Why Kids May Be Melting Down at School |
 | | Eleni Kalorkoti |
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I have heard from many readers and friends that their kids are struggling to adjust to in-person schooling this year. For the little ones, there's more separation anxiety, which means more tears at drop-off, and struggles to even get out the door. For older children and teens, I'm hearing that some previously motivated kids are less engaged. Perhaps they fell behind during remote learning and feel discouraged now that they're back in the classroom. Others have anxiety about the virus and may still be reeling from grief if they've lost family members. |
Many of them are wearing masks and, in a lot of communities, mask mandates are leading to heated school board meetings and a sense of general tension. As The Atlantic pointed out, a staggering number of children — at least 140,000 — have lost a parent or caregiver to Covid-19. And a meta-analysis of 29 studies looking at mental health among children and teens around the world during the pandemic found: "The prevalence of depression and anxiety symptoms during COVID-19 have doubled, compared with prepandemic estimates." |
I have been collecting anecdotes from stressed-out parents, but I wanted to hear from teachers around the United States, too — about what emotional changes they had observed in their classrooms. While much has been made about pandemic learning loss, social and emotional wellness is also a key part of school that feels under-discussed. |
All of the teachers I spoke to have more than a decade of teaching experience, and they teach in a variety of settings: urban, rural and suburban, with varied demographics in their districts. It's important to first note that everyone said, overall, their students are happy to be back in the classroom, connecting with their friends. While they described a variety of new challenges to this school year, the other consistent response is that many kids in their classrooms are socially and emotionally anywhere from six to 18 months behind where they are in a normal year. |
Sarah Ott, who teaches eighth grade science at a public school in Dalton, Ga., (a small city known as "the carpet capital of the world") said that her students are acting less mature these days. "I used to teach seventh grade, and seventh grade is peak silliness," she said — kids used to parkour off the walls and were still bringing fidget toys to school. In previous years, her eighth graders didn't act like that, and now they do. |
Amanda Marsden, a second grade teacher in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, a town of around 9,000 people outside of Portland, said that her second graders have never had a "normal" school year, since the pandemic hit in the spring of kindergarten for them, so they need to be taught some of the basics of being in a classroom again. "We're really breaking down the minutiae of the day," she said. Her students are also much quicker to run to a teacher with a problem than working it out themselves, she added — they got used to having a grown-up around to solve disputes when they were learning at home. |
Children also may be acting out in new ways to get that adult attention. "We actually just had a student start a fire in a school bathroom last week. THAT was a first for everyone in my building!" Nicole Hagle, who teaches seventh and eighth grade English in Mt. Pleasant, Mich., a college town in the middle of the state, wrote to me in an email. When I followed up with her on the phone, she said that the fire is just one of the attention-seeking behaviors she's observed — there's more yelling, more cursing, more acting out. "We're having to dial back expectations behaviorally," she said. |
Several teachers also said that they felt the public controversies over mask wearing had spilled over into the classroom. "I don't think parents realize the impact they have on their children," Ms. Hagle said. Masks are required at her school. "We see kids are a lot less careful, some are outright obstinate about mask wearing," she said — and that's a difference from last school year, when there was more of a feeling that everyone was in this together. |
So if your kid is struggling to adjust this year, what can you do to support them? |
First, keep the lines of communication open with teachers, Ms. Marsden said. Your kid might be extremely anxious at home and crying every night, and your teacher may have zero idea because they're not exhibiting these behaviors in the classroom. Sharing that information can signal to a teacher, "Maybe I need to do a little more checking in with the kids about how they're feeling," Ms. Marsden said, or that she needs to ramp up the social-emotional learning curriculum. It may also help the teacher refer a family to mental-health services available at the school or in the community, if necessary. |
Teachers appreciate this kind of outreach. "A cardinal rule of public school teaching is you meet your students where they are, not where they should be," said Chad Pape, who teaches high school music in Manhattan, Kan., a city near a university and an Army base. "Our job is to start moving forward from wherever that point is." |
We can't put a Band-Aid on a global crisis and all of the stress, anxiety and havoc it has introduced to our lives. It sounds simplistic, but what I heard over and over again is that parents, teachers and students giving each other grace, and not pretending everything is how it used to be, may be the most important thing right now. |
"I see students really wanting to get more empathy from the adults in their life," said Josh McKivigan, a behavioral health therapist who works at a public school serving seventh to 12th graders in Pittsburgh. "They've had to hear, 'be resilient.' They've had that pumped at them for over a year. They just want the adults in their life to take a step back and understand their perspective, and make it OK to get help." |
Though the pandemic has created numerous setbacks for these kids, teachers see the positive in them, too. Sarah Ott, in Georgia, said that her current group of eighth graders is more empathetic than kids of previous years. "They grew in certain ways to adapt and survive the pandemic," she said. |
For the first time in Ms. Ott's 14 years of teaching, she's had several students say they want to be therapists or counselors when they grow up, because they saw that they could help friends or family members talk about their feelings during Covid. These children have "developed really profound skills," she said, and we shouldn't lose sight of that. |
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