Students are stressed out. Our schools must do better

Three and a half years ago, Sebastian Fink-Locke was having a hard time. As a ninth grader at North Penn High School, he was misbehaving to the point where his school said he would no longer be allowed to attend.

He was told he had to go to an “alternative” school — Lakeside School in North Wales, Pa., roughly a dozen miles north of Philadelphia. He had no idea how different his experience would be.

Lakeside operates from a premise that is deceptively simple, but rare in education circles: every student sent there is dealing with something heavy, which is affecting their behavior and ability to learn. To break that cycle, the school centers its curriculum around how trauma affects the developing brain, and helping students process unresolved feelings.

So when Fink-Locke would act out, he wasn’t handed a detention; he was given a finger pulse oximeter, which measures your heart rate. He was told to use it, and figure out ways to get his heart rate down. There were many options — he could do some deep breathing, play with a fidget toy, or leave the classroom (yes, even in the middle of a lesson) for a cardio break, to ride an exercise bike or walk an outdoor track. And once he had calmed himself down, he could meet with his counselor to talk about what was behind his behavior, and how to handle those feelings differently next time.

At first, “I hated it,” Fink-Locke told me.

But over time, something clicked.

He started following the program. His behavior softened. He began focusing on his schoolwork. He spent a lot of time at the school’s greenhouse, learning to landscape the campus’ 40 acres, as well as selling flowers and offering landscaping services to the public.

I spoke to Fink-Locke last month on a beautiful spring day in the school’s greenhouse, surrounded by a sea of flower starter trays and the woodsy aroma of mulch. He’s about to graduate, and has enrolled in the Army. Afterward, he wants to get into farming, inspired by his time at the greenhouse. “This school definitely helped me put my life on a very good path,” he told me.

For Fink-Locke, Lakeside’s distinctive approach to the challenge of educating students with disciplinary problems worked.

As I walked around Lakeside, I saw what Fink-Locke was talking about. I watched students who were once too disruptive to remain in traditional classrooms walk the halls of Lakeside at a normal pace, speak to each other at a normal volume, and direct their attention to their teachers. Yes, some were standing, or rocking, or wrapping themselves in a weighted blanket. But to my eyes, they were learning.

Leaving Lakeside, I had one thought: They’re on to something here.

As adults, we like to tell ourselves that kids are resilient. That may be true — but only to a point.

Lakeside’s executive vice president, Kathy Van Horn, decided to revamp the school’s curriculum roughly 10 years ago after noticing over the course of her 40 years at the school that most of the students transferred there had experienced some type of trauma. According to school officials, one quarter of Lakeside students have a history of abuse or neglect, nearly one-half are (or have families that are) struggling with drugs or alcohol, and more than 40% have a history of depression or suicide attempts. Some have experiences with homelessness, have been in foster care, or have a parent who is incarcerated.

It makes sense that many of the students who are struggling most at school are having problems at home. But let’s get real: What young person you know isn’t dealing with some type of stress or trauma right now?

This is especially true in a place like Philadelphia, where children are shot and killed nearly every other week, creating a seemingly constant cycle of trauma and grief. More than half of the city’s school-aged children are in poverty, living with constant worry about access to basic needs like food, shelter, and electricity.

But almost every child deals with something heavy at some point — maybe their parents split up, a sibling got sick, or a beloved grandparent died from COVID-19. Call it stress, call it adversity, call it trauma — most kids have feelings they don’t know how to process, which get expressed in all sorts of ways.

With so many children in Philadelphia dealing with so much hardship, it should come as little surprise that most public school students don’t meet state standards in math, science, and reading. That’s because research shows children who have experienced trauma or some other heavy stress are more likely to struggle to learn, get lower grades, or exhibit behavior problems that get them suspended or expelled.

I realize there are many explanations for why so many students in Philadelphia are falling behind, including decades of underfunding, massive social disparities, and problems with standardized testing.

But there’s one explanation that doesn’t get nearly enough attention and resources at most of our schools: student stress and trauma.

Most schools can’t afford what Lakeside offers: a roughly 3:1 ratio of students to staff (all trained to handle trauma), therapy dogs that greet students when they arrive in the building, counselors for everyone, an outdoor track, and a pool. Even the trauma-informed workshops, training, and coaching the school provides is probably out of reach of many districts.

But many of the tools Lakeside uses to help students soothe their stressed brains, such as the pulse oximeters (less than $20 each), are affordable. And perhaps the most important aspect — the understanding of how childhood stress affects the brain, and how stress/trauma can interfere with learning — is free.

The walls of Lakeside are lined with poster-sized diagrams of the human brain, with different sections highlighted in different colors. Here, students learn that acting out is often an expression of a brain that’s been exposed to stress or trauma, which then overreacts to a trigger. To a non-traumatized brain, losing a favorite writing utensil or getting a side-eye from a classmate is annoying, but to people with unresolved trauma or stress, that can lead to an explosion of feelings and behavior.

