, she looked at them cognitively and tried to talk to them about what happened. Now, she concentrates on what’s happening in their brain, having learned that trauma triggers “fight or flight” reactions. Talking won’t work.

“Whenever they’re in an elevated brain state, they don’t have access to their cognitive abilities,” she said..”We have to meet them where they are and make sure they understand they are safe so they have access to cognition.”

Once she used this strategy after chasing a Feltonville student who was so traumatized that he ran down the street instead of going into the school after getting off the bus.

“He was a flight kid,” she said. “I had to come up with ways for him to escape while still being in the building.”

She discovered that he liked to read, so she gave him books. He devoured the Percy Jackson adventure series, sometimes while nestled inside a big toy chest in her office.

“Before I was really trained, I would have been sending him to the crisis center at Einstein,” she said. The boy still needed help to function in school and attend classes regularly, she said, but this was a start.

“As a society, we have to figure out the next steps, how we educate these kids who need all these extra supports,” she said.

In schools, “there are a whole lot of things we could be doing to keep children from getting so triggered.”

Tools to assist

Bunyon’s tiny office has sparkle bottles, which children make from used water bottles. They put in water and sparkling confetti and seal them with tape. Shaking the bottles and watching the sparkles roil and then settle down has a calming effect.

She also has fidgets. Some are made for that purpose, like a squeeze ball, and others are adapted, like a pencil, which is great for twisting.

“When you are twisting your hair, that is a ‘fidget’ at that moment,” she said. “There are strategies we as adults know to use sometimes. We do them unconsciously. If we taught kids to do that, then they begin to understand that’s a strategy they can use to alleviate their anxiety. Even students who are not ‘traumatized’ in a larger sense of trauma can really benefit from these strategies.”

Outside Bunyon’s office is a small cubicle transformed into a Peace Place, with a big stuffed Winnie the Pooh and a poster on the wall displaying student-generated strategies for handling anger.

Among them: Use a sparkle bottle. Meditate. Tell the upper brain to think. Practice breathing. Lie down and relax. Students can also draw positive thoughts and pictures or use a small sandbox. The cubicle’s glass panel, though, is gone – a young child pushed his hand through it.

Music and art are also important, Bunyon said. Students who like to draw find that calming. Sometimes, she’ll employ rhythmic drumming. Keeping these as regular features in Philadelphia’s school curricula has been a roller-coaster ride, as art and music teachers – who are not mandated – have been reduced and then restored, depending on school and District budgets.

Her classes now focus on helping students understand themselves and their reactions to stress. On a Friday in March, she visited Chris Powers’ 4th-grade class.

She started by ringing a small bell and asking the students to put thumbs up when they stop hearing the sound. A boy named Ezra was the last to respond.

“He had his eyes closed. … I’m wondering if that allowed him to focus a little bit longer on the sound.”

She asked all the students to close their eyes the next time.

“Part of mindfulness is that there are always going to be distractions. … Shutting your eyes is a way to focus just a bit more.”

Then she turned to the outline she had put on the whiteboard of the human head with the big words.

The brain stem, or lower brain, she explained, controls reflexes. The almond-shaped amygdala, deep in the temporal lobe, is a traffic cop, whose job is to protect us from danger. The upper brain, or cortex, is the thinker, the problem-solver. The class talks about reflexes or involuntary actions – what part of your brain takes over when you touch a hot stove? – and then about persistence and not giving up, even when you get frustrated, to give time for the upper brain to take over.

“The lower part of the brain and the amygdala are fully functional from the day you are born,” Bunyon said, “but the upper part of the brain, believe it or not, the upper part of the brain is where the cortex is, and it is still growing. It is not completely grown until you are, like, 25 years old.”

“That’s sad,” pipes up a little voice.

Lessons learned

Bunyon is in the process of training teachers in the building so they can better react to students on a daily basis. Powel principal Kim Ellerbee said Bunyon’s work has made a huge difference at the school, which has 300 kindergarten through 4th graders. Its catchment area includes both a middle-class community and a homeless shelter.

“It’s critically important that we know that students are not able to access the content teachers are focused on if they are in an emotional state,” Ellerbee said. With Bunyon working with teachers and students, “We are seeing a shift in classroom culture. These are the things we need to do to set the reset button to focus on teaching and learning.”

South Philadelphia is the most recent of nine high schools working with the Inner Strength Foundation. Founded in 2014, it now reaches 1,200 students with a curriculum of 12 mindfulness lessons.

The goals with older students are similar: to give them strategies for coping and help them understand how the brain works. Edelstein and her other teachers lead students through deep breathing exercises, meditation and other techniques. But the curriculum also includes a lesson called “teens in contemporary culture,” and another leads students through 600 years of historical and cultural developments to help them understand life today.

And, not unlike what Bunyon teaches her 4th graders, there are lessons in brain evolution and, specifically, the teenage brain.

Edelstein cautions: These tools “do work, but you have to put them into practice, they’re not going to work overnight. We’re going to learn how to be calm, we’re going to learn how to focus, and we’re going to learn a different relationship to our thoughts and feelings, a different relationship to our minds.”

At one point, the fidgeting stops, and she achieves nearly total quiet in the room.

A pilot study of the curriculum conducted in 2015-16 did pre-tests and post-tests with 98 students in four Philadelphia classrooms. It found that the sessions helped the students significantly with “self-regulation with respect to long-term goals and global behavior.” Changes in short-term self-regulation and self-compassion were positive, although not statistically significant.

Southern’s community schools coordinator, Janelle Harper, whose background is in behavioral health, brought the program to the school. Elsewhere, the classes are given mostly to juniors and seniors, but Harper wanted them for 9th graders, who are particularly vulnerable and stressed. Little changes are already evident, said Harper and Crystal Edwards, the assistant principal for the 9th-grade academy.

“They are pausing to think before they react, which for 9th graders is really a monumental decision,” said Edwards, who attends most of the sessions herself.

After the South Philadelphia session, the third in the 12-class cycle, friends Haley Alisio and Angelina La Barr said they liked it.

“I think it’s good that we’re doing this,” said Alisio, “because there is all this little school drama, so if you come here and do these breathing exercises, it, like, relaxes everybody. There’s not a lot of tension, so everybody is not going to be trying to fight everybody.”

“In this school you need as much relaxation as you can get,” said La Barr. “It is so stressful. It is drama, so it’s all right.”

Contact Notebook contributing editor Dale Mezzacappa at dalem@thenotebook.org; on Twitter @dalemezz.

Dale Mezzacappa

Female teachers support ‘A Day Without a Woman’

2017-04-06T10:05:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Hundreds of female teachers throughout Philadelphia rallied in March to advocate for a teachers’ contract and for fair working conditions across all professions dominated by women.

The protests were part of a nationwide action called “A Day Without a Woman,” which highlighted the importance of women in society and protested gender inequality. Nearly 1,000 District teachers took the day off on March 8, which was also International Women’s Day, to protest a culture that lacks respect for female-dominated professions, including teaching.

Before the school day began, hundreds of female teachers assembled outside their school buildings for informational picketing. Many teachers then went to City Hall to lobby their representatives, petitioning members of City Council for additional funding for Philadelphia schools and advocating for a teachers’ contract.

Teachers and other school staff represented by the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers haven’t had a contract since 2013. They’ve gone without raises since 2012. According to District data and PFT officials, about 75 percent of PFT members are female.

Pia Martin, a health and physical education teacher at Science Leadership Academy, said she participated in the action to demonstrate the power of women.

“I feel that I am morally obligated to participate in Day Without a Woman because my teachers taught me that teaching was an act of social justice, and my students deserve the same education,” Martin said.

“I am committed to the reality that women’s rights are human rights, and I stand for every woman who doesn’t have the resources and ability to strike. I am her feet on the pavement.”

Science Leadership Academy and Taylor Elementary were among several schools in the city where teachers participated in the action.

Melanie Manuel, a Spanish teacher at SLA, told Councilman Mark Squilla that “I would love to stay in Philly for as long as possible,” but the last four years spent without a contract are beginning to weigh down her optimism. Like most younger teachers in the District, she’s missed years of step raises for her accumulating experience.

Squilla, who met with six teachers who are thinking of leaving the District, said the time is right for a long-overdue contract.

Education spending going up but need, inequities remain

2017-04-05T10:54:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Updated 12 noon April 6 with reactions from Gov. Wolf

The budget process for next year is well underway in Harrisburg and spending on education is on a track to increase.

But advocates say that under current proposals the state will make but a small dent in the perennial quests to make sure all students have what they need, to reduce inequities between low-income and well-off districts, and to increase the overall state share of education spending.

“Clearly the budget proposal this year is not very ambitious in terms of extra money for K-12,” said Ron Cowell, executive director of the Education Policy and Leadership Center, and a former Democratic legislator.

However, he said, it is “realistic,” given that the state faces a structural deficit of nearly $3 billion and that Republicans continue to oppose raising taxes. The legislative leadership also prefers measures that promote school choice over sending windfalls of additional money to traditional school districts.

Gov. Wolf proposed an additional $100 million for basic education, $25 million for special education, and $75 million for pre-K. In late March, the House passed a budget that keeps the increases for basic and special education, but reduces the additional pre-K investment to $25 million.

At the same time, the House passed a bill sponsored by Speaker Mike Turzai that will increase two tax credit programs that funnel scholarship money to families so they can send their children to private and parochial schools. The Education Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) allow corporations to donate to scholarships or educational organizations in lieu of paying taxes. They can take a credit for 75 percent of taxes owed and can take a deduction for the difference.

Under Turzai’s bill, the total amount of taxes that can be used this way in a given year would increase from $175 million to $250 million.

Many education advocates, including Cowell, think that instead of this increase there should be $75 million more, at least, sent to school districts.

“A lot of observers are wondering how the legislature can be giving serious consideration to more tax credits that reduce revenue to the state at a time when one of the major problems is insufficient revenues” to fulfill the constitutional mandate of a “thorough and efficient” education for all children, said Cowell.

“It’s a numbers question — can you afford to give up more money when you don’t have enough to begin with?”

He pointed out that, despite increases of more than $640 million in education spending since Democrat Tom Wolf became governor, the state “has not fully restored the cuts made from 2011 while we have the worst inequity gap in the country.” Wolf’s predecessor, Tom Corbett, made decisions that cut about a billion dollars in state and federal aid from school districts. In Philadelphia, which absorbed about a quarter of these cuts, schools lost school nurses and counselors, while class size went up, among other drastic changes.

A spokesman for Gov. Wolf, J.J. Abbott, said in an email that he has made education funding "his top priority and here is no doubt the shift in the last few years from cutting public education to increasing overall education funding by $640 million is a result of his advocacy."

But, he added, "That said, there’s no doubt that there is much more work to be done."

And studies have shown that Pennsylvania ranks in the bottom five in the percentage of education dollars that come from state rather than local coffers, and has the largest spending gaps between rich and poor districts of any state.

Dealing with the inequities

When Wolf took office in 2015, he proposed an ambitious tax overhaul and huge increases in education spending. But while he touts rising investment in education as his proudest achievement so far, his original aspirations have been significantly scaled back.

Last year, the legislature did enact a new predictable state funding formula based on enrollment and student need, but applied it only to new education dollars, not to the entire pot. So the inequities will not be corrected any time in the near future. And lawmakers specifically prohibited the committee that devised the formula from determining how much money was actually needed by districts to adequately educate all children.

In the statement from the governor, Abbott noted that new funding is going out through the fair funding formula and said Wolf "wants even more funding to be appropriated. He understands that many districts across the state are struggling, including Philadelphia." The Philadelphia School District has received more than $100 million in additional funding since Wolf took office, Abbott noted.

Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Philadelphia Democrat, said that his caucus wants to find ways to accelerate the impact of the new funding formula and said that this new budget, if adopted, would at least restore the cuts of the Corbett years.

“We had four years from hell in terms of basic education funds under Corbett, and at least we now have a governor who has fought for getting those dollars back in,” he said. “Now, the problem is, how do we aggressively deal with the inequity.”

He said the Democrats would attempt to come up with a proposal in the next few weeks.

“I think it’s got to be done with new funding and targeting dollars on top of what is being proposed,” he said. “I think we’ve got to advocate for something this year.”

Republican leadership — in line with their national counterparts and new U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — has instead promoted charter schools and choice as the way to insure children’s futures by allowing them to “escape failing schools.” Wolf did not include increasing tax credits in his budget plan and "would prefer to protect and invest in programs that directly help every student have access to high-quality public education," Abbott said.

EITC is the second oldest tax-credit scholarship program in the country, adopted after the legislature repeatedly failed to pass a school voucher program under Gov. Tom Ridge. A study by an organization called EdChoice concluded that the program has saved hundreds of millions in taxpayer money because students left public schools to take advantage of the scholarships.

EdChoice was originally the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Economist Milton Friedman was the godfather of school choice and school vouchers. Opponents of the scholarship program discount those findings, pointing out the source.

They also argue that tax money should not go to private and parochial schools. They note that while the program was promoted promoting choice for poor families with bad options, families already sending their students to private and parochial schools are eligible and that the income caps are high — more than $100,000 for a family with two children. The legislation also limits data collection on who is benefiting from the scholarships and whether children who use them are doing better.

Turzai spokesman Steve Miskin discounted all these criticisms.

“We’ve got to remember, these are tax credits,” he said. “What we know is that kids are trapped in failing schools for various reasons, thousands upon thousands of parents made the choice to move out of them,” Miskin said.

Some receiving the scholarships never attended public school at all, a huge complaint of the opponents of the program if the goal is to provide better opportunities to students in failing schools. But It would be unfair, Miskin said, to “penalize a family scrimping and saving and sacrificing by denying scholarships to existing students.”

He pointed out that the OSTC program, smaller and newer than EITC, is specifically targeted to areas where the local public school is low-performing.

Miskin praised Superintendent William Hite as “the best Philadelphia superintendent in my lifetime. But he is hampered by his bosses and the politicians. Instead of trying to improve things, they are fighting for the status quo. The status quo needs to be ripped apart.”

