Editor’s note: This commentary is by Dillon Burns, who is a parent and licensed social worker who lives in Calais
Several years ago, I received a phone call from the parent of a 5-year-old boy in my social work practice. “The preschool called and asked me to pick him up,” she said. “He was so out of control that they didn’t know what to do.” She added “It’s weird, though. Since we got home, he took over the window washing that I had been doing. He has been spraying and scrubbing each window for the last hour. Now he’s completely calm.”
With any crisis comes an opportunity to rethink what we do. Schools are grappling with the many challenges of returning kids to school buildings, not least of which is seriously increased expectations around cleaning and sanitizing. Wiping down schoolbus seats between routes, scrubbing classroom tables three times a day, windexing plexiglass barriers – the list goes on and on. Schools are also rightly concerned about the mental health of students as they emerge from six months of social distancing. One solution may solve both issues: What if school districts look to students — from pre-K to high school seniors — to take on this cleaning work?
Before we had a Covid crisis, we had a behavior crisis in our schools. Every year, teachers and administrators have been reporting increased incidents of aggression and behavioral outbursts at younger and younger ages, often coming from kids who have stressed families and who may have experienced developmental trauma. Schools do their best, putting significant resources into helping teachers and classrooms manage, contain, and reshape students’ dysregulated behavior. But research on developmental trauma, ADHD, and emotional dysregulation is clear: rhythmic, repetitive activity that puts muscles to “work” can help kids regulate their bodies and focus their brains, more so in many cases than traditional talk or play therapy approaches.
Many adults intuitively get this, and take a walk, run, or exercise class before work or during a lunch break, feeling the benefits to their energy level and their attention span. But are 21st century kids getting enough rhythmic and repetitive muscle work in their day? Not enough. Most kids aren’t doing farm chores before school; and if kids are walking or biking to school or bus stops, that distance keeps getting shorter. School sports are the right activity, but at the wrong end of the school day. Many kids I know start their days with screens before school – phones, Minecraft, Fortnight, etc. Realistically, there is very little schools can do to influence these societal habits, but they can decide what students do with their bodies once they arrive on site. Why not make it 15 minutes of rhythmic and repetitive mopping, wiping, or scrubbing? While it’s likely that current policies exist to prohibit student cleaning, this pandemic has shown that systems can pivot quickly when there is a need.
Students cleaning school buildings will have other mental health benefits. Asking students to clean will engage students more actively as citizens in the collective effort to keep our communities safe from Covid-19 spread. Shifting students from consumers of school to crucial contributors will enhance their sense of self-worth, belonging, purpose – key areas that have shown to reduce symptoms of depression no matter the age.
I hope this pandemic will also drive schools to think about more outdoor learning opportunities, where the risk of infection is lower – and the likelihood of rhythmic and repetitive muscle work is higher. I’ve seen this done well. For example, 10 years ago, a group of local high school students spent a day removing an invasive weed from Curtis Pond in Calais, where I live, as part of an alternative classroom run by the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps. They got muscle activity and lots of affirmation. In this program, they were no longer the students who needed more than others; they were the students who were giving more than others.
It’s frustrating that Covid-19 is going to be impacting education for months and months. As a parent, this is beyond daunting. But as a person who cares about the kids who struggle most in school, it’s my hope that it lasts long enough to embed a new set of school routines and expectations for work into the school day in a way that become a win-win for students and school districts, and sticks even after the pandemic is behind us.
