School’s in Session: How to Navigate the Upcoming Academic Year

1:56 To demonstrate how the pandemic has affected academic performance, Dr. Tarasawa compares reading and math achievement scores from the 2020-2021 school year to the 2018-2019 school year. The data show that children did make learning gains throughout the year, but scores indicated less progress than in the final pre-pandemic year, especially in math. Children in younger grades, students experiencing poverty, and/or students of color were particularly negatively impacted. Dr. Tarasawa notes that these results provide a call to action – communities most impacted by the pandemic need to be prioritized for resources.

9:55 Theresa Chapple, PhD, MPH, Director of a local health department, dispels the assumptions that children are at a lower risk for contracting severe COVID-19 and discusses the origins of this false belief. She presents data showing the dramatic increase in child hospitalizations due to COVID-19 in the past few months. She reminds everyone that the best way to keep children safe is to wear masks and socially distance wherever possible. Dr. Chapple emphasizes that Black and Hispanic children are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and provides examples for why remaining in online schooling may be the best option for some children at this time, though there are steps everyone can take to keep students safe in the classroom.

24:36 Sharing a school administrator’s perspective, Sean Bulson, EdD, Superintendent of Harford County public schools in Maryland, shares tips and resources for a successful transition. He asserts that parents should engage in ongoing conversations with their children about expectations and worries for the coming year, stay involved in school events, and keep in touch with teachers. He shares lessons learned from remote schooling, particularly how technology’s role in education has changed, and what teachers are keeping in mind as they think critically about the best ways to incorporate screens in classrooms.

34:51 Understandably, children and teens may have anxiety about returning to school. Joseph McGuire, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, walks viewers through the process of identifying signs and symptoms of childhood anxiety. He recommends strategies for parents to help children cope, such as validating feelings and addressing misperceptions. Dr. McGuire acknowledges that while many parents and teachers may be struggling with their own mental health, it is important to model a strong front for children; however, it is paramount for parents and educators to make time to increase their own wellbeing.

45:04 Phyllis Fagell, school counselor, author, and journalist, provides more strategies for parents to help their children through this difficult time. The pandemic has changed our social landscape and children may be feeling lonely and isolated. Parents can support children by reframing social setbacks and normalizing insecurity. If children are feeling anxious about academic achievement, parents can help them set attainable expectations. Ms. Fagell emphasizes the importance of finding joy and humor in tough situations without invalidating challenges.

55:53 Parenting journalist Donna Tetreault reminds parents to approach conversations with their children with compassion and connection. Children are dealing with unprecedented challenges and parents must meet them where they are, give them space to feel their emotions, and ask “how can I help you?”. She discusses the benefits of schedules and routines and how families can best establish and maintain a balanced lifestyle. However, she notes that flexibility is a super power and schedules should allow for change to best address everyone’s needs.

1:07:56 The webinar concludes with the panelist weighing in on how to strike a balance between the rigor of school and children’s social-emotional wellbeing, as well as where they are finding hope as they look toward the upcoming school year.

[Dr. Gabrielle McHarg]: Hi and welcome back I am Dr. Gabrielle McHarg, assistant director of children and screens institute of digital media and child development and host of today’s Ask the Experts webinar. We are so excited to be back with our series. As parents students and teachers face yet another year of managing the uncertainty around the upcoming school year including unknown learning situations mask mandates vaccinations and the delta variant, we have convened an outstanding group of interdisciplinary experts to help you breathe a little easier by sharing their evidence-based advice about how to tolerate the unexpected and focus on what you can control, as well as how to support your kids as they navigate anxiety stress and other emotions. The panel has reviewed the questions you submitted, on everything from helping kids catch up on learning to keeping them safe in their classrooms, to maintaining your well-being, and will answer as many as possible during and after their presentations. If you have additional questions during the workshop please type them into the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. When you do please indicate whether you would like to ask your question live on camera if time permits or if you would prefer that the moderator read your question. We are recording today’s workshop and will upload a video to our youtube channel in the coming days. All registrants will receive a link to our channel where you will find videos from our past 32 webinars which we hope you’ll watch as you wait for this video to be posted. It is now my great pleasure to introduce our moderator Dr Beth Tarasawa leads NWEA’s research team that is devoted to advancements in assessment and growth measurement answering fundamental questions to inform policy and practice and drive educational innovation she also plays a key role in building collaborations with universities foundations and school districts to produce rigorous and accessible educational policy research. We are delighted to have you here today. Welcome back.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: thank you so much gabrielle it’s a pleasure to be here. I’m going to go ahead and pull up my slides. I’m honored to be here we are going to be presenting our recent research on the educational impacts. For those of you that are unfamiliar with NWEA, we are a not-for-profit education organization most known for our K-12 assessments that are given in our core subjects typically in fall, winter and spring and we serve about 12 million kids annually or one in four kids in the U.S. So this means we have really robust data on how kids perform academically. The research today that I’ll be presenting draws on map growth data from over five million kids in grades three through eight from across the country. To understand how gains across the 2021 school year compared to -pre-pandemic trends so, we’re going to look at reading results first. This graph presents average test scores across the fall, winter, and spring seasons. We can connect these points to infer a pattern of gains across time; the dotted line represents a pattern for a typical school year in grades three, five and seven drawn from 2018-19 data, the most recent with no impacts from Covid. So let’s examine what happened in the 2021 school year. First, you’ll see that at the start of the year in reading students in our sample were performing at similar levels this fall. However, as we follow students over time the solid lines and the dotted lines are not parallel and widen. Although kids are making some gains in reading the solid lines are showing modest evidence of increasing through the school year the extent to which they are making gains is diminished relative to a typical school year. In math again we see the dotted lines which represent historic averages, and when we overlay the solid lines to look at what happened this past year we see similar patterns. The solid lines are showing some evidence of gains across the school year but those gains are at a diminished rate relative to historic averages. These math trends are particularly painful. Students entered the fall already achieving below historic averages and grew at a diminished rate. So the end result is in spring we saw widening gaps in achievement in this Covid year compared to a typical year. Our next research question focuses on achievement this past spring, here we compared achievement in the Spring of 21 to historic levels. For this analysis we focus on percentile rankings and those percentile rankings are based on our map growth norms achievement norms allow us to situate a test performance relative to nationally representative averages. So in other words we can compare students to their peer students. who are in the same grade and receive the same amount of instruction at the time of the assessment. We then convert test scores into percentile ranks. So to examine these achievement patterns we’re next going to look at a series of arrow plots. These figures contain a lot of information. So we’ll walk through these in a bit more detail. Let’s zoom in on grade three. The circle of the arrow tells us about the median percentile rank for students in our comparison year sample; in other words we’re looking back at third graders from the spring of 2019. The tip of the arrow is the median percentile of students in the spring of 21 and the number at the bottom is the difference between the two. When we look at across the grade levels we studied you see a consistent pattern of modest declines in reading, and the figures for math are interpreted the same way here we see percentile declines in all the grades we studied and in math those declines were even larger than in reading. Also noteworthy, we’re seeing evidence of larger declines in the youngest grades we studied. This parallels much of the preliminary research we’re seeing from early learning experts that the youngest learners were particularly impacted by Covid disruptions. So in some reading and math achievements showed declines this spring and larger declines in math and especially so in the elementary grades. We also wanted to understand how our results differed across student groups, so more specifically by school poverty level and disaggregated by student race and ethnicity. Here, you can see the percentile rank changes by school poverty level and reading. We draw on stanford’s education data archive or CETA to define schools as low poverty. If they serve 25 or less of students who receive free and reduced price lunch and high poverty if they serve more than 75 percent of students who receive free introduced price lunch in low poverty schools. Note we’re seeing two to three percentile point declines which are lower than overall trends and these students were higher achieving in the first place contrast that with what we’re seeing in high poverty schools where a pattern of larger declines across all grades and in some cases the magnitudes of those declines are double what we’re seeing in more affluent schools. In some we had significant gaps prior to the pandemic and the academic impacts of the epidemic were seen in our most historically underserved schools which serves to widen already alarming inequalities. Here are the same results in math. In math we had even more dramatic impacts and more so in schools serving students experiencing higher rates of poverty. Finally, let’s look at how our results varied across race and ethnicity. Here we’re looking at results and reading for Asian American and white students. We see declines across grades but they are relatively smaller in magnitude than overall averages. Next if we look at our students of color from our sample latin x black and american indian and alaska native students we see patterns of declines that are much larger and especially so in the elementary grades. For math we see a stair-step pattern where achievement levels are initially higher for Asian American and white students and the impacts of this past year for students of color were greater. Which serves to widen already existing opportunity gaps. We capture all of this information in these heat maps on the right. Here, for ease of reference we use color coding to see where the impacts were the largest. The takeaway reading and math declines were larger for our students of color and particularly so in the elementary grades. So to summarize this collective body of research we’d highlight a few points. First it’s important to note that last year was definitely a tough year but students, teachers, parents and guardians went to heroic efforts and kids did learn. Across all grades all groups students made gains even if those gains were not on par with prior years. However, 2021 outcomes were lower relative historic trends on several dimensions, gains were diminished, and students ended the year eight to 12 percentile points lower than a typical year in math and three to six percent tile points lower in reading. We saw evidence declines across all groups but they were uneven american indian and alaska native black and latin x students and or those students in high poverty schools were disproportionately impacted and especially in the elementary grades we studied. Finally it’s imperative that we remember academic trends while important are only part of the story. Covid has brought into relief a host of other important concerns such as the digital divide, mental health, and social and emotional learning concerns, declines in attendance and engagement failing grades, fewer FAFSA filings all of which point to widening inequality many of the folks we’ll hear from today will speak more to these issues. But to conclude we believe these data offer a clear call to action we’re increasingly talking about the desire to return to normal but this year must be more than quote unquote normal. These widening inequalities require prioritizing communities most impacted by the pandemic and distributing resources accordingly. I’m looking forward, as I’m sure you are, to hear from today’s distinguished experts about ways particularly parents and caregivers can transform schools as we collectively work toward recovery. Next we’re going to turn things over to Dr. Theresa Chapple, who is an epidemiologist and director of a local department of health following other work in governmental public health at the local state and national level where she works hard to decrease disparities and promote the health of underserved populations throughout the pandemic she helped school districts craft reopening plans, provided consultations to recreational sports teams, news media operations, and community-based organizations. Theresa will discuss how parents can ensure their children remain safe when going back to school, in person and up-to-date information about vaccine distribution for younger students, as well as key takeaways to ensure equity and inclusion as we move into the classroom and continue virtual learning. 

