Trauma-Informed Family and Community Engagement, Part 3

Alice Clark:

All right, now we are broadcasting live to all our attendees. I will give everyone just a few minutes to stream into the room. Welcome everyone, happy Wednesday. You are here for part three in NAFSCE and MAEC’s Trauma-Informed Family and Community Engagement webinar series. While you are coming in, we would welcome you to use the chat box. Make sure that chats are going to all panelists and attendees, so they go to everyone, and introduce yourselves, tell us who you are, where you’re from, if this is your first time joining us. Afternoon, we’ve got someone from Chattanooga, Tennessee, Minnesota, Colorado, Oklahoma, New York City, Indiana, New Jersey. Welcome everyone, and again, make sure your chats are going to all panelists and attendees so everyone can see them. Tampa, Florida, Chicago, California, Virginia, South Dakota. Welcome.

Alice Clark:

Thank you so much for joining us. A few housekeeping items before we get into our program. One is this webinar will be recorded. We will send out the recording and the slides to everyone who registered, in an email a few days from now. Second, you are using the chat very well. Again, make sure your chats are going to all panelists and attendees, so everyone can see them. However, we ask that any questions you have over the course of the webinar, go in the Q and A box rather than the chat. The chat moves quickly, so the Q and A is an easy place for us to keep track of questions, and we will have a question and answer portion of the webinar towards the end of the program. All right. So with that, I am going to turn it over to Sherri Wilson [inaudible 00:02:28].

Sherri Wilson:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our webinar. We’re thrilled that so many of you could join us today. This is the third in a series of webinars that we’ve done related to trauma-informed family engagement. The first two webinars were absolutely amazing. We had some really, really great presenters. This one is going to be as good, or better as than the first two that we had. If you’re interested in the first few webinars and you missed them, those are available through our Member Connect platform. So if you’re not already a member of NAFSCE, make sure that you join. Right now, membership fees are waived through the end of September because that’s one of our responses to the COVID-19 crisis. So please do register, and check out the first few webinars if you haven’t already seen them.

Sherri Wilson:

So I don’t want to take up much of our time because we have an amazing panel of incredible presenters, and I want to be able to get right to them. Today, we’re going to talk about the work that’s happening in Maryland and Pennsylvania at both the state and the local level. We’re going to talk a lot about stress experienced by teachers, because that is, I think right now it’s safe to say that all of us are experiencing some trauma. Teachers are not alone in that, but they are the ones who are going to be going back to school and working with kids, and so we want to make sure that we’re supporting them as much as we can, and really thinking about some of the stress and trauma that they’re experiencing. So our first presenter today is going to be Karmin. Karmin Rouland, a friend of mine and Associate Director of Technical Assistance and Training at the Center for Education Equity. Karmin? Hello.

Karmin Rouland:

Hello, hello. Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Again, my name is Karmin Rouland, I am the Program Manager for the Collaborative Action for Family Engagement at MAEC. We’re one of several projects and programs at MAEC, and I’m very happy to be here today to highlight some practices that are happening in Maryland and Pennsylvania around mental health and teacher well-being. Next slide, please.

Karmin Rouland:

I just wanted to give you some background on MAEC. We were founded in 1991 as an education nonprofit dedicated to increasing access to a high quality education for culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse learners. We envision the day when all students have equitable opportunities to learn and achieve at high levels, and our mission is to promote excellence and equity in education to achieve social justice. And we are very excited to be a part of this webinar series because mental health and trauma-informed practices are at the heart of equity in education. Next slide.

Karmin Rouland:

So just a little bit more about the Collaborative Action for Family Engagement. We are one of the statewide family engagement centers. Our center, again, is a regional center for Maryland and Pennsylvania. We apply an equity lens to family engagement by building relationships amongst schools, parents, and community organizations. We improve the development and academic achievement of all students. One of the things that we are currently working on as our statewide family engagement center for both states, is a mental health toolkit that’s going to highlight strategies, tips, different information to support families as they’re working with their own children around COVID and the pandemic, and responding to trauma that those children may be experiencing.

Karmin Rouland:

But also, we’re going to have some pieces of that toolkit, as Sherri was just mentioning, around teacher well-being, because that is so key right now, and we were just discussing, as panelists, that we need to make sure that our teachers are okay, that our educator staff are okay through the developmental trajectory, because that’s how we’ll ensure that our students are okay. So I’m going to stop talking, because you want to hear the best practices from our guest panelists, so I’m going to turn it over to Sherri. Thank you for participating today,

Sherri Wilson:

Thank you, Karmin. You guys do amazing work at the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, and we are always thrilled when you are able to join us and talk about that work, so I really appreciate that. Next up, we have Kate Wasserman. Kate is the Program Director from the University of Maryland School of Social Work, the Institute for Innovation and Improvement. Hi, Kate. Take it away.

Kate Wasserman:

Hi, thank you so much for this opportunity to share a bit about what we’re doing in the State of Maryland, really looking first at the workforce of early childhood throughout this period of COVID, of our new normal, as many have said, as they’re pivoting to continue to serve children, families, and educators during this time. So next slide.

Kate Wasserman:

First, we very intentionally, at the School of Social Work, in partnership with our partners at the Maryland State Department of Education, have held a lot of conversations to really hold a space for the workforce. So many of which, as you guys have discussed in your previous webinars, have scrambled quickly and with intention to continue to meet the needs of students and families. There also has to be a space to hold and honor what they’re going through. In early childhood workforce in general, and from home visiting, to early intervention, to those educators and childcare providers, there’s a couple of things that make them primed for a moment of history like this. First, that the workforce is adaptable by nature, that those of us that work in early childhood know to plan and then to respond to needs immediately, and I’m always reminded when I’m not in an early childhood space, that that’s a skill of early childhood providers in general. And so, we’ve been really intentionally kind of reminding our state’s workforce of that.

Kate Wasserman:

And unique to other providers that kind of exist in their silos, the field early childhood is community-focused with intention. We want to be spread in a variety of settings to serve children and families where they live and where they are, and not make them come to us behind the panels of existing barriers of mental health services or other things like that. And the situation that we’re currently in has raised to to the public profile things that are stressful, but also things that are foundational to the field of early childhood.

Kate Wasserman:

And so, really trying to support our state’s workforce in a proactive way to kind of return to those values of proactively addressing family trauma, with respect to intergenerational stresses, parenting supports that are needed, and what that does for our youngest, to proactively address issues around disparities with respect to equity and racism in classrooms, in folks’ responses to behavior, and in access to services that children and families have, and the importance of the parallel process of supporting the early childhood educator workforce. So we’ve been intentionally holding spaces throughout our state to really support the workforce, to have reflective conversations with guidance and support about how to tolerate the unknown at this time, so that they can mirror and do the same for the childcare providers, educators, and families that they support, and I’ll talk in the next few slides about some specific pockets of that work in our state, so you can jump to the next slide.

Kate Wasserman:

The first is again, through our partnership at the School of Social Work, we get to work with the state’s mental health workforce for early childhood that’s funded through the State Department of Education, and we’ve done a few things to really support their continued effort to support both childcare providers during this time, early educators during this time, and headstarts and public and private pre-Ks, as well as the children and families that were needing their services before that are now no longer in classrooms, but home. And again, a lot of it has been offering spaces for people to connect, and get to discuss and not feel isolated behind a computer screen with respect to what they’re all going through.

Kate Wasserman:

We’ve been serving first the program directors of those mental health consultation groups, to really get to document this time what they’re doing proactively to hold spaces for families. So some of them are using things just like we are today, like Facebook and other online platforms to offer support groups to parents, to offer outreach, how do they replicate what their child was needing in the classroom, or getting [inaudible 00:11:49] a routine day within their home settings, and then how do they support the childcare workforce as they’re dealing with the pivot of all of these things as well?

Kate Wasserman:

We’ve had standing office hours for consultants just to talk through case specific things, some of which have been how do you replicate a classroom observation when you can’t be in the room through Zoom or something else like that, and how do you hold the line of consultation and not slip into family therapy when you’re trying to support caregivers at home, or for kids that were receiving behavioral supports within the classroom or within childcare centers before the lockdown across our states happened?

Kate Wasserman:

We’ve also held a monthly facilitated conversation, and so that’s been invited by both the childcare workforce and the mental health consultants, and other mental health supports in our state to just talk together about what’s been working, different social stories, or guidance around masks or reopening that they’ve been able to offer. And again, I think the most valuable thing that we’ve seen there is just the opportunity to connect with peers across the state.

