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Episode 15: Creative Cooperation - Parents and Schools Together
194 Plays8 months ago
As another school year comes to a close, we are taking time to reflect and acknowledge that “right service, right time” isn’t always possible in school mental health. Our guest today is Rachel Zwicky, parent advocate and lived experience representative on the Coalition Board. Rachel lives in rural northern Wisconsin and joins Kathy to discuss how she has navigated working with her children’s school to support their mental health when traditional resources aren’t immediately available.
Show Notes
Coalition for Expanding School-Based Mental Health in Wisconsin
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction - Comprehensive School Mental Health
Wisconsin School Mental Health Framework
Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health - Youth and Family Voice
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:17
Speaker
Welcome to School Mental Health Works, a quick dip monthly podcast presenting dialogues on school mental health in Wisconsin as viewed through the lens of an array of stakeholders who play a role in the comprehensive model of school mental health services in Wisconsin. Our mission is to share the successes and challenges experienced by a range of partners in Wisconsin as communities continue to collaborate and show that school mental health works.
Coalition for School-Based Mental Health
00:00:43
Speaker
This series is a product of the Coalition for Expanding School-Based Mental Health in Wisconsin, a statewide coalition with a mission to advance and support expanded, comprehensive and integrated mental health services within the school setting through school, home, and community partnerships.
00:01:01
Speaker
Welcome to School Mental Health Works.
Meet Kathy Markland
00:01:03
Speaker
I'm Kathy Markland, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Association of Family and Children Agencies, and more importantly, a member of the Board of the Coalition for Expanding School-Based Mental Health in Wisconsin.
00:01:14
Speaker
Throughout our past two seasons of episodes, we have explored the six elements of the comprehensive model of school mental health in Wisconsin. And we are excited today to welcome a guest to talk to us a little bit about that partner, that parent partner perspective in our school mental health service array.
Challenges in Rural School Resources
00:01:34
Speaker
We know that sometimes our communities and our schools may not have the right resources to support a right service, right time response for our students.
00:01:43
Speaker
We even often hear this more in our rural communities that this can be a challenge and especially as we as we close out this mental health month And we're transitioning to summer schedules. We're really thinking about some of those gaps and challenges for families We're so pleased to be joined by rachels wiki rachels a lived experience parrot partner and a coalition board member who brings a wealth of personal and professional experience to her board service
00:02:08
Speaker
and more importantly, her local community. Rachel hails from the more rural northern region of Wisconsin, and we're looking forward to speaking with her today about how she navigates working with her school community and beyond to connect with resources and finds partners and creative solutions when waiting for other responses for her own student and for supporting those families and parents in her school community.
00:02:34
Speaker
So super excited to have you with us today, Rachel. Thank you so much for joining us. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?
00:02:44
Speaker
Sure. So I originally trained to be a school counselor and at the time I graduated was right when Act 10 kind of happened. So then I actually did a small stint working in special ed trying to figure out if I might want to go back to school to be a special ed teacher. Decided that wasn't really for me. So then I redid my internship and took a few extra classes to be a clinical counselor.
00:03:13
Speaker
worked for a couple years in the clinics. I worked a lot with kids, although I did see all ages. My primary focus has always been kids. That's kind of my passion. A couple years into this, my son, who was seven at the time, needed to have brain surgery. And as you can probably imagine, that presented some challenges from a burnout standpoint and a sustainability standpoint.
00:03:42
Speaker
having to reschedule clients all the time, no matter how much they may have needed their sessions, struggling to keep up on insurance paperwork, and just realizing this is not really going to work out long term.
Rachel's Advocacy Journey
00:03:57
Speaker
It's not the best for me or my family or my patients. So I started looking into other opportunities. What I wound up doing
00:04:08
Speaker
was reaching out to the director at the Office of Children's Mental Health and just inquiring, you know, is there anything that I could do part time to make a difference within this organization? And I was connected to
00:04:27
Speaker
Andrea Turdenwald, who is the family relations coordinator. And I was very quickly recruited to be a lived experience parent partner with the Office of Children's Mental Health. This has been very
00:04:43
Speaker
very wonderful for me in the sense that not only am I able to advocate on behalf of kids and share some of the knowledge and experience that I've had both personally and professionally, but then also I never really realized how much we do systems change work.