Harvey Finkle

In Philadelphia, school police outnumber counselors

2017-03-16T13:36:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The Notebook is one of 15 news organizations in the Philadelphia Reentry Reporting Collaborative, a solutions-oriented journalism initiative focusing on the challenges of prisoner reentry.

Like most large school districts in areas with high poverty rates and a majority Black and Latino residents, Philadelphia has more school police officers than counselors.

Wealthier and whiter large districts, by contrast, invest more in counselors than in security.

Last year an analysis of data from the 10 largest public school districts in the country by the website The 74 million found that four of those districts employ more police officers than counselors.

When that data is compared with U.S. census data on the poverty rates and racial makeup of each district’s catchment area, a pattern emerges: large school districts in areas with high poverty rates and high portions of minority residents are more likely to rely on relatively large school police forces, and have smaller counseling staffs.

This is so even though studies make clear that students who have suffered from trauma—most common in high-poverty districts—are more likely to benefit from counseling and support than punitive measures.

While Philadelphia was not quite big enough to be included in the study by The 74, data on the District’s website shows that it follows the trend, although its ratio of counselors to police is not as low as in some other cities.

More affluent large districts with higher portions of white residents seem most likely to employ ample counselors and low numbers of school police.

Aaron Kupchik, a sociology professor at the University of Delaware, said he used a nationally representative sample of schools and found “schools with higher levels of disadvantage are more likely to have police officers.”

“Poorly funded schools are less likely to have counselors, but there always seems to be money for security staff,” Kupchik said. “It’s a shame we don’t also seem to have a ready supply of money for mental health needs.”

In a district with more than 134,000 students, as of January Philadelphia has 284 counselors compared to 351 police officers.

Greg Windle, data from The 74
Data from the National Survey of Children’s Health shows that the lower the income bracket of a child’s household, the more likely that child is to have lived through a traumatic experience. This applies to practically two thirds of children living in poverty.

So higher poverty areas inevitably have a larger portion of students in the most need of counselors, but census data suggests they are the districts with the smallest counseling staffs.

Policing poverty and race

The disparity can’t be explained by state law. Take a look at two counties in Florida: Broward County has the second highest portion of counselors compared to police officers, while Miami-Dade has the lowest.

The two counties are right next to each other, but differences between them are telling.

Miami-Dade is larger, with a poverty rate of 20.4 percent. It encompasses the city of Miami along with its southern suburbs. Like Philadelphia, the majority of its public school students are Black and Latino. Miami-Dade is only 14.4 percent white.

Broward County is just north of Miami-Dade, containing Miami’s northern suburbs around Fort Lauderdale. The poverty rate of 14.5 is just above the national average, and much lower than its southern neighbor. Broward county is also 65 percent white.

Greg Windle
Each of the five districts that employ at least twice as many counselors as police officers, highlighted in green, have catchment areas with poverty rates below 20 percent. The five districts employing significantly more police officers than counselors, highlighted in red, have catchment areas with poverty rates above 20 percent.

The census data also has racial implications. The five districts employing more police officers than counselors take students from a catchment area that is majority Black and Latino.

But almost none of the districts employing at least twice as many counselors than police have majority white populations. The situation with the sale of cheap medicine is a bit different. Instead, these are the districts where the population of white residents is closest in size to the combined population of black and Latino residents.

Greg Windle
In 2011 criminal justice professors Denise Gottfredson and Chongmin Na conducted a study examining the effects of school police. It used the U.S. Department of Education’s data from a random sample of 3,000 public schools.

The study found “no evidence suggesting that [school resource officers] or other sworn law-enforcement officers contribute to school safety.”

“To the contrary, more crimes involving weapons possession and drugs are recorded in schools that add police officers,” the study reads. “As schools increase their use of police officers, the percentage of crimes involving non-serious violent offenses that are reported to law enforcement increase.”

Kupchik used the example of a threatening note written on the bathroom wall. The school counselor might see that as a cry for help from an emotionally disturbed student.

“To a counselor that might be an opportunity,” to help a student, Kupchik said. “To a police officer that’s an opportunity to make an arrest.”

Access to counselors

The six most impoverished catchment areas are home to the five districts that employ more police than counselors. The exception is Los Angeles, which employs nearly equal numbers. They are also the districts that include the largest cities.

Four of the most impoverished districts do exceed the national average of counselors per capita—Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami-Dade and New York. But Los Angeles and Houston fall short of that average.

Philadelphia barely qualifies, and was below the national average until this school year when the district hired dozens more counselors.

Greg Windle, data from The 74
The five least impoverished catchment areas—Hawaii, Hillsborough, Orange, Broward, and Clarke counties—have districts that employ more counselors than police officers.

Large districts with higher poverty rates seem less likely to employ the average number of counselors, and more likely to employ a relatively large number of police officers.

Unequal funding

Some disparities among large districts may reflect different levels of funding.

For example, New York City employs both more police and more counselors, per capita, than Philadelphia. While Philadelphia spent $12,570 on each student in the 2013-14 school year, New York City’s collection of districts averaged $18,620 per student spending just one year earlier and appear to be better staffed.

Newly appointed SRC commissioner Christopher McGinley said Philadelphia saw the number of counselors shrink under former Governor Tom Corbett’s cuts to public education, which also reduced support staff like non-teaching-assistants who helped supervise students throughout the day. That made the existing school police officers all the more necessary.

McGinley, who has served as superintendent in the Philadelphia suburbs of Lower Merion and Cheltenham, added that despite recently hiring more counselors, the District is still “not at an optimal ratio” of students to counselors, and should continue hiring in coming years.

Other districts, like Clark County, seem to be hiring a smaller number of police and counselors in total compared to Philadelphia.

This is also likely the result of funding. Clark County’s per pupil spending was $9,322 in 2011, several thousand dollars lower than Philadelphia’s. But Clark still manages to employ roughly the same number of counselors per capita as Philadelphia.

It may be because Clark County employs so few police officers that they are able to afford so many counselors.

Trauma correlates with poverty

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network distributes a free Child Trauma Toolkit for Educators—a report that both provides information about students coping with trauma, and suggests solutions for teachers.

The toolkit’s recommendation for helping these children is almost a word-for-word description of a school counselor’s office:

“Provide a safe place for the child to talk about what happened. Set aside a designated time and place for sharing to help the child know it is okay to talk about what happened.”

Students suffering from trauma need access to a counselor, and populations of students that are disproportionately likely to suffer from traumatic experiences—impoverished populations—are in the most need of counselors in their schools.

Unfortunately, these seem to be the very school districts that are least likely to employ a large counseling staff, and most likely to rely on a large school police force.

The effects of a district’s policies

Michael Nash, a juvenile court judge in Los Angeles, told the New York Times that school police often handle relatively minor acts of school discipline that would normally result in detentions or suspension, by charging students with misdemeanors like disorderly conduct or assault.

“You have to differentiate the security issue and the discipline issue,” Nash said. “Once the kids get involved in the court system, it’s a slippery slope downhill.”

Gottfredson and Na’s 2011 study on the effects of school police found 76 percent of principals reported that their school police officers were involved in “maintaining school discipline.”

But the more revealing data is in the rate at which these minor offenses are referred to law enforcement who can potentially make an arrest—as opposed to letting the school administrators handle it without pressing criminal charges.

Chongmin Na & Denise C. Gottfredson
The study found that in schools with law enforcement, “discipline responsibilities tend to be shifted away from teachers, administrators, and other school staff to the [school police officers].”

On average, the data shows a 12 percent increase in reporting “non-serious violent crime” in schools with police officers compared to those without.

“The presence of an officer in the school is associated with more than a doubling of the rate of referrals to law enforcement for the most common crime perpetrated by students in schools—simple assault without a weapon.”

In 2014 the Philadelphia School District implemented a “delinquency diversion program” to provide alternatives to arrest for students accused of minor or first-time offenses. In the first year of the program, student arrests dropped by 54 percent and There were 1,051 fewer behavioral incidents reported in the District.

Still, some police-student interactions drew attention. Last May a student at Benjamin Franklin high school was physically restrained by a school police officer in the hallway after an argument between the student and the officer.

The student was trying to use the boy’s restroom when he was stopped by the officer. He did not have the appropriate bathroom pass to use that restroom, so the officer blocked his way and the argument ensued. The District has not pursued criminal charges against the student.

McGinley said that the primary concern of school police should be the security of the building, and they should only enter classrooms “in an emergency.” He added that police should never be used to confront problems with “student behavior.”

“You have to be really clear about the goals and functions of the school’s staff and the roles and functions of the school’s police,” McGinley said. Kupchik said the same thing.

A 2011 study by the Justice Policy Institute, using data from the U.S. Department of Justice, found that “there is no clear correlation between rates of theft or violence and the number of school police.”

Nationally, the study found that numbers of school police reached their peak in 2003. By 2007 there were fewer police in schools, yet that year had the “lowest levels of student-reported incidents of theft and violence since 1997.”

The District has been decreasing the number of police officers in recent years—in the 2009 it employed 455 school police officers, compared to 359 at the beginning of this school year.

One of the more startling findings of Gottfredson and Na’s study was that rates of crime being recorded actually increased in nearly every category in schools with police.

The study concluded that the primary causes of this were that “police officers may increase the accuracy of school records of these crimes, or they may redefine ambiguous situations to conform to legal definitions of weapon or substance possession.”

However, the study also offered another minor contributing factor since school police officers reported spending 25 percent of their time counseling or mentoring students:

“Counseling services provided by the police may be, on average, less effective than those provided by trained counselors,” the study reads. “By shifting responsibility for counseling troubled youth to police, problems may be exacerbated rather than resolved.”

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released a study in 2014, which found the use of school police, and harsh disciplinary tactics in general, disproportionately affect students of color and students with disabilities.

The study found that while African American students comprised 16 percent of U.S. public school students, “they represent 27% of students referred to law enforcement and 31% of students subjected to a school-related arrest.”

The study found that African American students are suspended and expelled at three times the rate of white students.

A 2016 study from the International Journal of Health Services found that minorities in need of mental health services are less likely to receive treatment than their white counterparts.

“We found particularly low mental health utilization rates among the groups at highest risk for incarceration: black and Hispanic young men,” the study reads. “An extraordinary number of inmates—at least half, according to a Department of Justice report—suffer from mental illness.”

“Prisons and jails have become de facto mental institutions,” the study concludes.

In Philadelphia, a majority African-American school district where 38 percent of children live in poverty and black students are three times more likely to face expulsion than white students, there is a dire need for more counselors.

Without them, the children who need the most attention from a counselor are likely to get it from a police officer instead.

New report identifies neighborhoods in need of behavioral health services

2017-02-24T09:55:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

At first glance, the Philadelphia neighborhoods in zip codes 19148 and 19120 might seem to have little in common.

The 19120 zip code is on the northern edge of the city, bordering Cheltenham Township and including parts of the Olney, East Oak Lane, and Lawncrest neighborhoods.

The 19148 zip code is along the Delaware River in Southeast Philadelphia, just below the Pennsport neighborhood and bisected by Interstate 76 before the highway links to the Walt Whitman Bridge.

But these two areas both have a shortage of behavioral health services, according to a new study comparing the availability of such services to the need for them.

The study, called “Place Matters,” uses sophisticated mapping techniques to identify neighborhoods that are likely to be underserved by mental health providers, particularly those serving young children.

“Traditional services aren’t always located where the kids need them to be,” said Joe Pyle, president of the Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation, one of the sponsoring agencies of the study.

The others are the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health and the city’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services (DBHIDS).

“Increasingly, we are recognizing that where people live makes a real difference in their health status,” said Arthur Evans, outgoing commissioner of the city department.

“Zip code is a better predictor of health status than the genetic code.”

The study was designed to identify the areas of greatest need for children’s services “based on indicators of poverty, low education, unemployment, exposure to crime and adverse childhood experiences.”

Evans said he hoped that in future years, using more sophisticated population health data would lead the city to make smarter decisions on where to locate behavioral health facilities, school-based mental health programs, and other community assets such as libraries, playgrounds, recreation centers, and physical health providers.

The study’s lead researcher, former Drexel graduate student Quan Truong, combined existing data in several areas.

“We took a lot of available data and tried to make sense of it all,” said Truong, who is now with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute.

This data included:

Crime, poverty and unemployment figures.
Medicaid claim data from DBHIDS.
Education levels.
The landmark Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, expanded for Philadelphia in 2013, with a follow-up survey of 1,784 residents by the Public Health Management Corp.

The follow-up survey explored traumatic childhood experiences, including witnessing violence, feeling discrimination, experiencing bullying, and feeling unsafe in the neighborhood.

In the report, Truong quoted national estimates that half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14 and research that links low socioeconomic status with poor mental health in children.

And she cited research indicating that the farther a child is located from a medical facility, the less chance he or she will receive needed preventive care.

The study created a risk factor analysis combining poverty, unemployment, lack of education, exposure to violence, and other traumatic experiences and correlating these with a person’s mental health status.

It also factored in two components of resiliency: perceived community support and access to clinical care.

In addition to discrepancies among zip codes, the survey indicated considerable unmet need citywide for mental health services.

“Of Philadelphia’s 46 zip codes, 39 fall below the national average for need,” the report stated.

With about 272,000 children in Philadelphia under age 17 who are Medicaid-eligible, the report estimated, there are more than 54,000 children “who may be in need of mental and behavioral health treatment within the Community Behavioral Health network. The current network served approximately 33,700 children in 2015.”

In the 19148 and 19120 zip codes alone, the report stated, “There may be roughly 2,971 children … who may be in need of services and are currently not getting services.”

Both Evans and Pyle said that the report was only the first step in helping the city take a population-health approach to mental health needs.

Both the foundation and DBHIDS say they are committed to moving from a zip code approach to a more detailed census-tract approach.

Researchers will also look at factors such as stigma, cultural competence, quality of care, and their influence on care utilization.

Evans also stressed the importance of keeping the database current, because gentrification and other changes can quickly alter an area’s level of need.

The report expressed the hope that in the future, “decisions driven by evidence and data, rather than instinct, would ensure a thoughtful approach to meeting the city’s needs.”