Kate Wasserman:

And then we’ve been able to partner with Maryland Family Network, which is the statewide childcare resource and referral network, to talk with childcare providers who have been open during this time. They’ve had a lot of different conversations around financial incentives, and what reopening structures look like. We were able to facilitate a conversation with their providers just around what the stresses have been for them, what they’re worried about with respect to staffing and families, and what we heard was it was a lot about how do they explain to caregivers the new sort of safety protocol and regulations, and the sort of dual stress for directors of supporting a workforce to continue to feel seen and valued, and then also supporting families to understand the limits that we’re currently operating within. You can jump to the next slide.

Kate Wasserman:

The other pocket of workforce that we’ve been focusing on is trainers, and educators, and coaches throughout our state that use the national Pyramid Model, which as many of you know, fits broadly within classrooms and home visiting services to support social-emotional guidance and equity for young kids. And we’ve done a couple of things, and we’re grateful for the technology that exists during this time to be able to have Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to push out content on a regular basis throughout the work week.

Kate Wasserman:

We’ve also put together a Coping with COVID as a family vlog series. So this happened fairly early on. We’ve now produced, I think it’s 15 weeks of content, so one video per week, but really with this idea that everybody’s inboxes were being flooded with many different resources, and folks needed something else to kind of summarize what was going on. So the first several episodes are really about caregivers caring for themselves during this time, with respect to a trauma-informed lens, that they’re in a trauma response to themselves, and they need to be able to regulate, and attend, and grieve what they thought the spring and summer was going to look like, in order to care for their kids. Some strategies around how to talk with kids about what’s going on with respect to missing people, or for the families that have actually lost someone to COVID, and then with the recent events that have happened that also add to the trauma that folks have been experiencing, we’ve been talking very directly about how to talk to kids and families about race and equity, and some of the things that they’re seeing in the news.

Kate Wasserman:

As a state leadership team, we’ve launched an Elevating Equity subcommittee to really talk about how do we return to the roots of early childhood that were originally focused on supporting families that needed it most, to really not talk about culture or equity as a final chapter of content that’s discussed, but really elevate it in ways that as we’re looking through classroom data, or programmatic or statewide data. I’ve done a lot to support trainers and coaches to support educators as they’re pivoting, to perhaps just spring or for many, much more longer term teleteaching, how do they elevate social-emotional context within that, that curriculum that they’re supporting through the screen, and not just the ABCs and the one, two, threes? Because we know that that’s something that they do so well in the classroom, but can be hard to translate over the screen. And for any questions, there’s our main email address there.

Sherri Wilson:

Kate, before you go, I have one question that I think is really relevant, but I don’t want to save it until the end.

Kate Wasserman:

Sure.

Sherri Wilson:

But several people have asked where they can view those video vlogs?

Kate Wasserman:

Yeah. So I’d be happy to share the… I can just put it in the chat, right? The link directly?

Sherri Wilson:

[inaudible 00:17:05].

Kate Wasserman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. It’s on our Maryland Pyramid Model website.

Sherri Wilson:

Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Kate Wasserman:

Sure.

Sherri Wilson:

Great information. Okay. So up next, we have one of my favorite people, Amanda Ensor, the Title I Parent and Family Engagement Specialist for Queen Anne’s County Public Schools in Maryland. Hi, Amanda. Amanda, you’re muted.

Amanda Ensor:

You’re right. Thank you. Can you hear me?

Sherri Wilson:

Yes.

Amanda Ensor:

All right. Thank you guys. Thank you, Sherri, for the introduction. I am coming to you from a tiny, but fierce corner of the universe on Maryland’s Eastern Shore from Queen Anne’s County Public Schools. We are located near the Chesapeake Bay, and because of our sort of unique demographics, but we’re a very strong county, I wanted to give you a little bit of background. We have 14 schools in our school system, two high schools, four middle schools, and eight elementary schools.

Amanda Ensor:

One of the most important things to me in working in Queen Anne’s County is our core values, and one of them that I wanted to highlight for you, was the value of social responsibility. So that our school system truly believes that we have a duty to act in the best interest of the environment and society as a whole. There are close to 8,000 students in Queen Anne’s County, and having said that, we actually have two schools that are already trauma-informed, or on their way to be fully trained as a trauma-informed school. So for being so small in the State of Maryland, we are actually, I feel like we’re ahead of the game, we’re doing well, and so what I’m going to highlight for you today is some of the strategies, practices, and things that we have implemented, things we have prioritized in Queen Anne’s. So next slide, please.

Amanda Ensor:

So these are just, I’ve split them up because in preparing for this, I had so many things I wanted to tell everybody, so many things that I wanted to highlight, and I titled my little section here about us as Fostering and Nurturing Balance to Address Community Stress and to Address Secondary Trauma. So here are three of the priorities that we have looked at as a school system, but mainly in my work as a family engagement specialist, to help develop this need for sort of a changing narrative on what is most important right now.

Amanda Ensor:

So priority one, we’ve worked really hard on developing a common language of hope, I like to call it, across all county staff, and really, this is an inclusive language model, inclusive language training, but this language of hope reflects all kinds of different pieces, and you’ll see that in just a minute. The second priority was really working to create a culture of strength, or culture of strengths, I should say, and optimism, because optimism is really a learned skill, and sometimes we take for granted, don’t spend time working on that. And then finally, priority three is really the importance of recognizing well-being and promoting self-care, because in order to foster very high quality important work, we’ve got to work to maintain balance, we have to incorporate well-being concepts, we have to help teachers identify and re-identify right now, the meaning in their work, we have to cultivate a practice of self-care, and then once we are able to do that, as educators, we can share that with the community and the families to help reinforce those strategies at home. So again, this is really about changing the overall narrative. Next slide, please.

Amanda Ensor:

So like I said, priority one was looking at and developing a common language, and I just want to give you a little bit about what this looks like in Queen Anne’s County. So our focus in this sense was to use a language where everyone felt like they were being reflected in what is being said. So I know it’s kind of that quote I have on that slide, right? “Language is the way of signaling to children, ‘You belong here,’ or conversely, ‘You don’t belong here,'” and sometimes we take that for granted. So there, we needed to do a lot of professional development and really kind of an explicit instruction on shifting the language we were using throughout the schools, because our school cultures are what shape self-concept, and they also are what determine our own ability to think about ourselves.

Amanda Ensor:

So we took some time to evaluate school messaging, and we did a teaching on empathy response tools, and how to effectively use those, we had a professional development, and this was from top to bottom. So I did this Common Language of Hope presentation for the deputy superintendent, all the way down to school staffs, and that was critical that everybody was hearing the same message, and we talked a lot about the impact of microaggressions, and teaching, and things like that. In addition, we looked at partnership language, we looked at family inclusive language. We looked a lot at asset-based language, things that especially veteran teachers, or just teachers who’ve been in the profession for a long time, we don’t often have time to stop and think about the words we’re using. And so, I felt that developing a common language that was sort of changing the mindset was extremely important.

Amanda Ensor:

One of sort of the greatest aha moments for many of my educators, was sharing some strategies with them for teaching emotional language, beyond our six hardwired emotions, because especially during trauma, or people who have experienced trauma, we expect them to understand patience, and empathy, and gratitude, and compassion, and all these things that will help them get through it, but what we don’t realize is those are not hardwired emotions. And so, we spend a lot of time working on that emotional language, and really switching over to honor and value the others, and to look more towards the problem that’s on the practice and not necessarily the child. So really finalizing it, just conveying that message, the words you speak, kind of become the house you live in. Next slide, please.

Amanda Ensor:

So priority number two was creating a culture of strengths and optimism, and again, just to let you know what this looked like, so these were some of the professional development sessions or things that took place. It was really important for us to cultivate an increased awareness of mental health, and ACEs has become more and more of a popular term, but what was shocking to me in my presentations of how few educators were familiar with the concept of ACEs, and how unfamiliar they were with their own ACEs versus everything that they were… All those ACEs of the children they were facing in their classrooms. So that was a big part of cultivating the awareness and really creating some advisory lessons for them, and teaching what the dangers of toxic stress actually look like.

Amanda Ensor:

We did another session on learning to be optimistic, right? And some of that is just the reminder of changing the conversation, especially in group settings, staff meetings, reminding them that school is a process. So things are temporary, they’re not personal, just really sort of changing that sort of catastrophic mindset and taking that second to pause and think, “Okay, how can we move forward from this?”, and that long question of, “What’s right with you?” So changing the focus there, obviously not everybody bought in, but really sort of using all opportunities to see failures as an opportunity for growth.

