At the start of the 2020-21 school year, Lomond Elementary School teacher Elisabeth Bates noticed something different about her first-grade students. While educators had anticipated delays in reading and math skills due to the pandemic, the lag in social skills was especially prevalent. It was showing up in playground disputes, name calling, and other hurtful behaviors. “They were a full one to two years behind where students that age would typically be socially,” says Bates. “There were no block parties or play dates where they would have learned those skills. I’m a teacher who has always taught kindness, but I had to focus really hard on friendship skills and how to treat others.” The effects of the pandemic on social and emotional well-being were at every grade level, though they manifested in different ways. Students at Woodbury and the Middle School exhibited increased social anxiety, school avoidance, and conflicts with others. And at the High School, there was a significant rise in students who reported being depressed, feeling anxious or overwhelmed, and having thoughts of self-harm. Not every family was affected in the same way. While some struggled to deal with loss of employment, or 48 SUMMER 2022 | WWW.SHAKER.LIFE a shift to remote work, others dealt with the raw grief of losing a family member to COVID-19. Shaker students’ behaviors and symptoms mirrored alarming national trends. In December of 2021, United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a rare public advisory on the severity of the mental health crisis facing young people. Data tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and reported in the National Survey of Children’s Health, showed that these problems pre-dated the pandemic but were clearly exacerbated by it. In 2019, 13 percent of adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007. Visits to the emergency room for children and adolescents also rose sharply for anxiety, mood disorders, and self-harm. A Coordinated Response While increasing students’ social/ emotional health and well-being was already a key District goal, the effects of the pandemic brought it to the very top of the priority list. At the start of the school year, Liz Massey came on board as the District’s first Supervisor of Student Wellness and Success. Drawing on her background as a licensed K-12 intervention specialist, the dean of instruction for Breakthrough Schools, and a former social services case worker, she quickly assessed what resources were already in place and what gaps needed to be addressed. “My initial observations were that the schools needed consistent access to social workers and a clear, unified protocol for risk assessment,” she says. She got to work identifying the staffing, resources, and strategies that could have the biggest immediate impact. Superintendent David Glasner, the District’s leadership team, and Board of Education members worked jointly to allocate the necessary funds to increase social and emotional well-being and learning across all grade levels. The Shaker Schools Foundation also made it the funding focus of the Shaker Schools’ 30th annual fundraiser, A Night for the Red & White, which raised nearly $100,000 for expanded social/emotional learning resources and programming. Massey’s first order of business was to close the coverage gaps by creating a coordinated social/ emotional learning (SEL) team. “I created a schedule for the team so principals could see who was available to them on any given day,” she says. Every building now has at least one dedicated full-time case manager or school counselor. A school psychologist is on site at each building at least one day a week (two to three days at the Middle School and High School). And the District continues to partner with outside agencies as well, with counseling support from Bellefaire JCB, Shaker Heights Youth Center, and the Black Mental Health Corporation. Licensed professionals from those organizations work with the staff in each building to make sure each student’s needs are met. They also connect families with any services they may need related to housing or food insecurity, problems with transportation, or access to health care. Says Onaway social worker Sarah Felson, “Our job is to remove any barriers a student or family might have to being successful and feeling connected at school.” Of course, every good team needs a coach, which is where the District’s four Positive Behavior Coordinators come in. As the District’s first Supervisor of Student Wellness and Success, Liz Massey coordinates staffing and resources to meet students’ social/emotional needs.
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