What We Can Do
Mandatory support offers a different path. Focusing on students’ well-being, it utilizes solutions the union has long championed, says Weingarten—including trauma-informed practices, community schools and bargaining for the common good.
Its basic tenets use preventive “healing gestures” to celebrate, comfort and inspire students; continue professional growth on implicit bias; combat stigma; support student privacy; collaborate; make caregivers the first call; consider a consultation that anonymizes the family; and share power with families by ensuring they are aware of triggers, know their rights and share their strengths as well as vulnerabilities.
Webinar panelists described their mandatory support successes. Anthony Arinwine, an instructional coach, kindergarten/first-grade teacher in San Francisco and member of United Educators of San Francisco, recalled a child he suspected was not getting enough food at home; Arinwine arranged an anonymized consultation to determine if this was reportable. He eventually learned the family had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina and had not yet found resources in their new home. “We were able to help connect the mom with food stamps and other things that would support her in raising her kids,”—without breaking up the family, he said.
Tom Stinson, a school nurse and a member of the Saint Paul Federation of Educators, described a home visit program codified by his union contract that, in one case, helped him support a child who was chronically absent. “I learned that the student was diagnosed with cancer, and the family was barely holding on,” he said. He excused the absences, sent in a teacher for homebound students and offered other resources that kept the family engaged.
Zortman Cohen described how BTU helped build teacher skills to address a shortage of counselors, psychologists and social workers, and advocated for additional staffing. Today, the number of social workers has doubled since Zortman Cohen was hired two decades ago.
These examples showcase how mandatory reporters can become mandatory supporters. “We want reporters to be a little bit more discerning,” said Chelsea Prax, an AFT associate director who organized the webinar—and to have the tools they need to better determine when a report is essential, and when another intervention could better serve the student.
Ultimately, said Weingarten, “Our first priority is our students’ well-being.”
Republished with permission from the American Federation of Teachers.