[Dr. Theresa Chapple]: Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here with you all today, I wanted to talk about epidemiology and then some equity concerns both with the pandemic and with returning and reopening schools. As mentioned I am an epidemiologist and I have worked on reopening school plans with over 30 schools now so I can give some insight into that as we go but my slides were really pretty much focused on the epidemiology and Covid concerns as it relates to children. So at the start of the pandemic um and this narrative pretty much stuck with us for a while, which is that children don’t get Covid um and then once we were able to prove that children get Covid, then it was children don’t get you know severe cases of Covid, then we had to work to be able to show data and prove that children get severe cases of Covid, then it was well when children get cold and have severe cases to go if they don’t die. Um unfortunately we’ve had over 350 children die as a result of Covid um children and Covid has this has been a really hard battle um over the whole course of the pandemic and it’s really been one it was the result of good public health and good public health policies. The reasons why we did not see children at the start of the pandemic get as sick as um get impacted as much as adults, did. So it took um the the first Covid death that we had in america uh happened at the end of january but the first Covid death that we had of a child didn’t happen until May of 2020. And so we had that long period of time where children weren’t being as impacted and people started to believe that it was because there was something unique about children that made them less likely to be impacted. When what was really happening was that there were protocols and policies in place that were protecting children from being as impacted. They were being um home, they schools were closed, children were less likely to interact in situations where Covid could spread and therefore we saw extremely low rates of Covid in children and therefore low severe impacts of Covid as well. Well when we start to think about uh where we’ve been and how we’ve gone through with this pandemic we see that since the start of the pandemic in America there’s been about 4.6 million children who have tested positive with Covid. In July of 2020 July of 2021 so a month ago we were having about 38,000 children test positive for Covid, a week um just last week we had 180 000 children cause positive Covid. We have to ask ourselves like what’s happening differently. Why are we seeing this exponential increase of Covid in children when we look at something just as simple as a month ago um a month ago all of our community level rates of Covid was much lower in the United States. So the rates of Covid and children are going to really follow the rates of Covid in the community um a month ago we were the president told us that you know Covid was behind us that we could take off our mask and that we could be um you know safe when we had turned the corner um so what people did was remove restrictions and as we remove restrictions we start to see the rates of Covid increase not just amongst children but the population as a whole. So we need to think about it what are those policies and practices that we had in place to protect children to protect the community to help keep Covid rates low and that’s going to be the thing that we in order to continue to see low rates of Covid in our communities and within our children. This is a chart showing Covid rates over the years starting with July 2020 going to basically the end of July of 2021. these are hospitalization rates for children um the first five months of the pandemic we had about 500 children hospitalized for Covid. Now we’re getting about 2,000 children hospitalized each week with Covid. So what we’re seeing is that um the severeness, the severity of Covid has pretty much increased especially as delta has become our dominant variant, um this what we’re seeing on the right end of this chart is extremely alarming the rates of hospitalization for a Covid is just increasing week by week with no end in sight. I think that we can pretty much tell where this chart is going to go as we continue to reopen all the ways having children return to classes with no virtual school option we’re taking away some of our mitigation, we’re taking away the um mask in some states for schools, having all children return to school has taken away the mitigation of spacing and social distancing that we’re able to have in schools, and so what we can what we know about the delta variant is that it’s more transmissible than the alpha variance and variance we’ve had before. But with a more transmissible variant we have tied our hands with taking away some of our mitigation efforts such as virtual school and mask wearing in schools in certain areas. What I want you to know about this pandemic all the way across the board is that it hits differently by race. Black and hispanic uh people have been impacted by this pandemic at a much larger rate than white people. When we look at our children, three of the four children that you will find in the hospitals are going to be black or hispanic. And so this really puts a pause and it makes us think about things differently. When we talk about equity issues, when we talk about returning to school, we need to know that the pandemic is different in black and hispanic communities. What we are dealing with, is different than what’s happening in uh white communities. And that really um that really colors how they return to school. The debate has been led. We had a lot of well-meaning people saying that we need to return to school, so that we can have equity amongst um for educational purposes for minority children, but if minority children are facing a different pandemic than what majority children are facing, um then we have these this situation where returning to school doesn’t offer the same protections that would offer white children for black and hispanics. It offers more of a risk that our children will end up hospitalized as a result of Covid. And it’s not just an issue within our children, hospitalization and death for the pandemic has been different for minority children across, and I mean for minority families, across the board. So thinking about the data that we just saw about schools and school achievement you have to think that children are just one aspect of the community, right so what happens to children is impacted by what’s happening to the adults around them to their family units. And if we’re seeing that um black people are getting Covid at the same rate of white people but are ending up being hospitalized nearly three times more than white people and are ended up dying on two times more than white people then we have to think about what does the whole pandemic, what is the whole pandemic doing to our children. And are we really expecting things of children doing this pandemic that we really shouldn’t be. Are we expecting the education to be on par as what it was prior to the pandemic, when children are going home to family members that are hospitalized, and children are going home to family members that are dying as a result of Covid. This is a slide that um it’s pretty much reminiscent of what we just heard earlier that there are achievement gaps that are happening as a result of the pandemic, there were achievement gaps if you look at the left part of the slide happening pre-pandemic. When we look at children in historically black schools I mean traditionally black schools versus children in non-black schools but when we throw the pandemic in it we see that by the end of the school year uh minority children were ending nearly six months behind um where they should have been or could have been. And people see this data and they say things like “see virtual school was really bad we shouldn’t have had our children’s original school because that led to these types of results” and I look at this data and say black children had a really hard year, black children their parents were being hospitalized. Their grandparents were dying at rates higher than what we saw in other communities in this country and so no wonder there is these achievement gaps and also a really great job that they did for being able to learn something in the most hectic year that they probably will experience in their lifetime. I did some research earlier on in the pandemic looking at virtual school, and the impacts of virtual school in the black community and one of the things that i was able to find was that virtual school offered a safe haven for minority children for black children. It gave black children an opportunity to go to school in a loving environment, in and an environment where they’re complete their whole family was home with them, they were able to get real-time support from their parents their parents were able to hear what’s being taught in school um being able to intervene and help their child speak up if there was a question in class. Virtual school offered a safety net for black children that in person school does not. And one of the things that it protected children from black children from was the school-to-prison pipeline was suspension and expulsion and expulsion black children are suspended or expelled from school nearly three times more than white children and we were able to see uh declines in in these types of disparities as well by having black children at home during the school year. My my research at the beginning of the well my research around this time last year was asking people “what did you like about virtual school” um and “if virtual school were to stay in place would you continue to send your children” and about 20 of black children’s black parents said regardless of what’s going on i would love to continue to send my kids to virtual school and then 45 of black parents said um you know “if my schedule allowed if it was at all feasible i would love to continue sending my children to ritual school” because virtual school provided a safety net that wasn’t there for black children. And as parents as people started to advocate for reopening schools, for equity issues, reopening schools for to help black children learn. What we saw across the country is that once schools did reopen black children returned to school at a much lower rate than white children, because these were these safety nets here in place that we appreciated and that we wanted to continue to stay. I’ll stop here but if there are any questions about specifically how to reopen schools safely, I can answer that. 

