Centering Student Visions for Healing Through Youth Participatory Action Research: The Transformative School Mental Health Policy Rubric

• In Event: Rethinking “Trauma-Informed” Education to Consider Race/ism and Youth Perspectives

Abstract

Schools can be places where students heal from past trauma and that promote holistic well-being (Ginwright, 2016). At the same time, schools themselves can be institutions that cause trauma for youth, and research calls for addressing the historically trauma-producing nature of schools (Discussants, 2021). To best understand this complex reality of trauma, mental health, and schooling, it is helpful to center the perspectives of youth themselves in research (Discussants, 2021). Thus, this project used youth participatory action research (YPAR) methodologies to address the following research question: What are students’ visions for systems of transformative, trauma-reducing school mental health?

This investigation particularly focused on the causes of student mental health challenges and the symptoms of those challenges. This study was conducted between a research institute and a partner youth organizing group that supports digital, multi-community, collaborative student organizing. The mixed methods YPAR project engaged a cohort of 12 public high school student activists from different communities across the U.S. in collecting and co-analyzing existing literature on healing and trauma, qualitative data on student researchers’ lived experiences, public quantitative data on student researchers’ schools and communities, and qualitative focus group data from student-led zoom based community meetings.

The result was a transformative school mental health policy rubric that includes seven aspirational areas for schools to improve their policies and practices to promote healing, well-being and mental health.This presentation shares the final rubric. The seven focus areas that will be discussed include:

Individual Mental Health Support: significantly bolstering and making accessible school-based mental health services with a focus on ensuring that support is responsive to and understanding of diverse student identities and experiences.
Curriculum: expanding curriculum content to center the identities of marginalized students and including explicit, high quality course offerings focused on the promotion of mental health.
Student Spaces for Growth, Connection and Healing: ensuring that all students have access to robust extra-curricular activities and identity-affirming spaces within the school community, and that these spaces allow students to engage in and learn about current events in the broader community.
Authentic Student Engagement in Decision Making: creating structures for students to have a meaningful opportunity to create and change school policy and practice, including related to hiring decisions and extra-curriculars.
Fair and Restorative School Discipline: moving away from exclusionary discipline and implementing restorative discipline practices.
School-Family-Community Connections: implementing community-specific supports to meet students’ outside of school needs, and connecting parents and families to local resources and educational opportunities.
Teacher and School Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing: improving teacher resources and working conditions, and implementing restorative practices and mental health support for school staff.

The focus areas identified in this rubric align with existing research on collective and radical healing and anti-racist, systemically-informed trauma informed practice. This study contributes a trauma-informed framework for school mental health that centers the research of youth activists who have unique and invaluable perspectives as current students in the public school system.

Author

• Kate Somerville, University of Virginia