Building a Culture of Care at John Wetten Elementary

by Melissa Duclos | Mar 8, 2019 | Podcast, Educators and Workforce, Successful Students

We visited John Wetten Elementary in Gladstone, Oregon recently to learn about how the district and the school are working to address ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences. Superintendent Bob Stewart and Principal Wendy Wilson have worked to establish a “Culture of Care” in the school that relies on building relationships with students and establishing an environment of predictability and safety. They’ve recently added a new classroom called the Skills Learning Center (SLC) that serves as a resource for kids needing to work on self-regulation, behaviors, and habits. In this segment, we hear from Stewart and Wilson about their work addressing ACEs, as well as Erika Nelson who works directly with children in the SLC.

The Foster Care Fix: Invest in the Services Proven to Keep Kids in Their Homes

by CI Guest | Mar 6, 2019 | Oregon Policy, Home Visiting, Oregon Research, Parents and Families

Guest Column by Leslie Brown, Program Director, Children’s Relief Nursery at LifeWorks NW

Oregon’s Child Welfare System needs help. Our system for reporting abuse and neglect can be confusing, we do not have enough foster families or child welfare workers, and there are currently 84 foster children who’ve been sent out of state for care. These issues hit young children hard: according to the Oregon DHS 2017 Child Welfare Data Book, 45 percent of children in the Child Welfare System are under 6. While additional funding to improve this system is important, it is even more critical that we invest in programs that help keep young children out of foster care.

Fortunately, we know what it takes to keep kids in their homes. Relief Nurseries offer tailored, trauma-informed services to support families with children ages birth to 5. As a clinician working in the field of early childhood for 40 years and Program Director for the LifeWorks NW Children’s Relief Nursery, I have seen firsthand the impact Relief Nurseries can have on a family. We provide wrap-around services to families that reduce parental stress and social isolation. We teach parenting skills, strengthen bonds between parents and their children, and provide targeted services that reduce child behavioral problems and improve social-emotional development in very young children. These services include therapeutic classrooms for children, respite care that enables parents to take care of personal or family matters, regular home visiting to help families achieve family goals and build healthier parent-child relationships, and access to family counseling and consultation with an early childhood mental health therapist. Research shows that these types of primary prevention activities build the protective capacity of parents, keeping kids out of foster care.

According to the most recent evaluation conducted by Portland State University, the families Relief Nurseries serve have an average of 16 risk factors associated with abuse and neglect. This same evaluation shows that 98.5 percent of children working with Relief Nurseries between 2008 and 2010 avoided foster care placement. Children already in foster care who work with Relief Nurseries exit the system twice as quickly as those who don’t. Relief Nurseries provide additional benefits to parents and children, including increasing the percentage of parents reading to children, decreasing emergency room visits, and improving family economic stability.

LifeWorks NW is one of 31 Relief Nurseries and satellite sites operating in 17 counties in Oregon. According to a Children’s Institute interview with Cara Copeland, Executive Director of the Oregon Association of Relief Nurseries (OARN), these sites serve roughly 3,000 children in 2,600 families. But there are many more families across the state who could benefit from these services: based on the number of cases of reported abuse and neglect among children ages 0–5, OARN estimates that there are more than 36,000 young children across the state whose families need these programs.

Oregon has an opportunity in 2019 to keep children out of foster care by investing in Relief Nurseries. Governor Kate Brown, supported by a coalition of early childhood advocates, has called for a $5.6 million investment from the state to open two new Relief Nurseries and seven satellite sites, as well as expand the capacity of current programs. This is a smart investment for the state not only because Relief Nurseries have been proven to keep kids out of foster care, but also because for every $1 that the state invests in these programs, Relief Nurseries raise an additional $1.80 in private revenue.

I hope Oregon’s lawmakers will support this common-sense approach to fixing our state’s over-burdened foster care system. We should improve our Child Welfare System so that we no longer need to send foster children out of state for care. The best way we can do that is to provide families with the support they need so that children can remain in their homes receiving the love and care they need.

