FAMILY MENTAL WELLNESS
Metro students face higher incidents of Adverse Childhood Experiences : how schools are Responding
BY GEORGE LANG
MOBILE-FRIENDLY VERSION CLICK FOR
COVID-19 and ACEs Students returning to class in the fall are overwhelmingly likely to have experienced trauma in their young lives. This was true before the COVID-19 pandemic that took hold in March 2020 and forced most children to spend the balance of their 2019-20 school year in virtual study environments at home. But according to Dr. Kenneth Elliott, director of mental health for Oklahoma City Public Schools, ACE scores are likely to increase among the general student population this fall. Before the events of 2020, Elliott said, the number of OKCPS students with ACEs was around 70 to 75 percent. “That’s pre-pandemic,” Elliott said. “So, with that awareness, we’re trying to implement better trauma awareness teaching strategies in the school settings.” Students who experienced past or current trauma can show signs in a number of ways. Jena Nelson, who teaches 7th and 8th grade composition for Deer Creek Public Schools and was named 2020 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year, said she has identified trauma from her students’ writing. “Kids are journaling constantly in my classes, so we must be in tune to what the kids are writing about, looking at their artwork, looking at how they’re playing with each other,” Nelson said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ACEs include exposure to violence in the home or community, verbal
As students and parents face the complicated prospect of returning to class this fall, which could mean any number of circumstances in the age of coronavirus, educators are preparing for children who, by virtue of the world in which they live, have been through a lot. Knowledge of the effect of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on long-term mental health is as old as psychology itself, but a 1998 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (AJPM) reported that the effect of ACEs can create lasting physiological damage as well, beginning the accounting for the physical manifestations of ACEs and childhood trauma. In 2020 especially, this puts not only parents but educators throughout the world in a particularly important position: they must both safeguard the emotional well-being of their students and help them ward off conditions like heart disease that can spring from early childhood trauma.
44 METROFAMILYMAGAZINE.COM / AUGUST 2020
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