Episode 3: SEL for All

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is getting more focus in schools. But it’s not a new concept. Dr. Renee Payton Cahill’s experiences as an elementary school counselor, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor, give her a well-rounded perspective on the role SEL plays in students’ wellbeing, as well as that of their parents, caregivers, and teachers. Listen in as she shares her perspectives on the ways we can address mental health coming out of the pandemic. 

Learn more about Dr. Cahill’s work at Worrall Elementary School in Pennsylvania: https://worrall.mnsd.org/academics/counseling 

Transcript

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Announcer:

You're listening to the Voices in Education podcast, powered by Securly, where we hear from new voices and explore new ideas about how we can reimagine education to support whole student success. Education is at an inflection point. As we grapple with complex challenges like funding and enrollment, as well as diversity, equity, and safety, we also have an opportunity, an opportunity to reimagine education. Now more than ever, we know the importance that students' overall wellbeing plays in their success. They need to feel supported and safe and connected to be able to engage in their learning and achieve to their full potential. Join your host, Casey Agena, a former teacher turned instructional coach and technologist as he interviews inspirational educators, school leaders, wellness professionals, and more to amplify their voices. You'll learn about the innovative work they're doing to support student safety, engagement and overall wellness. And who knows, you may even spark a new idea of your own. Ready to reimagine education? Let's go.

Casey:

I'm your host, Casey Agena. And in today's episode, I'm excited to be talking with Renee Cahill. She's a counselor in an elementary school outside of Philadelphia. And we'll hear a little bit about Renee's role in working with students, teachers, and families, and the challenges that she is facing in light of the pandemic, remote and hybrid learning, and what impact this has on the future of her work, her school, and her community.

Renee:

Thanks for having me, Casey. It's a pleasure to be here.

Casey:

Yeah. So why don't you tell us about what you do and I'll step back and I'll listen.

Renee:

Sure. So I've been a school counselor since 2004. Feels like a really long time, and doing that I feel like I've really seen a lot of trends and evolution in education over the past years. And I have the privilege of also having gone back for my doctorate and becoming a licensed clinical psychologist, which has helped me, I think, be a better school counselor, but also work in the private practice field. And that's lent me to working part-time as an adjunct professor and also helping individuals who are school counselors who are seeking to get their license, their LPC, and so providing them with some supervision. So I get to hear about how school counseling looks in a lot of different environments as well.

Casey:

I think in terms of your role in working in the elementary school and supporting students, as well as parents, do you see that as similar and/or different in terms of supporting students who are looking to be somewhat like you and the work that they are going to be doing in addressing the social and emotional needs of students?

Renee:

Yes. I think when helping students in their school counseling practice and trying to look at individual cases, that relationship is a little bit different and definitely more education based on their growth than what I do when I'm working with parents and how I work as a clinician outside of school versus inside of school. The work is really different I think outside counseling versus school counseling.

Casey:

Got it. So let's back up a bit. This term “social-emotional learning.” It really feels like in this post COVID time — though we feel like we're still very much in it — that it’s coming up as this hot item here in the K-12 arena. So I know that when we have spoken before, it's really not something new, but it's something that's even just more highlighted or amplified. Would you agree with that? And what's the kind of history behind that, particularly in the elementary schools?

Renee:

Yeah. So I feel very fortunate to work in my district because we have the budget that when these new initiatives become the forefront in the nation, we can really kind of adapt to that. For example, just this past two years, we adopted the Second Step curriculum for SEL and the Common Sense Education for digital citizenship. However, neither of these curriculums have been assigned as my task, which I think is rare for a lot of public education schools. And the reason being initially they were, but then this past year, because of the needs and the response that were seen in our students post virtual and hybrid learning and COVID, students need counseling. And so my schedule needs to be available to provide those services.

Renee:

So Second Step is a nice curriculum because it is pretty scripted and most teachers can implement that. So we've hired new teachers at all of our elementary schools who are scheduled to go into the classes and teach the Second Step curriculum. And then our school librarian has taken on teaching the Common Sense Education. However, I really think that social-emotional learning is not really new in education, because I think back to when I first started as a school counselor and as a country, we were really focused on school climate and especially implementing bully prevention programs. In fact, I remember back in 2006, like many schools, we implemented the Olweus Bully Prevention Program and all of our teachers were trained and really required to have class meetings and make that priority. But then like many things in education, the state testing became a real priority and class time became really focused on implementing new curriculums and devoted to helping improve students' test scores. So class meeting time became sacrificed.

