Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: This is fostering conversations with Utah Foster care, where we have insightful conversations about parenting for bio foster, adoptive, or blended families to better understand the experiences we all face as families.
Hi, I'm Deborah Lindner. I'm here with my co host, Liz Rivera, as usual. And I. Our subject today is back to school. But really, we're going to be talking about issues and solutions that you can use year round because things come up, don't they, Liz?
[00:00:39] Speaker B: They do. We talk about one of the places that we need to advocate for kids the very most is in school, because when school is going well for our kids, a lot of other things are also going well.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: That's right. And our guests are coming on board right now. So let me go ahead and introduce them quickly. First, we have McKay Esplin. She's a trainer at Utah foster care. In addition, she is an LCSW working as a social worker at Uinta School District. And we also have Tyler Bastian, director of Roots Charter School, Utah's first farm based charter school, and so much more. McKay, let me put the first question to you. Children and teens who have experienced foster care have a very different relationship with their school, right?
[00:01:29] Speaker C: Yes, they do.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: How do parents deal with that? What are some of the unusual issues that come up and what have you seen?
[00:01:37] Speaker C: I think one of the big issues that we see, especially when children have to switch schools, often when they come into foster care, they're not able to stay in their home school, which causes an added level of stress. Children spend much of their waking hours in school and with those professionals. So when those people have to be changed at such a critical time in a child's placement journey, it's very challenging and stressful for the child. And like Liz mentioned, when kids have success at school, it helps in other areas of their life as well. So I think transferring schools is particularly challenging. Also, even if a child doesn't have to transfer schools, the information often doesn't really get to the school and to the teachers and the individual people involved in that child's life on a day to day basis, as timely as it should or as completely as it should.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: So what do foster parents need to know, then, about really being an advocate?
[00:02:40] Speaker C: I think you start with working with the caseworker and making a plan for how you're going to work with the schools. The caseworker should have contact with the schools, the administration, the individual teachers. But it's important for the foster parent to have that contact as well, to really open those lines of communication. What I've noticed through my years of being a school social worker is that when parents and teachers have really good communication, things go very well in the classroom. And often we have. Maybe we have a little bit of fear of each other. I think sometimes teachers are concerned about parents, and if I have a struggle with this kid, will the parent be defensive of that? Well, how do I contact the parent and have a conversation in a way that's productive for our goals, our shared goals for the child's education? I think that as a teacher, with so many people in their classroom, so many students, it really needs to be a parent driven communication. I recommend that parents make contact with the teachers right away, let them know, not the details of the case, obviously, because that's confidential. But really talk about the things that are happening and the supports that are needed for that child in the school district.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: So I'd love to hear, Tyler, more about Derootes charter school. I've heard from coworkers who've been there and attended events there. The amazing work you're doing not only with kids who may be in care, but kids who come from backgrounds that are very similar to the kinds of backgrounds we see with kids in foster care.
[00:04:16] Speaker D: Yeah. So roots is an alternative school, alternative charter. The thing that kind of sets us apart? There's probably two things, really, that set us apart. One of them is the students have access and work daily on a six acre farm. They're doing everything from, you know, the eggs. We have 400 chickens, so they're collecting eggs, getting those ready to sell, raising sheep, goats. We have alpacas, donkeys, and then they also participate in a cut flower CSA, whereas we're raising cut flowers and selling them direct to market and to florists. The other thing that kind of sets us apart is we have a number that kind of is everywhere you go, you see it, and it's two, four, three, and it means we love you. It takes two letters to say we, four letters to say love, and three letters to say you. So really, that's the hub of our school, is that is the farm, and then two, four, three as a message, and it's spray painted everywhere. Up high. And so we tell the students, hey, if you're having a bad day, just look up, and you'll see that we love you. And piggybacking on what McKay said, one thing we do is we try to learn as much about every kid that we can as quickly as possible. Even simple things like what music they like, what foods they like, just little things. And we put it in a document that everybody has access to. It's called the Kid program, which is know, identify, and discover. And we found that when you do have a student that's new and he's feeling like he or she feels connected throughout the school pretty quickly by that information, then that really helps them establish a place. But I think new schools, and we get a lot of new students because they'll drop out or they'll get kicked out of another school and they'll join us mid year. It definitely helps to just know the kid as quick as possible and let him know that him or her know that you know them.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: That's wonderful. I mean, not only are they loved, but they're loved for who they are. I think there's that general kind of love that people may feel, but there's also that very specific kind of love that's based upon knowledge. And it sounds like you're meeting both of those types of love.
