CBE TACKLES MENTAL HEALTH
Helping students cope with stress
From Zen mindfulness and calming rooms to “trauma-informed practice,” public schools are ramping up efforts to address growing challenges around student mental health.
But critics say it may be the system itself that is stressing students, including larger class sizes, longer bus rides and sleep deprivation.
And in the same week the Calgary Board of Education released the results of an independent review on bullying, mental-health advocates say educators need to tackle challenges around social media and conflict resolution, especially in early grades.
The CBE has made public a series of new strategies around student mental health, including a program supporting “trauma-informed practice” providing support to students who have faced trauma in the home, such as abuse, divorce or death in the family.
The new strategy came out of a 2016 request from CBE principals who said they needed help in dealing with a growing number of students faced with mental-health struggles.
Stephen Becker, a CBE specialist in school improvement, said studies show trauma and adverse childhood experiences can have serious effects on learning.
“Students coping with trauma are more likely to fail a grade, score lower on tests, have expansive language difficulties, be suspended more often and be designated to special education programs more frequently.
“Brain development is impacted by toxic stress,” Becker added. “And trauma can also disconnect students from resources that help mitigate effects. Both have an impact on learning readiness.”
But trauma can come from within the school environment as well, argues Barb Silva, spokeswoman for Support Our Students, adding that failures in an underfunded system are causing huge stresses for students. “It’s time to address the source of the problem,” Silva said. “Trauma can be cumulative, oppressive, systemic issues that reappear in children’s lives.
“And those stressors are there within the system, from large class sizes to longer bus rides. Kids are having to wake up at 5 a.m. to get on the bus, because there isn’t a school in their community. Those stressors begin from the moment kids get up, and they continue everyday, all the way to Grade 12.”
Sarah Bieber, spokeswoman for Kids Come First, agrees early bell times or longer bus rides can be stressors for kids.
“There is definitely a detrimental effect on mental health when there is sleep deprivation,” Bieber said.
“There is no question that a bus arriving at 7:15 in the morning is resulting in less sleep, particularly for children involved in evening extracurricular activities.”
Bieber added that larger class sizes can also be stressful, particularly in early grades or when not enough educational assistants are available to deal with special-needs kids.
“From a class-size perspective, as a former high school teacher, opportunities for one-on-one time with students was limited whether my class size was 28 or 36.
“What was more helpful was having a teacher’s aide in the classroom that could help many students who were struggling. Usually, though, the teacher’s aide was only able to work with one assigned student who had crossed enough of a threshold to receive the funding for a teacher’s aide.”
But whether it is in the school environment or at home, youth are facing more mental-health challenges than ever.
According to recent data from the Distress Centre of Calgary, local youth are increasingly accessing the centre’s innovative Connecteen line, which communicates with youth in crisis through online chat or text.
Between January and August 2016, the centre received 1,713 contacts through Connecteen. In the same time period this year, Connecteen received 3,862 contacts, an increase of 125 per cent.
Overall, Connecteen has tripled its contact between 2016 and 2018, with top issues consistently being suicide, mental health, psychological distress, depression and anxiety.
Dianne Yee, CBE superintendent of school improvement and inclusive education, agrees that youth and CBE students are facing more stress simply because of the increasing complexity of life.
“The complexities of the world are making it more difficult for kids to feel capable and resilient.”
As a result, almost all junior high and high schools now have physical spaces dedicated to mental health, Yee said, including calming rooms or Zen mindfulness spaces, offering quiet and low lighting to give students a break from daily stressors.
But Dr. Kelly Schwartz, associate professor of school and applied child psychology at the University of Calgary, said that while he applauds the CBE’S efforts to expand mental-health strategies, he would like to see more conversations in early grades around mental wellness, conflict resolution and bullying prevention.
Schwartz said schoolyard aggression, online bullying and social media overuse can all have negative effects on mental health. And while much of it can occur outside of the school community, school boards have an important role in educating students and families about mental wellness.