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Thank you so much Dr. Chapple. We had a couple questions and I’ll ping one just for expediency. But just really appreciate the cautions you provide about interpreting data and really thinking holistically about the well-being of kids. So thank you for that. We have a parent who asked “My high schoolers are vaccinated and excited about getting back to school but are worried about interacting with their unvaccinated classmates. What can I tell them to keep them safe but not antisocial?”

[Dr. Theresa Chapple]: That’s a good question, what we’ve been learning about the delta variant is that um that vaccinated people can catch the Covid 19 the the new delta variant um and that we’re not as protected as we once believed we were from infection. What we are protected from by being vaccinated, is hospitalization and death. So what does that mean for children and socialization? I think what it means is that we need to tell our children that they still need to take precautions, so that they don’t catch uh Covid, and those precautions would be to make sure that they’re masking, to make sure that they’re not hanging out in crowded settings, if there is a crowd maybe you can take your one or two friends a step away, uh you’re safer outdoors than you are indoors, if there’s an opportunity for outdoor lunch let’s take that, if there’s an opportunity to uh wait for the school bus kind of steps away from everyone else to make sure you have that social distance in place try and do that. Um we want to still be able to uh be social but be safe and that would be making sure that you’re masking and social distancing as much as possible.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Thank you so much it’s really helpful and practical advice. Next up we have Dr. Sean Bulson, who is the superintendent of Harford County Public Schools in Maryland. Sean previously served as the North Carolina house education innovation committee and presented at national and state conferences on topics such as developing a youth master plan creating and welcoming school environment, and teacher leadership. Sean will offer his thoughts on what parents can do to prepare their children for the upcoming school year, what teachers should be keeping in mind, and tips to maximize learning opportunities and meet students where they are. 