[00:06:22] Speaker D: Yeah. If I'm telling a kid or trying to show a kid that I love him, but I have no idea who he or she is, then it falls pretty flat.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Tyler, you spoke to Utah foster care at our symposium, and what I came away with, and a lot of other people, too, I think, was one term that you quoted, you have a beloved community.
You create a beloved community at roots charter school. Tell us about that.
[00:06:51] Speaker D: You know, you have to let every kid that comes through that door, no matter what circumstances they're coming from, you have to make them feel like they belong and that they're part of that community. And it's easier to do that sometimes on the farm than it is in classrooms. But that beloved community is really, you have to bring them in, no matter what they bring with them, I guess you could say. And really having it be something that they feel is authentic. And I think we all strive for that beloved community. But when you really are establishing a beloved community, vulnerability is something that everybody has to be willing to make themselves vulnerable and to offer who they are, not who they want people to think they are. We get kids, for example, who have maybe a gang background, and they come in and they're posturing, and immediately I'll pull them aside and say, hey, you don't need to do that here. Usually they'll give me a little bit of attitude upfront, but within a couple weeks, I'll grab them again and say, hey, was I right? And usually they'll be like, yep, you were right. I don't need to do that here. And I think that's what a beloved community is, that you can let your guard down and be yourself.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: That's fantastic. And it speaks to something we talk about a lot here at Utah foster care, which is the idea of felt safety or felt security, and that when kids feel safe, that's when they can be vulnerable and start to develop those relationships. So, McKay, coming back to your experience because you have experience with foster care, both working for dcfs, working for Utah foster care, as a foster parent, an adoptive parent, a school counselor, how do we help kids to feel more safe in schools, especially maybe more traditional ones that are a little bit different than what Tyler's talking about?
[00:08:33] Speaker C: So I think as a school social worker, I have an opportunity to connect with lots of kids. So a question I often ask kids when I am just visiting with them is, who do you feel connected to at our school? A lot of times they'll feel connected to a teacher that's really unaware that they are that student's person. And I will go and talk to that teacher and say, hey, this student identified you as a person that they feel really connected to in our school. Can you help me by taking a little more care, reaching out to the student a little bit more? I think there's people that naturally exist in the school that might not be a school social worker, or it might not be a guidance counselor or a member of administration. It could be the lunch person. It could be a janitorial staff. It could be any one of their teachers. But kids have people a lot of the time that we can just naturally strengthen those connections with, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes their answer to that question is, I don't really have anybody here that I feel connected to. And when that happens, I try to figure out how we can connect them. So what are your interests? Are there clubs that you can be part of? Are there groups that you can be part of? Are there certain classes that you might take where you can find some other students and adults who have shared some of your interests? And that way we can help build a community where maybe there isn't a community already or they're having trouble connecting to a community.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: First lady Abby Cox. Part of her show up campaign is show up for teachers, and she spent a lot of time trying to give teachers what they need to be successful in the classroom. And educating the teachers themselves about what the children experiencing foster care are going through is a really big deal.
