Since the pandemic, mental health strains on youth have been put in the spotlight.

Pandemic closures provided some students with a chance to notice how stressed they are at school, says Jayne Demsky, founder of School Avoidance Alliance, an advocacy group that provides professional training to schools.

The time away from physical classrooms gave children and teens an experience with which to contrast the regular anxiety of being at school. Now that in-person school is back in session, Demsky argues, schools now have to coax these students back into the building.

“Just like [adults] rethought our work-life balance, and our employers had to treat us kindly and reengage us and to show us why we should work for them — kids are the same,” Demsky says.

Many students are missing school completely, and the number of chronically absent students — defined as those who miss 10 percent or more of the school year — has increased. Since the pandemic, roughly 13.6 million students are chronically absent.

Some share of students missing from school are suffering from school avoidance, sometimes also called school refusal, which is when children experience severe emotional or physical distress about going to school.

These kids might be hiding in the corner crying under their covers, tantruming and glued to their beds, or holding onto a wall, so their parents can’t drive them to class.

Rather than just a distaste for school, refusal can be visceral.

“These kids might be hiding in the corner crying under their covers, tantruming and glued to their beds, or holding onto a wall, so their parents can’t drive them to class,” Demsky says.

Avoidance has become a crisis in recent years, one that schools aren’t prepared to handle, according to mental health experts. Long term, it can leave students unprepared for life. It can knock students off the traditional developmental path and leave them without crucial social and emotional skills, says Anne Marie Albano, a clinical psychologist with experience in school avoidance. Often, other psychologists who spoke with EdSurge noted, there are underlying conditions that can exacerbate anxiety around school as well.

The strain of mental health woes has ratcheted up pressure on schools to provide support. But schools are stretched thin for mental health staff, with as many as 100,000 more mental health professionals needed around the country.

Some districts have gotten creative. A school district in Virginia even constructed a middle school building with extra glass in the hopes that more natural light will serve as a palliative. But a more common approach has been to ink contracts with telehealth companies.

Still, for families and teachers trying to tackle school avoidance, it can mean that there are few resources for the specialized interventions students need.

There are no clinical diagnostic criteria for avoidance, which takes a different form for each child. But generally, it's marked by sustained absence, which gets harder to correct the longer the student is out of the classroom, Albano says. Unlike some other forms of absence, it won’t go away on its own but requires intervention that’s tailored to the student and can account for the deeper reasons a student is avoiding school, she adds. Those reasons tend to be highly specific to the individual students, she specifies.

But it’s hard to solve a problem you don’t know about.

Desperate Measures

Many parents have never heard of school avoidance, and educators aren’t comprehensively trained on it, according to activists and health care professionals. Not all clinicians even know how to treat school avoidance. For parents, “It’s scary,” says Demsky of School Avoidance Alliance.

Schools can conflate avoidance with truancy or other forms of absenteeism that fail to consider the anxiety causing it, Demsky says. (Demsky started her organization after her experiences with her own son’s school avoidance, which led the police to her doorstep and left her “on the verge of an emotional breakdown.”)

The nuance can get lost in efforts to get students back in physical classrooms.

Post-pandemic, legislatures have looked to increase penalties for students missing school. Penalties can range from fines to threats of jail time if the parents are found to have failed to get their kids to school. In Texas, for instance, lawmakers proposed hiking up the fines for truancy to cut down on absences earlier this year. It was controversial with family groups for penalizing missed school rather than remedying the root causes.

But treating refusal like truancy makes it harder to solve the problem, according to activists like Demsky. “I’ve spoken to families and they said, ‘hey, if I could pay $500 and go to jail for a week and have my kid get better and go to school, I would do it.’ So that just shows you how desperate families are,” she says.

Instead, Demsky calls for schools to recognize when refusal is occurring, and to follow evidence-based paths. That means psychological evaluations, finding out whether there’s an undiagnosed learning disability that’s making school acutely uncomfortable for the student, and other measures such as exposure therapy, she says.

In the schools she works with, that requires finding “a champion,” someone who has a connection with the student to help draw them back into the school, she says. In that, it’s similar to addressing chronic absenteeism in general, which Hedy Chang, executive director of the nonprofit Attendance Works, says boils down to meaningful relationships.

For beleaguered educators, it’s yet another hat they’re being asked to wear. But for some students, it may be crucial, activists say.

“Schools have to step in and take the place of those missing mental health professionals. And they really have to step up and become the support structure for these families,” Demsky says.

Recent public debates have focused a spotlight on K-12 math pathways. But there’s been less attention paid to what math skills students need early in life, to set them up for elementary school in the first place.

For early learners, exposure to math concepts can be at the mercy of their family’s economic status or related factors like whether their parents are college-educated. That’s why one group of researchers asked what can be done to close the cognitive development distance that opens between children from high- and low-income families, which they argue is a watershed in equality of opportunity.