[Dr. Sean Bulson]: All right, so yes, I am superintendent of Harford County Public Schools. We serve a little over 37, 000 students in 54 schools. So we’re somewhat of a large district. I guess one thing to preface my comments first i would say my the two previous presenters on the panel, anecdotally our experiences in Harford county very much match what you’ve heard from the last two presenters. And so I recognize a lot of that. I’d like to target my comments more toward some of those tips for parents, and in some cases for teachers, so I’ll take a slightly different tact but I’m happy to answer questions in any of these areas afterwards. So I want to start when pre-pandemic when I would visit classrooms with my senior leaders, one of our sort of go-to mantras we’re always looking for books in hand, and I think for parents and educators that’s still a great thing to shoot for because at the end of the day devices are not, we know devices have been prevalent but the single best simple strategy is make sure that we’re finding time for actually reading both in the classroom, and at home and getting those books in hand is one of the best look for us that we try to strive to so we make sure that’s part of the work going on at all times. I do have this particular pdf with just some information that some of our student services leadership put up to give parents ideas for how to talk to their children prior to returning to school, knowing that this year is going to be different across our different districts. We see lots of variants both in what schools and school systems are doing with regard to different mandates and mitigation strategies and I think if you’re following any of the challenges with that we know we see a lot of variants across states and districts. That being said, um we’re working very hard to get students in person this year and so for some students who maybe didn’t do that last year there’s obviously going to be some anxiety around that particular topic. And so you know making sure we’re opening those lines of communications with our children, starting those conversations early, but also making sure you’re asking specific questions, you know get them talking about their expectations but also helping them see the benefits of returning in person if you know if they are nervous about that because i mean school in a normal year is anxiety inducing particularly as you’re getting ready to start. And this year is going to be different because for some students you know we have some rising first and in some cases second graders who may have almost never had the opportunity to be inside a classroom. So, there is a lot to think about there. A related idea and this is something that we actually began designing before the pandemic, but i think it fits here. As parents think about the conversations they want to have with teachers, you know we’ve done for many years we do a little mini video vignettes about this we in our parent education, our parent academy. You see the logo there for our parent academy. We try to give parents tips for how to get the most out of conversations with their teachers and what you see the first two things they’re actually a bookmark that’s the front and back of the bookmark and really what that is is just questions you can ask to be specific because you know in some cases if you’re not getting specific information you know what are my child’s strengths what are my challenges academic weaknesses, what are some other challenges you may see, how are they doing with the homework, what are the policies. These were questions that we actually went to um we had our teachers of the year and our administrators of the year helped design these questions, we translated them in spanish so uh that uh parents could be armed with some specific things to lead i think a more productive conversation. We also have another bookmark here which was just uh just some ideas about how to advocate for your children in a positive way. So again just one of those tips and tools that we can use to help parents be, you know, more deliberately engaged in the work. One resource I like to share and I’ll say I am, I do not work for the PTA and uh you know i’m not accountable for everything on their website but they really are a great resource. All of our family engagement work is designed around the national PTA’s standards for family school partnerships and the link that I put on this slide is the family resources. They have a great wealth of materials in there, some of them are current Covid related and some are just really basic family resources so if you’re looking for resources that is a good sort of trusted place to start. Like i said we do a lot of our family engagement work you know building on their standards. As we go into the year and this in many ways a segment segue from guidance for parents but also guidance for teachers. Deliberate use of technology the quote at the bottom we just need to remember that devices are not teachers they’re tools. You know even before Covid there was this discussion about going one to one and you know there’s this temptation to to allow technology to drive the learning and those sorts of things. And we know that really isn’t the best way to do things that um our teachers are still the very best resource and that’s where we want our instruction coming from. But, of course through cohorts, with so much more online learning and so much more digital learning that’s occurred over the last year we I think our educators have become much much better about being deliberate but also knowing what they can use the technology for in a more productive way. The pictures i included here, again these are pre-pandemic photographs because you can see the kids are a little closer than we’re ready for them to be this year without masks. But um again when I would go in and observe classes you know it was it never felt quite right to walk into a room with one teacher and 30 students all looking at their own screen. But when you could walk into a classroom and see students with other resources device is one of them it’s one it’s it’s a resource they can use and so we look for those opportunities, where the students are collaborating around devices and i’ve always loved this idea of three or four students you know one’s maybe running what’s going on on the on the laptop and the others are looking at the books and the things that the teachers have given them and so this to me is just it’s what we were looking for before Covid and it’s really where i hope uh we will return soon. One thing again for me you know I spent the summer visiting schools. I talked to all of my principals what were the things that they saw that was really valuable. And again it sounds so obvious but teachers particularly those who were teaching in a virtual setting, which was everybody at some point during the year found that they needed to slow down and spend that time on relationship building, spend a few minutes at the beginning of the class just you know kind of like we do in other settings it’s it’s the small talk it’s they’re reaching out to kids, it’s asking about their pets, asking about the other things that deliberate time focused on relationship building was absolutely essential. Um now of course to say that you don’t want to spend the entire period doing that because as you’ve heard we have a lot of maybe catching up to do. We have a lot of work to do. So my message in my school system will be going back in a couple weeks is we have to focus on the relationship building, we have to assess where our students are both emotionally and academically within the first few weeks of school, and we need to get the business of teaching going right away. And so you know we have a lot going on at once but what the teachers learned in the last year, about how to develop those relationships we want them to build on those skills because in a way that’s more critical than ever. So that’s really the end of my presentation. I know we have a few minutes and I’m happy to take some questions. I did put our website at the bottom hcps.org, our parent resources I think we have a very robust list of parent resources, our parent academy site has many videos with you know things we’ve done to help parents be the partners we really we always need them to be but I think in the last year we’ve called on parents so much more.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Thank you so much Dr. Bolson that was really helpful and great resources that will be available to the audience. So thank you for that. Just kind of I guess, to unite a couple questions that we have from the audience. So parents are talking about kind of this uncertainty of being in what happens when we quarantine go back and the importance of relationships that you’re highlighting. How do we think about being proactive of maintaining those relationships um with the uncertainty that we’re facing in this next year? 

[Dr. Bolson]: I think there’s a few things. First you know it’s never too early to start on that relationship and recognizing both from the educator side and the family side that this is such a partnership, we need so much help, so making sure we’re engaging in those things. From the parent’s side I guess and from the teacher’s side you know we are relying more on technology for how we’re accessing the curriculum and assignments, whether it’s you know a phone-based device or something you have to access online. We want to make sure that we know how that communication is going to occur if we have the disruptions, some school systems are offering more virtual options, some are really expecting some kind of resources to get pushed out. But everything you know, how are you going to deal with the communication if there is a breakdown so that’s something that people need to be thinking about in advance and need to be looking for the information coming from the system about how to do that. But as I said, any involvement in school for families you know go to that open house, go to those things where they’re allowing you to come in even if you’re doing it virtually, uh because that’s where you get those tips. 

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Lovely, thank you so much. Next up we have Dr. Joseph Mcguire, who is an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at John Hopkins University School of Medicine where he directs the Center for OCD, Anxiety, and related disorders for children. Also known as COACH, he has over 10 years of experience in the assessment and treatment of anxiety disorders ocd, trivet syndrome, and related conditions and his work investigates learning processes and mechanisms underlying the treatment of these conditions. Joseph will discuss the concerns many parents and teachers have about their children’s and students’ mental health as they re-enter school and how to support them.

