South Brook 6-8 rebuilding community
Rising Up:
Counseling students and rebuilding community at Pittsburgh South Brook 6-8
2023 | Written by Faith Schantz, Report Editor
The windowsills in the counselor’s office at Pittsburgh South Brook 6-8 are filled with plants, and the windows hold a view of trees. A beanbag chair squats in a corner, and artwork and posters decorate the walls. One poster, somewhat surprisingly, states, “Everything doesn’t need to be talked about.” For all the things that do need to be talked about, Dr. Nena Hisle’s door stands open. Students drop in at all hours, some seeking practical help, others needing a moment of support from her to help them get through the day.
According to national experts, children’s and teens’ mental and emotional health is in crisis. Anxiety, depression, and feelings of hopelessness had already been rising in school-aged children before the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, the U.S. Surgeon General has called children’s mental health the defining public health issue of our time. It’s also a crisis for education. Students with unmet mental health needs aren’t likely to function well in the classroom, if they show up at all.
Hisle has seen firsthand the levels of stress and anxiety students are experiencing. Between the fall and spring of last year, she referred about 50 students—almost one-fifth of the student population—for therapy. Like many other schools, South Brook has faced the task of repairing the harms of the pandemic while also trying to meet a persistently high level of student needs. Here, we look at how the staff approached these challenges, from actions that affected the school overall to the conversations in the counselor’s office that helped one student on one day.
The issues
South Brook is located in Brookline, on the city’s southwestern border. It draws its roughly 270 students from that neighborhood and Carrick, Overbrook, and Bon Air.
When schools reopened in the spring of 2021, Hisle saw the toll that social isolation had taken on students. “It was very, very difficult,” she says. “The kids had not been socialized on appropriate interactions with their peers. There were a lot of arguments and debates going on online…. And then when they got into the building, now they’re faced with this person that they’ve been battling with over the past few months or the past year.”
As a result, there were many more fights among students than staff typically saw. Hisle noticed “kids not being as empathetic and as sensitive to other kids’ needs,” which in turn made it hard for them to make friends. Some teachers reported that students were putting their heads on their desks, not doing their assignments, not participating in class.
Even more troubling, some students weren’t coming to school. The rate of chronic absence—a measure of how many students miss more than 10% of school days for any reason—had risen to 59% by the 2021-22 school year, according to an A+ Schools analysis. When classes were held online, students “could pretty much do whatever they wanted,” Hisle says, and that attitude seemed to carry over to in-person school. More began coming in late. Anxiety and other mental health issues kept others at home.
The solutions
In response to all of this, the staff worked to reestablish structure and to make school once again “a place that kids wanted to come to and that’s a fun place to be,” she says. To help students readjust to school norms, “We did a lot of reteaching of expectations and behaviors.” They put into place Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) plans with incentives such as points students could spend at the school store. To get more students to school, they held dances, a snow cone party, and field trips they had to qualify to attend. Some had attendance contracts with incentives tailored just for them.
Hisle and the principal, Jennifer McNamara, looked at both formal and informal data to gain a better understanding of what students were experiencing. McNamara studied the results of the Panorama Social-Emotional Learning: Student Competency & Well-being Survey (see the graphic below), and the Tripod survey, which asks students to rate various aspects of teaching. McNamara and Hisle both paid attention to what she calls the “real life, real time information provided by all the stakeholders”—the comments, complaints, questions, and suggestions made by students, parents, and staff—and thought through possible changes. For example, after listening to students and examining the root causes of some behaviors, McNamara revised the dress code to allow students to wear headgear. It may seem like a small thing, Hisle says, but for some students, “If their hair is not done and they can’t cover it, then their whole day is messed up”—or they simply stay home. The change “has definitely helped our students feel safer and more comfortable and improved the school culture here.”
The school contracted with outside organizations to find some resources for students. South Brook participated in a research study through the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine called “Expect Respect,” which brought together students who had experienced violence with researchers for 20 weeks of a teen dating violence and sexual violence prevention and support program. A few teachers initiated a partnership with the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank to provide backpacks full of food on Friday afternoons to students who might otherwise go hungry on weekends. For some needs, however, there haven’t been enough providers. The school psychologist who visits once a week can see up to nine students, Hisle says. Some have been treated by staff from Pittsburgh Mercy Behavioral Health, but Hisle hasn’t been able to find a school-based therapist for every student who needs one.
After the past three years, Hisle says South Brook is returning to normal. Fights among students have “slowed down tremendously.” The chronic absenteeism rate dropped to 48% last year, a 19% decrease from the prior year, compared to a 16% decrease for the district overall. One district-wide strategy seems to be working for South Brook. Beginning with the 2021-22 school year, the district has partnered with A+ Schools (through a grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation) to contract with EveryDay Labs to help track students’ attendance, communicate with parents through texts and letters, and offer resources. Hisle says parents do check in with her about their children’s attendance after receiving the letters, which are designed to be informative and supportive, not punitive.
Student-centered counseling
When it comes to working directly with students, “I think it’s really important that the students see the counselor as an ally,” she says. At some schools, principals assign tasks with conflicting interests to counselors, but at South Brook, Hisle’s conceptualization of her role is backed up by school practices. She conducts mediations to resolve conflicts, but “I typically am not suspending kids or calling home to report suspensions, because kids need to know that when they come to see the counselor, they’re coming to get support.”
She believes that having an ally in the counselor’s office is especially important for Black students. The school is diverse, with an enrollment that was 45% White and 31% Black, with smaller percentages of Multi-ethnic, Asian, and Hispanic students last year. However, Hisle is one of only two Black members on staff. She may be the only person Black students come to with an issue that concerns race.
To put students at ease, she uses humor, offers a hug if they want one, dances with them at recess, and shows that their presence in her office is welcome. “I never make a student feel like I’m too busy, or they’re bothering me,” she says. “I’m just not a closed-door counselor. I’m here to listen and take their issues seriously.”
Preparing for the next step
Along with handling the day-to-day issues that come up for students, part of Hisle’s job is to help prepare them for the future. One of her strategies is to point out the possible ripple effects of their current behavior. When students request work permits, for example, she brings up their attendance. “If your attendance is poor in school, it may look [to a potential employer] as if it’s going to be poor in the workplace,” she tells them.
Hisle is also responsible for scheduling students’ high school courses. Across the country, 9th grade is known as a make-or-break year for students. In Pittsburgh, 9th graders had the highest rate of chronic absence last year, with almost half missing more than 10% of school days. Yet if they can stay on track, research shows that success in 9th grade is one of the strongest indicators that students will eventually graduate.
Her approach is to familiarize students as much as possible with what 9th grade will be like. She visits 8th grade classes with a PowerPoint she created to inform students about high school norms: what a schedule is like, the semester structure, the finality of a failing grade. Last winter, they added another component, a visit to Pittsburgh Carrick High School. The 8th graders toured the building, met with counselors, and made preliminary schedules. Hisle went with them and observed that it calmed some fears.
Those students started high school this fall, perhaps better prepared than some. Back at South Brook, Hisle’s door stood open for the incoming 6th graders.