[00:10:30] Speaker C: I think as a profession, the education system is becoming much more trauma informed. I've seen it. I've worked in schools for nine years now, and I've seen the progression of teachers and administration becoming a trauma informed, as is becoming more and more common to find school social workers. In schools. It's more and more common to have those conversations between staff members, faculty about being trauma informed. So this is, it goes beyond just children in foster care. It goes to any child with a trauma history. I think we're more looking at what's happened to you instead of what's wrong with you. And I think teachers first response is not, this is a bad kid or this is a kid who's causing me problems. This is a student who's trying to make my life miserable. I think we're starting to get to a point where teachers consider first what's going on with this child, what's going on in this student's world, that this is how they're presenting in my classroom. In my school, I have worked with lots and lots of teachers and for the most part, they're people who really care about the kids in their classrooms. They want them to succeed. They're willing to go above and beyond to make that happen for kids. And I really am pleased with the direction that the whole education profession is moving. It's been very exciting to watch that as a social worker. And the conversations I'm having with teachers now in this last school year as opposed to the first year I came into the school system are very different. They're considering things that really are helping kids and helping them succeed.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: It's exciting to see that shift, and I think it's happening in a lot of places in our world, which is good. Tyler, I wanted to go back to something you said, if you don't mind going back in time a little bit. But you said that sometimes that beloved community that you were talking about is sometimes easier to accomplish on the farm than in the classroom. And I wanted to talk a little bit why that is. Getting out of the classroom and into nature has that effect.
[00:12:40] Speaker D: Ill give an example. We had a student who academically hed struggled since kindergarten. When he got out on the farm. He was a strong kid and he excelled on the farm and excelled and found success in a way that I dont think hed ever experienced in schools. And what I think people need to recognize is sometimes, and I'll speak for myself at home, I had very little trauma growing up at school. I had a lot of trauma because I have pretty severe adhd. I don't think it was as understood when I was in school as maybe it's understood now. And so my trauma really is tied to math and to academics and to being pushed in a way that wasn't productive. And so that farm doesn't have sometimes that same trauma. And it gives kids, kids that maybe haven't performed or been able to stand out academically. It's more of a level playing field on the farm. You also have animals, our goats especially. They'll run up to kids and they'll connect with kids. And maybe a lot of the adults or a lot of the other human beings in their life haven't connected with them. And we have students who, you know, that those connections with those animals really help them feel loved, feel a part of our community. And it's, again, something that they haven't experienced much in their life is that connection.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: I love that your beloved community involves animals, too, which is a great piece of so many people's lives.
[00:14:11] Speaker D: Yeah, we have a dog that's at the school every day. The dog's name is Banjo. In Ithoodae, banjo just roams. And there's students who spend so much time trying to get banjo to love them, they say more than other kids, and that even that little opportunity for them to have a dog that seeks them out and finds what class they're in and then approaches them, contributes to that loving community.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: And that's all part of what we know is becoming more and more important for educators and the whole education system to familiarize itself with. That's the mental health of the children in their classroom. There has been so much focus on that lately. McKay, tell me how that's being dealt with out in the Uinta basin.
[00:14:59] Speaker C: The social work program in a school grows every year because it becomes part of the culture. And that's really exciting to see because you get students who realize that there's availability at school to get them help. Teachers realize that there's that assistance, and parents start to make that connection as well. So the social work program that I'm running does not really function as a clinic, but we do have individual clients that we see. The goal is to support kids at school. And so some of the kids that we work with don't have an outside therapist, but many of them do. And we connect with their outside therapists in the community because, you know, you can't schedule when you're going to have a really hard day. It often doesn't fall on the day that you go and have your appointment with your therapist. So we want to create a safe space at school where kids know that they can come and they can decide, do they need to talk to somebody do they need to just go into the quiet room and have some activities and regroup and recenter, what is it that they need? We want to meet them where they are and help them move forward. And that's been a fun thing to see as it has progressed over time. And I suspect that it will get more and more busy and we will have to adapt and change as that happens. I started this last year. I was only one therapist at the high school, and we've hired another one at my school. So we're growing because the need is there. And I think we're realizing that when I. We can support kids mental health at school. It helps them in their academics, it helps them socially, it helps them with life skills. And I think we can do. We do a lot of prevention work, we provide social, emotional learning opportunities. Just the knowledge of mental health is a thing and we often need help. And if I can get kids and teenagers to be comfortable with their own mental health and their own needs in that area, then I think it sets them up to have a much better life as adults.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: That's wonderful. I think one thing that's difficult is that in where you live is basically where you go to school, and so that's what you get. And hopefully we have districts and schools and administration that are well resourced and have what they need. I want to go back to this idea of the roots of charter school and it being a very specific kind of place for kids that not every kid is going to be able to access. But how do kids end up coming to your school, Tyler?
