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EPISODE 5
The Power Of Noticing
By Stephen Kaplan
For the last 8 months, in addition to following my passion for world travel, I’ve been staying connected to the work of mental health professionals in schools by co-facilitating virtual Youth Mental Health First Aid workshops.
Youth Mental Health First Aid is a program that teaches skills to people without backgrounds in mental health to positively intervene and support young people in both crisis and non-crisis situations and connect them to appropriate professional support. In that workshop, we focus a lot on practicing our “noticing” skills.
It was interesting that one of the themes that came up in Episode 4 of “Talk with Your Mouth Full” was the risk factors that parents can miss as youth naturally move toward more independence in the adolescent years. It got me thinking about how much we all notice and don’t notice about the youth around us.
When you think about it, adults in our schools spend more waking hours with the youth in our community than their parents do. At the same time, though, all of the staff in our schools are overwhelmed with all kinds of job responsibilities that take us away from really tuning in to our students’ experiences.
So, what do we do? Humor me for a second… If you’ve ever watched trapeze artists at a circus, in addition to sometimes having a safety harness, they are always protected by a safety net. And how is that safety net designed? It’s got lots of interwoven elastic strings. As much as we can, all the adults in the lives of youth need to form that safety net together. The more we are connected as a net, the more likely we are to catch a youth who may falter.
As school staff, we need to do a better job of connecting with each other. I know that sometimes we can be burdened by formal communication processes like a behavioral health referral and the need to document, but also we sometimes need to recognize when a quick email can do the trick to share a noticing
For teachers, for example, a quick note from a specials teacher to a classroom teacher to see if a student was in a similar mood throughout the day or if it was an isolated moment, or to note that it’s been happening regularly is really helpful. You can always do this first and then go back and do the formal referral form when it’s appropriate.
For parents, not every email has to be long and involved. It’s okay to email a teacher and say, “Hey, Cynthia has been withdrawn at home for the last week or so, are you noticing anything in your class?” All a teacher has to do to respond is either say, “No, but I’ll keep an eye on it,” or “Yes. Let’s talk more.”
For school counselors and other school-based mental health professionals, because we connect with all of the people we’ve talked about above, we can be the central node for all this new noticing we’re doing in addition to doing all the direct work we do in supporting positive mental health for the students in our schools. We’ve got the skills and knowledge to put the pieces together.
For school administrators, activating your support staff like cafeteria workers, custodial staff, and paraprofessionals can help tighten the net. Almost all students pass through the lunch line every day. The people who man the lunch line notice students in an environment that is different from the classroom. Activating their noticings about our students helps too. It also means making sure that your school-based mental health professionals like School Counselors, School Behavioral Health Professionals, and School Psychologists are not burdened with non job-related tasks.
If we’re all practicing our noticing and connecting together, that safety net will be strong. We’ll be able to catch students who need our support.