Chris Leonard and guest Jayne Demsky, a parent who once faced her own son’s school avoidance and became an advocate for families dealing with this challenging issue, share advice for parents to help their school-refusing child get back to school.
School Refusal Series Part 1: Re-Integrating and Retaining Students After COVID
As we return to full-time, in-person learning, educators expect even more students to struggle with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues that interfere with their ability to learn and succeed in school. It’s clear that there is a mental health gap that we urgently need to close in order to address the academic gap from lost learning during the pandemic, and ultimately to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students. Teachers, administrators, and school counselors must be ready to assist these students. So where do we start?
Are You Ready For The Mental Health Tsunami?
Experts are predicting a wave of mental health issues as a direct outcome of the trauma and uncertainty associated with COVID-19. In this presentation, we explore how educators and parents can proactively address trauma, in themselves and their children, to minimize the long-term fallout from the pandemic crisis.
A Parent’s Perspective on School Refusal
In this episode, Chris Leonard talks with a parent of a student who struggled with school avoidance. This is an increasingly common problem faced by students, families, and school districts, and one that’s challenging to overcome. Laura describes her daughter Kelly’s battle with school avoidance and shares the intervention strategies that ultimately helped Kelly get […]
Solving School Avoidance: Strategies for Schools
In this episode, Chris Leonard talks with Linda McGovern, a mental health clinician embedded full time in the Randolph, New Jersey public school district. Linda has worked effectively with many students struggling with school avoidance, and offers advice and specific strategies that schools can use to transition these students back to school.
