Schools make a difference for students exposed to violence, new report shows

Some Chicago schools excel at curbing the academic and social-emotional fallout experienced by students who live near where homicides happen, a new University of Chicago study found.

The report released Tuesday by the university’s Consortium on School Research found that students living in proximity to killings tend to lose ground academically in the aftermath. Between 2011 and 2019, 1 in 5 Chicago Public Schools students lived within roughly two city blocks from the location of a homicide in any given year, with Black students more likely to have this experience. Six percent of students had the experience multiple times in a year.

But well-organized schools with positive climates and trusting relationships between students and adults consistently rein in this effect, the report found.

Many migrant students need mental health support. Here’s why this program is a go-to for schools.

When thousands of Syrian families fleeing violence resettled in Canada several years ago, Ontario’s school mental health agency wanted to give schools tools to help refugee children process their traumatic journeys and adjust to their new lives.

The children didn’t necessarily need intensive support. But kids were bursting into tears and struggling to explain how they felt. Parents, too, noticed their usually social children had become more withdrawn and were struggling to make friends. That was especially common after kids had been in Canada for a few months and the honeymoon period ended.

So a team of experts in child mental health put their heads together and developed a program for newcomers that focuses on their strengths and who they can turn to for support. Known as STRONG, the program is now used across the U.S. in several cities serving lots of newcomers, including Chicago, Boston, Seattle, New York, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., and Little Rock, Arkansas. Many others are asking for training, as schools struggle to meet the needs of students who’ve been through difficult journeys with limited school mental health staff, and even fewer bilingual ones.

Our Chicago: Talking to children about the Israel-Hamas War

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The images we have been seeing from Israel and Gaza since the surprise attacks by Hamas can be very difficult to watch.

Airstrikes, kidnappings and the death toll continuing to rise.

Locally, an Evanston mother and daughter were among those held hostage by Hamas for nearly two weeks. And a six-year-old boy from suburban Plainfield killed because he was Muslim, police say.

All of that can be hard for adults to process, and it can be even more difficult for children.

"I think a general question to any age child around, just have you heard anything scary in the news lately," says Dr. Colleen Cicchetti, a child psychologist and the Executive Director of the Center For Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children's Hospital. "What are your friends talking about. What have you seen about what might be happening in the Mideast or even locally around these issues."

The youth mental health crisis needs urgent care. What will it take?

When Leo began showing anger, causing tension at home and at school and seeing a decline in grades, his mom says things got to a point that they knew that something had to change. They needed help figuring out what was going on.

Leo was 11 at the time.

"He had a lot of angry outbursts, and he wasn't talking about what he was feeling and what was going on," says his mom, Jacinda, who asked that her family's last name not be published. That's when they talked with their primary care physician "about whether professional help was the right thing."

Commentary: When students are not OK, neither are teachers

“Exacerbated by the pandemic, the current mental health crisis is well documented, and it’s felt in homes and classrooms here in Illinois and nationwide:
 
Forty-two percent of Illinois high schoolers reported feeling sad or hopeless almost every day for two or more weeks in a row, according to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey of 2021; nearly half of surveyed Illinois students reported it’s hard or very hard to manage their emotions; and Hispanic and multiracial students reported lower well-being than their white peers, according to the American Institutes for Research this year.”

Mashana Smith, PhD, is the associate director of School Mental Health, Healing Centered Engagement with Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago Center for Childhood Resilience.