Resource Disparity in Northern Wisconsin
00:05:05
Speaker
And that has been more fulfilling than I ever really imagined it would be.
00:05:12
Speaker
One of the things that I'm often doing is raising awareness as to what it's like in the northernmost part of Wisconsin. You know, a lot of people when they think northern Wisconsin, they think the center of the state and that's not northern Wisconsin. We do have a lot of struggles up here with lack of resources. And there's a lot of times I say something in a statewide meeting where
00:05:41
Speaker
People are telling me it's not supposed to be like that anymore. We changed this and my response is typically well I don't know what to tell you that's not our reality here
00:05:54
Speaker
I actually love that, Rachel, because it speaks so much for me, too, that the on the ground versus sort of the planned versus the execution and implementation and what that looks like, right, that we have a lot of
00:06:16
Speaker
concepts and philosophies about how we want things to be rolling forward, how we're envisioning services and supports within our schools. And lots of times we don't really have the capacity to carry that forward or see that through to implementation just because local resources differ so incredibly.
00:06:34
Speaker
about how we actually move that and again do that implementation piece around our vision. So I'm thinking about that particularly as you know we set out this framework or these models around comprehensive school mental health and all of them are wonderful and aspirational
00:06:52
Speaker
And yet the lived reality of people on the ground trying to Really just do the best and do right by their by their families and their students and their teachers and their communities um that a lot of times that's just going to take on um, there's people have to get creative and and hustle a little to figure out how this is actually going to look on the ground so that we're getting the best result we can with the resources we have so
00:07:17
Speaker
I'm just so grateful that you found your way to the Office of Children's
Empowering Parent Voices
00:07:21
Speaker
Mental Health. They are a tremendous partner for us at the coalition and just appreciate how they have really developed that formational space for parents to really come to the table. I'm wondering if you can share a little bit more about us since we've kind of gone down that path a little bit.
00:07:38
Speaker
Some of the things that you think from kind of programmatically how the Office of Children's Mental Health has supported that parent voice, what you have kind of learned through the curriculum and opportunities that they've provided for you that has helped you both participate in those big systems conversation, but also maybe given you some different skills and tools to bring back in your local work as well.
00:08:09
Speaker
Sure. So there are a lot of different things that the Office of Children's Mental Health does well in order to engage families. Andrea herself is fantastic about pulling parents into conversations when we're in those large meetings with all the stakeholders
00:08:31
Speaker
and kind of giving us the encouragement to talk and really validating our perspective before we start to say anything, which is very helpful in those intimidating spaces. And they're very good about wanting to compensate parents or the other forms of lived experience partners for their time. So if you're
00:08:58
Speaker
struggling with the idea of I can't really take off of work for this or, you know, we do have a stipend that we're able to earn. If we travel to go to a meeting or something like that, we have our expenses paid and so that barrier is eliminated from a financial standpoint. There's a lot of trainings that they offer us. Some of them are focused more on
00:09:29
Speaker
certain issues relating to mental health. Some of them are more how to engage with stakeholders, how to speak to your local representatives, different things like that. We've learned how to kind of fine tune our
Advocating for Mental Health
00:09:49
Speaker
story in order to make it impactful and
00:09:53
Speaker
for example, be able to get a senator's attention and get their buy-in. So some of those things where we know we have a great story to tell, but how do you tell it in a way that's going to be meaningful and actually lead to an outcome? And so that's probably the biggest thing that I've learned as somebody who already has a mental health background is more, how do I talk?
00:10:22
Speaker
more as like a not a lobbyist, but you know, how do I talk to the people in government and try to persuade them to listen to our experiences because they do matter.
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, 100 percent. And I think I love the sort of breaking down to the specifics of some of these elements that I, you know, that again, not always possible to replicate them on our local levels. But I do think one of the things that we really and we have at the coalition, too, I think leaned on the Office of Children's Mental Health and the really extensive work that they've done on
00:11:03
Speaker
developing I think a tremendous model about how you how you authentically bring peers and people with lived experience to the table and so the specific things that you're sharing there that I'm hearing Rachel just around that authentic like taking space making space to listen really and validating and creating sort of and
00:11:28
Speaker
creating and generating that confidence in those lived experience partners about the expertise that they have to bring to the discussion and the systems change pieces. I think this stipends piece and providing for recognizing with financial resources that this time is valuable. We value your time and that actually
00:11:52
Speaker
putting some dollars and cents value on that, reimbursing travel and saying to have you at the table, we acknowledge that your time has value. And then I think that those specific skills and tools, like who are the different communities that you're going to be communicating with? How do we make sure that we're breaking down some of those language barriers? You obviously came into this with, like you said, a lot more of that mental health background and grounding. You have that very strong foundation.
