Addressing Social-emotional Learning and Mental Health: New NYKids Research and Highlights from Whitesboro Middle School

By K.C. Wilcox

Reports continue to roll in regarding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people’s mental health. In a 2021 report, an estimated 37.1% of students experienced poor mental health in the pandemic, 44.2% of students reported feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and 19.9% of students reported suicidal ideation.

As described in previous blogs, NYKids’ research team conducted a study of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in schools around New York state.  In a state-wide survey we found that  82% of the educators who responded indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed that they have had students struggle with mental health challenges.

In the second phase of our study, we visited a subset of schools identified for relatively better self-reports of resilience in the face of pandemic challenges. The Whitesboro Middle School Campus including the Deerfield school serving grade 6 and the Middle School serving grades 7 and 8 participated in the study.

In this blog we share an excerpt from this study focused on how leaders and educators approach mitigating the most negative impacts of the pandemic on their students.

Addressing Social-emotional Learning and Mental Health Needs “… For Years to Come”

As one Whitesboro district leader explained, “Just because we get a year out of the pandemic or two or three, it doesn’t mean those issues [SEL and mental health needs] are gone because people have experienced trauma in their lives as a result of this experience. And we need to make sure that we are ready and able to support them for years to come”. This long view of the effects of the pandemic on youth’s social-emotional learning (SEL) and mental health are reminders of the need to use promising practices like those outlined and excerpted from the Whitesboro Middle School Campus case study shared below

Building Self-Regulation Skills and Providing Opportunities for One-on-One Interaction

Living its mission “to foster an educational and respectful environment by providing rigorous and inspirational programs which prepare adolescents for challenges and choices that enable them to be motivated, self-directed learners” (Whitesboro Middle School Campus Home Page), educators described how the pandemic opened up opportunities for young people to take ownership over their learning: a key self-regulation skill. As one example, a teacher described posting materials in Google Classroom so that students who were absent for any reason (including just needing a “mental health day”) could keep up:

I post all my lessons in PowerPoint slides. So if a student is absent, they can see everything. If they needed a mental health day — are having anxiety — or they can’t come to school, they can go to my classroom and basically teach themselves the lesson. So, everything I do in class, I have an online version of it every single day. So, they can access everything, even if they’re absent. And I’ve had really positive feedback with that.

Teachers reported how making themselves available to students through email or text messaging encouraged students to “self-advocate” (teacher) as well. Two teachers described how this shift happened.

Teacher 1: There was a huge change. The kids would email you instead of their parents.

Teacher 2: They were self-advocates, which was great.

In addition, Whitesboro leaders addressed the needs for more support in social-emotional learning by encouraging school counselors to be present in Google Classrooms with accompanying frequent “check-ins” with students.

Mentoring and Wellness Efforts

While keeping standards high for student performance and behavior was important on the Whitesboro MS campus throughout the pandemic, so too was empathy and flexibility around the challenges students were facing socially, emotionally, and in regard to their mental health overall. As the principal reflected on ways they grappled with adapting some of their SEL programs, he described the importance of making sure that every student had a trusted adult they could turn to for support. While their extended homeroom had functioned as a place for adults to support and connect with kids prior to the pandemic, the principal described other efforts like implementation of “mentor meetings.”

We started trusted adult surveys. We wanted to make sure that our kids have somebody here on campus that they feel comfortable around and it was something very simple. We put in a Google Classroom all of the names of the staff; we included everybody – secretaries, monitors, aides, cafeteria people, custodians, everybody that they may come in contact with. We don’t do it first thing in the year, usually the week before Halloween.  We just asked them to list two or three staff members [that] if you were having a bad day or needed someone to talk to, who would those staff members be that you would be willing to talk to? . . . and we’ve continued to do that, but it also gave us an idea of which students did not have connections.

These mentor meetings typically take place bi-monthly and in 30-minute blocks. In them students are grouped with a trusted adult. Since not all teachers felt comfortable with what they would be expected to do during mentor meetings, choices were offered. As one teacher explained, “If I’m more comfortable with playing a game with kids, or, you know, whatever I’m comfortable with, I can do that. We’re still building relationships with kids.”

While these mentor meetings represent just one formalized method of connecting students to adults, other attempts at addressing students’ social-emotional learning and mental health needs were based in part on what students were providing in wellness surveys. These “quick five to six question” surveys (principal) asked students to give frequent feedback on how things were going in school and then the wellness committee used this information to come up with ideas like a “wellness ready” poster.

To see more from this case study or other case studies on addressing SEL and mental health please check out the NYKids’ research results page.

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