Back to School After COVID-19: Considering Emotional Well-Being
by Luis Javier Pentón Herrera
I remember growing up in Cuba and attending
elementary school in the 1990s. During those years, it was customary for Cuban
schools to enforce unannounced drills in preparation for a possible U.S.
attack. I was very young and do not remember much about those drills, but I do
remember feeling scared during that time. “¡Al piso, agáchense!
¡Rápido que nos atacan!” (Get down on the floor! Quickly, we are
under attack!), teachers would frantically scream after the school-wide alarm
would unexpectedly go off in the middle of the day. When these memories come
back every now and then, they are often accompanied by the same feelings I
experienced at those drills: fear, uncertainty, anxiety, helplessness, and
sadness. Even though these memories are more than 20 years old, these
unaddressed, unmanaged emotions have stayed with me throughout my entire
life.
Emotional Outcomes of
the COVID-19 Crisis
I share this
personal vignette because, in today’s world, our students are dealing with
these same emotions I felt as a child in Cuban schools. Certainly, we are not
rehearsing war-like drills but, nonetheless, children are still experiencing
fear, uncertainty, anxiety, helplessness, and sadness caused by the global
pandemic of the COVID-19 and all other saddening events occurring
simultaneously in our nation. As I write this article, my biggest hope is that
my words will help us—educators—understand that neglect and avoidance of our
learners’ mental and emotional well-being are not solutions. We cannot expect
this new school year (2020–2021) to be similar to previous school years. The
reality is that COVID-19 has affected all of us physically, mentally, and
emotionally, and in this new school year we cannot just look the other way.
More than 3.1 million people have been infected in the United States and more
than 130,000 people have died from COVID-19 (CDC, 2020), and the numbers
continue to increase every day. Simultaneously, over 40 million Americans have
filed unemployment since mid-March with more continuing to file (Lambert,
2020). Our students are seeing this new reality and, whether they vocalize
their feelings or not, they are being impacted by it.
Although
COVID-19 is certainly affecting the nation as a whole, our English learners
(ELs) are once again in one of the most vulnerable positions. For ELs and their
families, COVID-19 presents unique, additional challenges, and they have
limited spaces to turn for help. For example, many immigrant families do not
qualify for automatic federal stimulus payments while others may not know they
qualify because of language barriers (Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and
Refugees, 2020). In addition, noncitizen immigrants—including those who are
frontline workers—remain disproportionally uninsured and have a harder time
accessing medical treatment if they contract the virus (Chishti &
Bolter, 2020). Certainly, COVID-19 has amplified the impact
language barriers have for immigrants and their families’ access to food,
work, health services, and information
to keep them healthy and safe. The pandemic has reminded us that the topic of
visibility is, in many cases, a matter of life and death.
Now that we
are returning to schools, we are faced with difficult truths: Some students
have lost family members, others have been sick and recuperated from COVID-19,
while others are still facing economic hardship, homelessness, and hunger
because they or their parents have lost their jobs. In this new reality, we
must outgrow our definition of schools as only places of teaching and embrace
the idea of schools as communities for holistic child development and
well-being. Although the full scope of COVID-19’s impact in the United States
is still unfolding, mental
health is now being considered an emerging crisis of the pandemic;
the rise in mental health problems in the nation even has some professionals
considering mental health as the possible next pandemic (Galea, Merchant,
& Lurie, 2020).
What You Can Do: Three
Simple Suggestions
As teachers,
reading this information might provoke feelings of confusion or anxiety.
Without a doubt, teaching during and after COVID-19 has been and continues to
be very stressful for all of us. “What can I do? How can I help myself and my
students?” might be questions coming to mind. In the following section, I
propose three simple considerations we, educators of English learners in K–12,
adult, and higher education settings, should consider in our learning
spaces.
1. Self-Help Comes
First
You cannot
provide effective support to anyone if you do not take care of yourself first.
It is okay to acknowledge that coping and finding balance in this new reality
is challenging. At the same time, it is important to know that there are also
steps you can take to take care of your mental well-being. As Palmer (2019)
shares, teachers’ well-being is important because it directly impacts
performance, student learning, and teacher working environments as a whole.
