School makes some students anxious. Is it necessary to physically appear?

It wasn’t always like this.

When the regular public school she attended several years ago closed during the pandemic, Bradley switched to remote learning. That meant she didn’t have to wake up, get dressed or follow a schedule the same way, she says.

“There were only people on my screen,” he says disdainfully. She turned on the computer and went back to sleep.

For some students like Bradley, who spent much of his middle and high school career avoiding, a non-clinical term that denotes a visceral refusal to attend school, remote learning may be a way to extend their avoidance of the classroom, according to several clinical psychologists who spoke with EdSurge. Virtual education, in these cases, allows students to stay away from physical school spaces. While that may offer relief to students in the short term, the coping mechanism can have negative consequences, some experts say.

However, mental health professionals also question the wisdom of “forcing” students to attend schools where they clearly feel uncomfortable. Ultimately, experts advocate for alternative instruction that fits the needs of each student.

What is the right type of school for students who suffer from anxiety? It’s complicated.

For Bradley, attending virtual school during the pandemic certainly deepened her sense of isolation.

“It definitely made things worse,” he says.

He didn’t leave the house much and stayed locked up, he says. His friendships were completely online and his friends lived in faraway places like Oregon, Tennessee and Serbia. That meant he kept odd hours, texting his friends at 4 a.m. and then waking up at 2 p.m.

It was lonely. “I just became a fool. He didn’t leave the house for three months. I didn’t talk to anyone outside of my family. Completely shut down,” Bradley says.

And when school returned in person, Bradley didn’t dare go back.

Become a stranger

According to his mother, Deirdre, it would be difficult to identify a single reason why Bradley avoids school. (EdSurge only uses first names for family members out of concern for their privacy.) But he started in high school, around seventh grade.

When he was younger he had many friends, but as he got older he became an outsider, according to his mother.

Bradley missed school here and there, but the increasing number of absences worried his mother. There were some great teachers who could connect with him, she remembers, but overall it was a losing fight. The problem only grew.

Bradley’s eighth and ninth grade years were a mix of therapists and county and crisis management services. Each had their own diagnoses, from oppositional defiant disorder to autism, and to this day his own mother is unclear what condition he suffers from. Bradley believes she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

According to his mother, he was admitted to a hospital for two weeks in the middle of the summer before 10th grade and was assigned a probation officer through the “persons in need of supervision” program in family court, a program intended to dispute “incorrigible” cases. or “habitually disobedient” minors when his parents cannot do so.

Nothing worked to get him to go back to school or get him involved with his life. When Bradley was in high school, he couldn’t connect socially. He would get angry and make holes in the wall.

“And then I thought, maybe it’s just hard,” Deirdre says. “Some people are just difficult.”

His mother cried all the time. She fought with her son.

“I felt terrible about that. But she was also very desperate,” says Deirdre.

Special supports

Young people like Bradley can do everything in their power to avoid going to school in person.

However, some psychologists argue that the goal should be to get these avoidant students back into the physical building.

Sometimes, in a rush to help evasive students, schools put them in online school, says Anna Swan, a clinical psychologist. She says that approach is rarely the most helpful solution.

For certain subsets of children who avoid school, online school can sometimes become a way to promote avoidance by permanently removing them from the traditional developmental path, maintains Michael Detweiler, executive clinical director of Lumate Health, a cognitive telehealth platform. behavior that works with schools. It’s important to return them to the physical space of the building to reestablish that connection, he adds.

But school avoidance solutions must meet the unique needs of each student.

In her defense, Monica Mandell, a social worker and family advocate for evasive children in New York, often takes a different tack.

Their job is to separate the student from the school where they are having problems. For avoidant students, it’s crucial to move them to schools designed to handle significant mental health needs, she maintains.

The responsibility for attendance tends to fall entirely on parents, Mandell says. That is why she tries to shift the responsibility to both the school and the parents. That means getting special education classifications and individualized education plans (IEPs). It can also mean moving students to an “out-of-district” school — a school that is designed to provide education but also has significant support staff that offer counseling and behavior management and that allows for flexibility during the day, he says. she.

For a student who avoids school, the best classification is an emotional disorder, Mandell maintains, which requires some type of diagnosis by a psychologist or psychiatrist. It can be a struggle to get a school district to understand that avoidance is a mental health need that denies a student appropriate learning in a general education setting, Mandell says.

The process to get these types of adaptations can take a couple of months. While the student is out of class, Mandell tries to get him assigned home instruction, which must be provided by the school system. It can be virtual, in-person at home or in a public space, she says. Typically, she adds, it is taught by a teacher who follows the core curriculum.

So in Mandell’s approach, students are not forced to return to the school building. In the end, you won’t see anyone from the building. They start again.

A feeling of belonging

Some students are more practical, harder to pigeonhole into standard school models, and have individual needs that must be met to be successful in education, says Anne Marie Albano, a clinical psychologist and professor at Columbia University. Those children who struggle until the end of high school may end up miserable because their anxiety hasn’t been addressed, she adds. They may be stuck at home, avoiding not only school, but life in general. It’s worth asking, Albano says, whether the school environment is right for the specific student.

New York mom Deirdre couldn’t identify a single factor that helped her son, she says. But the most significant thing was undoubtedly finding a place where she felt like she belonged.

Finally, Bradley contacted Mandell, she got him an IEP and suggested he change schools. At first he wasn’t sure, but he eventually became convinced. While he waited to move somewhere new, he stayed home and took online classes for a few months. Initially, he says, this plunged him further into a stupor, eliminating even the limited interactions with his teachers that he had during the coronavirus lockdowns.

However, making a change was worth it in the long run. When he finally arrived at River View High School, an alternative school with a focus on social, emotional and learning needs, midway through his sophomore year, the specialized support offered there helped him get back into the world. Then, in September of last year, as a junior, Bradley joined the vocational program that allowed him to go to culinary school.

That gave him a purpose, his mother says.

Today, Bradley has a future in mind. She plans to go to the Culinary Institute of America, a famous private institution in New York’s Hyde Park. She wants to be a restaurant manager, somewhere with people around her and a minimum of paperwork, she says. Often, she adds, there doesn’t seem to be much passion in those jobs. But that’s something she believes she can bring to the table.

For her mother, Deirdre, the pain was worth it. One moment stands out above the rest.

One night, Bradley approached her. He was then a third-year student in culinary school, two months before his 17th birthday. Deirdre, who was working from home, had just finished her work duties for the day. Bradley was sitting there, waiting to talk and said he wanted to see a therapist.

This teenager, with whom he had spent years struggling to see therapists, simply to go to school, was telling him that he wanted to do it.

That floored her, she says: “It had to be when he was ready.”