TOM WILLIAMS: After COVID-19 spring and summer break, support students' social and emotional needs

For most of our traditional public school students and parents, last week marked the start of the official summer break. After what I suspect will be remembered by all of us as the most unusual thirteen weeks of our school experience, summer 2020 presents a change in the daily routine of remote learning and hopefully will ease some of the pressures caused by both COVID-19 and the most recent trauma caused by seeing or experiencing first hand acts of racial injustice.

While this natural change of pace is welcomed by many students, for our most vulnerable students, time away from the support of the regular school year schedule and relationships can be a time when these students are confronted with circumstances that can lead to food insecurity, loneliness, limited reading and learning opportunities and even unsafe conditions.

Teachers and schools, such as those partnering with the Public School Forum’s Resilience and Learning Project, are designing trauma informed classrooms and schools to put in place social and emotional learning practices that will equip teachers and students with the skills they need to negate the impact of ACEs both in and out of school.

These skills empower our students, at an early age, to identify their stressors and how their response to them allows them to handle such situations to positively impact their learning, personal relationships, health and mental well-being.

After a five-month hiatus from the regular routine, as schools prepare for re-opening in mid-August, let’s be purposeful as a state and local community in recognizing that individual students will return with a range of social and emotional learning needs.

These student needs must be addressed on an individual basis to ensure all students will be prepared to meet the rigor of the academic program as well as new school expectations for health and safety — from the buses to the ball fields.