Amanda Ensor:

Creating a culture of strengths is something I’m really passionate about, and if you’re not familiar with it, the VIA, Values in Action Strengths survey is something we decided to use in our schools, not only with just our staff, our educators, but we’ve used it with our students, and we’ve used it with a lot of our families as well. And so, ultimately, schools are not set up to recognize what have been identified as sort of the 24…

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:26:04]

Amanda Ensor:

What have been identified as the 24 major strengths. And so sometimes kids don’t see their strengths in the things that are regularly awarded or recognized in schools. But conducting a strength survey and helping kids and educators and families really discover their strengths makes them realize that they can start using them in a new way and it really leads to sort of a higher wellbeing and happiness. There’s studies to prove that. And really, also working to use those strengths to foster new passions. So I love to use the example of pointing out to a child who was constantly interrupting in class and saying to the teacher, “You know what, though? That kid’s… One of his major strengths is curiosity.” And helping that teacher build on that curiosity rather than looking at it all the time as sort of, “Oh, gosh. There he goes again. He’s interrupting, interrupting.” And I know that’s easy to say, but it’s, again, looking at things from another lens. Next slide, please.

Amanda Ensor:

And so our last priority, what is… Obviously, and this is not the last one for any, in order, but such a huge piece of what’s going on, but recognizing well-being and promoting self-care. And a lot of this, it starts with our educators. It starts with our teachers. And so it’s really giving our educators permission to pause. So a few things that we did in Queen Anne’s County, I’ve done… If you haven’t seen the KPJR film Resilience, The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope, it gives us an incredible overview for understanding how, where the ACES study and where that came to be. So one of the things that we did among staffs was we did some Resilience community screenings, and then I offered collaborative conversations for staff members as well as community members to stay so that they could talk, learn more about ACES, talk about them, ask questions. And viewing that documentary as a group was very powerful for people. The community bonds that formed from those screenings was a huge success as well in helping recognize… You know, leaning on each other’s shoulders to help us get through some things that maybe we’re going together in common.

Amanda Ensor:

One of the things that… I put that quote, “I’m not regular tired. I’m teacher tired.” But I do a lot of mindfulness training. I’m also a mindful educator, but emphasizing self-care is so important. And I think… This kind of goes into the second, the next one there, with recognizing and talking about compassion fatigue, but teachers need an outlet and teachers are exhausted. This is compassion fatigue, or secondary trauma. They need to be able to talk. They need someone to listen. And sometimes teachers also forget the benefits of sleep. And so I did a big PD about how important sleep is for your brain and things like that for both educators, but also for my families and routines. Something that sometimes we take for granted, for those of us who have established a pretty good routine in our own houses. All of this just ties into the fact that parents and teachers who take care of themselves are then better able to take care of children and students. And so that constant reminder of we can’t tackle everything immediately, and we’ve got to give ourselves time and permission to figure it out.

Amanda Ensor:

So the last part there is we’ve really worked to establish an attitude of gratitude, and hunting the good stuff. And this really came… Many educators reached out and were using the strategy, especially during the COVID closure when we had to transition to distant learning overnight. Because I like the analogy of gratitude being like a flashlight, right? There were things… Nothing is, necessarily, it’s nothing more, nothing different. But if we shine that flashlight on it, all of a sudden we’re able to see it. So really encouraging our educators, especially, to look for the little things.

Amanda Ensor:

One of the things I did for all of our families in one of my smaller schools is I sent home gratitude journals. So as a family they could just take a minute every day and write down or draw a picture of something they were grateful for that day, while this was all going on. I got pictures of lollipops and I got pictures of flowers, and there was all kinds of different things, but hunting for the good stuff, even the little, little tiny things, can be really beneficial. And so that constant reminder and teaching children what gratitude is and realizing that doesn’t come naturally has been another major success for us.

Amanda Ensor:

So my last slide is just my reminder for all, right? The sun will rise and we will try again. And that’s kind of the overall theme for the work that we are trying to do in Queen Anne’s County. So thank you for having me today.

Sherri Wilson:

Amanda, that was beautiful just like you. I have been keeping a gratitude journal for about five years now. I think it is probably the single most important thing I do from a personal level. It’s the thing that keeps me sane and happy, no matter what’s happening around me. So I love that advice. Thank you.

Sherri Wilson:

Next up we have Dana Milakovic. I hope I said that right, Dana.

Dana Malakovic:

You’re very close. It’s Milakovic. But that’s the closest anyone’s gotten in a while. So I’m good.

Sherri Wilson:

You are a mental health and AOD specialist at the Pennsylvania Department of Education Office for Safe Schools. Correct?

Dana Malakovic:

I am. And I lead the trauma work for Pennsylvania Education Department as well.

Sherri Wilson:

Wonderful. We’re excited to hear from you.

Dana Malakovic:

One of the things I love about what Amanda just said was the lens that they are doing. And one thing that we’re really talking about in the Office for Safe Schools is that, when we’re talking about equity and we’re talking about trauma informed, one, they go hand in hand. But two, they are a lens. We’re not asking anyone to do new initiatives or try something new. We’re really focusing on a lens. And we can go through the next couple of slides pretty quickly, Sheri. I put the mission there for the Department of Education, and then I have a lot to talk about. So the next slide is acronyms, and that is just there for when the slide goes out for anyone who’s not familiar with any of the terms that I use, I wanted to have them. And then, next slide.

Dana Malakovic:

So I wanted to take my few minutes to really talk about what Pennsylvania is doing in terms of trauma informed care. We are really looking at a trauma informed Pennsylvania. So what is exciting about this is that Governor Wolfe signed an executive order back in July of 2019. So almost a year ago. And at the same time legislation was being passed for Department of Education that informed trauma and trauma informed schools. And it really has been a year of, how are we going to move forward and what are we going to do? And then COVID hit and it put an entirely new spin on it. But I feel very lucky that in Pennsylvania, we had already started these conversations.

Dana Malakovic:

When he signed his executive order to say we were going to move forward to being a trauma informed state, he developed an office for advocacy and reform, and we’re very lucky to have an executive director of that office who really has a history in trauma, has a history in implementing training not just on trauma and ACEs but also how poverty and racism affect trauma, and looking at it from a variety of lenses. Next slide, please.

Dana Malakovic:

The key for this department is really looking at how we protect our most vulnerable students. So we are moving towards putting a plan out and it will be out, I believe, in the next two weeks. I said this summer, but I think they are actually going to move forward in the next two weeks. And it was developed with an overarching goal of making Pennsylvania a trauma informed healing centered state. So really looking at developing a mission of vision and values for action and planning that move Pennsylvania into a space where healing from past trauma is possible, not just at an individual level, but at a systematic level.

Dana Malakovic:

One of the things he did was establish a think tank. The think tank are volunteers that give their time to talk about how we can be better as a system. There are a couple people in that think tank that are actually in the state system, but most of them are from schools or from colleges or the community as a whole, and I’ve listed all the fields that they represent there. But it really is a diverse group of people who are instrumental in having us think about things from a wider lens. Next slide, please.

Dana Malakovic:

Thanks. So the goals that the team is developing are to increase awareness about ACEs in all sectors. One of the things Amanda talked about is I think when you’re interested in trauma, ACEs is like a normal thing that everyone talks about. But when you start going outside of those of us who kind of immerse ourselves in the trauma and recovery world, that is not necessarily understood. And it’s not always understood how ACEs impact us and how they impact our lifelong health. So in Pennsylvania, we really want to start with how do we increase awareness? And in addition to the trauma informed plan, Department of Education is also working with our early childhood centers as well and our departments centered on birth to eight years old, so that we can focus on how we are increasing ACE awareness and prevention efforts in that sector.

Dana Malakovic:

We’re also looking at building transdisciplinary teams in and outside of state government. One of the things we hear a lot of is that there’s silos, and we are working to reduce those silos so that we can better serve people living in Pennsylvania, and using data to make decisions. Data to make decisions about not only intervention and protection and support, but how do we revise our justice system and how do we engage in more prevention efforts. And then, creating More access to treatment and healing from ACEs for other children and adults. We really want to look at a state level cross-disciplinary team where we’re engaging communities and we’re engaging families with lived experience and youth to inform what we’re doing throughout Pennsylvania. Next slide, please.

Dana Malakovic:

At the same time that this office was being developed, the Office of Advocacy and Reform, I had mentioned the legislation was also going through for the Department of Education and school entities throughout Pennsylvania. And so the PA school code was updated around the same time that the Office for Advocacy and Reform was put out and they developed an educational trauma definition. And this was the start for us developing common language. In addition to having a definition put out by legislation, we also have a core group of professionals across the state, and we are developing a common language document for schools on how become a trauma informed schools and what everything means so we’re all talking the same language. When the school code was updated, it really pushed schools and the Department of Education to move forward quickly to become trauma informed. How do we implement that into our policies, our procedures taking a step back and really focusing on developing model trauma plans and really moving forward in the planning and implementation of being trauma informed.

