Challenges await youngest students

Extra anxiety may accompany return to CCSD’s classrooms

Some of the Las Vegas Valley’s youngest students are facing a huge transition this week as they set foot in a classroom for the first time in nearly a year — or the first time ever, for some — and mental health experts warn that it may not a smooth one.

The first day of school is always fraught with emotion, but Monday’s return to the classroom for some Clark County School District preschool through third grade students is expected to bringing an added dimension to the usual anxieties, experts say.

Young children may be facing mental health challenges stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, including fears about getting

sick, grieving the death of a family member or feeling the effects of a parent’s job loss, they note. Others may suffer from acute separation anxiety after being home all day with their parents while the schools were closed.

Still others may have suffered abuse or neglect at home without the safety net that in-person schooling provides in terms of spotting the warning signs.

“We’ve got kids going back to classrooms for the first time in a year, and we need to be looking at what they’ve been doing for the past year,” said John Etzell, executive director at the Las Vegas-based nonprofit Boys Town Nevada.

For example, Etzell said, during distance learning some kids may have been doing schoolwork or attending live class sessions from a comfortable sofa or bed, surrounded by pets or siblings. Or they may have gotten used to days that lack structure or developed the habit of moving frequently, he added.

The situation will be very different in the classroom when the first cohort of kids take their seats on Monday and Tuesday under a hybrid instructional model combining two days a week of in-person learning and three days with distance learning. Students in a second cohort that will attend classes on Thursday and Friday. Families also have the option of continuing with full distance learning, which has been in place for the school district’s roughly 307,000 students since March 23.

District officials and school personnel will be well aware that some of the returning students may be in fragile states.

All staff returning under the hybrid model were slated to watch a “handle with care trauma-informed video,” according to the school district’s reopening plan.

Schools also are supposed to “reteach school and classroom expectations and avoid punitive approaches when managing negative behaviors” while also providing opportunities for students to re-establish routines, it said.

And schools are directed to identify students and families who have been harmed by the pandemic or experienced a major loss and notify a school leadership team, according to the plan.

Child psychologists ready to step in

Boys Town Nevada has a local behavioral health clinic staffed by three child psychologists. The nonprofit also contracts with 14 Clark County School District campuses — primarily Title 1 schools with high poverty rates — to receive referrals for children in need of behavioral health services, including for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, depression, verbal and physical aggression, difficulties with adjustments, trauma, relationship challenges, phobias and habits such as hair pulling.

With children back in classrooms in person, “the expectations are going to be significantly different,” Etzell said, noting that for some students it will be their first time in a

classroom environment. “Behaviors are going to be expected.”

The types of behavior will run the gamut from “struggling to sit still” and having difficulty following instructions to being disruptive during class or experiencing emotional outbursts, experts say.

Etzell said he recommends educators treat the Monday return like the first day of school and consider ways to make it fun and exciting.

“Behaviors are going to happen, and being able to listen with empathy to whatever a kid might be feeling needs to be happening both at the school and parent level,” he said.

Katherine Lee, an assistant professor in residence for the UNLV school psychology program, said many kids will handle the transition without too much drama.

“I think it really depends on the child and the family and the teacher and how they all prepare the

ʻ Behaviors are going to happen and being able to listen with empathy to whatever a kid might be feeling needs to be happening both at the school and parent level. ’ John Etzell Executive director, Boys Town Nevada

K.M. Cannon Las Vegas Review-Journal @KMCannonPhoto First grader Tatiana Melgoza, 6, left, and second grader Thelma Castro-Rodriguez, 8, choose books at a school supply event Wednesday at McCaw STEAM Academy in Henderson.

K.M. Cannon Las Vegas Review-Journal @KMCannonPhoto Kindergarten teacher Brianne Gomez gets ready to deliver student materials at McCaw STEAM Academy. The magnet school is preparing to transition to a hybrid model.