EDU Trending: What Students Want and Need
What students want and what they need are the same. They want to be happy, and they need to be happy to thrive – socially, emotionally, physically, and academically. Yet, there is a severe and chronic mental health crisis that threatens their well-being.
Two contradictory facts are irrefutable. One: U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, warns that over a 10-year period, there has been a 60% increase in adolescents reporting feelings of depression, sadness, hopelessness, and suicide. All are emblematic of loneliness and disconnection. Two: Nationwide, schools are 100,000 short of the counselors needed on average to serve students. Even if schools could afford to add wellness staff, there are not enough qualified professionals to meet the need. And our children languish.
Some articles invoke platitudes like ‘develop more social-emotional programs,’ or ‘ensure that every student has a supportive adult with the training and time to develop a meaningful relationship.’ In addition to the dirth in mental health professionals, and given a massive teacher shortage, who would be qualified to successfully implement and maintain these recommendations? And when?
So much for unrealistic ideas. Let’s focus on what we can do to provide what students want and need to be happy. Research has shown that students want a clean school with bathrooms whose toilets and sinks work. Keeping schools safe, operable, clean, and healthy should be covered within a school’s maintenance budget. Students can also do their part.
Also at the top of the list is a hangout space. Most schools should be able to identify such a place. Fresh paint, cushy seating, some plants, and soft lighting can create a welcoming and safe environment where students can unwind, relax, connect to self and each other. Funding could be a community service project, endorsed by the school, headed by students. Participating in this project will lift students up with purpose, satisfaction, and pride. In addition, for their support, donors might be gifted with an invitation to the ribbon cutting ceremony, complete with music, beverages, and student-made desserts. It would be a win-win for everyone.
Note: Some students have circumstances that make it difficult for them to connect with their peers. It is important for school personnel to facilitate their opportunities to do so. Here is one happy result for a 10th grader in Mississippi.
New schools today are designed to maximize natural light, open spaces, and comfortable common areas. If yours is an older school, the ideas above and the two to follow will still develop agency and create a sense of well-being among your students. For example, with teachers to facilitate, murals drawn by students could be on walls outside and inside the school. Likewise, gardens maintained by students with teacher guidance could be outside the school or in classrooms. Take a look:
Fulfilling students’ basic wants by listening, hearing, and giving students agency, space, and a place to breathe, opportunities to connect with each other, a light, attractive and clean school environment will lead to student buy-in, self-determination, and ownership. What is more, when social/emotional well-being improve, there is a positive corollary effect on students’ academic performance which they also want and need.
News and Views: Alhassan Susso and The Morning Class
“If I know someone’s story well, I’m able to speak to them and understand them.” This is the lesson Alhassan Susso’s
grandmother taught him when he was growing up in Gambia.
Years later, that lesson would be his North star.
Susso came to the United States with $20 in his pocket and, like other immigrants, he dreamed of a better life through
education. He pursued both sustained by his determined spirit and with multiple jobs to pay his way.
Twice he put his own dreams aside to care for family. First, when his grandmother’s roof collapsed leaving her
homeless. Instead of going to college, for six years he worked to earn the money to buy a home for his grandmother and mother. Then, when his younger sister contracted Hepatitis and needed treatment in the United States. Once again, Susso set his plans and college aside to raise money for her trip, but her visa was denied. She died soon after.
Her loss motivated Susso to become an immigration lawyer, but a college advisor suggested that his talents and commitment might be more immediately useful to young immigrants if he worked with them as teacher and role model. It was a defining moment. Susso reflected, “My mission was clear. When these kids graduate, they have avenues to a better quality of life that they mightn’t have otherwise.” His students and their success are proof that he succeeded.
He was not sure how to help them. He remembered what his grandmother taught him: Listen. Forge relationships. Develop deep connections. But what did he have to offer? The answer was hard-earned practical wisdom and five elements for success in the real world. The Morning Class was born - so named because it met for one hour before the start of the school day. It prepares young students, many of whom are immigrants, to successfully meet the world. In my opinion, the Morning Class should be a required course in every high school. Students would love it!
The Morning Class changed the lives of hundreds of students. Many of them made their way back to the Bronx from wherever they live to honor Susso when he was named New York Teacher of the Year in 2019.
One said what they all felt: “One of the best teachers I ever had! So proud I got to be one of your students!”
No one tells Susso’s story or expresses his love and dedication for his students better than he does. This video will put a smile on your face and inspire you to start your own Morning Class. Guaranteed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?ab_channel=TED-EdEducatorTalks&v=LLVB50zzVhA
You Just Can’t Make This Up: A Segregated Playdate? Really?
