State of the Schools, How Are Our Kids Doing?

Everyone remembers when the world came to a screeching halt back in Spring 2020. None of us had ever experienced anything like a global pandemic. It was traumatizing for many, transformative for some, and ultimately made us all reshare and rethink our daily routines. Even as adults, the effects of the isolation and trauma can still linger, but it was truly the children who suffered the long term effects the most.

The lack of socialization, the missing structure of a well-run classroom, and the pause of afterschool activities and sports that children use to socialize the most really hit them hard. The shift to virtual meetings left some of us feeling empty, missing that face-to-face human interaction. However, it wasn’t just socialization and education that changed. New technologies emerged or became commonplace, such as the aftermentioned virtual meeting platforms, but more transformatively, the rise of A.I. has shifted the landscape tremendously.

With schools across the nation still recovering from Covid-era education setbacks, and a new emerging technology at children’s fingertips, how are our children’s mental health doing and how is Boulder Valley School District addressing these challenges?

Exception to the rule

Educationally, Boulder Valley School District is the exception. Test scores and many academic indicators have returned to pre-pandemic levels, BVSD deputy superintendent Lora de la Cruz shared. Many factors are at play but one decidedly beneficial program was the partnership with The University of Virginia. The partnership provided a way to use Covid-era funding to seek out and implement best practices for children experiencing the lockdown who were returning to in-person classes.

“BVSD was really thoughtful in how to use pandemic-era funding,” Randy Barber, communications officer for BVSD, shared. “We ended up differentiating across schools, those that were in highest need, ensuring that they had additional resources. We’re very lucky to be in Boulder Valley. There’s probably many reasons why our stats are a little bit different, but I do think that that was part of it that we’re really investing,” he elaborated.

“It was very intentional, the University of Virginia Partnership for Leaders in Education. We had at the time three of our elementary schools partnering with UVA around best practices and it was incredibly successful the schools,” de la Cruz confirmed.

Pandemic-era funding from different sources was put to good use with both the partnership with UVA and BVSD officials willing to get creative and seek new solutions. “Our superintendent, created a student-weighted funding formula, so different schools with greater needs have received more money, and they could use that money for staffing, for resources, support, professional learning, whatever was needed to really contributed to our ability to meet the needs of students. We provided some smaller class sizes, more personalized learning, and all of that culminated in our ability to rebound from the pandemic to pre-pandemic learning levels,” de la Cruz explained. Of course every child is in their unique situation, and just because the school has seen test scores come back to “normal” levels again after years of disruptions does not mean every child is where they should be but it is a great indicator that the schools as a whole are on the right track.

Emotional education

Education is only half of the school experience, the other half is socialization. It is crucial for children at certain ages to experience interacting with, coordinating with, and even competing with others in their same age group. Learning together, in person, provides something that an online platform just cannot compete with. It is also easier to tailor learning styles and lesson plans when students in in the classroom providing feedback, either verbally or though their body language.

“I think that’s been harder and I would say that’s definitely national. Young people have typical stressors like grades and academic pressure. There are additional layers that I think got amplified living in a very virtual era during the pandemic. That is not just living in the virtual era, but the amplification of social media in the lives of young people, You’re probably seeing that too. We’re seeing it real in real time in our students in our schools,” de la Cruz stated.

Although academic levels have returned, unfortunately, and even more unquantifiable, social skills and some emotional skills seem to have been impacted along the way. As per many teachers and school officials, many student’s psychological well-being has not returned to pre-pandemic normalcy as of yet. BVSD aims to combat this decline or lack of improvement in mental health through its relatively new Wellness Center program.

A Wellness Center aims to provide a healing and calming space. As per the Boulder High School Website: “Our mission is to provide a space for students to decompress and regulate their nervous systems during times of acute stress, anxiety, and other challenging social-emotional experiences.  Students can grab a cup of tea, relax on a beanbag, and engage in a calming activity to refocus their energy…”

Both de la Cruz and Barber shared their enthusiasm for the Wellness Centers and stated that feedback so far has been positive. There are indications that students are engaging with and using the Centers in high numbers, signaling a demand for more spaces that cater to mental health and wellbeing. In general, we have seen a more open discussion about the mental health of both students and adults in the last few years. Places like Wellness Centers aim to take those conversations and turn them into actionable items for those who need it.

One way to help discharge stress and reduce anxiety is to ditch the cell phones for a moment and focus on the present. Academic officials, teachers, and parents alike all know how information can be beamed into the palm of their children’s hands. This has opened up a world of information but also a wealth of disinformation and divisiveness. With Twitter (X) becoming less regulated and more unhinged each day, it is crucial to be able to take a break from social media feeds, sensationalized stories, and misleading headlines.