As you
balance online, hybrid, or full face-to-face instruction with the daily and
simultaneous bombardment of COVID-19 news and other erupting social events,
remember to take time for yourself to find peace. Try incorporating activities
to help you find peace and balance in this time. Some ideas to support your
mental balance and well-being include:
-
social online gatherings
with your teacher-colleagues and/or friends
-
disconnecting from (social)
media, internet, and devices for 1–2 hours every day
-
joining Deepak Chopra and
Oprah on their 21 days
of meditation experience
-
exploring new hobbies you
have been planning on trying for a while (e.g., writing poems,
painting/drawing, creating videos)
-
connecting with nature on a
daily basis by taking walks in the park, listening to the sound of the river or
the wind, or just working on your garden
For
additional ideas and habits, please see Palmer (2019).
2. Silence and Neglect
Are Not Options
Addressing
the mental and emotional well-being of students, educators, and school staff
should be schools’ primary concern at this time and in the foreseeable future.
If school leadership has maintained silence about mental and emotional
well-being, it is our responsibility to approach our leaders and let them know
their school staff and students need mental and emotional support. I am not
proposing a focus on mental and emotional well-being at the expense of academic
rigor. Instead, I am proposing mental and emotional support as essential
practices for effective teacher performance and students’ academic engagement.
If your institution and leaders are already focusing on social and emotional
well-being, congratulations. If your institution is not, then it is time to
communicate with your leadership and propose a short- and long-term plan for
schoolwide mental and emotional support.
In
the Classroom
The
incorporation of practices that focus on and support the mental and emotional
well-being of teachers and students needs to be gradual and layered at the
classroom, school, and county levels. These practices take less preparation to
implement in classrooms than adopting such an initiative at the school or
county levels. At the classroom level, prioritizing human communication and
stability for our students and ourselves will be fundamental. To do this, you
can incorporate short, simple practices, like 5–10 minutes of mindfulness in
your learning spaces. At the same time, you can fuse the topic of mental and
emotional well-being within English learning activities; this way, ELs have the
opportunity to talk about their emotions and experiences in a safe,
judgement-free space. As an important clarification, these activities and
practices supporting mental and emotional well-being can be implemented in
face-to-face or online learning spaces. For more detailed practices you can
include in your classroom to support the mental and emotional well-being of
your ELs, please see Pentón Herrera (2020) and Pentón Herrera & McNair
(2020).
At
the School and District Levels
Schools and
counties planning on adopting practices that support teachers’ and learners’
emotional and mental well-being should consider this implementation as a
gradual process. The goal should be to make the adoption of these practices
both effective and sustainable—they cannot be rushed to act as a superficial
band-aid. For school leaders hoping to incorporate social-emotional learning
(SEL) practices at the school and county levels, there are several different
frameworks already in place. For example, The Collaborative for Academic, Social,
and Emotional Learning has more than 20 years of experience
supporting districts and schools around the nation on the best practices for
SEL. Also, Mindful
offers free publications on how schools can be transformed through the
incorporation of mindfulness. Lastly, the International
Institute for Restorative Practices shares free school resources and
guides for implementing restorative practices in school and counties.
3. We Need to Support
English Learners’ Emotional and Academic Needs
In this new
school year, all students will need restorative and emotional support; that is a
fact. At the same time, as English to speakers of other languages (ESOL)
educators, our advocacy for EL equity in our learning spaces and institutions
will be more vital now than ever before. Through sustained communication with
colleagues or through school-wide training, we need to help our schools
recognize that our ELs will return to us at an even more vulnerable state than
most mainstream non-EL students. Why? Because prior to COVID-19, our ELs were
already dealing with culture shock, language learning, adaptation to a new
society, intergenerational trauma, literacy development, legal and
documentation concerns, and economic hardships, to name a few, as well as with
situations that may arise as a result of a combination of all or some of these
factors. In addition to these realities, our ELs have also been trying to
balance feeling safe in schools while witnessing the stable increase of school
shootings in the United States since 2009 (Grabow & Rose,
2018). Now, if we add COVID-19 to our ELs’ realities, I think most of us can
agree that this is more than any child, or even adult, can deal with
alone.