Using the pulse oximeters, students learn to figure out what helps them slow down their heart rates (a proxy for stress). For some, it’s the primal tools that often work for babies, such as rocking, swinging, swaddling, or deep breathing; others may benefit more from physical movements, big and small — walking, cardio, doodling, or gardening. Classrooms include rocking chairs, standing desks, and weighted blankets. Piped into every space is the faint sound of instrumental music at exactly 60 beats per minute, which research suggests can lower heart rate and blood pressure.

Once the school added these tools, Van Horn told me she noticed a difference right away. There were fewer student fights; traditional schools who accepted students back after a stint at Lakeside noticed other improvements.

After a few months at Lakeside, Fink-Locke learned that when he starts to feel agitated, he needs to remove himself from the situation — maybe take a loop around the outdoor walking track, or go to the sensory room, a staffed room for students to cool down that includes fidgets, hammocks, and an exercise bike. “If I get frustrated, I take a 10-minute cardio break, then go back to class.”

For Jimmy Galeana-Bruno, now 20, who went to Lakeside in 2019 from Wissahickon School District due to issues with his grades and behavior (skipping class, for instance), it was the pulse oximeters that made the difference. “That was a really good way to just kind of acknowledge to myself that, you know, I am really agitated at the moment.” When his pulse rose, he’d ask to take a walk. Eventually, “I stopped wanting to engage in activities like misbehaving.”

Galeana-Bruno has since graduated and now works as a landscaper (but hopes to start welding), and told me he still employs some of the tools he learned at Lakeside when he feels agitated. “Passing through Lakeside helped me a lot.”

According to data I got from Lakeside from the 2022-2023 school year, students’ GPA increased by an average of 0.26 from what they received at traditional schools (Fink-Locke told me he’s now trying for As and Bs). And 76% of Lakeside seniors graduated — notable, because most thought they would never earn a diploma. What’s more, 90% of the parents and guardians of students said they believed Lakeside was helping their child deal better with problems.

(That doesn’t mean Lakeside is a problem-free utopia. During my visits to the campus, I watched students file into the “resolve room,” where they go for help from counselors when their usual calming tools aren’t working. During my first conversation with Van Horn, we were interrupted by a PA announcement for all staff to come to the parking lot; a van transporting students had a behavior incident and needed some help.)

There aren’t many schools like Lakeside, Van Horn told me, even though it has conducted training known as NeuroLogic at other schools in our region and throughout the U.S. (and in other countries as well). Even if other schools have implemented other tools to help kids deal with trauma, “I do not know of any schools who are doing things to the extent that we are,” she said.

Unfortunately, too many schools don’t understand how the traumatized brain works, and use outdated thinking to manage kids and their feelings, Sandra Bloom, associate professor of health management and policy at Drexel University, told me.

That includes not letting kids take physical activity breaks (or cutting recess to only minutes per day), and punishing kids for not sitting still, said Bloom, who is now working with Lakeside to manage the online training she provides to organizations to help them become more trauma-informed.

But research shows that letting kids fidget — play with a fidget toy, doodle on their papers, or click a pen, for instance — can help them focus and learn. And giving them “brain breaks” — where they can dance, go outside for a few minutes, or just be silly — boosts blood flow to the brain and learning.

“I think it’s wonderful what they’re doing, and I just wish it would become universal education,” said Bloom.

Jayme Banks, the deputy chief of prevention, intervention and trauma for the Philadelphia School District, has visited Lakeside, and told me she thought it was “wonderful,” but that there is no one way all schools should look. “I think we have to have variety, because our kids are all different.”

She estimated that Lakeside has conducted training in roughly 50 to 60 district schools, and 25 to 30 schools have taken part in the more detailed NeuroLogic training.

Philadelphia school officials are also trying to adopt some of the same tools Lakeside uses, such as creating calming corners, or swapping some traditional desks with flexible seating that enables students to move around. Her office also works with other departments in the district to help teachers identify their and their students’ triggers, and incident responses that work best for each child. “Maybe Johnny needs a walk,” she said.

Not all schools are doing this work.

That said, not all schools are doing this work, Banks noted — in some, a few teachers have really embraced it, but there are likely only a “handful” of schools that are integrating trauma healing system-wide. For teachers and administrators who already feel stretched thin by the basic tasks of teaching reading and writing, Banks reminds them that healing from trauma is part of that, too. “Johnny will never be able to read if we do not incorporate all of this,” she said.

Crystal Edwards, principal of William D. Kelley School in North Philadelphia, told me that she agreed that just about every student in our city has something heavy on their minds. “We’re talking about all students, at all schools, being affected by some type of trauma,” she said, which “distracts from the learning that they need to be able to do inside of their school.”

Her school is one of three working with Temple’s Philadelphia Healthy and Safe Schools (PHaSeS) program to help teachers address their own traumas, and do the same for their students — by, for instance, journaling, drawing, using fidgets, or counting their breaths. She told me she “definitely” believes it’s helping her students’ academics, because “it allows teachers to be able to do their job: to teach.”

To Edwards, programs like this should be used across the district. “Every school needs it.”