Dana Malakovic:

So for the Department of Education and the school definition for trauma, it’s very similar to what SAMHSA has in, like, what the exposure to an event, series of events, set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening. But then it also adds in the understanding that there’s not just an exposure. We’re all going through this right now, and this is a traumatizing event, but we won’t all be traumatized to the same extent. And it focuses on the lasting adverse effects, but it also added in the significant difficulty in cognitive functioning. So that is different from SAMHSA’s definition and really focuses on the school part of learning and how learning is impacted with trauma. And next slide, please.

Dana Malakovic:

They also defined the trauma informed approach. When we think about trauma and the rates of exposure for Pennsylvania, we’re estimating at this point that 61 and a half percent of Pennsylvanians have experienced at least one ACE. 38% have two or more. And 15.8% have experienced four or more ACEs. So moving towards a trauma informed approach in schools was part of the updates and something we’re really focused on at the Department of Education and working with our schools so that we can impact healing in our schools.

Dana Malakovic:

I’ve really listed the four here, but they tie in to SAMHSA’s four Rs. Recognizing that there is trauma, and how do we do a school-wide approach to education? How do we put comprehensive mental health services in place to address that? And then recognizing the signs and symptoms and building on the professional development. And then responding by integrating knowledge into our policies, our professional learning, but our procedures and our everyday practices as well. How do we have a common language for healing and support in our school? And then understanding that the reason we do this, and the reason that we’re recognizing it is because there is a path to healing and there is a path to resiliency, and we can help inform that for our students and our families. Next slide, please.

Dana Malakovic:

To Plan for and implement trauma informed practices in PA, we developed five core values and they are the lens from which we view everything that happens in the school, including teaching and learning, our rules, our discipline practices, how we interact with our staff and how we support our staff. The principals for Pennsylvania in school are safety, trustworthiness, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment, choice and voice and cultural sensitivity. We really wanted to develop core values that focus on caring for our staff, caring for our community, and caring for our students, and incorporating all that into a systematic approach that is on top of what schools are already doing and support the principals that schools have. Next slide?

Dana Malakovic:

And one of the big principles that we have in Pennsylvania is that if we’re going to become trauma informed, again, this is a lens. So how do we implement it into our current MTSS? Because we encourage all of our schools to have multi-tiered systems of support. How do we include an equitable trauma informed framework on top of that and not have a new initiative? Our belief in Pennsylvania is that by infusing the five trauma informed care values into already existing practices, schools can understand and respond more effectively to behavioral and academic challenges. That strong universal practices that address the social and emotional learning and mental health set the foundation for trauma informed approaches, assist in the creation of an equitable, safe climate, and ultimately lead to students who are able to graduate and be workforce ready. Next slide, please.

Dana Malakovic:

So one of the things that we did is we’re creating an equitable school system roadmap for education leaders. This is Pennsylvania’s reopening plan that’s being put out by the Department of Education, and I put the link there for you. It has six key processes that we’re really focusing on for ensuring systems and policies that are flexible and responsive to the needs of students and school communities. We know the climate is rapidly changing and things differ sometimes week to week. And we want schools to be able to have support as they move forward. Next slide, please.

Dana Malakovic:

So we enlisted The six essential key processes here that we’re asking educational leaders to explore. But one of the things I’m most excited about is that we are focusing on social and emotional wellness. That’s not something that all states are doing, and I think Pennsylvania did a really good job on talking about how do we support the social and emotional wellness of families, students, and our staff Next, please.

Dana Malakovic:

The staff and student wellness guide is one component of the essential processes. And this guide was developed with a focus on five key elements that should be considered as part of the reopening action plan. So what the roadmap will do is offer considerations, resources, and key questions to determine effective methods of communication with stakeholders, universal practices to address social and emotional, how we create safe, welcoming, and equitable learning environments, whether they are virtual or brick and mortar, and what conditions for monitoring, supporting students and identified staff and students who have demonstrating needs. How do we support them related to social, emotional and psychological support? Next slide.

Dana Malakovic:

The guide begins with a focus on the communication plan, rooted in transparency, collaboration, and voice. We rooted the entire guide in our five principles for trauma informed care. So we want to focus on supporting staff within a tier model. And this is incorporated throughout the staff support section, including on differentiating professional development for different needs and different groups like mental health professionals, or administration, thoughtful planning and usage of natural relationships and mentoring in the buildings and in communities, and development of plans and routines to address your physical, emotional, and social safety prior to the start of school. We embedded self care as a component of the plan and we embedded individual and in a systematic self-care in that as well. Next slide, please.

Dana Malakovic:

I went too fast. Okay. And then, supporting student wellness is also in that plan and we know that this is going to be a thing that everyone needs to focus on, and I know other presenters are going to discuss the signs and symptoms. But one of the things that we wanted to talk about is how you do that in a tiered model. So understanding that you don’t necessarily need to do universal screenings or have a universal screening process in place. You can use data and supports that are already in your school system and data, how you use that data to implement an MTSS framework or a tiered framework that does not align with what you already have. So it’s almost like a tiered framework inside your tiered framework so that students have time to recover, and that they have time to move forward and develop relationships.

Dana Malakovic:

Everything that we’ve talked about with the Department of Education and the PA trauma informed plan, really, ultimately though, is rooted in relationships. How do we continue to develop relationships with our students, with our families, and our communities? Because we honestly believe that the way we are going to move forward to healing is through those relationships. And then I did include a slide with resources. So they are there if anyone needs them. And Sheri, I think I actually managed to do within my time, which is a miracle.

Sherri Wilson:

It was wonderful, too. So much good information. Thank you, Dana. I think one of the things you said that resonated the most with me was the value or the importance of relationships. I really think that’s the secret to the universe and everything we do should be based on building trusting, respectful relationships with everyone that we encounter. So that really resonated a lot with me. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Dana Malakovic:

Thank you.

Sherri Wilson:

Next up. We have Luke Braughler. Did I say that one right?

Luke Braughler:

Braughler. You’re close. That’s good.

Sherri Wilson:

Thank you. Welcome, Luke.

Luke Braughler:

Thanks. So my name is Luke Braughler. I’m with Child Development Centers and I’m a county administrator. So I oversee a large part of our operations with our different schools and locations. We have about 15 different locations in Venango, Crawford, and Erie County up here in Pennsylvania. And with that, we serve about 1800 children throughout the course of the year. And those are infants clear up through sixth grade. Besides a primary focused on student achievement, we also focus on a lot of supportive services for families as well. That could include vision, hearing, health, dental, behavioral supports, social supports, and work, and try and do that for children and families. You can visit us at cdcenters.org if you ever want to check this out or learn more information about what we’re doing.

Luke Braughler:

As a administrator, or school administrator, I guess I’ll just share with you guys a few principles that we focused on while we’ve reopened about how you can be trauma informed through operations and customer service. How can we be helpful to families while we’re reopening our doors, and how do we make it easy for them to come back to school? We’ve been partially reopened. You can go to the next slide.

Luke Braughler:

We’ve been partially reopened since the middle of May. So a little over two months now. And currently we have about, out of those 1800 children we serve, probably about 500 back right now. And that’s partially due to COVID-19 and that’s partially due to Head Start and pre-K counts being closed for the summer. We do those during the school year. And as we’ve reopened, we’ve really tried to focus on how do we be an asset to the community? How do we be helpful? How do we make it, as I said, how is it easy to bring your kid to school and to get back into the swing of things after everything’s been closed down? We don’t want to create… The last thing we want to do is create more barriers for families or create obstacles for them. We really want to focus on how do we be helpful and make this part of their life all that much easier, because I’m sure we’ve all noticed families have a lot on their plate right now.

Luke Braughler:

So some ways that we’ve done that is we’ve really focused on transparency, communication, and removing unnecessary barriers. So with transparency and communication, we really believe the more that we can be transparent as an organization, the less anxiety families are going to have. We’re really trying to take the guesswork out of things, the confusion out of things, and really make it as simple and clear as possible for them. So some ways that we’ve done that, we try to keep families informed and try to be ahead of the curve with information and try to make sure everybody understands what is what’s expected when health protocols are implemented or changed. We don’t want any surprises. So if a family shows up to drop a child off in the morning, they shouldn’t be surprised by anything. They should be well-informed what we’re doing.

Luke Braughler:

When we reopened, we really reached out to our families, phone calls, social media, as much as we could to try to contact them and kind of see what their plan was. Are they planning on coming back to care? They plan on coming back to school? Or were they not ready yet? And as a school administrator, I want all those kids to come back, but we were really trying to be sensitive to families and understand, especially with COVID-19 going on, every family really has to do what they feel is best for them. I really think that’s an individual thing. We’ve really tried to be supportive towards that and be completely understanding if they’re not ready to return to us yet. If they have questions, if they need something at home, or we can extend supports to home, we’ve tried to do that.