So, why is
ESOL teachers’ leadership crucial at this time? Ensuring equitable access to
restorative and emotional well-being practices in our learning spaces is
essential. Our ELs will return to us with varying levels of English
proficiency. In my experience as a high school ESOL teacher, most students’
English skills regress a little over the summer break. For this reason, I think
it is safe to expect that most ELs’ English skills will also regress a little
after this unexpected, extended period of virtual instruction. With this
reality in mind, our ELs’ language skills should not become barriers to
accessing restorative and emotional well-being experiences in our schools.
This means
that, as ESOL educators, we must share our knowledge with our mainstream
colleagues, as well as with our school administrators and school counselors,
about the importance of integrating, as much as possible, ELs’ first language
to support their process of finding emotional and mental well-being. For our
ELs, it will be difficult to make meaningful, supportive human connections with
others and learn how to take care of their own mental well-being if they do not
understand the language. Sharing multilingual school-wide materials with
practical tips they can apply to take care of their mental well-being will be,
more than ever, a matter of equity and social justice. Consider the following
resources:
No one
should expect ELs, or any students for that matter, to succeed in our learning
environments when their mental health and well-being has neither been properly
supported nor addressed.
Final
Thoughts
It may sound
like a cliché, but COVID-19 will become an important experience for our lives.
As a society, we will begin to reassess many definitions that we’d taken for
granted in the past. In the teaching field, we will be pushed to redefine our
criticality in society as professionals who do more than just teach. My hope,
as a Spanish and ESOL language educator, is that COVID-19 will, in some way,
contribute to placing language at the front of our
educational system. As language professionals, we are in a suitable position to
educate leaders about the critical role language has and will continue to have
for our society to cope, balance, and seek mental and emotional well-being.
In addition,
language will be vital for all members of our society as we reevaluate the need
for human support, interaction, and (inter)connectedness. Today, more than
ever, I think of us, ESOL educators, as important bridges to support our
students in our learning environments, our colleagues at our school buildings,
and individuals within our communities.
References
Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2020, July 11). Coronavirus
disease 2019 (COVID-19): Cases in the U.S. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
Chishti, M.,
& Bolter, J. (2020, April). Vulnerable to COVID-19 and in
frontline jobs, immigrants are mostly shut out of U.S. relief.
Migration Policy Institute.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/covid19-immigrants-shut-out-federal-relief
Galea, S.,
Merchant, R. M., & Lurie, N. (2020). The mental health consequences of
COVID-19 and physical distancing: The need for prevention and early
intervention. JAMA Internal Medicine, 180(6), 817–818. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.1562
Grabow, C.,
& Rose, L. (2018, May 21). The US has had 57 times as many school
shootings as the other major industrialized nations combined. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-world-trnd/index.html
Grantmakers
Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees. (2020). COVID-19 Pandemic
impact on immigrant families and communities: Recommendations for philanthropic
action. https://www.gcir.org/sites/default/files/resources/GCIR%20COVID-19%20Funding%20Recommendations%204.7.20.pdf
Lambert, L.
(2020, May 28). Over 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment during
the pandemic—real jobless rate over 23.9%. Fortune.https://fortune.com/2020/05/28/us-unemployment-rate-numbers-claims-this-week-total-job-losses-may-28-2020-benefits-claims-job-losses/
Palmer, P.
(2019). The teacher self-care manual: Simple strategies for stressed
teachers. Alphabet.
Pentón
Herrera, L. J. (2020). Social-emotional learning in TESOL: What, why, and how. Journal of English Learner Education,
10(1), 1–16.
Pentón
Herrera, L. J., & McNair, R. L. (2020). Restorative and
community-building practices as social justice for English learners.TESOL Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.523
Luis
Javier Pentón Herrera is a dissertation
core faculty in the Department of Educational Leadership and Administration at
the American College of Education and an adjunct professor at The George
Washington University and University of Maryland Global Campus. In addition, he
serves as the Social Responsibility Interest Section (SRIS) co-chair-elect and
as a member of the Affiliate Network Professional Council at TESOL
International Association. Luis had the privilege of serving as Maryland
TESOL’s 38th president during 2018–2019.