The resultant randomized controlled trial, “Boosting Parent-Child Math Engagement and Preschool Children’s Math Skills,” tried to hoist up the math skills of children ages 3 through 5 in Chicago. These 758 students — who were enrolled in Head Start programs or other publicly subsidized preschools — were from low-income families. Study participants were split into groups that received different educational materials. For some parents, researchers loaded up tablets with vetted apps designed to teach math skills, and then handed them to the families and walked away for six months, says Ariel Kalil, a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the director of the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy. Some parents received analog games designed to convey math skills, while others received a storybook. Researchers sent text reminders to some parents to use the materials they received.

The result? Some of it worked really well. There was no noted effect at the end of the original treatment, which lasted 12 weeks. But when researchers came back six months later, kids who had been using the apps saw math skills increase by 0.2 standard deviations, according to the report — an improvement bigger than students typically see after one year in a Head Start program. Groups that were given analog games and parental messaging saw improvements, too.

Another result: Girls got a bigger skills bump from the tablets than boys. That’s likely related to the fact that girls develop quicker in general, and can be able to self-regulate in younger years, Kalil speculates.

But there was another, unexpected finding.

The digital tools facilitated parent-child interactions, Kalil says in an interview, making the time spent more fun and efficient — just better overall.

While it’s common for parents to read bedtime stories to their children, it’s less common for them to solve bedtime equations.

In her work studying the differences in cognitive development between early learners from low-income families and their high-income counterparts, Kalil has noticed that the outcomes are more about the parents than the students. To improve children’s learning, interventions either have to increase the amount of time parents spend with their kids, or make the actual learning process more efficient, she says.

While it’s common for parents to read bedtime stories to their children, it’s less common for them to solve bedtime equations. Kalil came into this particular study believing that you can’t dramatically increase the amount of time parents devote to imparting math skills. But, in this latest research, parents reported spending more math time with their kids, thanks in part to the apps — “much to our surprise and great interest,” Kalil says.

In short, while the researchers thought that they were preparing the apps to substitute for the parents, they were actually preparing the tech tools to complement the efforts of parents.

The Price Is Right

By kindergarten, young children are supposed to learn quite a lot of math skills. That includes knowing how to count, understanding differences in quantities and knowing how to measure things. They also need to have some comprehension of shapes, spatial relations and patterns.

How well their young minds have managed to capture these concepts foretells whether they will be successful in their academic careers. In no small part, that’s because there’s a strong link between these skills and later-in-life math and reading abilities.

So the stakes are high.

For researchers like Kalil, the real question is: Will math apps actually prepare all early learners to be ready for kindergarten numeracy? Establishing that apps can help is only the first step in lifting math abilities.

Nevertheless, the kinds of solutions the researchers considered had another virtue: affordability. Apps are cheap and can be widely distributed, Kalil says, an important feature for any prospective solution to widespread inequalities. That’s exciting, she adds.

However, reliance on edtech introduces further questions.

Wheat and Chaff

The study required identifying effective apps. And the number of quality math apps available to the researchers — who chose to focus on apps in both English and Spanish, since Chicago has a high number of Spanish speakers — was limited. In the end, the researchers selected seven applications that they felt struck a balance between being engaging to students and also prompting them to learn. These largely focused on counting, number recognition and patterns.

Knowing what works in edtech is difficult. And in contrast to these researchers, the average early childhood education program, or the typical parent, may not be capable of rigorously appraising apps. That means that getting high-quality math apps in front of early learners will require more studies, to show which applications catalyze actual learning.

It’s something researchers such as Kalil are thinking about.

“There are shockingly few randomized controlled trials in a significantly meaningful population that really test what is working,” Kalil says, adding that there’s a lot of “nonsense that you just shouldn’t believe about what works and what doesn’t.”

Other researchers would agree. Previous studies have suggested that only 26 of the 100 most popular edtech apps have published research that aligns to federal standards from the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Far fewer of those reach the final tier, having “strong evidence.”

It’s also not clear whether these solutions would suffer from the edtech “drop off,” the phenomenon that sees learning benefits decline because people simply stop using the technology, Kalil says.

Imagine not only waking up to a pandemic, forced into an isolated space without the physical and emotional support you need for learning, but also discovering that the place you call home has been deemed unlivable. This was the reality for many of the students and their families at Luther J. Price Middle School (LJPMS) families after the city of Atlanta condemned property in the Forest Cove neighborhood in 2021.

There were over 300 families that resided in Forest Cove, and many of the children from these households attended our school. Even worse, we were still in the midst of a pandemic; not only did we have to create innovative ways to teach and reach our children virtually, but we also had to ensure that our children and families were physically safe, nourished and mentally and emotionally sound to cope with the trauma they just experienced.

The irony here was not poor property management that condemned the properties in this community – the homes had been unlivable for many years prior. If anything, the issue shed light on the lack of investment in the local communities where our students live and exposed the gap in mental health resources for students and their families.