Renee:

But just this past year in the response to the needs that the students are presenting, that became another focal point this year that our teachers have started implementing their class morning meetings again. And I'm really glad to see that because I think that will help with the whole class climate and foster those relationships that we know are so helpful in helping kids heal after trauma or separation.

Casey:

And COVID, remote learning, hybrid learning, quarantining, all of those kind of impacts are of something that really I think challenge school counselors like yourself, not only for the students who have to be away, but for the students that are still in school and as we're starting to see now for the teachers themselves within the school and how they're managing and how much of that, as you know, the adult mental health and that state really impacting on what they do. How has that been at your school in terms of that climate, that culture and then what has been your role to help support that?

Renee:

Again, I think we are really lucky that we had a lot of systems in place that were really working well pre-COVID. For example, we implemented our PBIS (positive behavior interventions and support) system well before COVID. And so students came back from their year away from school or their hybrid learning and were easily motivated to come back and show the expected behavior because of the reward system that we had in place. So I think we were lucky in that way.

Renee:

And also we've always had a really strong character program, which really is my joy when it comes to being a school counselor, implementing our character ed program. And I'm lucky that our teachers have always been very involved in the character education program. We meet every summer and this was even over COVID. We met on Zoom and we spend an entire day and can earn a flex day to do this planning where we plan out our character assemblies for the year, what character traits we're going to focus on. And sometimes we develop a whole theme for the year, and we're able to respond to things that are happening in the nation or things like coming back after COVID. And so in doing that, I think we were able to be pretty proactive with how to support our students post-COVID.

Renee:

But this is still a time where things are unexpected. As you know, I just talked about getting my own COVID positive result after getting a negative result and having a student come back this week after losing his father to COVID. So things are very fluid still and unpredictable. And with that, teachers I think are having a hard time teaching and focusing solely on teaching when there's so many other things that are clouding kids' ability to learn. And again, that's why I feel so fortunate that teachers can access me and I can provide the counseling for the students and even the families. I'm having to do more family counseling than I ever have before not because it's what I enjoy doing, but because it's what's necessary.

Renee:

Right now, it is so hard to get an appointment with an outside therapist. There's wait lists that are months long-

Casey:

Yep.

Renee:

And these parents have already been waiting sometimes months and months. So I'm having to spend a lot more time on the phone with parents and I've sent a home so many reward plans for parents to modify for home behaviors or developing family rules to try and help with communication and behaviors at home. And I feel comfortable doing that because the result is it's helping students and it's helping them be a better learner at school. But the need is definitely higher year than it ever has before.

Casey:

Let's take a short break to hear a word from our sponsor.

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Casey:

And now back to the interview. Those pressures because of the reliance, right? The parents and families are really looking at the school, not only reliant on folks like yourself for parenting skills and things that they can do to address positive behavior intervention at home as well. At the same time, hey, my kiddo lost some time in learning because of the past 12 to 18 months. How are we accelerating and amplifying that too even more so than you did before? So there's this kind of juxtaposition between let's really address that learning loss and let's get the kids going in. I want to know how my child is doing well academically. At the same time, let's really kind of push that social emotional supports and what can I do at home and all of those pieces. And really coming from the stakeholders of the parents, almost an overt reliance on the school, and those pressures then I'm sure are felt with you all.

Renee:

It is. And I think the teachers, at my school especially, they ruly care about the state testing scores that our students earn. And so they're feeling that crunch that the state testing is again right around the corner as it is every year at this time. And they're thinking these students came with lower skills and less skills than they're used to and how are they going to get them ready for those state tests? And so they feel that pressure. And sometimes I think the kids can feel that pressure stemming from the teacher's anxiety.

Renee:

But with that said, we try to remind our teachers and they do really hear this and listen that any student who already had educational delays or anxiety or depression or challenges with social challenges, those things are just amplified from the pandemic. And it's going to take some time to provide the assistance that those students need and recognize who those students are. Our school psychologist is well beyond where she normally would be with referrals at this time in year. And she's of course working overtime to try and get caught up and get these kids tested and services if they qualify. But it's just going to take some time and not all schools are willing to provide more mental health supports, which is what's needed for a lot of the students.

