Elementary Resources & Contact Information

SEL and Mental Health Considerations

In the article by EdSource titled Student anxiety, depression increasing during school closures, survey finds, Carolyn Jones states, “More than half the students who responded to the survey said they’re in need of mental health support since the school closures began in mid-March. That includes 22% who said they were receiving some kind of support before the closures but now have limited or no access to those services and an additional 32% who said their mental health needs have arisen since schools closed.” Also, the article discusses an ACLU youth committee directed survey given to students. The survey “asked students to grade their mental wellness before and after schools closed, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 indicating top mental health. Before the pandemic, 65% of students gave themselves a 7 or higher. After the pandemic, that percentage had dropped to less than 40%.

Worse, the number of students who rated their mental health a 3 or lower more than tripled after the pandemic began, from 7.2% to 23%.” (Jones, 2020)

Although these statistics are centered on pandemic learning, many of the same issues can result from students being at home all day if they are enrolled in the Cyber Academy. Even if online learning is the best modality for them, the isolation that they feel, the break from social circles, and the anxiety from potentially being home alone can be unexpected.

Empathy for Students

Here are quotes gathered from the aforementioned article from students:

“I have to balance my classes, zoom meetings, homework, AP exams to study for and work. Currently I’m the only one working in my family therefore I provide any necessities for my family. I work during the night so it’s difficult to wake up early.”

“I have been home for over a month now ever since school ended on March 13th and I don’t go out at all not even for groceries because my parents believe it’s unsafe and I’m worried because my dad still works and has to ride the bus everyday with 20 other people and that’s so risky. School wise my teachers are giving me extra homework than what they actually do at school … I also have younger siblings and they have homework due online as well and because my parents barely understand technology I have to be like my siblings teacher and balancing both my education and my siblings is very difficult. I feel very stressed out because it’s too much to handle all at once.”

“My mom works at a hospital where she is exposed every day to the coronavirus and I’m worried something will happen to her.”

“Online work seems pointless. Everything is ‘busy work.’ I’m not learning anything. My senior year has been taken away from me and I have no motivation to finish it.”

“The amount of time that my family is spending together is making us more susceptible to fighting and we have no way to spend time apart so it turns into a cycle of me getting yelled at.”

“Hugging my friends, talking to teachers and sitting next to classmates are now luxuries. I have had dreams about hugging people and wake up crying.”

One of the best ways to support students in online learning is to support their teachers in understanding what gaps may be present in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that may prevent students from being successful in the online class. Teachers should understand the district processes and policies for:

• How to address identified gaps in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• How to refer Cyber students for maltreatment
• The process for referring Cyber students for mental health services
• Identifying student behaviors who may be suffering from mental health issues and need additional services

Beyond policies and procedures, it’s also imperative to help Cyber teachers understand and empathize with the unique situations that Cyber students may be facing. Some students may be traveling, some students may need to work to help support their family, and some students may spend much of their time home alone. Reaching out to students on a regular basis for feedback on how their semester is going will be one way to understand how they are feeling about working from home.

Although it was created during pandemic learning, the video Numb by Liv McNeil can be a powerful message to what could be happening at home with Cyber students.

The Benefits of Online Learning and Social-Emotional Skills

When given proper support, there are many social-emotional related skills that are a by-product of learning online. For example, students need to practice self-regulation skills, self-advocacy and agency, time management, and responsible-decision making to name a few.

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning’s (CASEL)  Core SEL Competencies

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning’s (CASEL)

Core SEL Competencies

However, students may not be naturally gifted in these areas and might need additional support. If a student is not able to get their work done in a timely manner, for example, the root cause may be that they don’t understand the way that they organize their time in the way it works for them. They may not ever have had to time manage before because their school days were mostly scheduled for them. If school counselors are working with students to determine the root cause of falling behind, it may be in missing social-emotional skills that they never had to practice on their own before.

Also, from the standpoint of working online, building relationships and practicing relationship skills are going to be more critical as students as isolated, particularly social students who are extroverted but may happen to learn better online. Opportunities for relationship-building and collaboration need to be intentionally placed so students have the opportunity to connect. The article When it Comes to Social Emotional Development, Relationships Matter, Especially During COVID-19 states, “After all, to do remote learning well, it is critical to make engagement interpersonal through presence and responsiveness, with opportunities for students to engage with each other, and to center both community and personalization. Districts can take this work even further by finding ways to reach out to students and their families in personal ways to check in and connect them with resources” (Duchesneau, 2020).

Support for Parents

Many parents are aware that students suffer from mental health issues, but they may not want to believe their student would be one of them or they may not be able to recognize the signs and be unaware. Many more parents are even less aware of what social-emotional learning is, and may think that it centers around student engagement, which is a common misconception. We need to help students, but for online students, parents are our first line of defense for noticing any odd behaviors because they are the ones who see the students on a regular basis. Even if a Cyber teacher has a regularly scheduled online meeting with students, it can still be difficult in that setting to notice changes in a student’s behavior. Therefore, it would be of significant help to Cyber students if their parents were informed.

Social-Emotional Learning

As previously stated, many parents aren’t aware of what social-emotional learning entails. Therefore, providing parents with definitions, such as the CASEL Core Competencies with descriptors, can set a foundation of a common language so everyone can speak about SEL collaboratively. In addition, the links below may be helpful to support parents in supporting their students:

TODAY’S Parenting Guides SEL Toolkit - “provide benchmarks and tips for your child's academic, physical and social emotional growth”

Confident Parents Confident Kids - “A site for parents actively supporting kids' social and emotional development”

CASEL Curated Websites

Mental Health

Although parents may be familiar with mental health and mental health challenges, they may not know the symptoms of mental health issues and behaviors to look for, as well as the path to receiving mental health support for their students. Providing parents with a simple quick-guide of look-fors for mental health issues with instructions on how to contact the district with concerns would be a good start to providing the information parents need to recognize unhealthy patterns. The difference between Cyber students and brick-and-mortar students when it comes to mental health is the potential increase of loneliness and isolation as well as anxiety if they feel like they don’t know where to get help when necessary. Also, brick-and-mortar students spend time with adults other than their parents which increases the likelihood that someone will notice a change in their pattern of behavior. Cyber students will be more limited to their family recognizing a change in behavior. Providing families with this information increases the possibility that issues are caught and addressed in a timely manner before they grow into a greater or more serious concern.