Luke Braughler:

We also offered a social story on our website as we were reopening, and a social story explained our health protocols, our screening process. It showed pictures of some staff, masks on. Help parents understand, or really, to help children understand what things will look like when they came back. We’ve also, like I said, we’ve used social media a lot. Anytime that there is a update in guidelines, whether that’s with the government or that’s our internal-

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:52:04]

Luke Braughler:

Whether that’s with the government, but that’s our internal protocols. We really try to use social media, memos, face-to-face, phone calls, to keep people informed. As I said, communication from an operation standpoint, there really shouldn’t be any guesswork. No surprises in it, so I really try to focus on transparency. I really believe that when we look at trauma and this whole situation of dealing with our own personal trauma and then trying to get back to work and bring kids back to care and school, I think good information is going to reduce anxiety and it’s going to reduce the chance that we caused trauma accidentally by putting up barriers or confusion.

Luke Braughler:

The next thing we really looked at is removing any unnecessary barriers, as we make our health protocols and we can decide what we’re going to do as an organization, what’s necessary and what’s not necessary. We’re really trying to simplify those processes when you’re reopened and as they go along and things change.

Luke Braughler:

As an example, if it as a parent if it would take me 30 minutes to drop my child off for care or preschool or summer camp that we do, that took 30 minutes, that’s harmful, that’s not helpful. That’s just going to add to the stress and trauma of trying to get to work and keep my job. How do I keep myself safe while I’m there for 30 minutes in line, trying to bring my child in. So we’ve really tried to simplify our processes and streamline our health protocols so families can get in and out as quick as they can. So really any unnecessary barriers, the more simple we can make things more streamlined, they are the better for families.

Luke Braughler:

I keep saying in a really hard time, we really want to make it as easy as possible to bring your child to school. Honestly, that’s got a lot better than expected. I think really simplifying things and identifying barriers and removing those, has really helped us as an organization to focus on what matters. So instead of getting tripped up in our health protocols and tripped up in different things, we’re really able to focus on that customer service piece of keeping those relationships intact. Really focusing on people, and really focusing on relationships, and really making sure our people are well trained to do that and have that focus. So removing the barriers, being transparent, really helps you focus on what matters, and that’s your families. You can go the next slide.

Luke Braughler:

Supporting teachers during COVID-19. Man, I understand it. It’s difficult to be a teacher right now. It’s difficult to be an employee right now, no matter if you’re a teacher or food service or custodian or office worker. There’s a lot of things that you’re concerned about on a daily basis and you need to understand health protocols, make sure you have those down pat. A lot of people have to wear a mask all day long. Teaching with a mask on for eight hours a day, that’s not easy and that really takes a toll on people. So they’re concerned with that. Then outside of work, you have your own personal situation or your family or yourself you’re concerned about. We want to be mindful about that as well.

Luke Braughler:

But with the employees, we’ve really kind of focused on the same principles as we have with families, transparency and communication, removing barriers, those types of things. It seemed to work very well for us. So some examples of that with transparency and communication, really making sure that people understand the health protocols, answering any questions that they have, making sure leadership’s available to answer questions, and be there with an open door for staff during this time, same with families. Making sure employees are kind of ahead of the curve. So if new protocols are coming out, they’re aware of those and they’re able to answer parents instead of being taken by surprise.

Luke Braughler:

We also try to educate our employees a lot and I think that helps reduce anxiety and reduce a lot of worry for them as they come back to work every day. Some of the ways we’ve done that, is we do have an online training platform that we use internally. So before all of our employees came back to work when we reopened, we required them to do an online training about our health protocols. That way they all were comfortable with them. They knew what to expect. Some of our schools brought those employees back a day early and walk them through those protocols. They learned about them online, but what does that actually look like in this exact setting. And also, I’ve got a lot of feedback from them as well, which I think to help them take ownership of those protocols and offer suggestions, ideas, and make some tweaks before the door opened. That was very nice.

Luke Braughler:

I’ve also focused on employee wellness. We’ve done that a lot through online training as well. And that could be simple things about such as hand washing, to more complicated things like stress management. We try to provide those for staff as an optional mean. So if they need help, it’s there, just on a very basic level.

Luke Braughler:

And we also make sure our supervisors are educated and up-to-date. We want to make sure our school leaders are able to lead their people well. So we have documents and resources available for them, so they can be up to date on current information and they can respond well to real-time decision-making, instead of reacting to it or being unsure. We want to make sure we’re taking care of our supervisors as well. We’ve also just really tried to during this time when there’s a lot going on, again, removing barriers so that we can focus on what matters.

Luke Braughler:

And that’s an employee focus, that’s focusing on our people. And obviously with that, safety is a priority. We want them to feel safe while they’re at work. We don’t want them to come to work, wondering if they’re going to get sick, or if they’re going to have to take something home to their families. We really want to promote a safe and healthy environment for them so they feel good when they come to work and don’t have to have that on their shoulders. That also means working with our school leaders or supervisors to make sure they understand those protocols and they’re enforcing them as well.

Luke Braughler:

Once you’re two, three months into it, some of those things can get pretty tiring. Wearing a mask every day for several months can start to wear on you. We want to make sure that we’re providing breaks to people. We call them mask breaks or mental health breaks, where they can step outside for a few minutes and take their mask off and get some fresh air or collect their thoughts or whatnot. And really try to support people we can maintain our protocols.

Luke Braughler:

And then another thing we do, I think that really helps us to be employee focused as well, we have protocols in place. We really try to take things, situation by situation. An example of that is if an employee is sick or they’re concerned that they might have COVID-19, which knock on wood, thankfully nobody has yet. We take time to talk with them, get information from them, see what’s going on. And again, try to make a responsive decision instead of reacting to it.

Luke Braughler:

So an example of that is if an employee is not feeling well, they would call their supervisor. The school director would then contact myself, and then also our health services director, Dr. Scott [Cartwright 00:08:10], and we would gather some information. What symptoms do they have? How long have they had them? Were they exposed to anybody with COVID-19? Were they in large social gatherings? If they were, were they wearing a mask? Try to gather as much information as we can, that way we can respond well to that individual situation and treat that person like an individual person, instead of just a blip in the protocol or a hurdle in the protocol. We really want to talk to our people and look at those situations and help them on an individual basis.

Luke Braughler:

So I guess in summary, the three big things we’ve really looked at, whether you’re looking at family engagement or employee engagement, I really think those are the same. It’s really being people focused. We look at transportation and communication, trying to take all the guesswork out of it, take the confusion out of it, make it as simple as possible. We look at education, how to keep people informed and try to be a step ahead of the game with that. And then we also look at how can we remove barriers? How do we remove those extra hurdles for people to jump over that aren’t necessary? And again, I think looking at those three categories, it’s really helped us as an organization to maintain what matters, and that’s focusing on families, employees, looking at people, and maintaining our relationships.

Sherri Wilson:

That’s awesome. Luke, thank you so much. I really appreciate what you shared with us. I think it is important to remember that this is all about the people and the more we can make people feel safe and supported, the more successful all of us will be. One question real quick. I put a link to your site in the chat box, but there’s been a lot of interest about the social stories you mentioned, are those on your webpage?

Luke Braughler:

They should be. Yeah, I can get a copy of it. It will be branded for child development centers, but it’d be a great example for people. I could email that to you, Sherri.

Sherri Wilson:

Yeah if you send it to me, we’ll send it out when we send out the rest of the resources at the end of the webinar. That would be awesome. People were really excited about that.

Luke Braughler:

Sure.

Sherri Wilson:

Thank you.

Luke Braughler:

Thanks.

Sherri Wilson:

So next up we have Dr. Angela McMasters. Angela, are you with us? Hi.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

Hello.