[Dr. Joseph McGuire]: Awesome, thank you so much for such a kind introduction.Let me share my screen. I’m going to talk a little bit about returning to school and how best to support kids and I think this is something that we’ve learned a little bit about as some children started to return to school last year so there are some really clear takeaways from our experiences to date. So just a little bit about childhood anxiety it’s common whether it reaches clinically significant levels or just as present in small doses many children you know as young as 6 and all the way up to 18 and and even you know the transition age youth you know students who are 18 to 26 going back to college they all experience anxiety and anxiety disorder affects between one out of ten to two out of ten kids. So this is a really common condition about ten to twenty percent. It impairs functioning, it gets in the way with school, gets in the way at home, gets in the way with friends, impacts quality of life. Something that Ireally want to just hit on here for a second before i go into the school aspects is anxiety is a big risk factor for problems later on down later on in life. So, if you think a little bit about you know childhood anxiety what kids are kind of going through we really want to be preventative, we really want to help kind of thinking about the vaccine and other things inoculate them by using good strategies so that you don’t take childhood anxiety not treat it, not take care of i,t and not have a kind of or not allow it to persist on into adulthood because otherwise it places you at risk for a lot of other conditions like anxiety, depression, and a whole host of other severe psychopathology. So the takeaway from this slide is really effective treatment matters your actions as parents, your actions as educators, and if there’s any mental health other mental health professionals on the call your actions to helping you know students return to school children navigate this challenge and even parents kind of manage their own mental health matters. So how do we kind of do this? How do we help kids return to school? First and foremost identifying kind of signs and symptoms of anxiety, I think everybody kind of knows their son or their daughter pretty well but how do you know when they’re anxious? Avoidance behaviors, you know being very hesitant to talk about school not wanting to go to school not even one of doing drive-bys or putting on school uniforms, these are really common kind of concerns that kids will start to bring up as we school starts to approach or even out and outright refusal of i don’t want to go back to school, i’m not ready, this is really hard, because we’re transitioning from virtual learning now back to in-person learning. Which again, transitions are tough just broadly let alone putting in a transition in the context of a pandemic. Worries worries about the future worries what will happen, what if what if i should be feeling this way, what if my teacher doesn’t do, this what if my friends don’t do this, how do i kind of manage all of this uncertainty, so when kids start kind of asking those questions when they start seeking reassurance that’s another kind of common symptom for some kids they express their their anxiety. And their physical symptoms physically or they express their kind of symptoms physically so they may have you know stomach aches they may experience more muscle tension they may have trouble sleeping so even if they’re not expressing worry about going back to school but they start having trouble sleeping or you’re getting more stomachaches or any sorts of other stuff like this whenever there’s a change being attentive and being attuned and starting to kind of implement some of these supportive strategies that we’ll talk about. So what are some things that work and we’ll talk a little bit about what doesn’t work. But having an open conversation so if you notice your child your son or your daughter your student starting to be a little bit more anxious, starting to be a little bit worried, having that conversation and saying “hey you know so and so yeah you seem a little bit more on edge you know can you tell me oh have you noticed that too?” and if the answer is yes, “can you tell me a little bit more about that” you know is it you’re nervous about school or is it that you know you’re playing a video game and you didn’t do as well uh are you know and if so if it is school, what’s kind of driving those worries? What’s driving those fears? So you get a bit of an understanding of what their specific concerns are or as sean said earlier what their expectations are “i’m expecting everybody to go to school and there to be masks and not to be able to see my friends and nobody’s going to want to hang out with me” and everything’s going to be different addressing those expectations in a meaningful way helps you kind of understand where they’re at so then you can provide appropriate uh corrective information. Validating their feelings, so oftentimes parents or teachers have this knee-jerk response of wanting to say “everything’s going to be okay it’s all going to be fine don’t worry about it” and in doing so it kind of invalidates their feelings. It’s saying hey there’s nothing to worry about you know you’re you’re overreacting um as opposed to kind of going that approach, taking a step back and saying “hey it’s okay to feel scared it’s okay to be nervous it’s okay to be on edge and it’s okay not to be nervous and on edge if that’s you know where you’re at too” and just saying this is where you’re at and we’ll kind of take things one step at a time. Addressing misperceptions and misconceptions. So going back to school we don’t necessarily know what every kind of you know the landscape is going to look like but having that conversation on an individual level with your son or daughter or with your class or with your students so then you can kind of say “hey this is where we’re at this is what we know what are your guys concerns or what are your specific concerns and we’ll deal with them together” because we don’t necessarily know until we have that open dialogue until we validate those feelings where students are at where kids are at. The next kind of piece is moving forward. You know we’re going to kind of move forward together but we’re going to do it one step at a time so when we return to school we’re not thinking about you know our grades in december, we’re not thinking about midterms, or or kind of that project that’s due in october, we’re just focused on the first day and we’re going to kind of take it one step at a time and did you like it, did you not like it, how was it, was it exciting, was it scary, what was good, what was bad, what did you see? So taking those kinds of misperceptions and testing them out as you’re going back in and really kind of helping them to kind of take things one step at a time, and not worry about you know what’s the next week, the next month, the next year is going to look like. And last but not least modeling. Modeling appropriate behaviors kids are very sensitive whether it’s in a classroom or whether it’s at home you know doing appropriate behavioral modeling. So you know if mom or dad or sibling or kind of teacher is really worried about specific things kids pick up on that so watching them watching your behaviors, you know if you’re washing your hands 26 times being mindful about what kind of message that’s setting to kind of kids. So really being careful about the expectations that you want to set in the image you want to kind of put forward because kids learn from our behaviors. I know I want to be mindful of everybody’s time but if you guys have any questions, comments, personal feelings, there’s all the fun information there. I am delighted to kind of answer any stuff that’s come up in the chat so

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Thank you, thank you so much Dr. McGuire this is super helpful tips, I’m taking notes as you were speaking, a really practical strategy, so thank you for that. A few respondents were asking about, you know, we have a lot of attention to kids’ well-being and their mental health. Can you talk a bit about maintaining parents and teachers’ well-being and focus on mental health for the adults in the system?

[Dr. Joseph McGuire]: sSo it’s hard to help somebody if you’re struggling yourself. So there’s kind of two pieces going back to behavioral modeling. It’s from that piece it’s kind of faking it till you make it right, I can’t tell how often you know I use that time I use that phrase when I’m working with trainees or other people. Because that may be really hard for you but you need to kind of put a bit of a strong front up so the kids are learning how to respond to things you know you may be really nervous about dropping your son or daughter off or you may be really nervous about going back in the classroom. But being open and honest and saying “hey you know it’s going to be hard but we’re going to get through this together.” It’s also equally important for parents to seek out sources of support for teachers to seek out sources of support. tTe pandemic has caused a mental health crisis across the United States. I have several meetings even about that today. And this is a huge issue and I what I don’t what i think is a common thing for people to do outside of this pandemic is to say “oh i’ll get help later or oh you know I can I can tough this out just a little bit longer” uh but a little bit turns into a month turns into two months turns into six months turns into a year. If you go back to the start of uh this you know we were all baking sourdough bread and watching netflix uh and that kind of quickly faded away. And really putting yourself in taking care of yourself first and foremost so then you can kind of take care of others and I know parents and educators often feel a little bit guilty about that but I think that’s an important thing so thank you for that question.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Great, thank you so much. We’ll now hear from Phyllis Fagell, who is a, who’s a school counselor at sheridan school in Washington D.C., a therapist who works with kids and families in private practice, and an author and journalist. She’s the author of “middle school matters” and a frequent contributor to the Washington Post. She also writes for several other publications and her ideas have been shared in various national outlets. Phyllis will discuss how parents can help children maximize learning opportunities as they start this new as they start the next school year. Pardon me, with many transitioning into in-person learning for the first time in many months. She will offer her thoughts on social re-entry strategies and how those connect to academic success.