As for in-person activities and socializing, de la Cruz shared that “Relationships are a cornerstone to having a meaningful life and a life of contentment, and so that, I would say, has been a heavier piece [of the puzzle] coming off the pandemic.”

Artificial intelligence in the school system

Of course, the introduction of artificial intelligence has only complicated the picture for children and their screen time. At the touch of a button, the typing of a prompt, countless images or bodies of text can appear in a moment. The power to create new worlds, seek information, and be inspired by something you would have never dreamed of are all positive aspects, yet unfettered access can lead to horrific results as well. Vindictive classmates have created pornographic A.I. generated images of underage students, and much worse a teacher in Pascoe County was arrested for A.I. generated pornography.

How do schools balance the potentially harmful aspects of A.I with the infinite possibilities it also currently presents? As for BVSD, per de la Cruz, “ We decided early on to embrace A.I. in our world. It’s not something you can truly block out permanently. We do have filters in place in all of our district devices for protection for students, and we have had extensive professional development for our teachers through a series of opportunities.” While BVSD has embraced the possibility for A.I. assisted learning, not every school district has. But like all new technologies, savvy children will find a way to get their hands on it.

BVSD has embraced the idea that A.I. is here, and their students are likely already using it in some capacity. “The other piece is that we know that kids are using A.I., and so we’re applying it in the classroom in ways that make sense, in ways that allow it to be a spark of creativity that kids can build on, with some technology and protections for safe A.I. use on all of our school issued and district issue devices,” de la Cruz explained.

A.I. can spark creativity, check for spelling errors, and with certain platforms, can be customized for a specific school or district. It can also potentially benefit teachers in time saving tasks. “We brought in an AI environment called Magic School AI, and it’s a really exciting ecosystem in which teachers can use it for everything from those mundane tactics for teachers like helping writing lesson plans, making rubrics, generating worksheets, coming up with creative writing ideas.”

It is not just for the teachers, the A.I. platform “also has a student-facing side that has this teacher control, so a student cannot access it without the teacher knowing. They can do some kind of cool, low-risk creative brainstorming. They can generate really cool, safe images. It really can spark creativity,” de la Cruz said.

“We actually can load in our instructional model, our strategic plan supports for our teachers and be able to generate curriculum. Teachers are supported in being able to generate not just lessons, but differentiated lessons for different levels of learning, so that opportunity to reach more students becomes expanded just with the use of A.I., de la Cruz shared the possibilities.

Barber shared that they refer to this program as a “walled garden” of sorts that allows students freedom to explore within a protected area. Answers to prompts and questions by students are informed by the academic standards of the district to ensure A.I. answers are accurate and reflect towards goals established by academic experts rather than generating “hallucinations” containing false or made up information.

“Of course, there are those negatives, and teachers and other adults wonder about the unknowns, like students cheating, or other things that we’ve all seen and heard in the news. Our technology protections won’t allow school-issued devices for students the ability to make those unsafe or dangerous choices,” de la Cruz assured. “We have actually an A.I. task force, so we have teachers who are involved ongoingly in just keeping an eye on how this is developing and bringing issues to our team, so that we have this feedback loop happening,” she explained. “We want to teach them to use it in a responsible way, instead of either banning it and creating fear around it, or, you know, vice versa,” Barber shared.

Where do we go from here?

Photo courtesy of Unsplash

With A.I., pandemic recovery, constant social media and cell phone use, how do students manage their stress and keep up their grades at the same time? It will take the support of not just schools and districts, but of individual teachers and parents, a sustained focus on providing funding and spaces for mental health resources, and government willing tp spend money on education now to see results in the future.

When asked about how BVSD is supporting students, de la Cruz shared that “We have a counselor in every school as a baseline and then layered onto that mental health workers, school psychologist, all who are attending to the well being of our students.”

It can seem like an uphill battle at times. “What they’re combating or battling is that our students are living with, within the palm of their hand, a 24 hour news feed and that constant sort of comparison and understanding of what’s happening in the world is weighing heavily on the minds of our young people, climate change, politics, just all of that, the state of the world is weighing heavily on the minds of our kids,” de la Cruz said. Children are often more perceptive than we give them credit for. Having access to news headlines, which often focus on tragic and horrifying events, can impact an empathetic child in deep ways that we do not yet fully understand.

As for the future of BVSD’s students, “We’re expanding a partnership with CU Boulder, and we’re calling it a ‘research partners practice.’ So we’re embarking on a pretty in-depth study of the current state of well-being, mental health, anxiety, depression, happiness, contentedness, the whole emotional span of our students.” As long as funding, public support, research partnerships, and official action continue to support understanding and attending to mental health, our students may have a better chance at recovering from the disruptions that occurred so early in their lives.