Student Support System for Emotional Stability
By Jill Jenkins
Students’
emotional development is key to their academic development. Although schools provide academic support for
all students and a systematic system of support for special education students
and students with a 504 designation, it does not provide a systematic support
system for all students. Many students
who could qualify for additional support don’t receive it because their parents
are not informed about the procedures or the services available. Many students don’t receive support because
they appear to be doing satisfactory in school.
Schools need a systematic method to help young teachers identify
students who need additional academic or emotional support. According to
“Witnessing Violence Fact Sheet” by Joanne Davis Ph.D., and Ernestine Briggs
Ph.D 3.3 million to ten million children have witnessed domestic violence. According
to the C.D.C., “in 2012, a total of
305,388 babies were born to women aged 15–19 years .” Likewise,
according to Teen-Help.com, 20% of
all teens will suffer depression. All
of these students are at-risk; yet we fail to offer the support most of them
need. How do we provide all students the
support they need to function both emotionally and academically?
Some
students who need assistance have the wherewithal to simply ask for it. For example, Sara, a former students told me
that she had been sexually abused by her father and had been removed from her
home and placed in a foster home. She
didn’t want help for herself --even though I am sure she needed it-- but for a
sister who was still living with her biological parents. Students never approach a stranger about
something this delicate. They will ask a
trusted educator, so it becomes the job of that educator to become a liaison
between them and the social worker or counselor. That was the role I played. In another similar instance, LaDetra, a
student in one of my A.V.I.D. classes, told me about how her biological mother had
forced her to perform sexual acts with strange men at age eleven to enhance her
mother’s ability to get illegal drugs.
Later, her mother had abandoned her and three younger siblings for a
month. With no food in the house, and no
money to pay the rent, this young girl had called an aunt who had located each
of the children’s biological fathers and placed them in homes across the
county. LaDetra was concerned for the
welfare of her siblings. I introduced
her to a counselor who contacted her family and together they were able to get
her counseling and help contacting each of her siblings. Another student, Brian, told me that he had
no friends, and was planning to kill himself.
I wasted no time in calling his mother.
Thirty years later, he called me at home and thanked me for saving his
life because he was planning to kill himself after school that day. Because his mother took him to counseling, he
hadn’t. His life turned out to be
wonderful after he had gotten through that dark period. Take students seriously and do not waste
time getting them help.
Sometimes
as an educator, you just need to be sounding board for a student. For example, Denise, a student whose parents
had recently divorced was upset that she still loved her father and his wife
even though she knew her father was having an affair with his current wife
which caused her parents’ divorce.
Relationships are confusing to adults, so imagine what they are like to
children. Children who feel comfortable
with a teacher often use them as a support system to work out problems, but
teachers need training to know what to say to students who come to them for
help and lists of professionals to connect students with for the professional
help they need. Students who have
witnessed gang violence are often like soldiers who are haunted by their war
experiences. For example, Dashawn, a
former student, described his horror as he watched his brother shot down in the
streets. He wanted to leave his life in
gangs, but feared for his own life and the lives of his other family
members. Suffering this kind of duress
can make it difficult for a student to perform well in school, but it is a
reality that many students face every day.
Most
students do not have the skill or the self-assurance to ask for help directly,
so teachers need to be aware of signs that they are asking for help. Often students will write about a problem in
their journal writing or in an assignment.
For instance, I had asked my student to write a letter saying goodbye to
someone or something in their life, an assignment connected to a chapter in Ray
Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. One of
my students, Anita, wrote a goodbye letter to her parents who had recently died
from A.I.D.S.. The letter was so touching that
I contacted her family. She was living
with her God-Parents who had only met her a few months earlier. Her new mother told me that the letter had
opened up a flood of emotions and she was glad that Anita had an opportunity to
let some of her emotions free. In
another instance, I had given my classes an assignment to write a short story,
the culminating activity of our Short Story Unit. Benita, a student in my class, produced a
story filled with violence directed inward and at others. I took the story to our school counselor who
shared it with her parents. Benita was
suicidal and they found her appropriate counseling. Other students demonstrate their emotional
instability by acting out or withdrawing.
Students who teacher might perceive as discipline problems are actually
crying out for help. Others may dress in
large coats and pull their heads in like turtles disappearing from the
world. This is also a cry for help.
Still
when I reflect on my early days of teaching, I realize there were a lot of red
flags that I missed. Take Hector who in
7th grade was willfully disobedient of rules. In 8th grade he brought a gun and
bullets to school and was expelled. At
twenty-one he brought another gun into a pub and killed six people. Maybe if the school had given him counseling
when he was just willfully disobedient he could have been saved a life spent in
prison and six lives might have been saved.
In another instance, Joey, who could act the most believable scenes of
spousal abuse in my improvisational theater class, may not have strangled his
wife and one other woman if I had recognized that his talent for creating
believable improvisational scenes about domestic violence was actually a cry
for help. Students with shattered emotional lives need teachers to recognize their cries and help them.
To help
all of our students to learn and function in school, teachers must be aware of
their cries for help. Training must be provided for teachers to be able to
recognize the signs. Furthermore, we
need to open communication between teachers, parents, counselors, and the
school administration. Teachers will be
the first to notice problems so they need to know the signs of depression and
anxiety. They need to know who they
should contact to best help the child and they need to understand that seeking
the help of a counselor, a parent, or an administrator is not demonstrating
their ignorance; it is demonstrating their strength.