Casey:

And one thing that is an indicator of all this is the students themselves, how they are acting out, what types of behavior incidents are we seeing and/or from a digital standpoint, not seeing in terms of how peer to peer interactions are happening, who they're talking to, where they're voicing anxiety, frustration. Many times within the home setting, it's not sitting down and talking with mom and dad about it, but it's connecting with their peers or others online. And that being a vehicle to get things out good, bad, or ugly. A lot of those indicators then come back to you all and your plates and like, hey, here's what I'm seeing and here's the time spent on screen and here's all of these pieces. And I'm thinking that feeds into some of the coaching and with the parents as well on how to manage a home. Does it not?

Renee:

It does, but I think what you're bringing up is the fact that students really do feel comfortable with engaging and socializing with each other virtually. And that is one of the only things that I think was redeeming about the virtual learning aspect and the shutdown is that students really did stay connected. Whether it was through playing video games or FaceTime or whatever it is, they still did stay connected. So for a lot of kids, they came back to school and there weren't really noticeable changes.

Renee:

So it wasn't for all of the kids that they're really struggling. It's the kids who were already at risk that I feel like are really struggling. And then there were some kids that really actually benefited from that individualized attention that they had and that quality time that they now had. I mean, life is often very busy for families with after school sports. And if there's multiple children, it's a lot of divide and conquer, mom's taking one kid this way, dad's taking the other kid that way. And so there was that time where kids could just stay home with their families. The learning demands sort of lessened for a lot of them. And they got to just play board games and connect.

Renee:

Now that wasn't true for all kids, but definitely was for some. And so those kids really benefit. And then that's where we're seeing a huge gap between the kids who did really well with having all that time at home versus the kids who didn't have that same experience who maybe did become socially isolated or didn't have the same kind of technology. And then there are some kids who their level of independence you can see is different because they were so accustomed to having an individualized adult there to support them and help them with "how do you spell that word? Oh, I can tell you how to spell it" versus sitting in a class with 25 other students to one teacher. They're having to learn to wait their turn or try and tap it out themselves, or look at the cues around them to see if they could figure out how to answer the question. So we're still seeing the aftermaths of that, where kids are not as independent as they normally would be because some of them had a lot of attention, individualized attention.

Casey:

So with all of that said, I'm wanting to package this up by looking ahead. And before we know it'll be the end of the January and then February is going to sneak by. And then we have April and May and then turning that page and we know how quickly school calendars can go. And I'm already kind of thinking about the 2022/23 school year and what that has. So in your prospective look in your role of supporting students and families, what's that outlook look like, one, and then two, what are the kind of proactive supports that schools really need as they really kind of look ahead towards that next school year?

Renee:

So I probably wouldn't be in the role as a school counselor and in the mental health field if I wasn't by nature a pretty optimistic person. So I say that because I do feel like eventually we will catch up and fill in the gaps where kids have had some learning loss or gaps in identifying them for the needs they have for mental health supports. And I do think eventually we will have more mental health community services available. Right now, it's tough, but I do think eventually we'll catch up. Last summer felt almost normal to a lot of kids, I think.

Casey:

Right.

Renee:

And I'm hopeful that by this summer they'll be at their summer camps, maybe even mask free, if they do summer camps or get to go on their vacations. And I'm hopeful that it will feel almost normal again. And then maybe, I don't know, maybe we'll start back next September and it will really truly feel like a start to a school year that's pretty typical.

Casey:

Well, I think for just even my own three kiddos, glass half full looking ahead at that, and I'm anticipating baseball. I'm anticipating those summer camps. I'm anticipating YMCA weeks of summer fun. So I want to thank you for your time and for lending your thoughts. And I really want to highlight what you shared with us from a practitioner standpoint of what's happening within the schools to supporting the families of these students, to then even having an insight on working with those that are going to be in the pipeline of counseling. And thank you all for listening in and hearing another awesome and unique voice to Voices in Education. Renee, thank you so much for joining.

Renee:

Thank you.

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