⏩ Teletherapy services for students increase amid shutdown.

When schools first closed, parent Vita Silina was skeptical that distance learning could provide the services her son Gustavs Silins needed.

It takes a team to support Gustavs, a ninthgrader at Wilton High School, who receives speech and language therapy, academic support in all his classes and counseling from a school psychologist.

“The first two weeks were kind of tough for him and for me,” she said.

She sat in meetings with him to help him feel comfortable. Step by step, teachers eased him into feeling confident in front of a screen.

Six weeks in, Silina can now step back. Gustavs is more responsible in school now, and Wilton High School has a good plan in place, she said.

“He’s benefiting every week,” she said. “He feels comfortable with computers and technology. His independence level has built more than it did at school.”

He plays speech and language games with hs therapist through PresenceLearning, which provides live online special education-related services, including teletherapy, to K-12 schools. Therapists interact with students over a virtual tabletop with the same resources they would use in school, uploaded and displayed on “the table.”

“That brings a sense of normalcy to the kids and the therapist,” said Andrea Leonardi, the assistant superintendent of schools for special services for Wilton Public Schools. “As the novelty of being on the computer all day with teachers wears off, students are finding a sense of normalcy and safety, in the fact they’re seeing a tabletop.”

Without the structure and organization of school, New York psychologist Lata McGinn said, it is hard for children and young people, whose cerebral cortexes have yet to fully mature, to regulate themselves, and manage their time and what distracts them.

“One thing we are learning to appreciate is that we are learning how much a teacher’s role is not just teaching, but managing them,” she said.

Without in-person therapy options, many offices and school districts are taking the therapeutic services they provide online. While psychologists report the transition moving fairly seamlessly, Connecticut public school districts are at different steps in their move to teletherapy.

Normally, PresenceLearning’s platform comes with therapists, who Leonardi wanted to bring in when school therapists take maternity leave. During the pandemic, the program has been extended to school therapists.

In other districts, teletherapy looks different.

Darien parent Jamie Zionic has four kids under nine with individualized education plans, and all four receive occupational therapy and two receive physical therapies.

“Originally, we weren’t receiving teletherapy,” she said.

When teletherapy started, all four received the same tabletop activities, and work was discussed over the phone. Now, although teletherapy is being used, the platforms vary from Google Meets to Zoom, which confuses parents and students, she

“One thing we are learning to appreciate is that we are learning how much a teacher’s role is not just teaching, but managing them.”

Lata McGinn

said.

Special education students receive services from their public schools, but all students are going feel the effects of the changes to education, said McGinn: decreased motivation, executive functioning, and increased anxiety and depression.

“This is not going to just impact kids in special education, this will impact the entire population,” she said.

Her offices are providing services for students who may not be receiving them in school. In Connecticut, Sasco River Center — with locations in Darien, Stamford and Wilton — is adapting testing, psychotherapy, educational support, medication management and sensory processing treatment to teletherapy.

And districts are connecting families to services provided in-town.

In Greenwich, Pupil Personnel Services Director Mary Forde said district administrators connect struggling students and families with school psychologists and social workers.

Students may have had anxiety in the past, but were not receiving therapy. Now, separated from teachers and friends, students may feel more anxious, Forde said.

Social workers are calling and checking in, and if the family needs immediate intervention, 211 services are called, she said.

“Sometimes, it’s a case of a student not checking in,” Forde said. “We would send emails, make phone calls, anything we can do to get in touch.”

Teachers can receive counseling from the school, or through the teacher’s union, she said.

“There are a lot of options for people,” Forde said. “The most important thing is that they let somebody know.”

For Silina, this process meant trusting the teachers to make a plan for her child, and everyone learned something new in the process.

“In this very unusual time, it gives an opportunity for us, and our kids, even those with special needs, to learn something new,” she said.

Contributed photo Gustavs Silins, a ninth-grader at Wilton High School, receives counseling, one-on-one academic help and teletherapy services through his school. PresenceLearning provides a proprietary platform that school therapists are able to use during the distance learning era. They can upload resources normally used in the classroom to the program, which simulates a “tabletop” for various games and activities that make up therapy.