As a school, we knew that if our students and families didn’t have the support they needed, student learning and engagement would be severely impacted. Over the last two years, I worked with fellow educators and administrators at LPJMS to strategize ways to put social-emotional learning at the forefront of our curriculum and student and family engagement plan. What started as a daunting task became a mission to reignite the passion and engagement of our students while strengthening our local community.

Developing a Framework for Student Engagement

As the School and Community Engagement Manager and Parent Liaison, I worked with a team of LJPMS teachers and administrators to adopt a framework to re-engage students and families and restore a sense of love and belonging within the surrounding community. We decided that implementing a framework incorporating social-emotional learning (SEL) would help our students and families cope and heal from the inside out. SEL is defined as the process of developing self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills that are vital for school, work, and life success. When individuals are equipped with these skills, they can better cope with everyday challenges and positively improve all aspects of their lives, and given the situation that we were in, there was no better time than the present.

Once our school identified the need for SEL, we were able to re-channel our energy and focus on the inputs that would get our students back on track. Our educational spaces transformed into sessions and platforms where students and their leaders could authentically be themselves and thrive in safe and supportive spaces. Specifically, every classroom included spaces where students could decompress, take a break, or meditate to be productive in the classroom setting. Those spaces included things such as therapeutic herbal diffusers, earphones to listen to calming sounds, books and journals to write their thoughts. Students appreciated these spaces and were able to utilize them to self-regulate their emotions, find healthy ways to process trauma and become more productive and present learners in the classroom setting.

After we reached the pandemic's peak and students could return to the classroom, we also knew it would be important to help them identify the significance of their place in the community. We wanted them to identify positive attributes about themselves and then leverage these attributes to build personal, social and academic goals. Teachers began building lessons centered on identity formation, and soon after, students began to embrace their identity and individuality which transformed our classroom and community culture.
One of the most impactful ways our students exhibited their newfound confidence was by advocating for a new nutrition program in the school. Over the span of a few months, students captured pictures, videos and feedback from fellow students to build their case. When students presented their findings to our district leaders, the data revealed that over 70 percent of the students within the school were not eating breakfast and lunch. Students made the connection between healthy eating habits and student performance and identified choices district leaders and teachers could make to build a better nutrition program for students.

This presentation resulted in the district adopting a new food program for our district that was culturally appropriate, appealing, and good for students. When students saw the results of the work they had done, this affirmed how identity, advocacy and doing the work yields positive results.

For me, it was heartwarming to see students find their confidence after such a tragic event and I’m glad I took advantage of the opportunity to make connections and build trust with students so that we could grow into the community we sought.

Family Engagement and Support

Just as we knew we could not instruct from a one-size-fits-all mentality, we also had to apply that same philosophy to student families. Our parents yearned to build upon their knowledge to support their children's learning journey. Witnessing firsthand the stressors many of our families experienced allowed our teachers and leaders in the learning community to understand how we could better support our children and the families we serve.

This was the beginning of my transition from the classroom to a role as a family engagement liaison. I asked to be a conduit to engage with our families to re-establish trust, ensure families feel welcomed and build a stronger connection between our school community and families in the Forest Cove neighborhood.

First, I started by establishing Parent University, a place where parents could come and access resources to create better conditions for themselves and their children. Parents can access resources such as GED coursework, resume writing, financial literacy and individual and family therapy. During this time, I also leveraged our in-house partnership relationship with Communities in Schools who provided a team of liaisons in LJPMS that could work with students and families one-on-one to understand basic needs and help them secure housing, medical assistance and meals.

We also made it a point to improve our relationship with our external community partners including COR, a non-profit organization that I worked with to provide programming and support to trauma-impacted students and families who are marginalized by poverty and race-based educational inequities. Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation has been a viable resource to our families displaced by the demolition of Forest Cove, in addition to families who are dealing with landlord/legal issues, or those who are survivors of intimate partner violence. Last but not least, Chris 180 – one of the premier mental health, child welfare and family organizations in the Southeast – has been readily available on-site to meet the mental and emotional needs of our students and staff.

A Community That Heals Together Stays Together

Through this process, we learned to relinquish what power we thought we had in this space and become vulnerable. We depended on one another, loved on one another, and supported each other at a time when so much was uncertain for us all.

This community exemplified resilience at a time when most would have given up. We tapped into our creativity and learned to work outside of the box. We became foot soldiers and fought for the social-emotional learning of our students and the well-being of our families. If they would not come to us, then we came to them. While we celebrate the impact of the work we have done, we know must continue to heal and build our community to keep our students and families engaged.

Of course, things will never be what they once were, but we are building a better school and community – more importantly, we are building leaders. Shifting from a role as an instructional leader to a school and community engagement leader was a blessing. In this role, I am able to do work that creates a bridge from the classroom to students’ homes and communities. While the displacement of our students and families tested our resolve, I am grateful to work with colleagues and peers who care about improving our students’ circumstances just as much as I do.