ACE Study Drives Change at Gladstone Elementary School

by Niki Reading | Feb 8, 2019 | Successful Students, Health and Development

Teacher Erika Nelson meets with a student in the Skills Learning Center at John Wetten Elementary.

Rafael Otto contributed content and photos for this story.

At John Wetten Elementary in Gladstone, Oregon, a new classroom called the Skills Learning Center (SLC) offers students a calming environment for working on self-regulation skills. It features quiet music, soothing lighting, and a series of stations with calming activities like breathing exercises and fidgets.

Erika Nelson, a teacher at John Wetten with a mental health counseling background, works with students one-on-one to identify and regulate their emotions, learn how to use the space, and improve behaviors and habits.

The SLC is just one aspect of a multi-year strategy in the Gladstone School District to address Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). ACEs fall into three categories: abuse, neglect, and family/household challenges. The ACE Study, conducted from 1995 to 1997 by Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente, involved more than 17,000 adult participants and found that childhood trauma can lead to a lifetime of negative health outcomes. The study also found that ACEs are common, with almost two-thirds of participants reporting at least one ACE and more than 20 percent reporting three or more ACEs. [Read More: A Brief Explanation of ACEs: Adverse Childhood Experiences]

When Gladstone Superintendent Bob Stewart first heard about ACEs, he wondered how a public K–12 school could satisfy rigorous academic requirements while working to mitigate childhood trauma. He had already spent time investigating causes for absenteeism in his schools and learned that many other factors such as poverty, mental illness, and domestic abuse, were affecting how kids learn.

Stewart brought his staff to a healthcare symposium featuring Dr. Vincent Felitti, a lead investigator on the ACE Study. There he realized the significance of understanding the long-term impact of childhood trauma. “We knew there were issues in kids’ lives that were limiting their ability to access education,” Stewart said, “but we didn’t understand the lifetime reach of it.”

The ACE Pyramid connects ACEs to development of risk factors over time.

Stewart and his team spent a year studying ACEs and how to address them in a K–12 setting, searching for schools or districts that might be leading the way. In 2012 Gladstone—along with six other districts across Oregon—received grant funding to form the ACEs Collaborative and Stewart set out to change how his schools addressed trauma.

Initially, Gladstone tried to focus on kids with a higher number of ACEs. But that proved difficult, because high ACE scores don’t always manifest with visible behavior issues. “Kids that have multiple ACEs in their life don’t necessarily exhibit bad behavior,” Stewart said. “The reality is, many people with high ACE scores can also be very high-achieving.”

Stewart also realized that helping a small number of children might not create a significant and lasting impact on his schools. “We realized that before we ever get to intervention strategies, we’ve got to look at what we need to do for kids that gives all kids the best chance to be successful at school,” Stewart said.

Stewart and his staff stepped back and reframed: Treat every child as if they had a high ACE score. “That became an ‘aha!’ moment for us,” he said.

Building a Culture of Care

At John Wetten Elementary, Wilson and her team focused on creating a school environment that was welcoming, safe, inclusive, predictable, and full of respect. She worked with a psychologist to help develop daily structure and made sure training extended to every staff member. Called the “Culture of Care,” the concept has extended to all four district schools: the Gladstone Center for Children & Families, John Wetten Elementary, Kraxberger Middle School, and Gladstone High School.

While the Culture of Care looks different in each school setting, the foundation is the same across the district. “The Culture of Care is built on relationships, it’s built on predictability, it’s built on safety,” Stewart said, because children who experience trauma at home tend to need those elements in their daily routine.

Principal Wendy Wilson from John Wetten Elementary says routines, relationships, and regulation are the cornerstones of the Culture of Care. “Routines help establish reliability, predictability, and the feeling of safety,” she said. Relationships help each student feel valued and know they are genuinely cared for. And regulation—learning about the fight or flight response, practicing strategies for settling down into their “learning brain”—helps students understand and talk about their emotions in a healthy, productive way.

A student in the Skills Learning Center at John Wetten Elementary.