This story is part of a continuing series by the Notebook on student behavioral health, with support from the van Ameringen Foundation. Contact reporter Paul Jablow @Paulj1940 with your ideas and feedback. He would like to hear about your experiences with the system: where it has succeeded, where it needs improvement, and what you would like to read more about on this topic.

School counselors take on students’ trauma from home

2016-05-04T18:13:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

School counselor Pam Turner-Bunyon had been warned: This new, incoming student was prone to very erratic behavior.

"When he first came to us, he ran out of the building the first day — the very first day. Instead of coming in, he ran," she said.

Turner-Bunyon learned what happened and immediately dashed out into the crime-prone streets that surround the school.

"I found out he was running, so I went and chased him down and coaxed him back in, and we worked to develop safety places in the building," she said.

Turner-Bunyon has 15 years under her belt as counselor at Feltonville Intermediate, a Philadelphia public school serving grades 3-5. Most of its students come from low-income families.

Years ago, in the same situation, she would have reacted differently — maybe gotten angry and tried to lecture the student sternly about his misbehavior.

But that was before she learned about "trauma-informed" education care.

"It’s saying, ‘What can we do to intentionally work with children … and minimize the stress so that children are able to think and function in school,’" she said. "And not saying, ‘Oh, you’re just an angry kid, you need to do X, Y and Z.’"

For Turner-Bunyon, that means first recognizing the often profound weights that many students carry with them through their lives and helping to ease them with individualized attention.

"And so for him, it was trying to figure out a safe spot that he could go to that he could feel alone and that he could escape," she said. "And one of the things that we found out really quickly, he and I did, is that he really likes to read."

But what works for one child might not work for another. She has many students who live in the depths of poverty. Others have family members who have recently suffered sudden, violent deaths, and still others have come across the bodies of close relations who have committed suicide.

Like the student who sought refuge in running, many of these students struggle to focus in the classroom, and their stressors can manifest in often unruly ways.

"A kid will be throwing a desk and throwing a chair, and I will have to go up and get them," she said. "It’s real crisis stuff."

But over time, Turner-Bunyon has become adept at quickly de-escalating these situations — often by engaging students’ senses.

"I have students who come in who, for example, need hugs in the morning. So I give them hugs," she said. "And you can see that, totally, just that hug changes their ability to be able to function."

For others, the answer can be plastic — as in the stock of empty water bottles she keeps in her office.

"We play games to make them as small as you possibly can," she said. "And the sound and the physically breaking them apart help to calm kids down."

Read the rest of this story at NewsWorks

‘Glen’s Village’ wins EWA award

2016-05-02T17:36:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Glen’s Village, a series and documentary illustrating the struggles and success of Philadelphia student Glen Casey in coping with childhood trauma to succeed in school and college, won first prize in its category in the Education Writers Association annual awards contest.

The judges cited the work, written by Paul Jablow and directed by Dorian Geiger, as "a compelling view of the effect of adverse experiences and stress on a young person and a close look at the interventions and supports in place that allowed him to start turning around his life." Another judge called it a "powerful series [that] benefits from wonderful storytelling and the insightful Glen’s compelling personal journey."

The work won in the category of single-topic story or series for a small general news outlet – with a newsroom of 25 people or less. The two other finalists in the category were from the Hechinger Institute, an education journalism nonprofit based in New York, and The Marshall Project, a national organization that reports on the criminal justice system.

The award was announced during a banquet at EWA’s annual conference, held this year in Boston with the theme of "The Quest for Quality and Equity." It was accepted by former Notebook publisher Paul Socolar.

At a luncheon on Monday, U.S. Secretary of Education John King reiterated the importance of good reporting on education. He cited three works that spoke to him: Failure Factories, by the Tampa Bay Times on the resegregation and neglect of high-poverty, mostly Black schools in Pinellas County, Florida, that also won a Pulitzer Prize this year; The Problem We All Live With, Nicole Hannah-Jones’ radio piece about the inadvertent desegregation experiment involving the school district attended by Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and Glen’s Village.

As a Black male who grew up in difficult family circumstances and relied on mentors and teachers to succeed, King said he related to Glen Casey. King specifically pointed out how the series demonstrated the importance of adequate funding for all schools. He noted that Glen relied heavily on the presence of counselors and others in his school for support.

Socolar, who was the Notebook‘s editor and publisher when the series was conceived and executed, said that Glen’s Village "was one of the most important stories we put together in my 16 years as editor. Understanding the impact of trauma on students and changing the culture of schools to be trauma-sensitive are big shifts, but Glen’s story really illustrates that the stakes and the potential benefits are huge."

Maria Archangelo, the Notebook‘s new publisher, called the award "recognition that the Notebook is doing important work that is being recognized on a national level."

The documentary has won several awards at regional film festivals.

Glen Casey is now a junior at the University of Pennsylvania.

Read and watch the three-part series and documentary:

Part 1: From a trauma-filled childhood to the Ivy League

Part 2: A mother reached out, and a son got needed services

Part 3: A student’s turnaround gets him to Penn, despite painful new challenges

The connection between trauma and the dropout crisis

2016-04-13T07:45:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Talk to students who have dropped out and each of them has a back story. They describe overwhelming troubles at home, pregnancy, running with the wrong crowd, the death of a loved one, conflict with teachers and staff.

But rarely if ever do they mention living in poverty or exposure to trauma—two distinct yet intertwined conditions in children’s lives that experts say can go far in explaining the root cause of the dropout crisis.

“Trauma is not a singular event; neither is poverty,” said Chekemma Fulmore-Townsend, executive director of the Philadelphia Youth Network and co-chair of Project U-Turn. There is a “cycle of experiences,” she said, that can vary from homelessness to the unexpected death of a family member to food insecurity to experiencing a high level of violence in the neighborhood.

“Poverty and trauma are mutually reinforcing and negatively correlated,” Fulmore-Townsend said. "Young people living in poverty are more likely to experience trauma … and the psychological effects of trauma make it harder to overcome poverty. It’s an unwieldy, challenging problem.”

Research supports this view. Using brain scans, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that poverty can slow the rate of growth in two key brain structures in small children. According to Seth Pollack, a lead researcher, brains of infants from different economic backgrounds look similar at birth. But by age 4, children in poor families showed deficits that help explain behavioral and learning problems.

The impact of trauma on children, youth, and adults deep into their lives has been extensively documented and has spurred schools to become expert in and adopt trauma-informed practices to boost children’s emotional-social well-being. The ongoing Philadelphia ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study, for instance, has documented how stress and trauma in childhood can result in impaired social, emotional and cognitive impairments, as well as chronic diseases and unhealthy behaviors throughout one’s life.

According to Fulmore-Townsend, research also shows that “the caring adult is one of the most critical interventions” to boost the chances that a young person will persevere. The Graduation Coach Campaign initiative in the Mayor’s Office is helping create what she calls “a network of champions” for young people.

“Everybody’s path is unique,” said Fulmore-Townsend. “Our job is to make sure there is an adult ready to help them as they step forward, that there’s a way to reconnect with school or an employment readiness service” or other support.

“Those are the people who help young people deal with that unrelenting stress, perhaps not preventing them from dropping out, but supporting them when they U-turn or reconnect with their education. There’s real power in that.”

Notebook’s documentary on trauma a finalist for national EWA award

2016-04-01T15:42:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Glen’s Village, the Notebook‘s 30-minute documentary film and multimedia reporting project on childhood trauma and Philadelphia’s public school system, was named a finalist for an Education Writers Association award for education reporting in the single-topic news or feature category for small newsrooms.

The film, directed by journalists Dorian Geiger and Paul Jablow, follows the journey of Glen Casey, a resilient young Philadelphian who overcame violence, drugs, and family turmoil as a teen to attend the University of Pennsylvania and become an active community member. Glen’s Village was produced as part of the Notebook‘s coverage of the impact of childhood trauma.

Also named finalists in the small newsroom category are The Marshall Project and The Hechinger Report for their respective stories on an innovative American-Indian math program and the sometimes questionable and often brutal disciplinary practices of Southern schools.

These prestigious awards "honor the best education journalism in the country," said Dale Mezzacappa, the Notebook‘s contributing editor and a former EWA president.

EWA is the largest journalistic organization of its kind dedicated to coverage of the country’s education system on all levels.

Glen’s Village has screened at film festivals across the United States and has received a handful of awards and nominations at those festivals. But the EWA award is the first journalism award for which the film has received recognition.

"The competition is stiff," said Mezzacappa. "Glen’s Village deserves the recognition. It’s a prime example of bringing attention to an important issue by telling a compelling story about an individual. It represents an important step into multimedia journalism by the Notebook."

"When we began production of Glen’s Village just over a year ago, I never had any idea the film would go this far," said the film’s director Dorian Geiger.

"The EWA nomination is a new milestone," said Geiger. "Glen Casey, the film’s main character, has a powerful message that clearly resonates with mothers, teens, teachers, and education advocates across America."

EWA will announce this year’s winners at its 69th annual national conference May 1-3 in Boston.

The next local screening of Glen’s Village will take place May 22 during the Philadelphia Independent Film Awards, where the film is nominated for best documentary. The film last played at the Durango Film Festival in Colorado, where it screened to a sold-out crowd.

While on the festival circuit, Glen’s Village cannot be made available in its full-length form online, but can be viewed in three parts.

To discover coming screenings of Glen’s Village and other news surrounding the Notebook’s documentary, please follow the Facebook page for Glen’s Village.

https://vimeo.com/126298668?loop=0

Pew awards $8.6 million to help poor youth and families

2016-03-22T16:21:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

On Tuesday, the Pew Charitable Trusts announced $8.6 million in grants to 45 organizations in the city and region that work with high-poverty children and youth.

The awards are focused on five areas: creating more high-quality early-education and child-care opportunities; prevention and early intervention relating to cognitive and other problems for at-risk young people; promoting wider access for families to behavioral health services; expanding good afterschool programs geared toward school engagement, academic success and college readiness; and improving vulnerable families’ access to public benefits and services that improve household stability.

Citing the 37 percent poverty rate for children in Philadelphia — the highest of any big city in the nation — the senior director of the Pew Fund for Health and Human Services, Frazierita Klasen, said that these areas have been identified in research as "helping poor and disadvantaged children improve their life trajectories."

The awardees range from the AARP Foundation, for its Experience Corps program, in which seniors tutor kindergartners through 3rd graders, to the Joseph J. Peters Institute, which works with victims of sexual abuse, to Public Citizens for Children & Youth, for its efforts to help families get health insurance. Some organizations, like Drexel University, received several awards for different projects.

The grants are awarded in a competitive process, said Klasen, and the final awardees are chosen with the help of outside experts. The money, distributed over three years, is customarily for a specific project.

"We select those we conclude are the strongest, based on understanding of the target population, the evidence they provide, the likelihood of the work being successful, and the strength and quality of the organization overall," said Klasen.

The Pew Fund for Health and Human Services has three grantmaking areas: children, youth, and families; the frail elderly; and vulnerable adults, a category that includes the homeless, mentally ill, and disabled. Grants are awarded in three-year cycles in one of these areas. Next year, the focus will be on vulnerable adults.

Preparing an entire city to respond to mental health emergencies

2015-08-19T14:39:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Jason Palaia, director of elementary and special education in the Coatesville Area School District in Chester County, recalls interrupting his walk across a high school campus to talk to a youth sitting on a curb who was obviously very distraught.

James Hills, a school board member who volunteers at an afterschool program in Coatesville, remembers counselors there overhearing two youths talking about possible suicide.

Barbara Bolton, a marketer and business developer, plans to volunteer at a local suicide hotline and wants to know more about the issue before starting there.

All three say they have seen the benefits for the Coatesville school district and the community to increase knowledge of mental health issues through the Youth Mental Health First Aid curriculum.

The curriculum is the focal point of a four-year, $630,000 effort by Coatesville’s school district, four foundations, and state, local, and federal agencies to increase community-wide awareness of behavioral health issues from school cafeterias to therapist offices. The training is basically the mental health equivalent of CPR.

Eventually, the project aims to train up to half of all school district personnel, plus other community members, using the eight-hour curriculum, says program evaluator Stacie Metz, an associate professor of social work at West Chester University.

Mental health first aid, which originated in Australia in 2001, has been used for years in schools and communities across the country. Coatesville is among roughly 115 school districts designated by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services to receive $100,000 in grants over two years for what are, in effect, saturation programs.

“We’re trying to create a culture,” says Frances Sheehan, president of the Brandywine Health Foundation, which heads the collaborative.

“We see this as a learning lab,” says Alyson Ferguson, director of grant-making for the Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation, which started the effort along with Brandywine.

Ferguson says that working in a community the size of Coatesville, where the school district employs just under 1,000 people, allows for a controlled experiment that would not be possible in a city the size of Philadelphia, whose school district employs about 16,000.

“We do consider ourselves guineas pigs,” Sheehan said, jokingly.

Why Coatesville?

From the start, Coatesville was seen as an ideal target for the initiative.

The city has been economically depressed since the decline of the steel industry decades ago, and 53 percent of the students in its school district receive free or reduced-price lunches, a 10 percent increase from about a decade ago. About half the students are White, one-third African American and 15 percent Hispanic.

Although children in the city comprise just 2 percent of those in the county, they account for 29 percent of those involved with Chester County’s Department of Children, Youth and Families, according to the Brandywine Health Foundation.

Middle school and high school students in the district have reported depression symptoms at a higher rate than those in the county as a whole in the routinely collected Pennsylvania Youth Survey, and the gap has widened in the last two years. More than 41 percent of 10th graders and almost 37 percent of 8th graders reported feeling depressed.

“The community was ready and ripe to receive this,” says Brandywine’s Dana Heiman, who heads the youth mental health collaborative.

Hundreds trained

In the first year of the program, which started in June 2014, 321 people were trained in the Youth Mental Health First Aid curriculum. Just over half, 175, were school district employees, ranging from nurses, teachers, and mental health specialists to cafeteria workers and custodians.

The rest were members of the community at large, such as Bolton, a former teacher, who took the course before starting her work with the suicide hotline because “I wanted something more than my life experience.”