[Phyllis Fagell]: Thank you for that nice introduction. I’m just going to share my screen. As a school counselor, I keep thinking about where we left off last spring when it was clear that kids’ mental health was really taking up, was plummeting and they weren’t always presenting in ways that it was obvious that they were struggling. And so there was a lot of confusion among the adults about whether they were, in fact okay, whether they were just acting out because it was the end of the school year, and so i did an activity with them called “the iceberg exercise” in which I asked them to share anonymously what they thought the world saw when they looked at them, what they thought they were projecting to the world, and then what was really beneath the surface. There was so much consistency the students said that they felt like everyone thought they were okay that they had it together that they knew what they were doing and they had friends. But beneath the surface they felt very insecure, some of them were anxious about things like coming back after gaining weight, they were worried they’d get teased, some of them talked about feeling lonely and isolated even after they had returned to school because at that point we were back in school. After so many months they just didn’t know where they fit socially and so that I saw a lot of acting out, a lot of impulsivity, kids kind of jockeying for position, really misinterpreting social feedback, this awkwardness. And so the first thing I think parents can do and this is something I’m sharing with educators as well, is really focus on recreating a sense of belonging and helping kids see themselves as part of a community and helping them assume positive intent. So if a child comes home and says i was trying to talk to somebody on the blacktop and they were completely ignoring me, you can help them practice some cognitive flexibility, come up with some other alternative explanations that are maybe more benign for why that person didn’t include them. In fact I had one student who was incredibly upset that someone had ignored her and it turned out the person literally couldn’t hear them behind the mask. It was really easy to fix miscommunication. And I think that sensitivity that kids will be feeling as they return is going to lead to a lot of inaccurate interpretation of social feedback so that is something we can do to help them adjust and feel that sense of belonging. We also want to make sure that we are helping them set attainable expectations for themselves. I think students don’t fully understand that their nervous systems have been over taxed for so long that their focus is off, they can’t hold as much in their head as they used to, it’s harder for them to execute on assignments get things in on time, maybe some kids grades plummeted during virtual or hybrid learning and so they took a hit to their academic self-concept, so what we want to be doing is just normalizing that everyone is feeling that way and that they can ramp up slowly and that applies even to extracurriculars and everything else in their life. It’s going to take some time for them to have the physical and emotional stamina to deal with the demands of full in-person days. And they are going to have some social setbacks, they are going to see shifting friend groups, that happens in pre-pandemic times and it will happen when hopefully we eventually get to post pandemic times. Kids are constantly looking for where they fit and discovering what it is they need to do to be a good friend to find a good friend and so just helping kids understand that no one child is going to meet all of their needs. Maybe ask them questions like “who is the person you have fun with, who is the person who you know is a vault and can keep any kind of secret, who is the person who you know can be, is always going to say yes when you’re looking for someone to hang out with at recess?” and the idea in asking those questions is really to help them embrace this idea that you want to branch out, you want to constantly be looking for different people. No one person is ever going to meet all of your needs and then the rejection or the transition of one friend is just not as painful. It still can feel like heartbreak but they have an easier time recovering. You can even ask them a question like “is there a time when you decided that you needed to move on, that a friend wasn’t a good fit anymore?” and that can help them recognize that it wasn’t necessarily because they didn’t like that person as a human being but maybe their interest shifted or they had hit different levels of maturity at a different point in time. Joseph did a good job talking a little bit about modeling our own vulnerability and being authentic without creating fear, we know emotions are contagious we want our kids to go back to school if that is the plan and they’re not doing homeschooling or virtual learning at this point and we want them to do it without fear. That might mean that they need to have a plan for what to expect. Maybe ahead of time you go onto the school website you look at what the protocols will be so that there are fewer surprises if they can’t visit the school maybe they can at least walk the grounds or get a sense of familiarity or get together with a classmate over the summer, this would be particularly helpful if they are new to the school and they haven’t had a chance to meet anyone or if they’re say a seventh grader who never went in person for sixth grade. I think joy is going to be huge joy and humor. Just finding ways to laugh at the absurdity of the situation that doesn’t mean we invalidate where they are or say that what they’re experiencing isn’t hard, there’s no question what they’re going through is hard. But to model for them and find ways to incorporate joy and that might mean a family movie night once a week where you watch a funny movie or it could mean turning homework itself into play. I was talking to a consultant recently actually who works with businesses and one of the things he does with his own children that I thought was so great is that if a child is doing a really __ or boring assignment he will literally make a game of it he’ll ask his kid to repeat the question as fast as he can and as many times as he can until he falls down laughing. And the idea is that this does not have to be a time when we take everything all day long seriously because it’s all so heavy to begin with, and then we want to take the pressure off of achievement because kids are struggling in ways that they haven’t struggled in the past. I make a point with my own children of sharing when I have a brain fog moment myself. I changed my password the other day and went on to a new different computer and had no memory of what that password had been and it had been no more than 36 hours before. I think we’re all really re-entering and readjusting and all of our nervous systems have been taxed so we need to make sure that we are helping them and deal with all of those feelings, label all of those feelings, which can be really hard for kids because you can’t get to the problem solving if you don’t actually know what’s going on. So, if your child just says they’re overwhelmed they’re going to get stuck. But if you can in conversation find out that they’re overwhelmed because they’re not really clear on what the assignment is or when it’s due, well then maybe what they need to do is reach out to a classmate or check in with their teacher the next day and that will empower kids when they feel like there is something they can do with all of that anxiety. Some specific strategies that I think might be helpful going back into school right now, are things like cognitive offloading if you’re less able to hold things in your head than you used to be to put it down on paper whether you use sticky notes or whether you use a calendar or a day at a glance and really make a point of helping them check it and look at it every day. I think we’re going to need more crutches and just more of a embracing more of this idea that we are not necessarily going to be the same, our kids are not going to be the same as they were pre pandemic that’s okay, it’s going to take some time, but we will get there. And along the way we can try to have as much fun as possible and embrace the joy as much as possible. So with that I will turn it over to questions if there are any.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Wonderful, thanks so much Phyllis. This is really uh informational and appreciate the term of “cognitive flexibility.” I’m gonna ask you to to really do a practical application of that we have a parent with a real life scenario and we’ll see how you would recommend maybe some strategies here. “So my son has become a bit of a mask bully how can I explain to him that he needs to be safe but he still has to be kind to his classmates even when they aren’t wearing masks (the school does not require masks currently.)”

[Phyllis Fagell]: That’s a great question and one I can anticipate having to intervene with next week when school starts. I think it’s really hard for kids to have such a particularly for kids who think in a bit more black and white terms who know that it’s right in their mind it is right to wear a mask and wrong not to wear one and they can’t really understand that there are shades of gray. That there are ways to communicate that you’re uncomfortable and so I always advise kids to start with I statements and to not make it about accusing somebody else but to say you know “I feel a little uncomfortable when i’m talking to someone who’s not wearing a mask would you mind putting one on while we’re talking” So that you’re not conveying criticism or judgment but you’re still getting your needs met and which plays into a very hard concept for kids which is this idea that we can only control what we do we can’t control what anyone else does it’s a hard concept for adults too. So helping them understand that if they don’t get the response that the want, the other option is to walk away or to put themselves in a different situation where they’re going to feel more comfortable.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]:Wonderful, thanks so much Phillis. We are now going to hear from Donna Tetreault,who is a national parenting journalist, as well as a podcast host educator, non-profit founder and author. Her debut picture book “Dear Me, Letters to Myself for All of my Emotions”, proactively teaches children to have positive mental health strategies. Her forthcoming parental book “castle method; building a family foundation on compassion acceptance security trust love and expectations plus education” will be released in may. Donna will offer her thoughts on what parents can do to help their children succeed in school certainly but certainly not limited to helping them acclimate to the classroom routines and more rigorous schedules as well as structuring homework time after school activities and technologies.