[00:17:40] Speaker D: It's all over the place. If you're looking at our new students who come maybe the end of 10th, 11th and 12th, they're coming because they dropped out somewhere else or were kicked out somewhere else, and they have credit deficiencies and they need to get caught up. We have a pretty robust credit recovery program that we don't charge for, which is a little bit different than a lot of schools. Older school district in Salt Lake Valley. And then we also have kids who the parents can start to see problems in 7th and 8th grade. And we meet with a lot of those parents say, my kid needs something different. Probably 20% of our 9th graders, 2020, 5% of them are coming to roots, mostly because it's a small school, there's only 200 kids, and the parent has recognized that those bigger environments aren't working for that child, and so they'll bring their student to roots. So really, I'd say the kids that come later, it's more behavior based or even habit based, that they're not finding success. And with the younger kids, they're here because of the environment. Our first couple years, you probably had 50% of the kids that were here or the farm. We ended up getting rid of our FFA program. We wanted to eliminate that, to be honest, that kids were coming here for the farm as a perk, but we don't really want the farm to be the driving factor of why they're at roots, because a lot of those could. We were finding. We loved having them, but they could be successful anywhere. And it made us nervous that we were filling some really big needs really close to the school. And so eliminating the FFA program helped with that a little bit.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: What have you learned about these kids, Tyler, that you didn't know before you started working there?
[00:19:26] Speaker D: Probably the thing that stands out the most to me, and maybe it's not that I didn't know it, but I didn't fully recognize what a problem it is. It's how much human potential we squander because of our judgments. So we look at people, we look at these kids, and we don't understand what they're actually capable of, because maybe the way they look or the way they talk or how they carry themselves. And that judgment is really, it's. You could argue it from economics, from social, from anything. We're squandering so much human potential to accomplish amazing things because of the judgments that we cast. And that's probably.
I'd say that's one of the things that stood out the most. I would also say, my growing up, I didn't fully appreciate how much some of the traumas that young kids experience, how much that affects them. And so, as I've worked at roots and studied trauma, it shouldn't define the child, but it has to be in the forefront when you're dealing with those behaviors, is understanding, as McKay said, what happened to them, what they've experienced, as opposed to just, again, that judgment and saying, this is a bad kid.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: That's fantastic. And then McKay, I just wanted to ask, too, there's not necessarily an alternative school in every area. So how do parents help their kids get their needs met in their neighborhood school? What are some of the things that they can do?
[00:20:50] Speaker C: So there are alternative schools in most areas, and we're starting to see more and more charter schools. And like Tyler said, I really appreciate it when in a community, there's options for kids, there's options to help them succeed. Not every kid is going to just plop them in a regular district, junior high or high school or middle school, and have them be successful. I think it's very important that we have alternatives, and more and more communities are getting charter schools and different opportunities. So I think a lot of times parents are unaware of really what is out there. So I would suggest that they do some research and find out what is out there. One thing we learned from COVID when kids went home was some of those kids went home and it was really difficult for them to be online and do their school that way. But guess what? There was a group of kids that they actually did better when they had that online option. If you have a student who would do well with that, that's a good option. And they have those programs are really good programs. More and more development has been done in those online offerings. So I think that there's lots of availability. When I went to school, it was one school and you went there, and if it didn't fit good for you, well, too bad, that was your option. So I think it's a great thing that there's lots of options, and I just recommend that people research what's available in their community. If you can't find it in your own community and you have a student who would be successful with an online situation, you can find it somewhere. It's out there.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: And how early should parents start looking at an alternative of some sort? What age of kids?