The philosophy behind the project is that knowledge of mental health should be widespread, at least in the school community and, hopefully, beyond that.

“It’s important that all people be able to reach out,” says Alison Distenfeld, a therapeutic support specialist who took the course. “The more people who take the workshop, the more people can help out. A student might be more comfortable approaching the janitor. A casual relationship might be safer.”

“We’re still in the early stages, but I do see a difference,” says John Reid, Coatesville’s director of pupil services. He reported cafeteria workers at a middle school noticing that one of the students was unusually withdrawn and reporting this to the administration.

“They said that a year ago, they wouldn’t have known what to do about it,” Reid says.

He says that, previously, Palaia might not have stopped to talk to the crying student he saw, although in that case it turned out to be a romantic issue rather than a mental health crisis.

The students talking about suicide, however, were apparently serious. A key segment of the training discusses warning signs, whether a youth is verbalizing it or not.

“If we don’t talk about it,” instructor Tracy Behringer told a recent class taking the training, “people are going to continue to die.”

Reid noted that the state is requiring suicide prevention training in schools starting with the 2015-16 academic year.

Looking for impact

According to the first-year evaluation of the program, a significant majority of those taking the course found it valuable.

Questionnaires given before and after the course found overall increases in participants’ confidence in recognizing and dealing with youth experiencing behavioral health challenges. Almost 80 percent said they would find the course useful in their workplace, whether in a school or elsewhere.

But members of the collaborative are also looking for specific improvements in areas such as responses on the Pennsylvania Youth Survey and increased referrals to local mental health providers, who have revised patient-intake questionnaire forms to help the evaluation.

Metz says they are still working on refining their evaluation methods: If Pennsylvania Youth Survey scores improve, for example, how will evaluators be able to determine how much of it is due to the Youth Mental Health First Aid initiative?

Or if referrals to social service agencies increase, how much can be attributed to this effort?

“We want to be able to tease out what’s happening with the referrals,” she says.

“Looking at all the different data together might give us a better picture of what’s going on.”

District wants to expand popular trauma-training classes

2015-02-17T17:49:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

With training courses filled as soon as they are made available, the School District of Philadelphia and United Way of Greater Philadelphia & Southern New Jersey are seeking ways to expand opportunities for teachers and other personnel to learn about trauma-informed care.

“Classes fill within a day of the e-blast I send out,” says Jody Greenblatt, the Stoneleigh Fellow in charge of coordinating training courses for the District.

“We have waiting lists for all the courses.”

To date, almost 200 teachers, counselors and other personnel have taken at least one course on a trauma-informed approach to school behavioral health, which shifts the focus from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” And 105 more are enrolled in the courses taught by the Institute for Family Professionals (IFP) in Fort Washington and financed by United Way.

Suzanne O’Connor, education manager at United Way, said, “We are exploring new opportunities for partnerships and additional support to expand our reach in this area."

IFP has been actively recruiting and training new trainers to expand as well, she said.

Greenblatt said that the District is also seeking foundation and other support to expand Mental Health First Aid training, which is basically a behavioral health version of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. So far, 745 District staff members, including teachers, counselors, and school police, have taken courses offered by the Philadelphia Mental Health Care Corp. and the city’s Department of Behavioral Health.

For teachers, Greenblatt said, it has been difficult to get the release time for the eight-hour course because “professional development hours are spoken for.” Additional funds might make it available for teachers to attend on their own time. They already do this for the IFP trauma courses, which they attend in the evenings and on weekends.

Pushing for standards in school behavioral health

2015-02-12T12:53:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

As a psychiatrist and a public official, Kamilah Jackson has one foot in the field of medicine and the other in public health.

But there is little question that she finds school behavioral health a much tougher field to make judgments about than medicine.

Jackson, associate medical director for children’s services at Community Behavioral Health, puts it this way: “We don’t have a test that says, ‘You have taken this drug, and we know you are better.’”

Jackson’s observation is reflected by other behavioral health practitioners. For them, the issue isn’t just finding the right answers; it’s finding the right questions.

“The field has historically not lent itself well to evaluation — we need a unified approach,” said Joe Pyle, president of the Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation, which makes grants to help providers evaluate themselves. “The science is evolving. I want to start talking about data.”

Schools themselves use standard benchmarks, like graduation rates, dropout rates, and standardized test scores. But mental health programs are less easily assessed.

“There is no universal or consistent way of measuring outcomes, and it’s been a real obstacle. It’s been a challenge,” said Sharon Stephan, co-director of the Center for School Mental Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Criteria used by school-based mental health programs around the country include:

Standard academic measures such as test score improvements, attendance.
Suspensions, bullying and disciplinary actions.
Family engagement in a student’s progress.
Fewer referrals to special education.
Reductions in destructive behaviors such as substance abuse.
Reduction in symptoms of depression or other mental illness.

In September, the center and the School-Based Health Alliance received a $1.2 million, four-year grant from the federal Department of Health and Human Services to develop the first national performance standards for school mental health.

At the program level, Stephan says, “efforts are often piecemeal …[and] there’s not a lot of funding for measuring long-term impact.”

She praised Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) as the individual program with the best evaluation system.

Locally, PBIS is offered in 20 District schools and one charter school under a grant from the Philadelphia Foundation to the Devereux Center for Effective Schools.

Barry L. McCurdy, director of the Devereux center, says the program has reduced the numbers of suspensions and times students are sent to the school office for disciplinary purposes, has improved attendance and has shown some improvement in reading and math scores.

The center is also joining with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia on a project that seeks to blend mental health services with efforts to improve school climate.

Ideally, McCurdy says, he would like to see more school-wide surveys of student behavioral health needs, but a lot of schools, particularly in urban areas, aren’t prepared to do this.

“It would be negligent to identify students as needing services and not give them the services,” he said. “You could legally get into some difficulty. If you’re saying you’re concerned enough to screen, you’d better provide the services.”

Another difficulty in evaluation cited by behavioral health experts is that some of the key questions to be answered are subjective.

“Evidence-based standards are very sexy,” said Jackson, of Community Behavioral Health. “Everyone’s grabbing hold of them.”

But there are things that they can’t measure.

“How are you functioning in your family?” asked Jackson, citing one example. “How are you functioning within the school context? Are you developing a peer network, being a good family member?”

The city’s Community Behavioral Health department asks its school providers to draw out answers to these questions by interviewing teachers, parents, clinicians, and the students themselves.

Although there are widely accepted tools for measuring such specific mental health issues as depression, these go only so far.

“It takes lots of input from people supporting children,” Jackson says. “Kids come in with such different needs. We need to give providers flexibility.”

Jody Greenblatt, the Stoneleigh Fellow who is charged with improving school climate in the District, feels that the ultimate test of school-based behavioral health programs is how well they enable students to function socially and academically in a normal school setting.

But even here, she said, it’s easier to measure success when dealing, for example, with a child’s disruptive classroom behavior than when helping a child who is withdrawn.

“If they’re not drawing attention to themselves, they [sometimes] don’t get the services they need because they’re quiet,” she said. “It’s something you need to pay attention to.”

Clea McNeely, an associate professor of public health at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, points out that it can be difficult to structure any behavioral health evaluation because it’s hard to find a comparison “control” group that isn’t receiving it.

McNeely, who has evaluated behavioral health programs for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and others, said that one successful trial involved a charter middle school (grades 6-8) in Baltimore that admitted students by lottery.

McNeely and a research partner used wait-listed students as a control group, measured both groups in areas such as academic performance, civic participation, and lower levels of sexual activity and found that the admitted students did better.

However, “you need external funding [to do that]” she said. “And evaluation budgets are too small.”

Jeanne Lehrer, vice president for youth behavioral health at NorthEast Treatment Centers, agreed.

“It’s challenging just having the resources to gather outcomes,” she said. “Gathering the data, inputting it, analyzing it.

“And I haven’t found a whole lot of standardized tools that are super helpful. We do collect the data now, and we don’t organize it.

“It would be ideal to track a kid two years later, three years later.”

This story is part of a continuing series by the Notebook on student behavioral health, with support from the Van Ameringen Foundation. Contact reporter Paul Jablow with your ideas and feedback. He would like to hear about your experiences with the system: where it has succeeded, where it needs improvement, and what you would like to read more about on this topic.

Community mentor helps youths, nonprofits succeed

2014-12-16T14:58:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

When he first moved to Philadelphia for Temple University’s Urban Anthropology Ph.D. program in 1996, Notebook member Bill McKinney said he felt like it was home, similar in a lot of ways to where he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio.

Now 18 years later, McKinney, who lives in Kensington, is dedicated to helping the youth of Philadelphia and aiding emerging nonprofits as a dedicated employee, volunteer, and mentor. He said the Notebook has been a valuable resource for him when it comes to providing him the kinds of content he needs to fit his many roles.

“The Notebook really became a way for me to get more information than is just going to be in the newspapers and have a story here or there,” he said. “This was going to have more in-depth stuff and have a lot of details – and I’m a detail-oriented person.”

As a product of public schools himself, McKinney, 44, said he’s “definitely a public school advocate.” Before getting his doctorate at Temple, he earned an undergraduate degree from Cleveland State University and a master’s in applied anthropology from the University of Maryland. McKinney said he began reading the Notebook several years ago because he was interested in learning more about Philadelphia’s public schools.

Though his day job directing research at the Howard Samuels Center in the City University of New York’s Graduate Center took him outside the community, he stayed connected through his work with community-based organizations and as a mentor to three Philadelphia middle school students. Those students, McKinney said, have either graduated from high school or will be graduating this school year.

As a mentor, keeping up to date on news that affected students was crucial. McKinney said that the Notebook provided needed resources for him.

“The School District is complicated,” he said. “I think for someone like myself, who doesn’t have kids – so I don’t have the direct access to the schools like a parent would, but at the same time I’m trying to affect the lives of some young people who are directly in contact with the schools – [the Notebook] just becomes a really valuable tool.”

McKinney, who now works as the director of research and evaluation for The Food Trust, said he decided to start contributing to the Notebook as a member because the publication had provided a service for him, and he felt it was important to support the publication’s efforts.

For the past five or six years, McKinney’s work with community-based groups has been focused on working with “truly” emergent nonprofits, an area that he said has always interested him. He developed a model to better support them, and this model will run as a pilot for several organizations this winter.

“I’ve had my own difficulties in life, and I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had,” McKinney said. “A lot of other folks haven’t had the chances that I’ve had, so I think it’s really important that I don’t just take what I’ve been given – and that I’ve had to work for – and just do for myself.”

McKinney said that he enjoys the Notebook’s print editions and stressed their importance for people who can’t access the Internet. He also values the website, saying he immediately goes to the Notebook for current events stories because the information “is more in-depth.” McKinney recalled relying heavily on the Notebook when he chaired a School Reform Commission task force on dropouts a few years ago.

As more and more upheaval continues to affect Philadelphia’s schools, McKinney said everyone in the city needs to be in touch with what’s going on, and what’s in the Notebook makes events more predictable.

“I think it’s a good publication. Not every city has it,” McKinney said.

“There’s nowhere else to get that level of information.”

To join the Notebook or for more information on membership, go here.

5-step action plan for youth mental health first aid

2014-12-15T15:23:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

ASSESS for risk of suicide or harm

LISTEN non-judgmentally

GIVE reassurance and information

ENCOURAGE appropriate professional help

ENCOURAGE self-help and other support strategies

Tips for educators on trauma

2014-12-11T14:10:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

If a student…	This might help
Shows obvious signs of sadness, acts clingy	Listen to concerns and feelings. Educate students about different trauma reactions.
Experiences behavior problems that were not as serious before	Stay calm, set limits. Try to get the student back into a regular classroom routine.
Has trouble concentrating, paying attention, or getting work done on time	Focus on the present with gentle reminders. Consider modifying work or adding structure.
Seems sleepy or irritable due to lack of sleep	Suggest healthy sleep habits, like not viewing,a computer or TV screen right before bed. Consider adjusting work deadlines until sleep is stabilized.
Experiences typical trauma reactions such as stomach aches, pounding heart, body aches, fast and shallow breathing	Understand that these may make the student fearful. Teach relaxation strategies such as slow breathing, stretching, physical activity.
– Adapted from the National Child Trauma Stress Network

What trauma-informed care looks like

2014-12-10T12:40:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Trauma-informedNot trauma-informedRecognize trauma as an issue. Think in terms of “What happened to you.”Think in terms of “What’s wrong with you?”Act as a caregiver/supporter. Focus on collaboration. Avoid making the issue one of power or control. Pay constant attention to the student’s background and culture.Act as a rule-enforcer. Think in terms of compliance.Use objective, neutral language.Use labeling language: words and phrases like “manipulative,” “needy,” “attention-seeking.”Understand behavior as a coping mechanism.See behavior as intentionally provocative.

– Adapted from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental health Services Administration (SAMHSA) website.

Exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in Philadelphia

2014-12-09T15:48:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The results are from the Philadelphia Urban ACE survey of adults about traumatic events in their childhood. It was conducted by Philadelphia Health Management Corporation for the Institute for Safe Families in 2012-13; 1784 adults age 18 and older were asked about experiences during their first 18 years. ACEs are known to be predictors of poor health outcomes in adulthood.

To assess physical and emotional abuse, adults were asked if they were victims more than once. To assess emotional neglect, they were asked if there was someone in their life who made them feel important or special. For physical neglect, they were asked if the family cut meals for lack of money for food.

Read The Philadelphia Urban ACE Survey

How to get help: A resource guide to city and school-based services

Philadelphia’s shift in discipline policy

2014-12-09T13:21:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

In the wake of the catastrophic Columbine school shooting in 1999, many school district leaders, politicians, and police summed up their response to school violence with two words: zero tolerance.

Infractions that once might have prompted a discussion of motive and intention instead often led to immediate, automatic suspensions, expulsions, and calls to police.

From 2002 to 2011 in Philadelphia, that view held the upper hand; both Paul Vallas and Arlene Ackerman favored a zero-tolerance approach to school discipline.

In 2012, however, dissatisfaction with the results led to a tectonic shift in policy.

