To address student mental health, Vermont schools think outside the … – VTDigger

Fifth and sixth graders at the Moretown Elementary School share their work during a weekly afternoon in a classroom in the woods on Tuesday, October 24, 2023. The students participating in the schools Education Children Outside program. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

In the woods behind Moretown Elementary School, an informal economy has sprung up.

One day a week, students leave the classroom for the Moretown Town Forest, which abuts the school building. For fifth and sixth graders, that program involves self-directed time outdoors time that kids have used to build a community of wooden forts from fallen trees and logs.

One structure is a bunker, a fifth grader explained to a reporter one afternoon last month. Another is a mall, where kids can buy and sell items or real estate. Another is a bank that holds the small pieces of colored wood that function as currency.

So we find wood that isnt painted, but its like tinted, with blue, he said. We break it off and we will either sell it or use it to get other stuff.

The place, he added, is like a civilization.

The ad hoc community is a byproduct of a program at the K-6 elementary school called Educating Children Outdoors, or ECO. One day a week, classes move out of the classroom into the town forest, where they complete specialized lessons and maintain their civilization.

As students across Vermont and the country grapple with their mental health, ECO is one of multiple school initiatives that has found benefits to getting them out of the classroom.

A 2021 survey found that 22% of Vermont middle schoolers and 35% of high schoolers reported experiencing poor mental health in the past 12 months. In that same time span, 22% of high schoolers reported that they had engaged in self-harm and 14% said they had made a suicide plan.

Experts cautioned against comparing the 2021 data with previous years because of the effect of the pandemic. But Vermont survey data from previous years found that increasing percentages of students felt sad or hopeless, engaged in self-harm, or made a suicide plan.

In an April livestream with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I.- Vt., U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy referred to mental health as the defining public health crisis of our time.

The pandemic poured fuel on the fire, so to speak, Murthy said. But the fire was already burning.

But for struggling Vermont children, getting help is not always easy. Mental health professionals are in short supply, therapeutic facilities are few and far-between, and waitlists for both are long.

School counselors across Vermont find that waiting lists are long for care in their region and few providers are taking new clients, according to a survey conducted earlier this year by Linnea Jahn, a counselor and board member at the Vermont School Counselor Association.

In some parts of the state, families struggle to transport students to counseling services outside the school, according to survey data. There are also few short-term residential placements for students with acute needs, counselors said, and sometimes the cost of services can be prohibitive.

But another barrier not included in the survey, Jahn said, was the school buildings themselves.

I know that at a lot of schools, from other counselors Ive talked to, space is absolutely a barrier, Jahn said in an interview. Finding a quiet confidential space for students not just for mental health therapy, but also just to have a break. A lot of students are asking to take breaks.

So some schools have looked beyond their buildings.

In Moretown, school officials started ECO with the North Branch Nature Center in 2011, after watching a documentary about how kids were spending too little time outdoors. It was the fall after Tropical Storm Irene, and Moretown was hit hard.

Our village was pretty much decimated, said Pam Dow, a kindergarten teacher and a founder of the ECO program. About half of her class of roughly a dozen students had been displaced from their homes by the storm, she said.

That year I watched children heal through play and building in the forest, Dow said. And so what that whole year was, was kids kind of reenacting what was happening in their life in the forest. And so kids spent the year building sewers, and constructing houses, and it was really kind of fascinating to watch that piece of it.

Originally, the ECO program was limited to just kindergarten students; now, students of all grades participate. Every Tuesday is ECO Day for all students, who complete lessons tailored to the outdoors and have unstructured time to play. The program runs throughout the school year except for two months in winter, when students go downhill skiing instead.

ECO was not explicitly founded as a mental health program. But it has created significant benefits for students social and emotional well-being, staff said.

Mandy Couturier, the Harwood Unified Union School District director of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support and former principal at Moretown Elementary, said that during her five years as Moretown Elementarys principal, behavioral incidents were typically far rarer on Tuesdays than other weekdays.

Its a different kind of experience, she said. You know, the kids who struggle learning how to read, and so need that extra help on a regular basis, might be the best fort builder outdoors. You know what I mean? Or know more animal tracks than anyone else, or you name it. And so theres multiple ways to feel successful, and (to feel) like theyre contributing good things.

In Bennington, many families are contending with what law enforcement officials describe as a burgeoning drug trade and a surge in opioid overdoses. Many in the Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union are also struggling with poverty: in the 2021-2022 school year, roughly 70% of the supervisory unions students were eligible for free and reduced lunch, according to state data.