[00:22:39] Speaker C: There's options for elementary kids on up, so there's options all the way through the student's educational track. But I think parents like Tyler mentioned, they start noticing that their student is just not getting their needs met, or maybe they're not feeling a sense of belonging. I think as parents, this is where you trust your gut. If you have an issue with a school, you try to work it out with the school, see if you can come to solutions. But maybe the solution is it's just not a great fit for you. So I just think you're aware and you're involved in your students education. You're communicating with your students, teachers and the school as a whole, and you start to just listen to your own parenting gut when you feel like, you know what, this is not a great fit for us, and I can't make it be a good fit for us. What else might be out there?
[00:23:33] Speaker B: I like that. Privileging the parents knowledge of their kids, which of course is difficult potentially with kids in care because they may not, that foster parent may not know that child very well yet. And that's maybe where conferring with the school and those professionals becomes really important.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: And if you are preparing your child for school just really quickly, what are some of the little things you can do to get them prepared?
[00:23:58] Speaker D: I would say try to maintain, if possible, some sort of a routine for that child or help them create a routine that they want. I'm not saying they need to stay waking up early every morning, but it's really hard with the youth when school starts again, when their routines are shifting and they're complete opposite routines between the summer and the school. So providing simple routines and making sure that they maintain some sort of a routine is key and get them ready for it. As far as just talking about and trying to get them excited, talking about, hey, when school starts trying to not demonize it or make it into something that it's not, a lot of kids, if they're surprised and it hasn't been talked about, and all of a sudden it starts, that becomes really difficult.
[00:24:49] Speaker C: I would echo that. Even practicing a couple of weeks before school starts, practicing, getting up and practicing what that kind of looks like, taking kids to the school that they're gonna go through, make sure you're walking around. Hopefully they've seen where their classes are. If they're in the upper grades and they've had an ability to get familiar with the school, the younger kids help them go to the school and know where people are. Where's the nurse? Where's the front office people, this is where your classroom is. So just orienting them to the school and to the routine. I think one of the things to remember is that we have a summer stomach and a school stomach, and it's really difficult for kids the first several weeks back in school to get their school stomach on, send them with snacks. That's one of the things that we have to meet those physical needs. And sometimes kids, depending on when lunch is, it might be really early or it might be really later in the day, they will have a need for some additional nutrition. I think it's really important that you're checking in with them emotionally when they start back at school. And the question is, two questions. What was the best thing that happened today? And what was the most difficult thing that happened today? And I think when we ask kids those two questions, we really can learn a lot. I think often we say, how was your day? And their answer is, fine. And we're, as parents, we're busy, and we're like, oh, they said fine, so it's fine. But when you make them focus in on specific incidents from their day. You start to notice things that maybe you wouldn't notice. Maybe they're not playing with anybody at recess, and that's something that you need to get involved with the teacher at. Maybe they're having somebody who's being unkind to them and it becomes a pattern. You start to hear that more and more. That might be something that you need to address with the teacher or the administration.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: I love that. And I love the idea of the summer stomach and the school stomach. I've never really, I've never heard of it put that way, but that makes so much sense. Thank you.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: I'm just so glad to hear that there's more of an awareness at schools that you need to meet the kids where they are so they can flourish and grow and really be successful. I want to thank our guests today. The first one was McKay Esplin. She's a Utah foster care trainer and an LCSW at Uintah schools. And Tyler Bastian, director of roots charter school. Thank you as well to my co host, Liz Rivera, director of education here at Utah Foster Care, and our esteemed producer, Marshall Scherer Davis. Remember, you don't need to know everything to be a foster parenthood. You just need to be willing to learn. For details on foster parenting and so many other ways you can get involved, go to utahfostercare.org dot. I'm Deborah Lindner.
This has been fostering conversations with Utah foster care. Thank you for joining us. For more information, go to utahfostercare.org dot. We'll see you next time.