The School District adopted a new discipline code that has more of a case-by-case, individualized approach, with some discretion about consequences for students. Since then, out-of-school suspensions have declined, as have expulsions.

One of the authors of the policy change says that the District is increasingly attuned to the fact that thousands of Philadelphia students have been deeply affected by traumatic childhood events, and these events can play a big role in their behavior.

Jody Greenblatt currently oversees school climate matters for the School District. She is a Stoneleigh Foundation fellow who started working on discipline and school climate issues at the District headquarters in mid-2012.

Greenblatt said in a recent interview that one of the root problems with zero tolerance is that many students with discipline problems have experienced trauma in their lives and need support in a positive setting, not isolation and more rejection.

“With the traumatized child, creating a sense of safety and security is really important,” she said. “They are already in a heightened fight-or-flight stance … and any change in school environment is not going to promote the feeling of well-being that they badly need.

“You hear over and over [from educators] that behaviors they are seeing are worse and worse every year and are happening in younger and younger children. That’s a direct correlation to the trauma and poverty of an urban environment. I think there has to be a shift in how we address these behaviors … and it is beginning to happen.”

David Lapp, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Education Law Center, who has represented students facing expulsion, agrees. “There’s a willingness now to … look at mitigating circumstances and not just blindly say, `This happened; this has to be the consequence,’ but to look at what makes rational sense.

“The leadership of the District has demonstrated a sincere will and commitment to the new direction.”

That “new direction” came out of a years-long battle about zero-tolerance practices.

The latest round began in the fall of 2008, when incoming District Superintendent Ackerman announced a shift in policy toward expelling more students for violent behavior.

The numbers of out-of-school suspensions and students expelled to disciplinary schools soared. Stories surfaced of students suspended or expelled for seemingly minor infractions. Backlogs grew, as cases dragged on for weeks and months. Surprisingly, many of the students being expelled were very young – by far the most were in the elementary and middle school grades.

In 2012, facing growing criticism, the District scrapped the old policy. SRC member Lorene Cary spearheaded the overhaul, which had been sought by student activists and other public school advocates.

The adoption of the new discipline policy is just a first step toward a “trauma-informed” approach to discipline and school climate.

In a school district like Philadelphia, many children experience poverty, hunger, an unstable family life, and street violence outside their doors.

As many as two of every three students have experienced this kind of trauma, said Maura McInerney, also an Education Law Center attorney.

Schools must make an extraordinary effort to understand how children’s’ behavior in the classroom is shaped by what they have gone through, McInerney said. To help them succeed, she said, educators have to undertake a shift in how they look at student behavior. “You don’t say, `What’s wrong with this child!’ You say, ‘What has happened to this child? What did this child experience?’”

And to truly have a “trauma-informed” approach, McInerney said, educators and administrators also have to “ask questions like `Do we need more social workers and guidance counselors? Can we provide more support for teachers who are working with these children?”

And misbehaving children need “a space where they can have a conversation about what happened and talk through an approach or resolution to the situation.”

McInerney added, “It means transforming your school – you’re not going to be pushing [rule-breakers] away; you’re going to find a way to engage them.”

That doesn’t mean adopting a permissive attitude toward disruptive actions.

Greenblatt summed it up this way: “In a positive school climate, the norms and expectations are really clear and if they break those norms, they know what the consequences are. … Behavior is addressed by the staff in a way that does not ostracize the student, but instead takes into account the child’s background and gives the student a voice to talk about what happened. And the consequence deals with the behavior.”

That is also the view of Kelley Hodge, the state-appointed safe schools advocate for the District. The role of the advocate is to be an independent monitor of District violence reporting practices and an advocate for victims. Hodge also describes herself as a big proponent of prevention strategy – “It works.”

She said that a trauma-informed approach to discipline and school climate “gives teachers and administrators another set of tools,” whereas zero-tolerance disciplinary system is “more reactive.”

Factoring in the role of trauma in disruptive behavior helps teachers and administrators “relate in a better way to the young people they are working with every day,” Hodge said.

Greenblatt said that approach is being implemented on the ground.

Hundreds of principals, teachers, administrators, and the District’s disciplinary hearing officers have attended training sessions to make them aware of the effects of trauma on children.

Grants are currently funding programs in more than three dozen schools that are addressing discipline and school climate issues by building a positive, supportive environment. The District just received a $3.5 million federal grant that will add 28 more schools to that list over the next five years.

McInerney said another positive step was the decision this school year to add 27 Department of Human Services social workers in schools that have many students under DHS supervision. And the District is quickly sharing records with outside agencies so that service providers find out about attendance and other problems in a timely way.

From left to right: Maura McInerney, Lorene Cary, Jody Greenblatt, and David Lapp.

Others have also seen improvement.

A few years ago, some Temple and Penn law students formed a group called School Discipline Advocacy Service to provide advocates, if requested, for children in District and charter disciplinary hearings.

“There are cases where we feel there are children getting removed and pushed out into exclusionary discipline far too quickly and for actions that don’t warrant it,” said Ben Fils, a third-year Temple law student who was the group’s head last year. But overall, he said, “The District is heading toward realizing that these students do go through trauma and giving them an opportunity to learn from previous mistakes.”

Mary Kate Kalinich, also a third-year Temple law student, added that administrators are grasping the changes, and now “they will often say, `I don’t have to suspend this kid; I can do a behavioral contract instead.’”

There are obstacles, however. Chief among them are the District’s disastrous financial situation and a test-driven system that evaluates students, administrators, teachers, and schools in large part on state exam scores.

“We know that the student support services side does not have the money and doesn’t have the time” to provide all the help that is needed, Greenblatt said. “That’s because there is a culture out there that is still about the testing. … Social-emotional learning is a key part of preschool. But when you get to elementary school it stops – it’s all about the academic focus. For younger kids, especially, it should not stop. You teach kids reading and math – you need to teach behavior too.”

There is certainly not enough money in the District’s coffers to accelerate such efforts, Greenblatt added.

But, she said, at least “the conversation is beginning to change.”

The bottom line, she said, is that most School District employees at all levels “want to see children succeed and realize that they are not going to succeed if their social and emotional needs are not met.”

12 behaviors in children ages 3-6 that may indicate exposure to trauma

2014-12-08T12:55:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

1. Problems focusing in school

2. Learning disabilities

3. Severe loss of temper

4. Constant demands for attention

5. Aggressive behavior

6. Verbal abuse

7. Startling easily

8. Fear of separation from caregiver

9. Being withdrawn

10. Stomach aches and headaches

11. Nightmares, poor sleep habits

12. Bed-wetting, regressive behavior

Adapted from the National Child Trauma Stress Network

How to get help: A resource guide to city and school-based services

Editorial: Traumatized schools

2014-12-05T11:42:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Philadelphia schools are becoming trauma-informed.

In a city with 60,000 children in “deep poverty,” it is essential that those who work in schools understand the painful experiences that students may carry with them. Their families face such overwhelming issues that some of us mainly know about from the news: hunger, homelessness, substance abuse, incarceration, neglect.

Besides those facing poverty, there are children in all neighborhoods who have been scarred by abuse or the loss of loved ones. But in low-income communities, mental health supports are also in short supply. Trauma begets more trauma.

Our school system serves tens of thousands of traumatized kids, which explains a lot about the behaviors that schools confront every day: tantrums, fights in class, students tuning out or dropping out. Schools and teachers can in turn become traumatized.

There has been an important breakthrough: School officials have recognized that zero tolerance discipline policies add more layers of trauma when what’s most needed is conversation and empathy. Systemwide, we are seeing a shift away from purely punitive responses toward more individualized approaches. Grant money is helping schools implement solid programs to improve climate, like Restorative Practices or Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports.

Of course, schools cannot solve the mental health problems of the city. But as communities with many caring adults, they can be safe, supportive environments for children.

Building a compassionate school climate requires staff training – understanding misbehavior as a symptom, knowing how to respond constructively when a student acts out. This has started to happen. The day may require reorganizing to maximize supportive adult-student relationships. At minimum, staff need time to confer about individual students.

Some schools need a sea-change in culture. Students frequently say their schools lack social connection, particularly larger neighborhood high schools. Youth courts or other programs that emphasize peer roles in discipline can give students hope that they can improve their school environment.

We applaud District leaders’ commitment to becoming a trauma-informed school system. But we see major obstacles to that goal. One is the still-pervasive emphasis on standardized tests. You can’t build a positive school culture around the narrow goal of higher scores. Teachers should be rewarded for helping students through emotional crises. Students should be recognized for community-building efforts.

There is also a fundamental resource issue: Most schools simply don’t have enough adults. Cuts to counselors are the tip of the iceberg. Outside partnerships may provide some mental health services, but day-to-day demands on the skeletal school staff have become overwhelming.

Hopefully, the lawsuit challenging inadequate state funding and the election of a pro-education governor have changed the terrain. Elected officials need to hear that schools need a major boost in resources to mitigate the effects of trauma.

Trauma courses train teachers, other staff on behavioral health issues

2014-12-04T12:39:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Michele Messer, a counselor at John Moffet School, said the course she was taking on trauma training had been “game changing,“ helping her gain a new perspective on her students.

“It helps me see where they are in time and space,” she said.

Marsha Weiford, a counselor at Edward Gideon and Gen. George G. Meade schools said that in addition to being useful in the schools, “It helps me educate the parents.”

Cynthia Moore, a counselor at Thomas G. Morton School, said simply that “It gives you the tools you need to get back in the trenches every day.”

All three were taking a course in trauma-informed care, taught by the Institute for Family Professionals and offered through the United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey.

Cutbacks in counselors and other school personnel have taken a toll on school behavioral health initiatives. But the District has been able to move forward on another front, by having teachers, school police, and other professionals take advantage of training such as the trauma course and courses in Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) through the city’s Department of Behavioral Health.

The hope is that they will teach others when they go back to the schools.

David Monico, a public program health analyst with the MHFA program, said that is particularly well-suited for a school system where behavioral health professionals may be in short supply.

“Help isn’t always at hand,” Monico said. “There might be one counselor for a few schools.”

Akin to CPR

Practitioners of MHFA, a worldwide program that originated in Australia in 2001, often refer to it as the mental-health version of CPR — in the sense that it can, for example, help a teacher defuse a situation in which a student is having a meltdown in the lunchroom.

MHFA-trained personnel, Monico said, “can see something they [once] viewed as a disciplinary challenge as more of a health challenge.”

But locally, where it is offered by the Philadelphia Mental Health Care Corporation and the Department of Behavioral Health, it is seen as a first line of defense, hopefully helping teachers and others spot signs of behavioral health issues before they become acute.

“If a person is identified early on, they have a better chance of getting the help they need and on the road to recovery,” said Vorlea Chaney, a disciplinary hearing officer for the District who is also an MHFA trainer.

But “you won’t be able to diagnose anybody,” she cautioned a group of paraprofessionals taking the course recently at Stephen Girard Elementary. “This is a bridge to professional help.”

In addition to teaching how to defuse an immediate behavioral health crisis, the course gives a brief introduction to adolescent development and six behavioral health conditions as they manifest in young people. These conditions include depression, anxiety, eating disorders, psychosis, substance use, and attention deficit and disruptive behavior disorders.

Chaney’s co-instructor, attendance, and truancy counselor Maurice West, said that widespread behavioral health training helps, because a student might feel comfortable talking to anyone in the school community with whom he or she has a friendship, rather than just a teacher or counselor.

The largest group to receive MHFA training to date has been the school police, of whom 375 have taken the course, usually taught in one full day or two half days.

Illustrating the low-key approach favored by MHFA, Monico spoke of a school police officer at Taggart Elementary, who took a disruptive student to the school’s police office and talked with him about baseball for several minutes before even trying to get to behavior issues.

“We want to train teachers, janitors, anyone in the District,” Monico said.

In addition to the school police, more than 300 paraprofessionals – aides and other support staff – have taken MHFA training, in addition to more than 30 occupational and physical therapists.

Trauma awareness training

There are also 213 trained District staff, mostly teachers, who have taken the trauma training courses, a series of offerings that include “Enhancing Trauma Awareness,” “Understanding Anger,” “Essential Communication Skills” and “Mindful Interaction.”

In addition to helping teachers recognize signs of trauma, the course delves heavily into brain chemistry and the biology of trauma. And teachers sometimes bring those lessons directly into the classroom.

Tina Krovetz, a math teacher at Dobson, said she has incorporated brain biology in teaching 5th-grade classes. Other teachers have said the material can even be taken to the 1st- or 2nd-grade level as a way of helping students understand sources of behavior issues.

Since the trauma training courses usually take six sessions of 2 1/2 hours each, teachers have to take them on their own time. The MHFA courses are taught on school time. There is no cost for either one.

Kamilah Jackson, associate medical director for children’s services at Community Behavioral Health, said her agency eventually hopes to expand its trauma training to include school personnel.

But it has already had a significant impact on the District by providing trauma training for personnel at the contract provider agencies for school-based mental health services.

So far, 153 professionals in the agencies have received trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy training under a federal grant to the Philadelphia Alliance for Child Trauma (PACTS) initiative.

For more on trauma training

School District of Philadelphia personnel should consult the District’s PD planner for a schedule of courses being offered. They should also receive emails with specific course details. To sign up for courses or ask further questions, contact Jody Greenblatt at jgreenblatt@philasd.org.

Details on all IFP trauma courses are available at the Institute for Family Professionals.

For details on Mental Health First Aid, see mentalhealthfirstaid.org.

For availability of mental health first aid courses in Philadelphia, consult healthymindsphilly.org.

Breaking the cycle

2014-12-03T14:20:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

It’s interview day for prospective students at the Science Leadership Academy, and Angela Sutton is just another happy mother.

Sitting with other parents in the back of the room, her hair coiled in gleaming braids, she’s telling about the day her 7-year-old tried to order $500 worth of science books online.

“It was biology, anatomy, it was a chemistry book in there – I couldn’t believe it,” she tells the parents nearby. “He said, ‘Mom, I saved you so much money, they were half off!’”

