Student-Led Mental Health Teacher Professional Development

The Building Capacity for Inclusive Innovation project focused on recruiting a district and community partner invested and committed to collaboratively addressing an equity challenge identified by their community. Bristol Township School District (BTSD) in collaboration with their community-based partner Bristol Cares, was selected to co-lead.

The BTSD team identified the challenge of addressing the role racial trauma plays in student mental health through a deep dive with a variety of school and community members including Bristol Cares Coalition, student, staff, and family surveys, and with their Equity Leadership Council. Student voice was emphasized in the process for identifying their challenge with specific student panel discussions.

One district leader shared “Our students have expressed a need to address racial trauma and growing mental health needs exacerbated by the pandemic. Students are impatient with the lack of action in our community. We heard students say, ‘We are exhausted. We keep discussing this and nothing changes.’” – BTSD District Leader

Located in Levittown, PA, Bristol Township School District (BTSD) consists of six schools serving over 6,000 Prek-12th grade students. The district has worked to intentionally create infrastructure to increase equitable outcomes for all students and built a spectrum of strong community partnerships to support the variety of needs for their students, including Bristol Cares.

This journey map offers a visual overview of the Inclusive Innovation process for this project. The project story follows below.

 

Employing the Inclusive Innovation process, the co-leaders established a team of district leaders, students, teachers, parents, community members, and school board members to deeply investigate their challenge topic through root cause analysis, user personas, and focus groups with a broad set of school and community members. The team analyzed data to define the priority problem and identified a central challenge to focus on in solution design: “Racial trauma impacting the mental health of students.” With support from the Center for Inclusive Innovation, the team conducted a literature review, data collection, and focus groups to develop indicators and outcomes for potential solutions.

After completing their initial research, the team ideated solutions ideas, prioritized ideas and components, iterated on and refined solutions ideas over multiple co-design sessions. The team then worked with a mental health expert to develop a solution concept and, again, engaged additional stakeholders and subject matter experts. Finally, the teams in Bristol Township have implemented solution prototype, gathered data for iteration, and initiated plans for refinement, additional implementation, sustainability, and eventual scale

During the first phase of the Inclusive Innovation process, the teams focused on building relationships and trust. To begin, the co-leads recruited an eight-member core team of two students, two educators, two parents, and two community leaders who represented a wide variety of perspectives from the district. The folks invited to join had previously been engaged in the district’s equity work in building more inclusive practices. This project was a space to take the work to the next level. As a first step in the process, they created a vision for, “What would the school and community look and feel like if mental health and racial trauma were addressed substantially?”

• Students would have voice & choice in their education
• Cultural Responsiveness in Curriculum and Climate
• Increased Sense of Belonging and Connection
• Connected Family and School Relationships
• Students have Access to Quality Professional Services

To engage in building that future, the team built a community charter with equity commitments to ensure the team stayed true to their values. These included:

• Prioritizing feedback from a diverse range of community members
• Listening with the intention to understand
• Calling it out when we don’t do what we say

After building their vision and their agreements, the team was ready to begin their research.

The team started digging into the challenge by hypothesizing and exploring root causes of students’ increased mental health challenges and decrease in engagement in the district. To test their hypotheses, team members conducted focus groups with key community members and designed a survey for students to take. Participants were eager to have a space to discuss their experiences in the school system with racism and how it impacts their mental health. Students spoke with current students and alumni, teachers spoke with colleagues, and parents and community members spoke with peers about their experiences. Overall the team held six focus groups with over 75 participants. Students asked questions like:

• What has been your response to microaggressions and racist comments/actions? Was your response different based on if the racism was coming from a teacher or a student? If so, how?
• Are there teachers you feel comfortable talking to about these issues? What about your relationship with that teacher makes that possible?
• Are you aware that there are places to get support for your mental health (or with racial trauma) – in school, or in the community?

Additionally, the team reviewed quantitative data from the school climate and culture surveys. The team then analyzed the community input, articulated the problem statement, and identified target outcomes to address the challenge.

Students, teachers, community members, and staff members ideated and created four different solution ideas that addressed their priority problem. The solution ideas included:

• Student Led Peer Learning
• Student Led Professional Learning
• Accessing Mental Health Resources through an App
• Equity Advisory – Parents and Students

After narrowing down to these ideas, the team hosted six focus groups with over 46 participants. In each focus group, participants discussed the four options and gave feedback on each idea. At the end, participants were asked to vote on their top idea. These focus groups informed their top solution, Student-Led Professional Development for Educators.

