L, Mental Health and Behavior: Collects resources and tools specific to social emotional learning, behavior, mental health and general health to support schools and families when in-person learning is suspended or interrupted. A team of professionals from the Colorado Department of Education curates and presents evidence-based practices and supports.
Teachers Guide to Anxiety: Outlines types of anxiety that are common in children, and describes symptoms of anxiety you might see in your classroom. ChildMind.org explains that anxiety is sometimes easy to identify (e.g., when a child is too nervous to read aloud or make a presentation in class); while at other times anxiety in the classroom can look like something else entirely — an upset stomach, disruptive or angry classroom behavior, ADHD or even a learning disorder.
Systematic Screening Guidance in the COVID-19 Era: Offers three videos (3 minutes, 23 minutes, 48 minutes) to support screening of students for internal and externalizing behaviors in the COVID-19 era. This website includes more than half a dozen validated screening instruments with extensive supportive resources for screening protocols, primary reference, and training resources.
Pulse Check: Brief Surveys to Assess Socioemotional Needs of Your School Community: Recommends administering periodic surveys to gather feedback from families and teachers about the social and emotional needs of both students and educators, including insights about what is and is not working well. ED’s Comprehensive Centers National Network has designed a set of four Return-to-School surveys – one each for teachers, for school counselors and social workers, for parents, and for students (Gr 6-12) – designed to take about ten minutes to complete - to help school administrators quickly assess the major concerns and needs of the school community and integrate them into their planning.
UCLA Brief COVID-19 Screen for Child/Adolescent PTSD: Offers a no-cost screening tool to triage potential impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on students and their families. The tool is designed for use by professionals across a range of child serving systems, including behavioral health, primary care, pediatrics, schools, child welfare and juvenile justice. The pandemic exposure questions are followed by an 11-item set of validated questions about the frequency of PTSD symptoms in the past month. The score sheet provides an algorithm for determining the need for ongoing monitoring or a full PTSD assessment and, if indicated, evidence-based trauma-focused treatment. The UCLA Brief COVID-19 Screen for Child/Adolescent PTSD is available in English and Spanish.
How Schools Can Help Kids Heal after a Year of 'Crisis and Uncertainty': Offers insight about the importance of providing regular/daily mental health promotion and support activities for K-12 students. This 7-minute audio segment on National Public Radio (4/21/21) shares examples from students, family members and student support personnel. Child psychiatrist Matt Beil, featured in this story, commented, "If kids don't return to school and get a lot of attention paid to security, safety, predictability and re-establishing of strong, secure relationships, [they] are not gonna be able to make up ground academically."
COVID-19 Resources: A Trauma-Informed, Whole Child Response: Provides links to two recent reports from UConn's Collaboratory on School and Child Health about schools' trauma-informed responses to COVID-19. The first article outlines how schools should plan for a trauma-informed response to COVID-19. The second article summarizes easy-to-use and low-cost strategies that can be integrated within existing school initiatives and adapted to fit different contexts.
Supporting Students Experiencing Trauma During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Identifies best practices for addressing student- and educator-related trauma through the Cross-State Collaborative to Support Schools in the Opioid Crisis (CCSSOC). Through this work, the collaborative developed and curated tools and strategies all educators may find