00:12:20
Speaker
in knowing that language and not all of the parent peers would have that piece and so that kind of having some learning in that space and getting past all of the acronyms and all of the things that government has out there that can get in the way that we still see as sort of barriers when we're even talking between mental health providers and schools sometimes that we all have our own lingo and FERPA and HIPPA and these acronyms
00:12:44
Speaker
So helping I think parents to become conversant in and some of that so that it's not getting in the way And then and then formulating your
Impact of Personal Stories
00:12:52
Speaker
story. It's another big component of this. Like how do you actually? Come put your story into a position so that you're able to sort of respect your own sort of protect your story and and but yet
00:13:07
Speaker
Share it in a way that's going to translate and be impactful, which is really your whole purpose of I think for parents engaging is really wanting to see that that experience is having an impact on the policymakers and decision makers out there and so figuring out how to package that and really.
00:13:25
Speaker
Becoming that advocate, that advocacy voice so thank you so much for sharing that because I just wanted to reiterate all of that because I think it's so important as we think about how we're building forward those pieces in our local coalitions and our local
00:13:40
Speaker
collaborations as well as our statewide collaborations where we still I know have a tremendous amount of work to do and to really get to a place where we're more more actively really pulling forward and and Recognizing and creating parity with that lived experience lived expertise voice within our within our decision-making bodies so Grateful for that and I think one of the things that we've touched on is, you know, then how does that
00:14:10
Speaker
One of the things that you had a chance to be a conversation on recently that sort of was an impetus for our gathering today was really focusing in on thinking about questions about gaps in service delivery.
00:14:24
Speaker
You referenced earlier on about We have these grandiose visions perhaps on the state level about About how we're breaking down barriers and creating opportunities and and creating these comprehensive models within our schools across the state of wisconsin and yet You know you're bringing a little bit of that reality check from the north woods from from the real north the north north of wisconsin
00:14:49
Speaker
And so talk to us a little bit about sort of how you have navigated that space, how you help your child, how you help your community and your school when you see an experience
00:15:03
Speaker
those gaps. What does that really look like on the ground for you? What are the things that you ideally would have but maybe don't have and how you navigate around that and help to fill those gaps?
Limited School Resources
00:15:15
Speaker
Sure. In my younger child's elementary school, we are pretty well starved for resources. Our school counselor is only there a couple days a week and
00:15:30
Speaker
really focuses more on those whole classroom developmental guidance lessons. Very, very little opportunity to do any other interventions that are more specific, whether they be group or individual. We don't have a school social worker. The school psychologist is only ever really there in the aspect of leading a 504 meeting or doing a special ed eval.
00:16:00
Speaker
So there's really just a lack of programming to begin with. When you look at some of these other schools that have these wonderful programs or groups or different interventions that they're doing, we don't have the bodies to do that here.
00:16:19
Speaker
We also, I mean, we don't even have a nurse half of the week. We often don't have a principal in the building. We don't have enough para support. There's kids that if they're entitled to have breaks or different things, if the special ed para is at lunch, they have to wait until she comes back because there are just not enough bodies.
00:16:44
Speaker
So when it comes to a child needing an intervention and there's no bodies to provide it, that's probably the biggest challenge that I've seen in the school setting from a parent standpoint. And one of the things that I have really had to do and found great success with is finding your person who is available
00:17:10
Speaker
And, you know, maybe they don't have a special kind of training or maybe they don't have the title that you were hoping for, but they can be just as impactful.
Building Relationships in Schools
00:17:22
Speaker
So in my son's case, it is the secretary in the office. He knows that if he is having any kind of a problem,
00:17:31
Speaker
he can go into that office and talk to her at any time. Sometimes she kind of does a little more counselor type stuff with him, like obviously not formal counseling, but just talking him through what's bothering him, encouraging him, that sort of thing. Sometimes it's a phone call to me to try to figure out what's the best way to handle this.