Sherri Wilson:

She is a psychologist in the Indiana area and Pennsylvania.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

Hi everyone. Thank you so much for having me this afternoon. So what I would like to do today is kind of highlight where we are at as a school district. And so I titled our slide, “Leading with Social-Emotional learning in mind: Reconnecting and Healing Together”. From the time that we started our safety planning and what things will look like for our staff and our students, we really realized that in order for anything we do to be successful and effective for our students, we have to focus on healing and reconnecting and creating a safe environment for our students and for the family, sending their children back to us, because that was something that’s very important.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

So leadership is key. And Mr.[Vukovich 00:11:34], our superintendent, was to join us today, but he wasn’t available. And he always says hope and compassion, those are the two elements that we want to lead with. That we’re hopeful for a bright future, and that we can overcome this hurdle for our students and our families. And then compassion that we have to meet children and families where they’re at, as well as our teachers, to make sure that we’re keeping everybody in mind as we go forward and developing our plan.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

And before we advance the slide, I have one quick quote, Brene Brown is one of my favorites. She’s a licensed social worker and a researcher at the University of Houston. And she says, “We are hardwired to connect with others. It’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. And without it, there is suffering.” So if you could move to the next slide please.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

With parent permission, the heart on the left shows that of a 12 year old student, about six weeks into quarantine and social distancing. I think many of our students are feeling confusion. We were in school and then all of a sudden you packed your things up and life as they knew it as our students, came to a very abrupt end. And there’s a grieving process that they didn’t get to say the same farewells to their teachers. Maybe they were involved in sports or extracurriculars, and those came to a quick stop.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

So keeping all of those things in mind, this has been our focus. So we want to work to our very best to heal our students. So whatever their needs are coming to us, this has affected everyone very differently. And so what I keep telling our leadership team is, we prepare for the worst and we hope for the best because all of us have experienced some sort of trauma in some way. We have to offer students and our families hope, as I said.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

Ensuring safety. So I think part of that is our physical safety, but also our emotional safety, because we have students under normal circumstances to come to school dysregulated and with behavioral difficulties or mental health concerns. So making sure that we can support our students emotional wellbeing too.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

Building resiliency and working on creating trauma informed classrooms and training our teachers. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that later, but that was a large part of our focus on end of year professional development, was supporting teachers in starting to acquire some of these skills. That will be really important when we come back together. Showing compassion. And so not just feeling what somebody else is feeling, but how can we help to make it better.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

And then lastly, supporting our teachers. Someone had said to me, “You can’t pour from an empty cup.” If our teacher’s cups aren’t full, how are they going to care for our students? And so I really, really feel that that social-emotional learning piece for our teachers, is just as critical as it is for our students. So if you could go to the next slide, please.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

So what I tried to do was put everything together in one place, to kind of highlight the big pieces of our plan for the social and emotional learning piece. So our primary goal always has been to provide a healthy, safe, and positive environment for our staff and students. And we realized that we have to move our students forward with their academics. However, if we’re not taking care of their physiological, their safety needs, and same thing for our teachers, then it will be really difficult for us to get them to access their learning.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

So by creating that really strong infrastructure of support and compassion and care and kindness, hopefully we’ll be able to create as much of a normal situation as possible for our students. And I think they, just as much as I, want to jump right back into being in the classroom and things being normal. And I think I feel the same way. There’ve been times I’m in the office and I’m like, “Wow, this feels outside of the mask, a little more normal.” So our kids might surprise us because they’re very resilient.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

These are our six key areas of focus. And so we had already started a lot of work in the area of social-emotional learning. So all of our K five grade levels across the district already use pads, which is promoting alternative thinking strategies, as our tier one social-emotional learning curriculum. We’re in the early phases so we’ll be starting here to this coming year, but we talk a lot about feelings and we talk a lot about giving kids the tools to be able to communicate effectively how they’re feeling, but then also to problem solve. So that’s a large part of our work, as well as school-wide positive behavior intervention and support.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

So we’ve started to revise and revamp the school-wide expectations. So we realize it’s really important for us to reteach model practice and reinforce the behavioral expectations for our students. Because I think a lot of our students will come in and they’ll feel uncomfortable. So if we feel uncomfortable, there’s a lot of different reactions we could have. So I think, we’re thinking of those students who are like, “well, if I cough on this student first and say, I gave you COVID.” That’s taken the focus off of them, who’s already feeling uncomfortable.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

And that’s just an example that comes to mind. But I think we have to account for all of those different possible situations because that to me, is we need to care for our kids because this is a scary time for them too. Making sure that we’re addressing any kind of bullying through our school-wide program, and again, supporting teachers in those kinds of things.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

Rebuilding connections and relationships. So students have been apart and staff members have been apart for a long time, and it’s really hard to keep kids away from other people because we are hardwired for that interaction. And my five-year-old, who’s going to kindergarten, she met a little girl at the playground. Then I called her over and I said, “Remember, you have to keep your distance.” And she’s like, “But I didn’t hug her.” And I said, “I know you didn’t hug her, but you still have to keep space.”

Dr. Angela McMasters:

So I think that, that part, we have to be careful to make sure that we’re still giving students healthy opportunities for social interaction with their peers and not making it a punitive situation by enforcing. I mean, I know we have to enforce the safety measures, but I also think we have to think of creative ways to allow them to interact with others.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

Promoting mental health and wellbeing. And I think that this is something that’s important for us to embed for our students, but also for our teachers. And I started to see this towards the end of the year where teachers, you could see a lot more of the emotions running really high with them. And so sometimes I would just try to reach out and say, “Hey, here’s some things that have helped me”, whether it’s a gratitude journal, like was previously mentioned or exercise or deep breathing, but really trying to push out and, and letting them know that it’s really important for them to take care of themselves.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

I mentioned professional development for teachers. So part of what we had worked with, those in-service days or a professional development days, teachers participated in a recognizing secondary trauma training, so that they were able to recognize signs of some of their own experiences possibly that could be impacting them in the classroom. And then we also did a training that focused on trauma informed practices and resiliency, so that they could create that culture by having that understanding of what traumatic experiences. How it manifests in students and what they might see. And that it’s not a child problem it’s a, what happened to that child that might be causing them to act in this way. The adult’s response is very important.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

And then lastly is to offer those consistent routines and expectations. So if we’re really going to create that safe space for students, we have to make sure that we provide them with consistency and as much predictability as possible. Because I think the other reality of part of this is, school is a great place for many of our students. So as abruptly as school ended in the spring, there could always be that lingering feeling of, “Okay, so I’m at school today, but is school going to be here tomorrow, or are we going to shut down?” So I think it will be really important for us to reassure our students and let them know that even if there would be another closure, it’s still going to be okay, and that we can be connected in different ways. So this opportunity to start in the fall hopefully, will allow us to reassure students so that it’s not so abrupt for them. If you want to take me to the next slide, please.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

So I tried to summarize all of the work that we’ve been doing through our system of support. A lot of this I’ve already mentioned, but I’ve looked at it through three different lenses and we’ve actually been doing some work with Dr. Roland as well, and focusing on equity and trying to make sure that we’re looking at everything through a lens of providing equitable supports for students, staff, and families. So a large part of what I’ve mentioned there, that’s available for students outside of some other elements that we have incorporated in our district.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

So for example, we have the student assistance program. And we also have a relationship with a community school-based mental health services. So we are able to be almost as though a satellite site for therapists to be able to come in and work with our students. For staff, we have the comprehensive health and safety plan. Just recently our principals, as well as myself as a school psychologist and our other two school psychologists, we went through the TOT, the trainer of trainers from CREATE, to work on rebuilding community, which is a workshop that we can provide to teachers that really focuses on their own social-emotional learning. So I really hope that that will be a great tool and resource for us as well as I already mentioned, the professional development.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

The tier one support from the counseling staff for teachers. So if a teacher needs a break from the classroom, that we have individuals in place that we can kind of do, what Luke had mentioned, where we can step in and allow teachers to take a break if it’s needed. I had a teacher friend of mine say, “Seeing all those students lined up in a mask to wash their hands, just kind of caught me all of a sudden and I needed to step away.” So I think that we have to make sure that we’re taking care of our teachers. And as a school psychologist, we’re in a bit of a unique role to do that. And I also think caring for each other as colleagues.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

And then for families, we’ve been working really hard to make sure that we’re communicating very clearly with them about the reopening plans, about the different opportunities that we have available for them. So we’ve also been collaborating with the childcare facility to make sure that we’re offering opportunities for, here’s our plan, here’s what it could be. And so we’re trying to plan as a community to make sure that we have a comprehensive approach for our students.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

And I have one last slide, and this is basically our multi-tiered system of support, what it looks like pre-COVID. And so our goal is to really, through a lens of equity, make sure that we are providing support to our students across the board and in academics and social-emotional learning and behavior.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

And then the last slide is just my contact information. So I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you all. And I know I always run out on time. So I appreciate again, this opportunity. And if there’s any questions, I’m happy to answer them in the Q&A.

Sherri Wilson:

Angela. I’m so sorry that we had to rush you towards the end. We have so much great content today. It is hard to cram it all in.

Dr. Angela McMasters:

No worries.

Sherri Wilson:

Also a lot of people really jealous of your background today, so thank you for sharing that with us. Next up, we have a real treat for you. We have Dr. Seth Shaffer and Dr. Kristin Carothers, who are going to talk about psychology.

Kate Wasserman:

Hello. Thank you for having us.

Dr. Seth Shaffer:

Hello.