That can have devastating effects on childrens mental health, school officials say.

Since the pandemic weve had a growing a small percentage, but really, really difficult to remediate group of learners that are experiencing trauma in our community, said Kate Abbott, the Southwest Vermont Supervisory Unions director of student services. And when they are experiencing trauma, they arent available for learning. And then they interrupt everyone elses learning.

Last year, a VTDigger investigation found that Bennington Elementary School staff were repeatedly calling the police when faced with disruptive and sometimes violent student behaviors.

In January of this year, administrators took a step toward a solution. In the summer of 2022, the supervisory unions central office had moved to a new office downtown, leaving its old office on Beech Street vacant. What if, officials thought, that building could be converted into a therapeutic space for children?

We literally had a discussion, I want to say, like right before the holiday break in December, said Danielle Myrtle, who oversees the facility. And we opened this place on January 17. It was like a shotgun wedding. Because we had to meet the needs of our kids.

The Beech Street School, as the building is now called, is a collaboration with the local nonprofit United Counseling Service. The facility provides a calming and therapeutic space for students with significant needs. It also gets struggling kids out of classrooms where disruptive behavior might disturb or endanger their classmates.

Children were previously referred to a separate facility called OnPoint, which offers similar programming. But last year, officials said they saw a spike in the number of kids in need of mental health help, and the district needed more room.

Now, nearly a year in, the Beech Street School has classrooms, therapeutic spaces, and rooms where children can de-escalate from extreme behaviors. Currently, the Beech Street School is working with 11 children between kindergarten and fifth grade.

Roughly a dozen staff members are based in the facility, including three teachers, four paraprofessionals, and a team of therapeutic staff. The ultimate goal, administrators say, is helping kids develop a particular set of skills: understanding and naming their emotions, self-regulation, mental and emotional self-care.

Administrators say that 30% to 40% of children referred to the Beech Street School end up successfully reintegrated into their original schools. Others who stay longer-term find it easier to meet their academic goals or develop social and emotional skills there, officials said.

The therapeutic element is what kind of drives everything here, said Myrtle. So its not education in terms of academics first. Its like education in terms of, How do I learn how to be well and have a better quality of life?

In Burlington, students are grappling with many of the same problems faced by their Bennington counterparts: the opioid epidemic, poverty, the Covid-19 pandemic.

The result of the pandemic was (that) a lot of families were isolated, said Jim Kelliher, the school counselor at Champlain Elementary School in the Burlington School District. Were seeing the impact of that coupled with just stress that families are under.

Unlike in Bennington, however, finding the physical space to address those issues has proven difficult. Kelliher said that his building has one room where students can get mental health help. But because of the confidential nature of therapy, the room has a capacity of one at a time while demand has increased.

Theres no space. Theres no therapeutic mental health space in schools. Theres just theres not, said Jen Colman, a Burlington psychotherapist who contracts with the district. If you cant provide a confidential therapeutic space, you really cant do therapy well.

So Colman came up with an unusual workaround: space that moves.

We have bookmobiles, Colman said. We have dog grooming. Like, why cant we have therapy on wheels?

In 2021, Colman bought a 8.5-by-20 foot aluminum trailer and had it outfitted by a customization company in the state of Georgia. The trailer weighs so much over 5,000 pounds, Colman said that she had to buy a new car to haul it.

The vehicle is equipped with heating, electricity and water and outfitted with chairs, books, toys and knick knacks, accouterments intended to create a welcoming and therapeutic environment.

Through her nonprofit, Green Mountain Mobile Therapy, Colman tows the therapeutic facility from school to school to see patients. As of September, Colman was working with 30 students at four schools in the Burlington School District.

At some schools Champlain Elementary, Edmunds Elementary and Edmunds Middle School Colman parks the trailer in the school parking lot and students come outside for therapy sessions. Because Burlington High School is currently in a retrofitted mall downtown, though, parking has proved a challenge, and Colman does therapy inside the building in what she believes was once a changing room.

Green Mountain Mobile Therapy has allowed more kids access to therapeutic services, Colman said. But the demand still far outweighs the supply.

Ultimately, like, I could be at one school 100% of my time, Colman said. And it still wouldnt be enough.

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To address student mental health, Vermont schools think outside the ... - VTDigger