00:17:57
Speaker
Sometimes it's she walks him back to his classroom and helps facilitate a conversation with the teacher that maybe because of his anxiety, he was not able to initiate himself. But now that somebody else has started the conversation, now he's able to share what he needs. And so she has just been a tremendous support for him. And I just
00:18:25
Speaker
so painful for her. But that would, I guess, be my first piece of advice is if you can't find the people that you're looking for or you're told that your school doesn't have X, Y, or Z, that doesn't mean that there's nothing you can do. There's always someone that you can reach out to who will care enough to become invested and to help that child
00:18:52
Speaker
to the best of their ability. I think the second biggest thing that I would say is making sure that you are keeping in touch with everybody at the school and keeping people updated as to what's going on. That's something I've had to do with both of my kids. So, you know, whether it's teachers, nurses,
00:19:16
Speaker
the person in the office, depending on the situation, but letting them know, hey, he's having this health problem right now and you might see it impact him in this way.
00:19:31
Speaker
or hey, grandpa just died and he might need XYZ from you for the next couple of weeks. Whatever it is, just keeping them informed. What I've heard multiple times from both of my kids' schools is that parents apparently don't tend to do that. And it doesn't have to be giving details. I know that can be a concern for some families.
00:19:59
Speaker
You know, we've had some teachers advocate from the beginning of the school year, you know, just, hey, send me an email or send a note in the home folder that says handle with care. And you don't necessarily have to give any details at all, but just let them know when something's up. They really appreciate that. And then they can try the best from their standpoint to try to support the child.
00:20:27
Speaker
I can't even tell you. Honestly, that chokes me up a little bit, the idea of just a handle with care note, Rachel. Yeah, I think we do see. I can imagine that our families, not all of our families are comfortable and confident about the school space.
00:20:47
Speaker
And so, and I think we hear this particularly in our rural communities where sort of everybody knows everybody and to the degree that maybe that's a, but, you know, maybe it's an oversimplification and certainly there are some of those challenges that present in our more urban communities as well. But I do think you hear sort of this, this reticence or concern about oversharing of business.
00:21:12
Speaker
and thinking about how we want to keep the personal personal on a level and how do we really set that up successfully for our family. So we're creating spaces for them to be able to
00:21:27
Speaker
share enough so that people have awareness. And I love the way that you articulated that with just sort of just creating awareness of the fact that there may need maybe a need for a little more tenderness in how we're approaching
00:21:46
Speaker
The day with a child and that that could be enough to just set the tone Because as soon as you were talking about communication and kind of putting forward your list here You know, I was looking for some you know, you know, I think that how to maintain those channels open and what do you do when?
00:22:05
Speaker
you know, you have some of those communication breakdowns and how you really navigate that. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and you talk about sort of finding those people within the school space that are safe and how do you sort of recover when maybe we've had a rough patch? Yeah, and I have definitely had some of those.
00:22:28
Speaker
It kind of depends on the person, too. But I know I can think back to an incident with a teacher when my eldest child was in first grade. And I did not really yet understand the classroom practices in the school. So he would come home and he would tell me something that had happened. And in my mind, I might not always picture
00:22:57
Speaker
the way that it actually happened in the classroom because I had not yet been exposed to their classroom practices. So I remember one time blowing up at a teacher over email about what I perceived to be this bad thing that had happened in the classroom. And she was so confused. Like she did not understand why I was so upset. And then I had come into the classroom to volunteer for
00:23:26
Speaker
a holiday activity. And I saw a visual that immediately I understood what had happened. And I understood, you know, why my son perceived it the way he did, but also understanding where the teacher was coming from. And I made it a point to send her a follow up email after that saying, Hey, I saw this in your classroom today.
00:23:52
Speaker
And now I understand this and I apologized for blowing up at her and I thanked her for, you know, working hard and doing what she could to support my son. And she told me that she actually cried when she read my email. She was so happy that I had, you know, gone back and
00:24:15
Speaker
you know, took the time to validate her position and admit that I was wrong and express appreciation for what she was doing. I guess it was very unexpected. So I think as parents, sometimes, you know, we really, really want what's best for our kids. And it's really hard sometimes to
00:24:39
Speaker
say if maybe we asked for too much or if we had an unreasonable demand or whatever it might be but not being afraid to just do whatever you have to do sometimes to repair a situation because at the end of the day families and schools are hopefully partnering together and collaborating and that's really hard to do if you're not getting along.