Everyone laughs. Upstairs, Sutton’s older son, Jahzaire, 13, is answering questions and showing off his science project: an important step on the journey to adulthood.

Downstairs, mothers and fathers of every description are milling around, drinking coffee, chatting and wondering. White, Black, Asian, Latino, jeans, slacks, young, old, hip, square – it’s a cross section of Philadelphia families, united by a desire to give their children the best education possible.

All that sets Sutton apart are the odds she’s trying to beat. “Everything I didn’t have as a child,” she says, “I want to give to them.”

She’s not just talking about money. She’s talking about peace.

Angela Sutton is one of tens of thousands of Philadelphians raising children in what’s known as “deep poverty,” living on about $10,000 a year. She grew up in Germantown and North Philadelphia, surrounded by violence, dysfunction, and deprivation. Raped for the first time at 8, abused and rejected by family, bullied in school, ensnared in her own anger, life was, in a word, traumatic.

“It changed who I was,” Sutton, now 38, said. “I felt nothing was for me, everything was against me. I felt no love.”

When it comes to education, the challenges faced by people like Sutton – and the children they raise – are daunting. Traumatized people develop tools for survival – tuning out, lashing out, repeating the abuse – that are far from helpful in school, often resulting in still more trauma: suspensions, expulsions, arrests, incarceration.

Sutton is determined to break that cycle. Her mission is never far from her mind, even as she sits in SLA’s bright lobby, waiting for Jahzaire.

Jahzaire and Angela Sutton in the lobby at the Science Leadership Academy on interview day. After his interview, Jahzaire came back smiling. Just over a year ago a personal crisis threatened to throw him off track – a crisis that peaked with him in custody of the Department of Human Services, crying, “My dad don’t like me, the school don’t want me, and now you trying to take me from my mom?”

Every year, thousands of deeply troubled young people attend school in the Philadelphia system, hoping to rise above circumstances like Jahzaire’s. Every year, thousands fail.

So Sutton is visibly relieved when her son strides confidently back into the lobby, stylish in his bow tie and suspenders, a Styrofoam model of a cell tucked under his arm.

“He’s smiling,” Sutton says. “That’s good.”

Toxic, infectious, and ubiquitous

The first lesson of trauma, says Mariana Chilton, is that it’s a social experience, handed from one person to another, replicating like a virus.

“If you’ve been traumatized, you’re very likely to reenact that trauma,” says Chilton, director of the Center for Hunger-Free Communities at Drexel University. “It’s very infectious, and I think it has a lot to do with why Philadelphia continues to recycle its poverty.”

The impact on children’s ability to learn is profound. Neglect and abuse essentially starve young brains, slowing the growth of neural pathways and stunting cognitive and emotional development.

“We have a 3rd grader right now who can’t count to five, and a 4th grader who can’t count beyond 10 – on her fingers,” says Jeneen Whaley, manager of the Center for Parenting and Early Childhood Education at the People’s Emergency Shelter in West Philadelphia. “Not only do you have the acting out, the fighting – you have children whose ability to learn is adversely affected.”

Trauma is not exclusive to the very poor by any means. Sexual, physical, and emotional abuse of all kinds can be found in any zip code.

But in low-income communities, where jobs and resources are scarce, multiple forms of dysfunction and deprivation can blend together over generations to create what Chilton calls a “toxic” level of collective trauma.

Of the 60,000 children estimated to live in deep poverty in Philadelphia – defined as about half the official poverty level, about $10,000 a year for a family of three – many will suffer from the kinds of experiences Sutton grew up with. Whaley estimates that “99 percent” of PEC’s residents grew up badly abused.

Mental health surveys suggest that trauma among poor Philadelphians is “off the charts,” Chilton said.

Traumatized children are more likely to drop out, get arrested, make bad decisions about sex and drugs – and repeat bad behaviors, traumatizing still more children.

It’s a vicious cycle, Whaley said, that can suck in entire families and communities.

For many children, the first trauma is hunger, which leaves them lethargic and withdrawn, slowing their neural and cognitive development.

Neglect can do similar damage. Physical and sexual abuse intensify the effect, teaching children coping mechanisms like disassociation (“tuning out”) or hypervigilance – mechanisms that may be useful in traumatic, dangerous situations, but don’t work well in school.

The result is a very large problem for the District. Thousands of such children attend Philadelphia schools at any given moment, where they’re likely to fall afoul of the system by acting out what they experienced, or tuning out and falling behind.

Even the brightest among them can struggle to beat the odds.

“There was a young man here, and he had a phenomenal gift for writing,” Whaley recalled. “The stuff he was turning out at 12 and 13 could sell books.”

The boy – “call him Bruce,” she says – had been a chronic truant and was far behind in his schoolwork. But he made good progress in PEC’s afterschool program. On the brink of high school, he showed promise.

But he also had a mother who, instead of supporting her son’s writing and schoolwork, “belittled him.”

It was something Whaley has seen countless times – trauma replicating itself. “Because of her mental health [issues], her own substance abuse, because of her own trauma, she wasn’t able to nurture that in him,” she said.

The family soon left. Five years later, Whaley was working as a Philadelphia police officer (she’s since returned to PEC) when she spotted Bruce with some shady company.

“So I roll down the window and I say, ‘Bruce, come here,’” she recalled. “He says, ‘Eff the police!’”

But then he recognized her: “Oh my God, Miss Jeneen, I’m so sorry.” Yes, he was dealing drugs. No, he wasn’t in school. Yes, he’d go back, he promised – as soon as he “beat this one case.”

And please, he said, “Come by and see my mom sometime. She’s doin’ good.”

Three months later, Whaley got a call: a “hospital case” in Cobbs Creek Park. “It was him,” she said. “They shot him. The people for whom he worked took him into the park and killed him.”

Rejection, tailspin, and crisis

It was just over a year ago that Jahzaire faced a personal crisis that threatened to throw him off track. Now he is looking to gain a spot in one of the city’s best high schools. Could Angela Sutton see Jahzaire in Bruce’s shoes?

“Easily,” she said. “This is what I try to explain to people. When you’re dealing with children that are this fragile, one bad day can change their destiny.”

Jahzaire’s bad day almost came in 7th grade, when Sutton got a shocking call from school: DHS was ready to “take him downtown.”

It was the culmination of a string of setbacks. Jahzaire’s grades had been slipping for a year – “puberty stuff, girls breaking his heart” – but the big blow had been a falling out with his father, who had asked Jahzaire to go to a funeral for a little-known aunt.

Jahzaire had been scheduled to make a presentation in class that day. He knew his grades needed a boost, so he chose school over the funeral. “I didn’t know her like that,” he recalled.

In response, his father cancelled a planned weekend and sent him a bitter text: “You’re blood, but you’re not family.”

The brutal rejection sent Jahzaire into a tailspin.

“He was devastated,” his mother recalled. “From that point on, his grades were horrible.” She’d sent him into counseling at school, where he eventually told a story about a spanking that triggered the call to DHS.

That’s the call every struggling parent dreads – harbinger of one of the worst traumas of all. “Not a single parent I’ve spoken to is not afraid that DHS is somehow going to come and take the kids and rip apart the family,” said Chilton.

So Sutton rushed to the school, burst through the front door, jumped on the countertop and “lost my mind. … I said, ‘He’s leaving here over my dead body!’”

She was lucky: a DHS staffer involved knew and trusted her (“He said, ‘Ms. Sutton, I’m so glad it’s you.’”). The story was cleared up, and she took Jahzaire home.

But her work wasn’t over: Next, she cut off Jahzaire’s father entirely. He’d been abused by his own dad, and now, she believed, he was repeating the same thing with their son.

“I said, ‘I’m breaking the cycle right now,’” she recalled.

Jahzaire didn’t like it: “He didn’t do nothing to me!”

Sutton gave no ground: “He already has. He’s endangering your future. He’s a destiny killer. … As long as he’s around, you’ll be on this emotional roller coaster.”

Eventually she won her son’s trust. “He said, ‘Mom, just bear with me,’” she recalled. “He brought up his last report card last year, and he’s been doing good ever since.”

Jahzaire himself is matter-of-fact. “I can tell you all about that,” he said. “Ever since that day, I haven’t talked to him. … My dad was a big distraction for me. Putting him in my past has been very helpful.”

Luck and perseverance

Chilton and Whaley see much room for improving the way schools handle trauma survivors like Sutton’s family. Whaley sees a need for more support services of all kinds, especially when it comes to keeping young men on track to graduate.

Chilton reiterates that schools need to adopt a comprehensive “trauma-informed” approach to everything from staff meetings to discipline, such as the Sanctuary Model developed by Drexel’s Sandra Bloom. In that model, mental health professionals – social workers, psychiatrists, nurses – collaborate to provide trauma-informed, healing treatment.

But both agree that what’s also needed is what Sutton has: luck and perseverance.

“I’ve been raped. I’ve been shot. I’ve been homeless. I became angry, bitter,” Sutton said. “I had so much hate for families.”

She struggled to deal with her own issues – among them, a tongue that can “cut arteries.”

But as she grew older she learned to forgive and focus. She has a GED and a work history. She became an advocate with a group called Witnesses to Hunger, where she met Chilton; working with that group, she and Jahzaire have both spoken publicly about what it’s like to go without food. (“It makes it hard to concentrate,” Jahzaire said.) She’s got credits toward a degree and hopes one day to work professionally helping people like herself.

But she’s still on public assistance, living in Section 8 housing in the Far Northeast on $692 a month (“more if there’s child support”).

It frustrates her that so many are so poor in a country so wealthy, and that the prison system gobbles up so much promise.

She tells her boys that they already have two strikes against them – “You’re Black, and you’re men” – and that they can’t afford a third.

But she also tells them that with an education, they can do anything. Both sons attend one of the top-performing charters in the city, Folk Arts – Cultural Treasures (FACTS). She has challenged Jahzaire to win a spot in one of the city’s top selective-admission high schools, like SLA – and so far, so good. If he stays on track, she says, the sky’s the limit.

But there’s no money now.

She’s already let them know: This year, no Christmas. No new sneakers, no down vests, no PlayStation, and no excuses.

“I used go to the dollar store, and buy them toys, and they were cheesy, but they didn’t know any better because they were younger,” Sutton said. “But now – they know. I can’t do that this year. They’re looking at me, so I told them the truth.”

Statistically speaking

2014-12-03T12:12:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Percentage of lifetime cases of mental illness that start by age 14: 50%

Percentage of the population that will have a diagnosable mental disorder in their lifetime: 57%

Percentage of children 14 and older with mental illness who drop out of high school: 50%

Percentage of children and adolescents with mental disorders who are identified and receive mental health treatment in any given year: 20%

Percentage of children 9 to 17 who have a diagnosable mental or addictive disorder that causes some impairment: 21%

Percentage of children 9-17 with an anxiety disorder in any one year: 13%

Percentage of boys in juvenile detention who have at least one mental illness: 65%

Percentage of girls in juvenile detention who have at least one mental illness: 75%

Percentage of youths 12-17 who experienced at least one major depressive episode in the past year (2004 figures): 9%

Approximate percentage of school-age children with ADHD: 4%

Mastery moves toward understanding trauma

2014-12-03T11:20:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

At the Mastery Thomas elementary campus in South Philadelphia, children sit in a circle in their 1st-grade classroom to talk about using “restaurant voices.”

“You can whisper,” says Dana.

“No screaming,” Maurice adds.

“Please, can I have a Coca-Cola?” Liz suggests.

This is the start of a Play-in-1 session, where students learn social skills and ways to express feelings, then practice what they’ve learned and discuss the topic further with their teacher. Learning about dining out is the least of it: Other lessons focus on problem solving, sharing, saying sorry, and learning more words than mad, sad, and glad to express emotions.

At Mastery Cleveland in North Philadelphia, friends Scott Mintze and Yahmir Small, both 8 and in 4th grade, play checkers in the warm, sunny confines of the social workers’ office. They say they like the place. It’s a refuge, they agree, a place to calm down and get over hurts.

The room is longer than it is wide, and at the far end is the peace corner, where a classmate is taking a break from a classroom upset. There are peace corners in many Mastery elementary classrooms across the city.

“A peace corner is a place where angry people can sit down, relax, probably read a book, probably play with something, until they feel better,” said Scott.

With programs and practices like these, the 17 Mastery schools in Philadelphia and Camden are beginning to infuse trauma-aware practices into the school day. Teachers and other staff are gaining expertise in trauma-informed approaches to handling classroom disruptions and student misbehavior. They are learning about the toxic effects of childhood trauma on learning and well-being.

Experts describe such schools as “trauma-sensitive,” where staff recognize the possibility that the child who is chronically absent, or shutting down, or given to outbursts, has experienced a severe trauma – parental death or divorce, physical or emotional abuse, homelessness, bullying, violence in the neighborhood, or other extreme upset. Mastery schools serve neighborhoods identified as highly stressed by the Philadelphia Urban ACE Survey.

“We began to realize the high level of trauma and toxic stress and adversity our folks were facing,” said Ivan Haskell, Mastery’s director of social and psychological services. It was not an option “to not do something about that.”

With this effort, the charter school organization, with 10,400 K-12 students, joins a national movement in incorporating trauma-informed practices.

For years, Mastery has piloted various programs to deal with students’ emotional and behavioral needs. But this year, the charter organization is dedicating most of its professional development time and money to training teachers and administrative staff to understand and respond appropriately to the impact of trauma on its schools and students.

Mastery Thomas literacy support teacher Rebecca Orendorf leads a Play-in-1 session, where 1st graders gather in a circle to talk about the lesson of the day. (Photo: Harvey Finkle) It has reconfigured school days to make time for morning meetings, end-of-day circles, and class time dedicated to social-emotional learning. One middle school program teaches skills including emotional regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, mindfulness, and tolerance to stress. Students are encouraged to practice self-soothing.

Meanwhile, the staff studies topics including restorative practices, cultural context, building authentic relationships, self-awareness, and bias. The series runs about 18 sessions this school year.

All this is occurring amid curriculum and instructional revisions – what CEO Scott Gordon describes as “Mastery 3.0.” Staff calls the overhaul, including the trauma-sensitivity training, “the big pivot.”

