June and August are quiet months in the school world for administrators to revamp schedules and attend to facility needs. July is a silent month, a month when the buildings can lay dormant as all staff members take the time needed to be able to come back to care for our youth’s academic, physical, and mental well-being.
This summer, the school program managers at 1N5 watched our calendars change with the season. Yes, we still had occasional tabling events and times when we stepped in to support our community and corporate colleagues, but some days promised uninterrupted time. This space has not felt dead. The openness has breathed like the liminal space between logs on a fire, the space that helps the fire burn.
This summer, we have been able to slow down to catch up on the latest research, knowing that we learn more about our brains every day. In training with the International Institute for Restorative Practices, we’ve deepened our understanding of the preventive qualities of restorative circles because we know that fostering belonging is one of the most important ways schools can attend to mental health. We sat in day-long Zooms with people all over the country to learn from leading researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health on topics like “Discrimination as a Social Determinant of Mental Health Disparities and “Promoting Mental Health for Sexual and Gender Minority Youth: Evidence-Based Developmental Perspectives.” Sometimes our learning has come in bite-sized bits but the bits of understanding are so potent that we still chew on them days later. A small workshop run by Stanford University called “Healing School Communities in the Context of Faith-Based Bullying” was one that still has us wondering how we can help schools support their Jewish and Muslim students and staff in this time of strife. Sometimes the learning’s value comes from the affirmation it affords us. A four-series on mindful self-compassion sponsored by the University of Berkley reminded us that even during the busy schedule of the school year, we were keeping up with the latest research.
We’ve slowed down to catch up with people who are our allies in this work. We’ve made new connections with superintendents of CPS, Winton Woods and College Hill. We joined forces with new initiatives. We are partnering with UC’s Youth-Built Change, a grant that will fund classes at two area schools so that students can become co-researchers on various mental health topics. Members of our team are stepping in to support HEY Cincinnati, a diverse group of community organizations working in support of youth wellbeing. Ohio State’s Coach Beyond trainers came to our office to train us so that we can train adults who coach athletic and extracurricular activities at schools and in the community how they can recognize signs of mental distress. We walked alongside Hamilton County Suicide Prevention Coalition in support of their efforts to promote firearm safety and to gather information about how to better get the messaging of the You Belong campaign out to students.
People often mistakenly assume that jobs in education are 10-month jobs. Ten months with children, yes, and two months to tend to the embers to keep the fire burning throughout the year.