As we all know, students are increasingly battling with racism and systemic oppression inside and outside of school. This mentor program gave students the support to understand their relationship with humility, self-awareness, and the importance of advocating for themselves. This program has shown me the importance of mentoring the lives of the youth, especially the ones who’ve experienced trauma. – BTSD Mentor

After creating a prototype for their top solution, the team created an implementation plan to pilot the professional development model. In order to create and deliver student-led professional development, students prepared for their work through a series of training and design sessions that helped students themselves gain a better understanding of the impact of racism on mental health.

The training included opportunities for self-reflection and healing and prepared students to facilitate conversations with teachers about the impact racism has on student mental health. Students were also partnered with the community members, who were familiar with mental health supports, to support them throughout the work.These community partners completed mentor training prior to working with students. Finally, the students co-designed and facilitated teacher training, making changes with each iteration to improve their facilitation. Supported by community mentors and a subject matter expert, as well as Digital Promise team members, the students presented the prototype workshop to educators in December 2022; the training sessions continued in Spring 2023 with additional educators, and a third session took place in May 2023.

The feedback from the teachers who participated in the student-led professional development was overwhelmingly positive. Most participants, 91% in December 2022 and 95% in March 2023, indicated that the professional developed increased their awareness of how students have experienced racism in school and 82% of participants in December 2022 and 95% of participants in March 2023 indicated that this professional development increased their understanding of how the mental health of students is impacted when they experience racism. Participants said, that “It was very powerful to hear of cases of racial trauma that students experienced in school.It helped bring this perspective to reality.” Another participant stated, “The training made me more aware of how many incidents of racism stem from adult interactions.” The training had an impact on participants with many indicating that this is a training that all administrators and staff within the district need to attend. One participant called for every employee of the district to attend this professional development, saying “I think the support of your entire building admin, teachers, hall monitors, security, ALL, need to take part in this and hear the stories of the students.”

The following materials were created in partnership with the BTSD Inclusive Innovation team, Christina Broderick of Elevate Intention, and Bristol Cares. The materials were created for school-community teams to use as a model in building student leadership and student professional development opportunities.

Student Leadership Training

In order for students to feel prepared to lead professional development for teachers focused on the impact of racial trauma on student mental health, the students went through a semester of training that supported them in discussing their own mental health and the impacts of racial trauma. Through this process, students had support from a mental health professional and community mentors who reflected their identity. Through the training materials they also learned how to share about their experiences and support teachers in action planning. Below are the samples of materials that were used in the experience. Before implementing any of these materials, educators need to be fully prepared with professional support to implement the materials safely.

Mentorship Resources

The community mentors were supported through training and debriefing. The training included information about mental health first aid, racial trauma, and students support systems. Below are a selection of resources.

This program provided an opportunity for our youth to find their voice and share their stories related to how they can be marginalized but also empowered to be that voice for those who are still in middle school. As a mentor I was excited to see the growth and confidence in the youth especially as they successfully delivered the PD for their teachers and administrators. – BTSD Mentor

Student-Led Professional Development

The final component of the solution included students presenting their learnings to teachers. At each session, teachers learned about the connections between experiences of racism and mental health. Students shared personal stories about their experiences in school. Each session concluded with teachers developing action plans for confronting racism and supporting students’ mental health.

The Center for Inclusive Innovation worked with the community district team to create a sustainability plan to support the continuation of the student-led professional development. The goal of the sustainability plan was to support the district community team in thinking through the conditions needed to scale and sustain the project; to identify which community and district members would manage all or parts of the solution to ensure that the work could continue; to consider the budget required to continue and grow opportunities for teachers to take part in the student-led professional development; and how the community district team would continue to collect and analyze data related to the project’s success.

Beyond the project’s end, the community district team continued to offer the student-led professional development and are planning on continuing the Student Leadership Team during the coming school year. There are also plans to continue to offer the student-led professional development for teachers starting at the beginning of the coming school year.

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Use this section of the page to include links to communications pieces (articles, blogs, webinar recordings) and/or research.

• How the Inclusive Innovation Process Amplified the Voices of Students in a School District Blog
• The Power of Community Mentors in Building Student-Led Professional Development Blog
• Inclusive Innovation Convening Video