The “pivot” addresses concerns among Mastery leaders that too few graduates enroll, persist, and succeed in college.

Compared to similar students, Haskell said, “Our graduates do better than average in persisting, but not at the rate that we want. So the question is, what’s missing? We need them to take ownership of their learning and to grow on their own.”

They are seeking a breakthrough: Data show, Haskell said, that student performance at Mastery schools improves at a steady clip for the schools’ first few years but then “plateaus,” with gains more difficult to attain.

Looking at root causes

What staff has learned about reactions to trauma has also spurred a rethinking of disciplinary practices, according to John Widmer, Mastery’s director of culture.

Mastery has touted its successes in turning around low-achieving, out-of-control schools through structure, remediation, and orderliness. Now there’s an added emphasis, said Widmer: exploring with students the root causes of the “wrong behavior.”

“Before, there were consequences. Now, there are consequences but with support,” he said.

Where the consequences previously were one-size-fits-all, teachers now have options. In the lower grades, the student might be directed to the peace corner for “time and space to reflect,” said Widmer. In upper grades, a dean might tell the student to take a breath in the hallway.

Teachers are encouraged to utilize restorative circles. The child acting out is asked to think about who is impacted and to find a way to make amends. All the remedies emphasize collaborative problem-solving.

There are anecdotes speaking to the success of the approach.

“Sometimes, kids actually give themselves consequences,” said Natalie Catin, Cleveland’s principal for K-5. Students have written letters of apology to teachers, peers, even parents.

“Instead of a demerit, or detention, we can have a restorative circle, we can have a conference,” said Jean Carn-Wolfe, assistant principal of school culture K-5 at Cleveland. “Just giving a punitive response doesn’t always get to a behavior change, and that’s the goal – right? – to change behavior.”

Nadine King, a parent volunteer, has two adopted children at Cleveland. The children at a young age witnessed the difficult divorce of their parents, have been diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress, and receive therapy at school, according to King.

“The peace corner – I love it,” she said. “The teachers give them that time and that space and that understanding.” Teachers are being successful in talking with children about feelings and upsets.

“Most kids don’t want to tell you this or tell you that. But my kids are getting more verbal. The teachers have them talking more about their feelings. … It’s amazing that you can get a 5-year-old and an 8-year-old to express themselves like that.” She said she’s seen a change in habits and more respect. “And after what they went through, sometimes that’s difficult.”

Trauma-informed transformation

Mastery’s efforts have won the support of Leslie Lieberman, director of Multiplying Connections, a nonprofit group in Philadelphia that trains professionals in trauma-informed techniques.

“They’ve engaged in a lot of training at all levels, which I think is essential,” said Lieberman. “Now they’re integrating this into all their activities – educational practices, counseling practices, policies and protocols.”

But a trauma-informed transformation is a long process, she noted – taking at least three to five years “to fully make that organizational change.”

Mastery’s efforts appear to be bolstered by the sheer numbers of senior staff already in each building – a hallmark of the charter organization’s management approach – though there was no new funding for the trauma initiative, according to a spokesperson.

Cleveland, in its third year under Mastery, has a 10-member leadership team, including two social workers, for 755 K-8 students. Thomas, which opened a year ago and draws 90 percent of its 667 K-6 students from South Philadelphia, has a lead team of six, including an assistant principal for school culture and two social workers. Most schools have a therapist and all have a nurse, said Haskell. Students also participate in small-group and individual therapy, as needed.

In August, Mastery won a three-year, $4.8 million federal grant for school improvement at the Gratz 6-12 campus. Haskell said the plan includes trauma-informed work.

The more adults who are trained and able to work with children, the better, said Lieberman, citing the work of neuroscientist Bruce Perry, an authority on children in crisis. His research shows that children benefit not just from quality adult relationships, but from many adult relationships. “It’s the quality but it’s also the quantity that matters,” Lieberman said.

Scott, the 4th grader, described how his teacher might separate two children who are arguing, sending one to the classroom peace corner while a second adult escorts the other child to the social workers’ office.

His friend Yahmir said he appreciated how “there are people here that can help me … and when somebody says something to me, I keep it in my head so it can help me at home.”

Scott, who has been at Cleveland since kindergarten, recalled the school as unruly before Mastery took over.

“I feel safe,” he said, “because all these adults who are here can help me still be friends with the person I’m arguing with.”

Servicios de salud conductual en las escuelas

2014-12-02T14:00:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Servicios de salud conductual en las escuelas

Lista de proveedores por escuela

Visite pccy.org/issues/child-health/behavioral-health

Programa de Ayuda para Estudiantes (Student Assistance Program, SAP)

El Programa de Ayuda para Estudiantes (SAP, por sus siglas en inglés) está diseñado para identificar y ayudar a los estudiantes que estén teniendo problemas en la escuela como resultado de uso de drogas o alcohol u otros problemas de salud mental. El programa puede ser activado por la escuela o por la familia.

Aquellos estudiantes que necesiten ayuda se referirán a los servicios apropiados en la escuela o en la comunidad. Un evaluador del SAP vendrá a la escuela con un permiso de los padres por escrito y se reunirá con los padres y el estudiante. El evaluador entonces ayudará a los padres a obtener cualquier servicio recomendado.

Servicios Terapéuticos en la Escuela (School Therapeutic Services, STS)

Los Servicios Terapéuticos en la Escuela es un servicio intensivo y a corto plazo ofrecido en escuelas selectas del Distrito Escolar de Filadelfia. Este programa fue desarrollado para apoyar a los estudiantes que tienen barreras en su éxito académico creadas por problemas emocionales y de conducta. Un equipo de profesionales experimentados de salud mental de una agencia proveedora trabaja de cerca con el personal de la escuela y las familias.

Si la escuela de su hijo no tiene el programa STS, usted puede pedir que le transfieran a una escuela que lo tenga.

Servicios de Rehabilitación de Salud Conductual, (Behavioral Health Rehabilitative Services, antes conocidos como el Programa “Wraparound”)

Estos servicios esencialmente son los mismos del programa STS pero en las escuelas que no cuentan con ese programa. Ambos programas buscan involucrar activamente a la familia para resolver los problemas de los estudiantes.

Contacto regular con los proveedores

Los servicios de Salud Conductual para la Comunidad (Community Behavioral Health, o CBH, por sus siglas en inglés) requieren un contacto semanal entre los proveedores y las familias. Si esto no está sucediendo, comuníquese con el orientador de la escuela o con la oficina de servicio al cliente del CBH.

Si un niño cambia de escuela o empieza a asistir a una escuela nueva

Si el estudiante está recibiendo servicios de salud conductual, notifíqueselo al proveedor en la escuela anterior y hable con el orientador de la escuela nueva. Usted tiene que iniciar el cambio, no ocurrirá automáticamente.

“Es importante que usted le informe a la escuela nueva sobre los servicios que su hijo está recibiendo, no importa cuáles sean”, dice Bridget Taylor-Brown, directora de prevención e intervención del Distrito Escolar.

Consentimiento de los padres o el encargado

A menos que el problema se relacione con drogas o alcohol, un padre o encargado tiene que dar su consentimiento para cualquier evaluación o tratamiento de salud conductual de su hijo, ya sea dentro o fuera de la escuela, hasta los 14 años. Después de cumplir 14 años el estudiante puede dar consentimiento, pero de todos modos es posible que un proveedor requiera el consentimiento de un padre o encargado. Un estudiante puede recibir tratamiento para uso de drogas o alcohol a cualquier edad sin que haya que notificárselo a los padres ni obtener su consentimiento.

Escuelas Superiores que cuentan con servicios

La mayoría de los servicios de salud conductual en el Distrito Escolar está dirigida a los grados de Kinder a octavo grado, pero tres escuelas superiores cuentan con clínicas de atención ambulatoria para sus propios estudiantes: Frankford, Martin Luther King y la South Philadelphia.

Lo que la ciudad ofrece

Si tiene preguntas sobre los servicios ambulatorios y hospitalarios de salud conductual de la ciudad:

Llame a la Oficina de Servicios de Salud Conductual para la Comunidad al 1-888-545-2600

Si tiene una emergencia de salud mental:

Llame al teléfono de servicios agudos en caso de crisis de Salud Conductual para la Comunidad al 215-685-6440

Plazos de espera para obtener servicio:

Si su hijo tiene Asistencia Médica, los proveedores de salud conductual tienen que ver al niño en un plazo máximo de siete días. Si el niño necesita atención de urgencia, el proveedor tiene que atenderlo en un plazo de 24 horas.

Si está teniendo problemas para conseguir una cita:

Llame a la oficina de servicios al 1-888-545-2600

Llame si ya ha esperado más de siete días, o si el proveedor dice que no va a atender a ningún niño menor de 4 años. “Tenemos algunos proveedores que atenderán a un niño tan pequeño como de 2 o 3 años”, dice Andrew Devos, subdirector de operaciones del programa de Salud Conductual para la Comunidad.

Si usted detecta un caso obvio de maltrato o descuido de menores:

Llame al Departamento de Servicios Humanos al 215-683-6100.

Asuntos relacionados con el seguro

Información sobre Asistencia Médica

Llame a la Oficina de Servicios de Salud Conductual para la Comunidad al 1-888-545-2600

CHIP – Programa de Seguro Médico para Niños (Children’s Health Insurance Program)

CHIP es el seguro de salud de Pensilvania para niños y adolescentes que no cuentan con plan médico. Es posible que haya cargos y copagos en base a los ingresos. En Filadelfia el CHIP se proporciona a través de cuatro compañías de seguro diferentes:

Aetna 1-800-755-2422

United HealthCare 1-800-414-9025

Kidz Partners 1-877-710-8222

Keystone Health Plan East

1-800-688-1911

Si usted tiene seguro privado a través de su empleador, llame al teléfono de servicio al cliente en la parte de atrás de la tarjeta del seguro.

Otras preguntas sobre el seguro de salud o si necesita ayuda para solicitarlo

Línea directa de la organización Public Citizens for Children and Youth 215-563-5848 x17

Para más información Información general sobre el sistema de salud conductual para niños de la ciudad

La organización Public Citizens for Children and Youth es un recurso excelente. En su sitio web en pccy.org hay disponible una serie de guías y de informes de investigación.

Su guía de servicios en Filadelfia del 2012 está disponible en
tiny.cc/WhereToGo

Para más información sobre los recursos de salud conductual de la ciudad, vaya a HealthyMindsPhilly.org

Información general sobre traumas y atención que toma en cuenta los traumas

National Child Traumatic Stress
Network www.nctsn.org

ChildTrauma Academy
ChildTrauma.org

Preguntas generales sobre salud mental

Centro de Información de la
Asociación Americana de Psiquiatría 1-888-357-7924
8:30 a.m. – 6 p.m. EST

Cómo abogar por su hijo

Hable con otros padres que tengan los mismos problemas

Parents Involved Network (PIN), un grupo de apoyo para padres en Filadelfia 267-507-3860.

Obtenga ayuda para lograr que el sistema funcione

Línea directa de la organización Public Citizens for Children and Youth 215-563-5848 x17

Waiting for details about Wolf’s plan for education

2014-12-02T13:13:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

A new governor will take office Jan. 20, with significant, but as yet unknown, implications for education policy in Philadelphia and around Pennsylvania.

On Nov. 4, Democrat Tom Wolf swept into office, unseating Republican incumbent Gov. Corbett on a tide of anger about state and federal aid reductions that forced school districts to slash spending statewide. It was the first time in more than 40 years that a sitting governor in Pennsylvania lost a second term.

In the campaign, Wolf promised to raise income taxes on the wealthy and impose a levy on natural gas extraction so he could increase state education spending, reduce the burden on local property taxes, and improve schools. He also came out in favor of abolishing Philadelphia’s School Reform Commission and returning the District to local control.

But as of mid-November, he had said little about what he intends to do as governor about education, and certainly nothing about Philadelphia and the SRC, even as key constituencies that supported him – most prominently the teachers’ union – continue to press for an elected Board of Education. EDITOR’S NOTE: During the campaign, Wolf endorsed in principle an elected board for Philadelphia.

He is also facing an anticipated $2 billion state budget deficit for his first budget, which must be adopted by June, not to mention a legislature that increased its Republican majority and elected more conservative leadership, at least in the Senate.

Wolf told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in a November interview that despite the looming shortfall, “there is still plenty of money to make sure that our commonwealth is spending whatever dollars it has intelligently and that we establish the right priorities.”

He added, “Education has to be a priority. We’re going to have to find the funds.”

Wolf told the paper that he thought the budget deficit would ease legislative opposition to the extraction tax. He said he would push hard for a boost in education spending in his first budget but could not predict what the outcome of negotiations with the legislature will be.

Editorial: Paying for charters

2014-12-02T12:11:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

A requirement that the District consider new charter schools annually has resulted in an unprecedented 40 applications. Some are cheering the possibility of expanded school choices. No doubt there are promising proposals among the applicants.

But we cannot be oblivious to the damage that a new wave of charter expansion could do to the 128,000 students who rely on traditional public schools. These schools have been squeezed financially to the breaking point, with students being denied classes, books, counselors, and other vital services.

The District should draw a line in the sand – that it will not approve more charters until the state revamps school funding, including charter formulas.

The problem is inadequate state dollars, compounded by an outdated law governing charter funding that manages to simultaneously make charters feel shortchanged while districts are overburdened. Each time students leave District schools for charters, money leaves with them, but the District still carries thousands in “stranded costs.” Let’s say 10 percent of students leave; the District cannot reduce school-based costs by 10 percent. When the District tried in 2013 to capture savings through mass school closings, the plan backfired; the resulting turmoil accelerated the flight of students from the system.

Rules for funding special education in charters are a particular problem. There are wide variations in the cost to educate a student with disabilities, and charters serve mainly the less expensive students but are reimbursed as if they had more expensive students. Cyber charters siphon off tens of millions of District dollars; they get the same funding as brick-and-mortar schools though they don’t have the same costs. The charter funding drain is a big factor in why the District for two straight years barely managed to open its doors in September.

