I’m a school social worker. Our kids can’t learn if they don’t heal from trauma.

In the midst of a nationwide youth mental health crisis, Chicago’s crisis response systems are buckling. One example: Illinois’ system for youth on Medicaid is overtaxed, with limited follow up options — dangerously few pediatric beds in psychiatric hospitals and 6-month waitlists for outpatient care. Families are left to coordinate care solely on their own.

Meanwhile, many children continue to come to school in crisis, and the conversations on care largely center around reaction instead of prevention.

I see this play out in our public schools, in the push for more counselors and social workers. That’s necessary, but that’s not the whole conversation.

As a school social worker for Chicago Public Schools, I’m asked to be many things: a crisis responder, a special education specialist, a behavior interventionist, a grief counselor, a social-emotional learning educator and a therapist to a caseload of over 75 students.

What makes all this insurmountable isn’t the amount of work — it’s the daily navigation of which needs take precedence: academics or social-emotional learning. There’s a push-pull between the two — now more than ever in a post-pandemic world — and it’s felt by teachers, students and clinicians alike.

Emotionally safe schools must be the focus. Without this, we won’t see a change in children’s academics or mental health.

A ‘back to normal’ culture

A 2020 report by Lurie Children’s Hospital surveyed 1,000 parents from across the country. They found that 71% of parents said the pandemic took a toll on their child’s mental health, and 69% said that it was the worst thing that has happened to their child. Most importantly, the study also noted that children already experiencing toxic stress or trauma are more likely to have long-term impact from COVID.

This tells a story I see play out daily. In this post-quarantine world, our students come to school with increased levels of social anxiety, decreased self-esteem and lagging reading and math scores. Yet the culture of “back to normal” communicates to our students that they must “catch up” academically, and we have children internalizing that they’re not enough.

A 30-year veteran teacher at my school shares that she’s never seen anything like her current class, in which the majority of students have unmanageable levels of stress and anxiety. While our teachers are asked to erase the impact of the pandemic and prove a job well done with standardized test scores, it’s our students who bear the brunt. It’s time to stop placing the burden of “learning loss” on children and teachers.

Doing so is counterproductive. It blames the individual student for what should be a systematic adjustment because of the disruption caused by a global pandemic.

District officials and school administrators may decide that “back to normal” is the priority, but parents can change that.

While there are barriers to school enrollment in Chicago, such as limited transportation and selective admissions, parents have options when it comes to where to send their children to school. And when a child changes schools, money — which is provided to schools on a per-pupil basis — moves with them. This means parents of CPS students can monetize their concerns. Better yet, they have the power to organize. They can ask their local school councils for specifics on how their neighborhood school is prioritizing trauma-responsive practices, antiracism and social-emotional learning in a daily and consistent way. With current CPS enrollment now at a record low, parents have a unique opportunity to get their demands heard.

Surely, schools serve to educate. Yet, we know that students can’t learn if they don’t heal. Neuroscience teaches us that chronic stress and trauma changes our brain, by impacting emotional regulation, executive functioning and relationships. How school administrators respond to this knowledge matters.

A non-supportive, inconsistent school environment can exacerbate trauma, threatening a child’s sense of safety. Conversely, when a child has a strong sense of belonging and security at school, their equilibrium can be restored and serve as a protective factor. With strong, focused advocacy for preventative mental health support, parents can achieve better learning environments for their children.

The grand quest of public education is to create a container where young minds are developed, guided and transformed. Perhaps it’s time to replace “catching up” with something more imaginative.

We have an opportunity to create a learning environment in which youth experience school in a new way. More so, we have the responsibility.

Kaitlyn Rippel is a school social worker for Chicago Public Schools and a graduate of the University of Chicago’s Crown School of Social Work, Policy and Practice.