A student works with fidgets and manipulatives in the Skills Learning Center at John Wetten Elementary.

At John Wetten, days begin with morning meetings where kids gather to exchange greetings and participate in activities that help them settle into the school day. “Whatever they came from at home, this sends the message that we’re in school and ready to learn,” Stewart said. During these meetings, kids as young as kindergarteners learn how to recognize and regulate their emotions so they can be successful in their school day.

The school has also added “calming corners” to their classrooms with fish tanks, dim lighting, soft music, and bean bag chairs to create a space and resource for children dealing with difficult emotions and behavior. Any student can go to a calming corner in their classroom at any time, but they cannot be sent there as a result of behavior issues. The calming corner is used as a resource rather than a punishment.

John Wetten expanded the Culture of Care by adding the Skills Learning Center in the fall of 2018, an additional layer of support for kids who are displaying behavior issues in class.

When a teacher refers a student who might need help, Vice Principal Buchanan, SLC teacher Erika Nelson and a team of teachers work to better understand reasons for the child’s behavior, history of behavior issues, and any additional context. Some of the students referred to the SLC have caused “room clears”—meaning their behavior (throwing desks, tearing things off the wall) necessitated clearing the other students out of the room for safety. Many of the students had numerous disciplinary interventions last year due to their dysregulated behavior.

The Zones of Regulation help students identify emotions when they arrive at the Skills Learning Center.

Once a student is referred to Nelson, she schedules 20-minute sessions each day to orient them to the routine and tools. The students engage in a routine that consists of a sensory path (jumping, wall push-ups, hopping, etc.) and then one regulating station that has specific calming tools such as a light table, dark space, fidgets, fish tank, sand, or rice. They end their routine with yoga, breathing exercises, and a brief Zones of Regulation lesson at the learning table.

Students learn about the Zones of Regulation with Nelson, a tool and curriculum that locates their emotional state in one of four zones: Blue, Green, Yellow, or Red. After spending time in the SLC, the goal is to return to the Green Zone where students should feel happy, calm, focused, and ready to learn.

Assessing Results

Two months after the SLC opened, Nelson said they are seeing results. None of the 18 students who were using it had caused a room clear and the number of disciplinary referrals had dropped. Students also reported sharing their learning about the Zones of Regulation and tools they were using with their parents.

Gladstone’s Culture of Care has also reduced behavior problems, improved attendance, and improved test scores in both English Language Arts and math.

As Stewart and his team continue to improve their approach to addressing trauma and understanding ACEs, they’ve met with district leaders from around the state to share what they have learned. All the district representatives involved in the initial cohort of districts from 2012 have said the focus on ACEs has been a “game changer” for their schools.

A student wraps up his time in the Skills Learning Center and prepares to return to his classroom.

“It’s difficult to make system changes,” Stewart said, “and very few school districts do it. But every one of the seven districts have said this work leads to real systemic changes.”

Stewart believes that understanding ACEs and working to address it through an approach like the Culture of Care could be transformative for many more schools. He is working to develop a set of best practices and, eventually, wants to build a model that can be scaled to schools across Oregon and the country.

Additional Resources

A Brief Explanation of ACEs: Adverse Childhood Experiences

Superintendent’s State Crusade to Help Schools Help Students of Trauma

The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study: How are the findings being applied in Oregon?

Listen to our story about John Wetten Elementary

Building a Culture of Care at John Wetten Elementary

by Rafael Otto | Feb 8, 2019 | Podcast, Educators and Workforce, Successful Students

We visited John Wetten Elementary in Gladstone, Oregon recently to learn about how the district and the school are working to address ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences. Superintendent Bob Stewart and Principal Wendy Wilson have worked to establish a “Culture of Care” in the school that relies on building relationships with students and establishing an environment of predictability and safety. They’ve recently added a new classroom called the Skills Learning Center (SLC) that serves as a resource for kids needing to work on self-regulation, behaviors, and habits. In this segment, we hear from Stewart and Wilson about their work addressing ACEs, as well as Erika Nelson who works directly with children in the SLC.