00:25:08
Speaker
So I mean, hopefully the school's repairing things if they mess up too. But like on parents, like don't be afraid, even if it's as simple as saying, you know, hey, I misunderstood. Sorry about that. Even though it feels so small to us, obviously, if she cried, it meant something way bigger to her.
00:25:28
Speaker
Yeah and I'm so I'm just so pleased and impressed you know Rachel that you went to a personal example first of sort of like looking at sort of that self-reflection piece about how you show up too in those spaces for your for your school community and saying
00:25:47
Speaker
you know, you're invested in what's happening for your student, but you're invested in what's happening for the whole school community. And so and I think to the degree that you have that you can and parents can make space and time to actually Experience the school culture firsthand and and so to help contextualize how that that really is looking on the ground and really providing for that humanity of like
00:26:14
Speaker
of being in the moment with the people who are there in the school day in and day out, serving to the best of their abilities. And the other thing I really heard you saying, which I think is really at the core of what we talk about when we think about what good quality collaboration looks like is starting from that place of let's presume good intent for everyone in this situation. And I think, you know, you taking that extra step and not just
00:26:41
Speaker
Coming from that place of presuming good intent, but then like recognizing and articulating when something didn't go well like saying I see this and and I hear you and and knowing that really that story is so beautiful that it meant so much and
00:26:56
Speaker
for that teacher to hear that there was kind of some learning on your end and that you had that humanity to share that forward with her, I think is just, it's really important.
Collaborative Problem Solving
00:27:11
Speaker
And I think, again, as we're having this conversation about how we do what we can with what we have, showing up for one another is just at the core of that, right?
00:27:25
Speaker
right for your communities like how you're building that together so you shared sort of finding that person that there's always that person and that you know and having good communication um anything else that you wanted to share with us as you think about what's really important um when you think about you know doing doing a lot with a little um in your in your school community i think honestly it really just comes down to partnering and
00:27:55
Speaker
just people wanting to work together and collaborate because a lot of times when things are under resourced you rely on creative problem solving and if you have good relationships and you are you know willing to come to the table and it's not something that is
00:28:21
Speaker
being avoided, you know, sometimes, let's be honest, we all have people in our lives we avoid, right? I mean, sometimes, you know, I know there are certain parents that staff find difficult to work with. And as a parent, there are some people at the school that I don't always want to work with. But at the end of the day, if we're going to solve any problems, we all have to learn how to work together. And so
00:28:50
Speaker
But just keeping that at the forefront and realizing that we're all human and regardless of how somebody might act in a certain situation or regardless of any perceived shortcomings of another person, parents are trying the best they can, school staff are trying the best they can. Most schools are still underfunded.
00:29:20
Speaker
you know, all of these things, we all have our systemic barriers that get in the way of doing what other people might think we should be doing. So if we can try to look past that and just, like you said, assume good intentions and try to see where people are trying, where people are doing well, and then build on that.
00:29:44
Speaker
I honestly can't think of a better place to sort of wrap up this conversation today, Rachel. I mean, what a beautiful testimonial to the work that your local community is doing, that you're doing, that you're really kind of making it work.
Empathy in School Communities
00:30:02
Speaker
And I'm gonna keep returning back to that handle with care statement because I just thought that was so beautifully stated and I think how a great way to think about sort of being in that very simple communication to one another, but to how we should be really just orienting ourselves on a daily basis because we don't know when we're approaching people on any given day what they may have
00:30:28
Speaker
what may have happened, what they may be carrying into that space in that day. And so that really thinking about that as a fundamental of how we engage with one another.
00:30:38
Speaker
and that it can be as simple as that reminder to just handle with care. So much gratitude, Rachel, for you being with us today and for this conversation and really thinking about just hopefully this bringing a great deal of hope to our school communities about all of the tremendous resources they have in their parent partners within their school communities.
00:31:05
Speaker
Thank you so much for being with us today, Rachel. This was a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to future episodes? Make sure to subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice and leave us a rating so that others invested in better mental health for Wisconsin students can find us. We welcome your questions. You can reach us and find resources and learn more by checking out today's show notes and by visiting the coalition's website at schoolmentalhealthwisconsin.org. Until next time,