Kate Wasserman:

You’re muted Seth.

Dr. Seth Shaffer:

I just want to say hello. I’m going to mute again. It is your turn. You’re up. Tag.

Kate Wasserman:

Okay. Thank you. Hi everyone. My name is Dr. Kristin Carothers and I’m a clinical psychologist who’s based in Atlanta, Georgia, and licensed in the States of Georgia and New York. And I’m here to kind of talk to you all, along with Dr. Shaffer, about some of the effects of stress and warning signs, things that you can notice as administrators, teachers, and parents for your children, and things that teachers themselves can be aware of as we attempt to return to school in some form, within the framework of the COVID pandemic.

Kate Wasserman:

And there’ve been many pandemics, I think, that we’re experiencing. There’s the COVID pandemic. There’s a pandemic in terms of racial injustice. And so in terms of looking at things from a lens of equity and inclusion, we just want to be aware that there are a number of different ways we’ve all been impacted at this time.

Kate Wasserman:

So I’m here to speak to you all specifically about the stress that’s experienced by teachers as they returned to the classroom or the classroom setting, whether that be a virtual or in-person setting, and how COVID might impact a teacher’s functioning. So one of the things we know is that teachers experience a great deal of stress that’s related to their occupation. But aside from the stress that’s related to their occupation, they’re also under an additional level of stress right now. So whether they’re experiencing concerns about their student’s academic achievement and behavioral progress, students have been away in many places since March, have they been able to interact with students in ways that they feel are meaningful? Are they concerned about their student’s progress? And outside of looking at what’s good for their students and the parents that they work with, teachers also have their own personal experiences of ACEs. So another of the presenters talked a lot about ACEs or adverse

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:18:04]

Kate Wasserman:

ACEs. So another of the presenters talked a lot about ACEs or adverse childhood experiences. So teacher’s own experience of adverse childhood experiences influences the ways that they interact with children in the classroom. And there are many times when we may not even be aware as adults of how our childhood experiences impact us and the way that those experiences can show up in the classroom. So our own trauma exposure can have a major impact on us.

Kate Wasserman:

Then there’s the vicarious trauma that teachers face as they work with students in the classroom. So many students may have experienced or been directly impacted by COVID-19. They may have lost family members. They may have had family members sick. On addition to that, teachers themselves may have experienced the sickness or have family members who succumbed to the illness or who were impacted. So these are all things that really impact teachers every day in terms of the stressors they face. We can go to the next slide.

Kate Wasserman:

So the literature around occupational stress for teachers, I’m going to take the right-hand side of the slide or the left-hand, since you’re looking at it. Teacher stress is linked to burnout and teachers leaving the profession. And I think this is a big concern for us, especially right now, as we are concerned about what does schooling look like as we move forward? So we want to make sure that teachers are receiving supports because we know just as an occupation, teaching is very stressful and people can burn out. We know this teacher stress is also linked to increases in student behavioral problems. So anecdotal research or work that I’ve done consulting with teachers in classroom settings, we’ve been able to track students’ behavior and progress at the beginning of the year, mid point of the year, and at the end of the year. And what we found is that as teacher stress increases, student behavioral problems also increase. So I think that’s a lens for us to kind of approach looking at this year and in years to come that as teachers are more stressed, their students pick up on that and may be negatively impacted.

Kate Wasserman:

And then teacher stress can also negatively impact interpersonal relationships and their own individual function. And so we’ve got to remember that outside of their occupation, they are people who go home at night, who also have concerns that they bring into the classroom as we face getting back to school.

Kate Wasserman:

Some of the things that I think are specific to COVID right now that we’ve got to be aware of is this shift from in-person to web-based instruction. That takes a whole different paradigm, a shift in terms of thinking about how you instruct children, how you assess whether or not they’re learning and making gains. And that can be very stressful for teachers who may not be familiar with providing web-based instruction or prefer to be face-to-face with their children in the classroom.

Kate Wasserman:

Teachers might also experience a lack of control or support from colleagues and supervisors who may be under their own occupational stress and their own burden as they attempt to provide the best practices for their students in a classroom setting.

Kate Wasserman:

Some other things that could potentially be worrisome for teachers at this time is are there going to be limited chances for career development? How am I being assessed right now, as I provide instruction in a different format? What types of pressures am I going to be under to help my students perform? Am I giving enough work? Is the quality of the work that I’m giving really helping my students? And do my superiors or administrators really think that I’m doing a good job? So these are some additional pressures teachers would face. We can go to the next slide.

Kate Wasserman:

So as teachers and as administrators who work with teachers, I think it’s really important that we’re aware of when it’s important for teachers to be able to seek their own support. So we think of teachers, I know in the field of clinical psychology for children, teachers are often the gatekeepers because they see some behaviors that parents may not see, or that parents may not understand. And can typically be the first people to say, “Hey, something’s going on here.”

Kate Wasserman:

But when it comes to teachers, who’s doing that for them? And so one of the things that I think is really important for teachers to have their own self-awareness of, and for administrators to also be aware of, is signs of when teachers need to seek support. So when you’re experiencing physical or emotional exhaustion, when you are speaking with colleagues and you notice feelings of cynicism or detachment, thinking that the things that you don’t do don’t matter anymore, having difficulty getting started or approaching tasks, and also beliefs that the work that you’re doing isn’t effective.

Kate Wasserman:

So some teachers may have the belief, if I’m not in the classroom with the students, the work that I’m doing is not as effective, or the instruction I’m providing isn’t as effective as it would be if I was in a school setting, and this could also lead to feelings of lack of accomplishment. And all of these things can contribute to feelings of anxiety and depression, hopelessness, and worthlessness. And we want teachers to be able to get some concrete support when they face those things. We can go to the next slide.

Kate Wasserman:

So what are some practical ways we’ve heard about a lot of excellent programs that are being offered across different states by administrators, by school psychologists, to try to buffer and support teachers from the negative effects of stress. So what are some things that we can encourage teachers to do if we, or as teachers you can do, if you become aware that you’re experiencing stress and you’re having difficulty handling it on your own?

Kate Wasserman:

One of the things that I think is a practical thing to do is to reach out to your Employee Assistance Programs for time-limited therapy that is provided through Employee Assistance Programs. Typically, you’ll be given up to six sessions and then maybe referred out to someone who takes insurance. Most mental health professionals are providing services through tele-medicine right now. And so if there’s a worry about having to go and see somebody in an office setting and being exposed, hopefully you would be able to access treatment via tele-med.

Kate Wasserman:

The other thing is really, really important that teachers have some social support from family and friends and other people in the field. So social support from family and friends, as well as your peer support network is really important. There are some Facebook groups that have been started for teachers. There are also other social media outlets that can be a good way to kind of interface with other people and to get some ideas and to vent and to be validated and heard from people who are going through assemble similar struggle.

Kate Wasserman:

If you’re specifically for mental health professionals and you don’t know where to start, Psychology Today, the American Psychological Association and the Association for Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy, ABCT, those are great resources. They’re websites where you can put those names into Google, get to their websites, click on areas, find a provider. You type in your zip code, and they’ll help you find providers in your area. I noticed in the Q&A and in the chat, and we’ll get to this later, when Seth and I talked that there were lots of questions about trauma informed sources and supports for teachers in schools. And I’d also refer you all to National Child Traumatic Stress Network for additional resources. And now I’m going to hand it over to Dr. Seth Shaffer.

Luke Braughler:

I don’t think there’s much more to say. Kristin, you gave a lot of information. I’m really impressed by all the speakers. You guys are all doing fantastic work, and the participants and the comments that were made in the chat room.

Luke Braughler:

I believe we have a hard stop at 1, well, it’s 1:30. I’m on the West Coast, but 3:30 on the East Coast. I’m going to yield my time. I’m just going to say maybe something for one minute or two, tops, and then yield my time to open it up for maybe one or two quick questions before we wrap up. I think that’d be a nice way to kind of end this fantastic webinar. So thank you to NAFSCE and MAEC and all the partners for making this happen.

Luke Braughler:

So I work in an outpatient setting, two private practices. I live in Long Beach. I work in LA. And I think the best thing I could offer is my perspective as an outpatient service provider or clinician in the context of trauma and working with children, I’m not really going to reference this slide. You can even pull it down. And this is going to be disseminated as well, so there’s some warning signs of trauma.

Luke Braughler:

But just to illustrate one main thing when it comes to children trauma, or really anyone, is the relationship. So those who’ve experienced any kind of trauma, and in particularly children, I know the most about that professionally, is some kind of relationship that the child had in many cases was taken advantage of by someone maybe older than them, their age, or whatever the case may be. Or even some kind of event like a natural disaster, or whatever the case may be, lead the child to experience the event is traumatizing. And then that child wasn’t able to kind of move on.