The state used to recognize that districts assume new costs when they operate charters alongside traditional public schools; Pennsylvania partially reimbursed districts for costs associated with students in charters. But Gov. Corbett killed that funding in his first budget.

A fix must happen soon to avoid this debacle next year. If needed, Pennsylvania can close tax loopholes and raise revenue from those who can afford to pay more. It is within the power of the governor and state legislature to resolve this.

Adversidad en la niñez un duro golpe en la juventud

2014-12-02T11:24:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Desde la primavera de 2013, Roy Wade ha visto desde tres perspectivas el impacto que tienen las experiencias traumáticas en los niños y adultos de las comunidades urbanas de bajos ingresos.

Una de esas perspectivas proviene de su oficina de investigación en el Hospital del Niño de Filadelfia, ubicada a una altura de 13 pisos sobre la Calle Market. La segunda, de su oficina de pediatría en la sección Cobbs Creek del oeste de Filadelfia. Y la tercera, de sus visitas en la comunidad a lugares como los Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs, YMCAs, centros de salud, refugios para personas sin hogar, clínicas de atención primaria y organizaciones de salud conductual.

La meta de Wade y otros investigadores del Hospital del Niño (CHOP, por sus siglas en inglés) ha sido incorporar las voces de la juventud urbana actual, que nunca antes habían sido escuchadas, en el estudio original titulado Adverse Childhood Experiences (experiencias adversas en la niñez), un estudio histórico en el 1998 que examinó los efectos de una experiencia traumática en la niñez. Los investigadores esperan que el énfasis en escuchar a los jóvenes resultará en mejores intervenciones conductuales.

“Yo quería entender lo que sus experiencias adversas en la niñez significaron para ellos”, dijo Wade. “Yo quería hablar su lenguaje de trauma”.

Lo que él encontró es que el lenguaje usado por los jóvenes para describir sus experiencias traumáticas era fuerte, emocional y a veces gráfico. En un artículo de la revista Pediatrics, publicada por Wade y sus compañeros investigadores, un joven dijo “Yo vi a mis primas siendo violadas por tíos que eran adictos a drogas. … Literalmente, si te despertabas en medio de la noche, daba miedo bajar las escaleras porque tus tíos les estaban haciendo quién sabe qué a tus primas”.

Otro dijo “había tiroteos todas las noches; tantos que los niños no podían jugar afuera. Tú te levantabas en la mañana y encontrabas que alguien de la familia de tu amigo había muerto”.

Experiencias adversas en la niñez

El estudio de experiencias adversas en la niñez nació muy lejos de las calles de Filadelfia; empezó en una clínica de obesidad en San Diego, California.

Allí, el médico Vincent Felitti quería saber por qué muchas mujeres abandonaban los programas para perder peso. En muchos casos, descubrió, se debía a que todavía estaban procesando los traumas de su niñez, y estos a menudo eran abuso sexual.

A él y a Robert Anda (otro investigador) les pareció fascinante la frecuencia de las experiencias traumáticas, y diseñaron un cuestionario en el que se les preguntaba a las personas si habían tenido experiencias adversas durante la niñez, entre ellas abuso físico, sexual o emocional, descuido físico o emocional, haber sido testigo de violencia doméstica en el hogar, o vivir con una persona drogadicta, mentalmente enferma, o que estuvo presa. Estos se convirtieron en los indicadores del estudio original sobre las experiencias adversas en la niñez.

Este primer estudio de experiencias adversas en el 1998 fue un esfuerzo conjunto de Kaiser Permanente Health Systems y los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC, por sus siglas en inglés).

Los investigadores entrevistaron a más de 17,000 participantes de planes médicos HMO de Kaiser Permanente en el sur de California. Los resultados sorprendieron a la comunidad de salud pública, al menos en parte porque los sujetos fueron mayormente personas blancas de clase media.

Aproximadamente dos terceras partes de los adultos del estudio habían experimentado uno o más de los indicadores de una experiencia adversa en la niñez. El ochenta y siete por ciento de estas personas había tenido dos o más experiencias adversas en la niñez y también tenían más probabilidad de presentar problemas médicos, mentales o sociales como adultos.

Los resultados también sorprendieron a educadores e investigadores, quienes contendieron que si esto era cierto de los sujetos de Kaiser, tendría que ser aún más frecuente en las poblaciones urbanas de pocos ingresos.

Sandra Bloom, profesora de salud pública de la Drexel University y experta en traumas de la niñez reconocida nacionalmente, dice que el estudio de 1998 fue la clave del desarrollo de educación con información sobre traumas, en la cual el trato hacia los estudiantes con problemas cambia de “¿Qué pasa contigo?” a “¿Qué te pasó?” y “¿Cómo podemos ayudarte?”

El estudio, dijo Bloom, “se enfocó realmente en la niñez y en lo que les está pasando a los niños”.

Durante la década siguiente y más, el estudio de 1998 fue replicado en otras áreas, incluyendo a Filadelfia, donde el Institute for Safe Families hizo un contrato con la Corporación de Administración de Salud Pública para hacer un estudio entre los adultos de la ciudad con respecto a sus experiencias en la niñez.

Ese estudio, conducido a finales de 2012 y principios de 2013, agregó cinco nuevos indicadores de una experiencia adversa en la niñez en un ambiente urbano: ser víctima de racismo; ser testigo de violencia; vivir en un área peligrosa; vivir en un hogar de crianza (foster care) y ser víctima de intimidación o acoso (bullying).

El estudio demostró que el 68 por ciento de los adultos habían experimentado al menos uno de los indicadores originales. Cuando se agregaron los cinco indicadores urbanos, la incidencia subió a un 81 por ciento.

Aproximadamente un tercio había experimentado abuso físico o emocional, y más del 40 por ciento habían sido testigos de violencia. Uno de cada cuatro vivía con una persona con enfermedad mental.

Para algunos de los que trabajan en el Distrito Escolar de Filadelfia, los hallazgos del estudio no son muy sorprendentes. Durante una clase sobre métodos de educación que toman en cuenta la información de experiencias traumáticas, la orientadora bilingüe de la Escuela Superior Lincoln Marie Acevedo levantó la mirada de una lista de eventos traumáticos en su cuaderno de trabajo y dijo, en parte bromeando, “Toda la gente en mi vida cumple una de estas condiciones”.

Próximos pasos

Con la publicación del estudio de ACE de Filadelfia, el Institute for Safe Families hizo un llamado para tener estudios adicionales a fin de “entender el impacto de las experiencias adversas en un entorno urbano”. En este momento fue que Wade y sus compañeros empezaron a trabajar.

Wade dijo que a menudo un padre trae a su hijo a la oficina y dice algo como “la maestra dice que John tiene ADHD, y que no lo puedo enviar a la escuela otra vez hasta que esté tomando medicamentos.”

Después de varias preguntas, Wade determina que el niño no tiene déficit de atención ni trastorno de hiperactividad, sino que ha sufrido una experiencia traumática.

“Yo puedo darle todo el Ritalin que quiera al niño”, dijo Wade en una entrevista, “pero si no identifico los antecedentes de su conducta, el resultado no va a ser distinto”.

El CDC ha estado incorporando preguntas sobre traumas en sus estudios nacionales desde el 2009. Pero Wade ha estado buscando maneras para afinar las preguntas y que sean más relevantes para las experiencias de los niños en comunidades urbanas. A él le gustaría que este tipo de preguntas llegue a ser tan ampliamente aceptado que se incorpore en la práctica estándar de los pediatras y los proveedores de salud conductual.

“Nuestra meta es crear una medida de las experiencias adversas que corresponda a las experiencias que los niños tienen”, dijo Wade, quien creció en Atlanta y recuerda cuando acompañaba a su papá, un ministro bautista, a visitar a los enfermos.

Fue allí, dice, que por primera vez se dio cuenta del estrés de la pobreza y sus efectos en la salud.

En un estudio que hizo en Filadelfia en 2013, los investigadores colaboraron con organizaciones de servicio social y condujeron grupos de enfoque. En estos grupos se entrevistaron 119 personas entre 18 y 26 años que crecieron en vecindarios donde al menos el 20 por ciento de los residentes vivía al nivel o por debajo del nivel de pobreza federal.

Los factores de estrés más comunes que encontraron incluyeron crimen y violencia en el vecindario, maltrato de niños, dificultad económica y una falta de amor y apoyo en la familia.

Los factores de estrés financieros fueron mucho más enfatizados en la muestra del estudio original de experiencias adversas en la niñez, lo cual no es sorpresa. Un joven dijo que “lo más difícil fue ver cómo mi mamá tenía dificultad” para comprar comida y pagar las facturas de los servicios públicos básicos.

El proyecto actual de Wade, que está siendo apoyado por la Stoneleigh Foundation, incluye entrevistar a organizaciones de atención médica y servicio social y a niños desde 8 años de edad a fin de refinar el cuestionario y hacerlo más útil para los pediatras y otros profesionales que trabajan con niños.

Él también espera trabajar más para explorar la relación entre las experiencias adversas y el estatus socioeconómico y tratar esos traumas como un problema de familia, para así alentar a los padres a obtener ayuda cuando la necesiten.

“Lo que sabemos es que las experiencias adversas en la niñez se propagan por sí mismas”, dijo. Por otro lado, dijo, “es posible que los padres mejoren sus estilos de vida porque sería beneficioso para los niños”.

Y los resultados que él está buscando van más allá de los datos de investigación; a él le interesa saber lo que esto puede significar para los jóvenes en áreas urbanas.

“Yo quiero verlos superar sus experiencias y lograr su verdadero potencial”.

Indicadores de una experiencia adversa en la niñez

Indicadores originales

• Ser víctima de maltrato físico

• Ser víctima de abuso sexual

• Ser víctima de maltrato emocional

• Sufrir descuido físico

• Sufrir descuido emocional

• Ser testigo de violencia doméstica en el hogar

• Vivir con un adicto a substancias

• Vivir con alguien con enfermedad mental

• Vivir con alguien que estuvo preso o que va a ir a la cárcel

Indicadores adicionales de una experiencia adversa en la niñez en áreas urbanas

• Ser víctima de racismo

• Ser testigo de violencia

• Vivir en un área peligrosa

• Vivir en un hogar de crianza (foster care)

• Ser víctima de intimidación o acoso (bullying)

Tom Wolf needs to hit the ground running

2014-12-01T17:26:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Tom Wolf won the governor’s race because he made this election about education and he aggressively challenged Tom Corbett’s budget austerity narrative. Wolf put forward bold proposals for funding schools, including taxing shale, closing corporate loopholes, and creating a progressive state income tax.

A landslide vote, running against a strong Republican tide nationally and in local legislative races, allows him to claim a mandate for moving ahead on this agenda.

But it won’t be easy. The legislature, both House and Senate, is dominated by conservative Republicans. And the state faces a massive deficit, thanks to the budget passed this year by the Corbett team, which plugged the fiscal holes with lots of one-time gimmicks.

A chorus of pundits are saying that this will require compromise on Wolf’s part. This is undoubtedly true, but what Wolf must do is strengthen his position at the bargaining table by reaching out and mobilizing the millions of Pennsylvanians across the state who want decent education and fear the impact of spiraling property taxes in their communities.

Wolf should use the first 100 days to establish himself as the education governor by going to the people with a message that, because of cuts to schools and warped priorities in Harrisburg, we face a grave crisis that threatens the future of the state. Funding is the first priority, but he also needs to promote an alternative to the market-based version of school reform that is undermining public education.

The 100-day agenda could be:

• Get the legislature to pass a 5 percent extraction tax on Marcellus Shale, close corporate loopholes, and scale back prison construction.

• Propose an equitable funding formula that ensures funding for quality schools in all communities in our state.

• Declare his support for a moratorium on charter school expansion until legislation to check waste, fraud, and abuse in this sector is adopted and implemented.

• Appoint a secretary of education who is committed to developing community schools that engage parents and neighborhoods as partners, creating engaging curricula, and using restorative justice over punitive, zero-tolerance policies.

To realize these goals will require mobilizing the education base to overcome the recalcitrance of many of the GOP legislators. However, because the alternative to new funding is either more cuts or higher property taxes, a coalition that includes a significant number of Republicans around funding is possible.

Sticking to business as usual would squander the opportunity that the first 100 days present. The governor-elect needs to go on a listening tour of the state to hear from people about their schools and let them know his plan for fixing them. He could call a summit of state leaders to dramatize that we face a serious crisis and help forge consensus around his school funding initiatives.

Critical to success is that education advocates continue to mobilize and play an active role in the shaping of the Wolf administration and its policies. We must push Wolf to follow through on his campaign promises while simultaneously supporting him by lobbying and staying in the streets. We know what happens when an aroused electorate thinks the job is done once the polls close.

Cell phones are a huge issue

2014-12-01T16:24:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Response to Oct. 29 post, “Expelled for inappropriate cell phone use?” by Payne Schroeder

This article is about an important issue concerning zero tolerance and students getting disciplinary records, which will harm their careers.

But it is also about a huge issue teachers have to face. Many groups who react to the District’s changes around cell phone use have no direct understanding of the impact these devices have in a classroom.

Everyone is implicated in this issue. Parents — who now seem to think that kids somehow have a right to a cell phone for safety reasons, which are statistically non-existent when you compare what children faced before cell phones. There is no reason for a student to text, surf the Internet and call people other than their guardians, other than for school work.

Then there is the District, which is just reacting in a knee-jerk way by placing restrictions on cell phone use. Solutions are to use technology that would encourage students to use their cell phones for educational purposes; technology like Poll Everywhere, which can accept text or Twitter-based answers to questions.

There are many other free or low-cost products which could be used instead of causing teachers to have confrontations with students about their phones. This technology could help to keep students off of the Internet and engage them to use their devices for school.

Instead of the District just issuing a policy, it needs to provide the reasoning for the policy, and the impact disruption has on students.

All involved need to be more responsible about the issue. Taking sides will just leave you on opposite ends instead of together working on the solution.

Maurice Jones

The writer is Home and School president of Henry C. Lea School and a member of Parents United for Public Education.

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