Higley discusses social-emotional learning success

Apr. 17—Higley Unified is "leaps and bounds ahead" of its peers when it comes to fostering the social-emotional growth of its students, district officials say.

The Governing Board recently heard the district's progress in maximizing students' academic and social-emotional skills, one of the goals outlined in HUSD's 2022-23 Strategic Plan.

"We're talking about defining very clearly what are the steps and the systems that we are building and making progress on," Superintendent Dr. Dawn Foley said April 5. "We are doing an exceptional job .... We were behind and we are now leaps and bounds ahead."

According to proponents, social-emotional learning, often referred to as SEL, helps improve kids' academic performance, curtail bullying, reduce dropout rates and build character by developing self-awareness, self-control and communication skills.

However, opponents see it as a cover to introduce elements of critical race theory into schools. State Education Superintendent Tom Horne, a Republican, has vowed to remove such programs from schools.

"Social emotional growth has taken on many different definitions depending on where you look," said James Walker, director of Student Services/Title IX coordinator.

Walker said the district's developed the Healthy Higley wellness initiative, involving partnerships with agencies and community resources.

"We've identified themes that include parent information sessions around topics such as resiliency, suicide awareness and drug prevention," Walker said. "We've successfully implemented our tiered approach to our staff suicide-awareness training and we focused on proactive and preventative ways to overcome obstacles and to develop positive life skills."

Walker said the district with its partners such as Community Bridges and the Arizona Army National Guard have presented to parents topics such as building resiliency, drug trends, the dangers of the social media app Snapchat and suicide awareness.

He said that the biggest take-away this year has been to initiate suicide awareness using a tiered approach in conjunction with compliance to the Mitch Warnock Act, which requires staff to be trained in suicide prevention.

All staff members have received suicide prevention training, Walker said.

"Our future plans moving forward are to continue on with the theme of resiliency," Walker said.

He added that parent have asked how students can also receive information about suicide prevention, suicide awareness, drug misuse and dangers of social media.

"So, we'd like to move forward in the future to offer a parent presentation to include students after school hours at both district and school events and continue on some of the sessions are designed specifically for adults," Walker said.

Board President Tiffany Shultz called the presentations "amazing."

"I'm sad that we have to do them but I've attended several of them and the education around it is just wonderful for parents," she said.

Board member and teacher Michelle Anderson said, "For those of you that know me, suicide is very real in my household. Here's where I've had some enlightenment.

"Suicide rates, suicide attempts are higher in special-needs students, students with learning disabilities, students with physical disabilities."

She said watching a training video on suicide prevention isn't enough.

"I can clarify one thing," Walker responded. "There were no training videos for our staff. It was all live direct training."

Anderson applauded that effort and said she would like to see staff better trained on how to work with students with disabilities. She said one of the best professional developments she's received in her career was learning how to read and utilize an individualized education program or IEP, which are for students who need extra help and support.

""We're a school district and these are the children that are suffering," she said.

Associate Superintendent Sherry Richards said that staff is already working on training teachers to have a better understanding of IEPs.

Foley said she appreciated Anderson's perspective and that the entire school staff took the training seriously.

"Our goal is to not just do it but to do it very well," Foley said. "We're making sure that it's sustainable and continues to be something that we're not only doing for compliance because we have to but because we're doing it for the very best of everybody, our professional development as well as for our families and our students."

Board member Amanda Wade said a high school she taught at in Maryland used the Sources of Strength program, which changes the norms and behaviors surrounding suicide and increases social support and connectiveness among students.

One of the things it does is creates avenues for kids to know places that they can go, Wade said.

"Because sometimes a home may not be the place that you can go to get the assistance that you need or to get somebody to hear what you're feeling," she said.

Board member Anna Van Hoek said parents need to be notified first and foremost of a situation involving their children.

Wade said a school is legally required to contact parents if a student is a suicide risk and that the program she suggested gives students a safe place to express themselves.

It's "because of this program that a kid's friend went to a teacher to say, "I think my friend needs this help,'" Wade said. "It creates ways for kids to look at it in a different way so it's not something that we just don't talk about or we just don't have those things. And it also creates opportunities for more people to be aware.

"At the end of the day they do leave here and they are at home and home needs to be aware. It's just the idea of identifying it. You want as many eyes and as many hearts as you can to care about the people in your orbit and that's essentially what that was for."

Walker said parental notification was another piece of suicide awareness.

"Any type of crisis is taken serious," he said. "The expectation is that parents are made aware and they're the first person that gets the phone call and then there is a soft handoff between the school and the parent. The No. 1 priority is to get the student to their parents and the parents can help them get further resources that supersedes what a school can offer."

Board member Kristina Reese noted the importance of social-emotional support.

"We had a horrific situation over spring break with one of our students and those kids returning to the classroom without one of their students needed social emotional support," she said. "They needed a crisis team, how to explain to a first-grader."

"If a student can't process, if they can't figure out why their friend isn't coming back, it's a disruption to the classroom. And when there's a disruption to the classroom, it's a disruption for their learning. We have to help them identify those emotions and put them to words and then they can also have those conversations when they go home and their parents can also support it."

Van Hoek said she agreed that there are incidents where kids need that support.

"My concern is when it's taught as a lesson and it's across the whole school and we're treating every child like they need that support versus individually when something occurs or if the child seeks that," Van Hoek said.

"For instance, in my case it was added to my child's IEP when she was 5 that she needed training on how to deal with emotions and work with other children. My only concern — and it's not just mine you know (but) many parents' — is that it's being taught to every classroom, every student and we're treating like every child needs mental support when that's not the case.

"So that's the concern parents have when they think of social emotional learning because when you look at all the information on it that's what it talks about."

Wade said that all people benefit from being able to identify the emotions that they're feeling.

"I think it's wonderful and excellent when you have students who come from a home in which they have these types of conversations," Wade said.

"These are the types of interventions that decrease drug use, it decreases the risk of suicide, it overall improves the learning environment because we have people who are dealing with big T and little T traumas at home."

She added that from a teacher's perspective, every single person in a classroom is better off by learning how to communicate to each other and that SEL overall helps with academic achievement by teaching students how to process their emotions.

Van Hoek, however, asked, "When do we find time for actual academics?

"We need to be able to concentrate at some point on the academics, on the core subjects that these kids are supposed to be learning and I don't like the idea of turning our schools into mental-health facilities," Van Hoek said.

"Yes, provide support to the kids that need it but we need to also concentrate and make sure that these kids are learning what they're in school to learn."

Wade said people misunderstand the length of time SEL is practiced in the classroom, which could be as simple as a student check-in asking "how's everybody doing today to start your day right."

Resident John Mason was critical of the strategic plan and requested that HUSD hold at least three meetings to allow the public to ask questions and make suggestions to improve it.

"The district created a portrait of a graduate that lists numerous social-emotional learning goals," he said.

"SEL is a controversial topic. Thus, I do not understand why the district would list so many controversial social-emotional learning goals. Do these goals truly represent the broad community residing in the district's geographic boundaries?"

He said HUSD should explain the rationale for the goals, how the community participated in creating those goals and how the district plans to measure the achievement of the goals.