Luke Braughler:

So quick little sidebar about that is the distinction between being traumatized by an event or something that happened, and then having clinical symptoms after the fact, and after some time. Meaning, we’ve all been through difficult things and many of us are able to cope with them or not at different times, but if you’re able to kind of overall kind of get over it, then that’s wonderful. If you’re not and there’s some lingering things, then that’s where you might want to contact your teacher, you speak with the school counselor, connect with the principal, and maybe try to reach out to community-based mental health programs for someone like me to actually assess the child. Because teachers, you have so many things to do on your plate, you don’t really need to do that if it gets that far, although, ACE is a fantastic thing.

Luke Braughler:

Last thing. I’ve been seeing a teenage client male for a couple years now. And speaking to the relationship, when things went to Zoom with COVID in the Spring of last school year, he couldn’t stay connected to that format. It was extremely difficult for him. His mom had to work and there were other things happening that were stressful. And part of his trauma-related symptoms would be kind of heightened anxiety that would happen, and that tended to be triggered by him being online.

Luke Braughler:

The work that I, in working with the family and my client with school was priceless. He ended up getting, I think it was either 504 Plan or IEP because of his emotional needs. Being in the classroom, if there was a loud noise, he would get easily triggered and things of that nature.

Luke Braughler:

But the point, the take home before I yield the rest of my time for a question or two, in addition to the relationship is the collaboration that took place. Not every family either knows to reach out to someone like me or ask the school to reach out to someone like me. Not every school does, although the schools that are connected in some shape or form to this presentation seemed fantastic in the school districts.

Luke Braughler:

So I worked with the family and kind of was a bridge between the school and the family. But then ultimately once that connection was made, figuring out, this was a little bit further in the past, but does he need an IEP right now? It’s not about academics. It’s about the emotional stability and he was getting triggered in classroom and that was being a barrier for him being able to perform.

Luke Braughler:

So I’m kind of going to stop there to open up maybe for one question for me and Kristin. But the relationship that the child has to kind of rebuild that trust in attachment figures or caregivers, including teachers with that relationship and others, and then the collaboration between people like me in the mental health field and people like you teachers, I think needs to happen more and more. Sherri, is there time for maybe a question? I don’t know, or whoever’s going to lead that?

Sherri Wilson:

We have time for one question, if somebody wants to type it quickly into the chat box. I think that you’ve been responding to a lot of them as we go, Seth and Kristen. So thank you for that. Somebody did ask about the resource that Kristin mentioned at the end, and I know you posted that in there. Here’s a question, but it’s kind of leading. But should schools reopen in person this fall?

Luke Braughler:

Should schools reopen this Fall?

Sherri Wilson:

In person? Tough question. Right?

Luke Braughler:

Should school reopen in person? Well, personally, I can’t speak to that. I think the way that I’m going to respond to this question is quite different. But just to underscore self-care. Right now, we’re in crisis management mode. So one thing that I’m going to be putting out and having NAFSCE disseminate is, it might even be three pages. I went to town on this thing. But in it is specific things that as a teacher you can do to focus on self-care. There’s going to be a bunch of other things and tools like five-finger breathing and stuff like that. And I think the more that, while we’re all in crisis management mode, whether you go back to school or whether it’s digital or some kind of hybrid, that we’re all taking really good care of ourselves. And that teachers take the opportunity to connect with students and specifically, well, priority one being safety and priority two probably being socio-emotional needs.

Luke Braughler:

We have something in as your opener for online class or in-person where you do some kind of relaxation-based technique, check in with the child, and a lot of self-programs focused on this, like raise your hand if you want to share how you’re feeling right now. How are you feeling? You can use a 1 to 10 scale, 10 being the strongest you’ve ever could feel that feeling, to give the children opportunities to express themselves. But Kristen, did you want to add anything? I know I didn’t answer question directly.

Kate Wasserman:

No, I think that was an excellent way to respond to it. I think to some extent, schools are going to open somehow this fall. And when they open, I think it would be really nice if administrators could also signal to teachers that it’s okay to take time and focus more on the socio-emotional learning piece, rather than jumping right into curriculum. One of the things to keep in mind is that we have all been under an extreme level of stress since this has started. We are also currently under stressed because we don’t know what is happening next.

Kate Wasserman:

Somebody said it’s like the weather. We are going day by day with this thing. And so I think it is really important to have those strategies Seth mentioned, the concrete, socio-emotional strategies, the five-finger breathing, the mindfulness meditations, the checking in with kids about their experience and how things have been going with them, in addition to some appropriate sharing from the teacher about what it’s like for them to face the stressors that are associated with COVID and racism and everything. And so I’m really glad that you focused on some practical strategies and the fact that it’s okay for teachers to check in and focus more on socio-emotional health as we start this school year.

Luke Braughler:

One concrete way to do that, I want to kind of just mention, I know we have to wrap up Sherri.

Sherri Wilson:

Sure.

Luke Braughler:

Thanks for all your questions and comments again. Amanda mentioned this. In Queen Anne’s County, she gave the example of being a teacher and how student was kind of blurting out answers, that kind of a thing. And what she tried to do, which she said, it’s not easy, and hats off to teachers. A lot of respect for the work that you do. Instead of while trying to internally regulate and not get so irritated because it takes you off what you’re trying to focus on as a teacher, that you try to channel that child’s energy in a way that’s constructive and could benefit everyone.

Luke Braughler:

And I think similarly, when it comes to socio-emotional needs, if a child has kind of checked out, or they’re not participating, or a child is talking too much, you might want to do a connection of, okay, it seems like for those who are talking a lot, you have a lot of great things to say, and that’s amazing and that’s really exciting. But it would be good to also let you kind of read this slide on the PowerPoint, depending on the kid’s age, and I’ll let you come back to that. Or a kid who’s not talking as much, that you try to think about as a teacher, and I’m a strong proponent of this, children and even people as a whole, I think, particularly children, my specialty, I work with children and families, children want to do well. They want to make good choices.

Luke Braughler:

But what ends up happening is that things end up being barriers to that. Whether it’s something trauma related or some kind of stressor or whatever’s happening. And so as a teacher, if a child is presenting with behaviors that are like, oh man, this is really annoying. I can’t get what I need to get done, or whatever’s happening, that you want to ask yourself, what’s going on underneath this? And then, like Kristin said earlier, you could reach out to your network of teachers and other colleagues, even family members, and try to think about constructively, what’s really going on here? And let me see how I can help, because we’re all really in this together.

Sherri Wilson:

I think that was the perfect response to that question because the challenge is nobody really knows what’s going to happen. And a lot of the anxiety comes from not knowing. And so there’s a lot of fear and anxiety going on. And the more we can think about these things before we end up back in schools, however that ends up looking, the better off we’ll probably all be. Thank you so much, Dr. Carothers, Dr. Shaffer.

Luke Braughler:

You’re welcome.

Sherri Wilson:

Excellent. Excellent advice. We look forward to your resources when we get them. I think it’s going to be super helpful. I’m going to ask Karmen to check back in with us. Tell us what’s coming up, Karmen.

Karmin Rouland:

Yes. Thank you everyone. Thank you to the panelists. Thank you to the participants today. I really enjoyed this, learned a lot. Before you go, we just want to announce that tomorrow the Mid Atlantic Equity Consortium Collaborative Action for Family Engagement Center will be kicking off a second part of our series, The Family Table. It’s going to focus on how are we going to reopen schools. That’s tomorrow. Please register at the link on the screen. I will also make sure that’s posted in the chat box. And then we’ll be hearing from Steven Hicks and Pam Smith. Stephen from MSDE, and Pam from Pennsylvania Department of Education. And we have two other sessions on Thursday, July 30th, and Thursday, August 6th, which are going to focus on families. Well, this is all focused on families, but we’re going to hear from families about working on school reopening decisions and making sure that their voices are heard. And how do we do that? There’s a registration link, again, but I’ll also post it in the chat box. Thank you.

Sherri Wilson:

Karmen, if anybody hasn’t had a chance to join The Family Table yet, they absolutely should. It’s incredibly powerful. And perfect timing, since we finished today with the question about the reentry to schools. The opportunity to participate in that session tomorrow, I think, is absolutely fantastically timed.

Sherri Wilson:

So thank you everyone. Thank you to all of our panelists today. They just did an amazing job. I’m sorry we didn’t have time to get to more questions. We’re going to share those with the panelists and try and get some responses to them. And then we’ll send that out when we send out the link to the recording, as well as the slides and those resources that Dr. Shaffer was putting together for us. Thank you all very much. Stay safe, stay healthy, and we’ll see you next time.

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:40:31]