What Schools Can Do To Effectively Respond to School Refusal
School refusal is a complex problem. In fact, it’s been a problem going back at least as far as 1932 when researchers were writing about truancy and school attendance problems (SAP). The return to in-person school after the COVID-19 lockdown correlates with the continuance of rising numbers of school refusal in the USA, the UK, Australia, France, and Indonesia, among other places worldwide. Complex, indeed. However, there are things that schools can do.
School refusal as a response to the world children are being raised in
There is no question that we are living in certain times—historic, transformative, anxiety-provoking, and uncertain. As I write this we are just days out from the news of the horrors unfolding in Israel and Palestine directly affecting children all over the world. There have been at least 58 school shootings in the United States so far in 2023, and climate change is increasingly affecting the mental health of children.
What does this have to do with students refusing or avoiding attending school? There is a growing awareness that social and global issues are closely tied to personal mental health, and personal mental health significantly affects school attendance. The effects of social and cultural issues require an appropriate response from the systems within which our children live and learn. Gabor Maté, a wise voice I turn to often, writes in the recent book The Myth of Normal, co-authored with his son Daniel Maté :
Mechanisms for estranging people from themselves abound. They begin acting on us from the earliest moments of our existence. . . The flight from self is powerfully compounded by overt trauma, of course. But even in the absence of personal wounding it can be impelled by a conformist and competition-centered educational system [my emphasis], by social expectations to “fit in,” the drive for peer acceptance, and a socially induced, pervasive anxiety about one’s status.
Have our schools ever been suitable for children in the history of compulsory education?! Roald Dahl would tell you NO! My idealistic part dreams of the time when our education systems are designed at all levels with children in mind—a tall and impossible order. But we don’t want to discard tools that work to get our kids back into the classroom. [See this interview with a parent who used the four tools of The Shiftless Wanderer and how she worked with the school to move her high school student from school refusal to robust attendance and participation.] The educational community also has a responsibility and obligation to create appropriate responses to the issue.
Clarify your purpose as an educator: Whom do you serve?
I have written elsewhere that educators have an opportunity to be revolutionaries. If we are clear about who we are in service to then we are more likely to create an educational environment that meets the learning needs of the kids we serve. So let’s begin there.
This question, “whom do you serve as an educator?”, is a compass for creating a validating ecology in the school community that’s psychologically safe for your students. The question that each individual in the community—all the way from administration, to support staff, secretarial/administrative staff, to faculty, para-educators, librarians, lunchroom staff, custodial staff, technology support, librarians, bus, drivers, security, to school board members—should be able to answer this question. Are you in service to the parents, an ideology, a system—or are you in service to the students? If the answer to any of these questions is anything other than the students, then we must not be taken aback when students refuse to participate in a project that does not meet their emotional, cognitive, physical/somatic, or relational needs.
Students who refuse to attend school are canaries in the mine. They are telling us something important. Are we listening? Are we expecting them to come and be in a place for hours at a time, days, months, and years on end that is contraindicated to meet their needs at the very least and demoralizing, soul-numbing, or abusive at worst?
Simple interventions and strategies
While I have big visions of how schools could be, implementing small changes can go a long way to meeting students’ needs. Educators are notoriously overworked, over-scheduled, and burdened. The last thing they need is more added to their plate. These interventions should lighten the load. My adolescent clients tell me that these suggestions would make all the difference in their school experiences.
Meet students’ in the eye, say “hello”, even to those you don’t know. Too many kids feel invisible.
Learn students’ names. I could write several book chapters on the importance of names and identity for our kids. Learn their names and call them by their names.
Smile.
Ask questions about their lives. Ask for real life examples of concepts you are teaching. Connect curriculum to their lived experiences.
Breathe—when you are frustrated, impatient, frazzled. Take a breath. Teach your kids to do the same.
Take as much time as you can to navigate conflict in the moment. It can save you hours in the future.
Make a practice of grounding your day in the larger context of your calling as an educator, remembering why you’re here, what you’re doing, and the kids you are in service to.
See crisis and chaos as an opportunity.
Put a post-it note somewhere to remind yourself that for your students to succeed the most basic need they have is a feeling of psychological safety. If they don’t feel safe, they’re not going to learn. And if they don't feel safe and they’re not learning, then they’re not going to want to come to school.
Not so simple interventions and strategies
These suggestions require more time, money, planning, and focus. However, they can change everything about your school program, the overall health and welfare of staff and students, and create a validating ecology that can then become sustainable and integrated into your program for years to come.
Learn about boundaries, what they are and aren’t, how to have boundaries that have integrity, how to maintain them, how to honor other’s boundaries, especially students’ boundaries.
Learn about trauma in adolescents, how it shows up, what it is and isn’t, how to provide trauma-informed services — which is not therapy!!, how to create safe space for those who have experienced trauma.
Practice collaborative problem-solving as much as possible. This, too, is a vital lesson for adolescents. It also gives students ownership over their classroom/school environment.
Engage in radical acts of self-care so you can continue to be present and grounded in the face of the daily challenges of being an educator today.
Reflect deeply, even archetypically, on what brought you into the work of education. This can situate you in the larger context of the work and can sustain you when the going gets rough.
How one teacher does it
Finally, I leave you with a link to Matt Eicheldinger’s Instagram page. “Mr. Eich” is right there with his kids, he is there to serve them, he creates a validating ecology in his classroom, and I would venture to guess that his kids love to come to school to be with him.
Image by: Andrii