[Donna Tetreault]: Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here and I’m honored to hear all of these wonderful people who are speaking to educators, parents. I want to start with first talking to you from the parent perspective. A former teacher, mom of two boys right now who just started school 12 and 13 years old today went off to middle school, within the realm of schedules and routines that we should focus first on compassion and connection. So if we can think about what we’re doing within our parenting, even within routines and scheduling which we’ll get to if we can focus on compassion and connection first we know that these are protective factors, we know that they help reduce anxiety stress and trauma, and so what we really want to do is we want to allow our kids if they forget that book, if they forget that planner, if they forget their homework, that instead of getting on them and wondering what’s going on why are you doing this it’s more about listening trying to have that compassion, trying to hear their emotions, what’s going on and then connecting with them, and then from compassion and connection going into the parenting, and helping with those schedules and routines. And so the other thing that I want to emphasize as a parent going through all of this with you, we must have compassion for ourselves as parents right, we have to model this we have to show our children this behavior because if we don’t our children will be unable to be compassionate and gentle with themselves. So if we’re making a mistake or we have a blow up, an apology gentle with yourself and move on. Right so we’re showing this to our children. Okay so let’s move on to the kind of nitty-gritty of the routines and schedules so the schedule is basically an outline. It’s that big picture of what we have to achieve during the week during the day and it’s laid out for our kids. Right and then the routines within that are just those little steps to get through our schedule. So routines and schedules we know provides safety for our children they help our children understand expectations as well. So building in these routines and schedules is really important but of course we need to really think about flexibility and being malleable within these schedules and routines because of what we’re all going through, this historic school year, everything that we’ve been through in the past year and a half. So let’s start with the schedule. So a schedule with your kids, what you really want to focus on are you know we got to have time for homework, extracurricular, bath time, some tech time, and down time of course right you’ve got to have that downtime built in for mental health and well-being. Okay so let’s think about creating that schedule. We don’t want to outline the schedule for our children, we want our children to outline it with us, we want to do this together, we want that buy-in from our children. So that they can make decisions on what they want to do and how they want to spend their time and we can work together. So I also wanted to kind of take a moment on resetting this tech contract that we have had over the past year and a half I usually am pretty strict on tech and monitoring it but over the pandemic I realized as a parent this was their connection this was how they were building new friendships, this is what they were doing they needed tech. Right but now we’re not going to be needing tech as much so what we need to do is we need to really focus on telling our kids, allowing our kids, and having our kids understand that their number one job is to go to school and do the best that they can and learn at the pace that they can. Right so school is their job technology is not to be overtaken, so school and then homework, extracurricular activities, downtime, and a little bit of tech however that might look for you. Every family is going to be different, it’s going to depend on the child, it’s going to depend on the age, so think about how you want to incorporate that. I really believe in tech contracts and it doesn’t have to be this huge. This is the way it’s going to be and then all these details it can just be a talk through with your kids writing down the contract child signs, parent signs, again allowing for flexibility within it. I also think it’s really important to hang up the schedule that you come out with, um somewhere visible it doesn’t have to be pretty, but hanging it up so everybody knows what’s what the expectations are and to really think about that. I also think it allows for no battles you know you could say “hey this is what we agreed to there’s the schedule let’s try to follow it let’s try to keep up” of course if things are going on that are difficult for child, parent you can be flexible within that and move appropriately through that. I think it’s important to sundays to be sacred to work together as a family maybe for a half an hour 20 minutes to look at what the routine is going to be for the week, what expectations are for the student for learning, just to help child get through that and and and lessen that fear and anxiety moving into the new week. I want to talk a little bit about routines now and I think that everybody is going to have a different routine. Right so if we talk about a nighttime routine, what time you’re going to bed, are you going to lay out clothes in them for the morning to be prepared, is your backpack going to be packed so that there’s less anxiety in the morning. And then the morning routine you know: get up, shower, breakfast etc. I do think it might be beneficial actually, I do think it’s really beneficial because it’s a practice that I use with my two boys is to build into that routine gratitude and it and and how do you do that right. How do you build in gratitude into your routine and why would you do that? Well we know from research that building in gratitude into our daily lives helps our mental health and well-being helps our happiness so what I like to say is if you build in a gratitude in your morning routine. What we do in my family you don’t have to do it this way. It’s just a suggestion and you can figure out what might work for you and your family. In the morning on the way to the bus we talk about what we’re grateful for. And I begin as the parent to model so my I might say you know how how are you um I might say in the car uh uh some positive affirmations you know you can begin to model like today is a beautiful day, I can’t wait for this today to happen, I love wednesday, because just these positive affirmations help build this feeling of gratitude and well-being and it’s kind of a start to the day that this is a good start to the day. We have a lot of trauma but let’s try to find this joy. I think it’s really really important. Let’s set some expectations, look the expectations don’t mean straight a’s you’re going to be this perfect student athlete no i’m talking about setting expectations for this school year in that, how are you going to learn, what are you going to do for yourself to make sure that within your schedule within your routines you can have the best school year that you can have. So not straight A’s but what are you going to want to learn this year, what are you going to focus on, are you going to really focus on history this year, are you going to really kind of focus on math, what are you wanting to learn and set those personal goals for the school year. I think it helps kids have ownership and really think about what matters to them and parent allowing that it doesn’t have to be straight a’s and it that’s not what success is okay. So I also think that um as you set these expectations again with your children being really really flexible. Quickly I want to touch on study skills and organization. Plan your study time this helps reduce that anxiety and you know procrastination if you’re planning it out. You know, meet your child where they are, you know help your child get into these organizational routines as needed, step back when they don’t need you as much but when they need you step in, help them, they’re learning they’re growing executive function isn’t complete until our mid 20s at least right. So let’s help our kids also really set up a nice homework spot for our kids they can you know if some kids like to stand let them have a standing desk some kids like to get cozy and read their book. Don’t set this expectation of you have to sit at your desk this is how it has to be allow that learning to happen the way it feels comfortable for them and joy of joyful for them. And i really want to say at the end, you know let’s meet our kids where they are, they have struggled so so much, they have lost friendships they haven’t been able to socialize, they haven’t they’ve had so many different emotions and so we want to really let them feel those emotions, being open, giving the space for those emotions and just saying to them “I’m here for you” and really always asking the question “how can I help you how can I help you what can I do for you you tell me what you need from me” So thank you so much and I wish you all a great back to school this year. 

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Well thanks so much Donna. We have several questions for you that have popped in, so I’ll pick one of them that is a reocurring theme. So really appreciate the recommendations you have about schedules and routines setting contracts; those are all really helpful tools. One question is when is it okay to steer away from a routine? If you could talk a little bit about that flexibility, that you’ve uh reinforced. 

[Donna Tetreault]: Yeah you know, I love that question and I think that um it really depends on the child and the parent and how things are going to look. Our schedules are set, our routines are set but it doesn’t mean that that’s how it has to be we really need to be flexible. I like to say that flexibility is our superpower. You know as a parent it allows our child to really kind of figure out what they need to do and how they can move through it. And so really don’t be so so tough on those schedules, allow that flexibility, move through it, you can go back to the schedule and you can readjust schedules. Try try to follow your child’s lead.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Great, thanks so much Donna. Well we have a few questions that are really kind of open for any panelists. So I will uh kind of raise those and see whoever wants to pop in. Phyllis was specifically called out, though I should mention on this one um so I happened to be on a panel a few weeks ago with Dr John King who is a former secretary of education and he talks about this balance between really the rigor of school but also the importance of social emotional well-being, humor, all these other pieces of school, especially as we think about the long road ahead of recovery, so how do we strike that balance. And he called it kind of affectionately the balance of ice cream and broccoli. So we have a similar question here and this is to Phyllis “I love that you mentioned humor and all that is so heavy around us um given the time that it’s not necessary to make the best or take everything so seriously. What are your feelings around accelerated learning and how do you balance these theories of “catching up to the realness” of how students learn, especially in the time that we’re living in?”