Every parent knows that a playdate can backfire. Children can be cranky, decide they don’t like each other anymore, fight over toys. Possible reasons are endless. But never has there been a more defective, incendiary, thoughtlessly exclusionary playdate than the one hosted by the Equity and Inclusion Committee of Chabot Elementary School in Oakland, CA, at the start of the school year.
The news release sent from the Oakland Unified School District, identified the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Playdate as an official event for Chabot Elementary School students of color and their families. White students and their families were not invited.
Why? Was the exclusion of White children symbolic of racial bias? Misplaced righteousness? Insensitivity masquerading as empathy? Stupidity? Or all of the above?
According to Sam Davis, a District Director, the playdate was conceived with good intentions “to be more welcoming to families of color.” (For the record, White is a color, too.)
Sadly, along with “all of the above,” Davis’ explanation is likely true if only for one reason: No school or organization would deliberately court the backlash of hate from culture wars extremists that Chabot Elementary School now confronts every day. What happened still begs the question: where was the welcoming inclusion for the White students who, by the way, are the minority in this school? Whether minority or majority, there is no justification for excluding anyone.
Sadder still is the missed opportunity. Had all students and their parents been invited, the day could have been one of acceptance, belonging, and community - true inclusion and a chance to bond for those who attended. It could have become a cultural touchstone for the school, students, staff, and families, and served as a stellar example for the city of Oakland and beyond.
Saddest of all, to date the school has not issued a public apology to all students and their parents for its mistake and the fury and danger it unleashed: Bomb threats keep the Oakland Police Department on high alert. The Oakland School District has remained silent.
People make mistakes. Chabot Elementary School should own theirs and apologize. A sincere expression of regret would be a courageous first step toward healing. Then school leaders can ask for a second chance to host an all-student and family playdate and invite community members. It would stop haters cold and show children that learning from a mistake clears the path to a positive outcome.
Part of the problem? Or part of the solution? Chabot Elementary School has a choice to make. So do we.
Question of the Day: Funding Students’ Mental Health
An estimated 100,000 shortage in the number of social workers and counselors in U.S. schools nationwide have exacerbated the serious mental health crisis among our students that existed before COVID and has worsened since. To help mitigate the problem, for the next five years, the Department of Education will have an annual budget allocation for school districts and state agencies specifically to support student mental health. That amount is:
$144 million
$213 million
$279 million
$327 million
$400 million
For the correct answer, please go to: www.merleschell.com/reflections and read the article Love Is a Bag of Potato Chips
From Me to You: Where I’m From
In 1993, writer and teacher, George Ella Lyon, wrote the poem Where I’m From, which famously begins: “I am from clothespins, from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride…” Not what you usually expect in a poem, it was a declaration of personal identity, memories, feelings, and appreciation of her childhood and roots. The poem - honest and basic - transcended boundaries to achieve global relevance. Students around the world still write their own Where I’m From poems, fostering respect for individuality, mutual understanding, compassion, and community in the process.
In 2015 - along with writer, teacher, and activist Julie Landsman - Lyon created the I Am From Project “in response to the fear- and hate- mongering alive in our country today.” She called on students in her home state of Kentucky to write their own poems. This was not a contest, but a mission to remind students and the rest of us that greater than our differences is our common humanity. 731 students submitted their poems.
In 2023, Lyon’s concerns about fear- and hate- mongering are truer and more dire than they were eight years ago. The world is coming undone, shredded by perpetrators of hate who seem to be wherever you turn from a landlord in Illinois to students on elite college campuses. They may be exposed for their bigotry, but they are also emboldened: Murdering innocents and bulldozing people’s hope and desire for equity, belonging, trust, and peace. It is a global human crisis like none before.
For one look at where we are from, here is a 2010 video created by Julia Daniel when she was a student at Tamalpais High School's Academy of Integrated Humanities and New Media (AIM):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdnHl_yW1dQ&ab_channel=NBCSports
And here is Lyon reading the original Where I’m From.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdnHl_yW1dQ&ab_channel=NBCSports
No matter where you are from - geographically, culturally, religiously, or politically - we owe it to ourselves and our children to accept, respect, help, and protect each other. To remind ourselves how wonderful and precious life is. To stand together against those who would destroy us all. Our memories and experiences impact us. They do not define us. Individually, we are responsible for the decisions and choices we make for good or ill on all things big and small.