[Phyllis Fagell]: You know I think there’s a lot of pressure that people feel to quote unquote to make up for learning loss and I have never seen anyone perform better because someone tells them they’re lacking or someone tells them they’re behind or someone tells them the stakes are high. And when your nervous system is overtaxed when you’re under tremendous stress, doubling down is actually going to backfire. And so people can want kids to make up for lost time whatever that even means but the only way forward is to meet kids where they are, and to help them proceed at a sustainable pace that’s right for them, because we don’t want kids to be getting frustrated, to shut down, or to feel that they’re incompetent because if they feel that way they are not going to be motivated we want them to experience some joy in the learning.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Anyone else want to chime in on that question? The ice cream broccoli question?

[Dr. Sean Bolson]:  I could add, I mean I think for school systems, the question about students’ emotional health has we’ve been talking about it for years but like many things that happened during the pandemic, just really came to the forefront. And so on the school side being more deliberate about assessing that in addition like I said in my comments earlier you know we need to go into this year looking both at the academic and the mental health side of things and being more deliberate, in our district we’re working on a mental health assessment for all students, that we can use as a way of starting that. But I think the checking in on all of those we talked about the conversations parents can have with children it’s not just how he how’d you do in school today um it’s it’s the other pieces so just make sure we’re keeping that balance the ice cream broccoli balance.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Great thanks Dr. Bulson um we just have about 10 minutes left of kind of formal Q&A and responses. So I want to make sure we have a chance to hear from the distinguished panelists or the experts across the board here. And it’s just such a privilege to be surrounded by an interdisciplinary team, um practitioners, as well as scholars, epidemiologists, superintendent, um just to hear from a variety of voices. And i don’t know about you but this has been a tough couple years and it likely will continue. And so it’s this balance of both being showing some kind of alarming trends but not being alarmist and to think about the road ahead to best prepare the kids and the adults in the system. S as we think about this next year and you know Dr. Chapple talked about some of the intended unintended consequences some real positivity that we’re seeing also in disproportionality of discipline, Dr Bulson focus on relationships and the importance of communication whether we’re hybrid remote in person, so some of these lessons that we’re learning that can likely extend well beyond the coming years are just really critical. So in, as a year expert or from your lanes of knowledge, what are you most optimistic or what do you see as hopeful in the year to come? 

[Donna Tetreault]: I think that uh we have to understand where our kids have have been and what they’ve gone through. And as parents we have never experienced this right we did not experience this. So we really can’t talk to uh what they’re experiencing. So i really really think that allowing them to really feel their emotions and really practicing this. I think that this skill if we can teach this in the home, in concert, at school. We’re going to have a lot more kids who are able to manage their emotions and move through life in everything that they do in school and all their extracurriculars and everything that matters to them. And so I think as parents coming from that parenting perspective, look i’ve got these two boys who who you know they’re going through their things too and I have to pull myself back as parent and and really sit down and listen really hear and listen and allow for those emotions, and especially with our boys right our boys have been conditioned to not express their emotions only to express that anger emotion but we need to allow them to express frustration, and sadness, and everything along with that. So I think that there is hope because we are learning new skills, right we are learning as parents and as kids and as families and we’re building stronger families. So I do see hope and um I think that it is good to be excited about this school year. I think it’s important to set that expectation that we will have success. It might look different, but we will have success.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Wonderful thanks so much, that’s inspirational Donna. Phyllis, would you do the honors going next?

[Phyllis Fagell]: Sure you know I think it’s an opportunity really if we can seize this moment to say what wasn’t working before the pandemic that really came into sharp relief during the pandemic. Sean was talking about mental health. We have not really done more than paid lip service to that in the past, and it’s just an inescapable reality right now because so many kids are struggling with depression, with anxiety. And so I do see this as an opportunity to really take a hard look at how we’re structuring school. I’ve heard of middle schools that are reincorporating recess after never having it or adding recess for the first time. I think it was taken away from a local school system 30 years ago or so, the importance of giving kids unstructured time, giving them voice and choice, giving them ways to feel empowered. when the rest of the world is so out of control. And I think that is an opportunity to come together as a community I think would become a really individualistic society over time and it doesn’t really work when people are in crisis when people are in crisis they need to feel like they’re part of a community, that they have people who care about them, and who want to nurture them. And so I’m hoping on the other side of this maybe we have more play, less testing. More of a collective support for one another, more empathy for one another and focus drill down to what really matters.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Thanks so much Phyllis, Theresa?

[Dr. Theresa Chapple]: I want to live in the world that Phyllis just described that sounds like an awesome place and if that is to come out of this pandemic that I would love for that really to happen. What I think we have to look forward to are vaccines for children under 12. The, it looks like that this is something that should happen maybe by the end of the calendar year, and I am really excited as a mom of three children under 12 who ask every day if they can get vaccinated. That is on the horizon.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]: Great thanks so much. I love this idea of a reimagined world, and we need to take notes from Phyllis. So I agree with you Theresa thanks. Sean, would you finish this out? 

[Dr. Sean Bolson]: Sure, as I think about the next year, it’s easy to look back a little bit. You know we had all these fears when we thought about bringing kids back in last year, we were afraid they weren’t going to follow the masked mandates, they were going to be up the kids way outperformed our expectations, you know we planned for the worst and as educators we tend to do that we get caught in what if what if what if, but the kids came in and they were wonderful. And they were so excited to learn in a way there was kind of this renewed enthusiasm that you know some of our students had lost over time. And so I feel we can build on that. We do, we still need to plan for those eventualities, because we see room for conflict coming this year and all the concerns with the students have been out so long. But last year our students outperformed in terms of their behaviors and their enthusiasm and I expect to see that again when our kids come back. So i’m really excited about that. And I think we’ve just begun to tap um all of the things we learned during the pandemic, as educators how to reach kids how to personalize, there’s so much we learned that we haven’t even realized we learned yet. And I just want to make sure we focus on,you know, building on all of that. So many great ideas have come out so many that we heard about today, so I’m excited for this year. It’s going to be a year of tremendous growth.

[Dr. Beth Tarasawa]:Gabrielle i’m going to hand it back to you. But before I do so I just wanted to extend a huge thank you to everyone who joined and it’s been such an informative and inspirational hour and 20 minutes rather than an hour and a half. So gabrielle please close us out for the day. 

[Dr. Gabrielle McHarg]: Okay well thank you so much Beth and to all of our panelists, Donna, Phyllis, Teresa and Sean and to Joe who did have to go for a clinical emergency. But we do thank you all for being here and for taking the time to share your insights, your expertise and your excellent advice with all of us today. Thanks to all of you as well our zoom participants for joining us. To continue learning about this topic be sure to visit our website childrenscreens.com and read our tips for parents and other resources. We will post a video of today’s webinar on our youtube channel, to which we encourage all of you to subscribe, and we hope you will share our resources with your fellow parents, teachers , clinicians, researchers and friends. For more from children and screens please follow us on instagram, facebook, twitter, linkedin ,and even tiktok um at the account shown on your screen. Our Ask the Experts webinar series will be back in two weeks on wednesday september 8th with “establishing character in a digital world building grit resilience and socio-emotional skills” we hope you’ll join us then to continue our conversation about helping children lead healthy lives in this our digital world. Thanks again for being here today and everyone stay safe, and be well.