Please consult again
This short story produced in collaboration with the local civic media organization El Tímpano.
Yesebel Inga works at Melrose’s Bridges Academy in East Oakland, where she is the only therapist of about 400 students, a quarter of whom are newcomers. Most are from Guatemala and speak Mam, a Mayan language spoken by about a million people in that country and Mexico.
“A lot of them, when they arrived, only spoke Mam, they didn’t speak Spanish or English,” Inga said. “Then they were a little lost, you know?”
As those and other young people return to school this month in the Bay Area, one constant is their need for intellectual aptitude: Reports of increased depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and emergency hospital visits exacerbated by the pandemic are a crisis, according to CDC reports. , The Annie E. Casey Foundation and Mental Health America.
To meet those needs, California is investing billions of new dollars, in addition to state and federal pandemic relief funds. Bridges Academy in Melrose, which is a public school, has figured out a way to leverage cash to maximize impact, moving from crisis control to prevention.
Bridges’ director at the time, Anita Comelo, had to make tough decisions about which young people could see the therapist and which couldn’t.
“Then we have to decide what the biggest trauma is, you know?” said Comelo. “From time to time we end up giving the facilities to those we call ‘externalizers’, the young people who end up disrupting the classroom. “
These fellows are children, Comelo said, adding that this means that other fellows who tend to internalize the trauma of their anxiety and depression aren’t getting the help they need.
Because the school’s therapist, Inga, would only have to bring in a maximum of 15 students at any given time, dozens of other bridges youth who may have used the assistance didn’t get it, and the result was a huge disruption in elegance and style. playground. explains Rosana Covarrubias, Community Schools Project Manager.
“There was a lot of cyberbullying and we saw it break out here at the school because of what was going on online,” Covarrubias said. “They needed intellectual aptitude for that. We had students with suicidal thoughts.
However, when Covarrubias tried to refer the academics to other organizations in the network they were marrying, he said they had a waiting list.
“They’ll say, ‘Okay, thanks for the referral, we’ll get back to you. ‘And it takes months before they are paired with someone who can help them and be their therapist,” Covarrubias said.
And those are the acute cases.
According to Inga, Bridges’ therapist, what makes things worse is the lack of a physical care policy for preventive care. Currently, Medi-Cal-controlled care plans and advertising providers like Kaiser do not reimburse county behavioral fitness for youth without a clinical diagnosis.
This could simply be replaced with legislation, namely AB 552, which is now on the governor’s desk. to provide remedy to students with more moderate needs.
“If we had to prepare young people with curative and preventive support, you know, we wouldn’t have fifth-graders with suicidal thoughts,” said Inga, who works for Seneca.
California has begun an unprecedented investment to address the intellectual aptitude desires of K-12 students.
There is $4. 4 billion for a youth and youth intellectual fitness initiative to decrease structural barriers that prevent youth from accessing inpatient schools; Another $4. 1 billion for the network’s schools, including investments for intellectual fitness needs; as well as billions in more federal and state pandemic relief dollars, some of which also aim to help students recover from the depression and anxiety caused by the pandemic and the school closures that followed.
In the 3rd federal investment circular for schools due to the pandemic, the Oakland Unified School District raised more than $100 million. According to records filed with the state in May of this year, the district spent about $650,000 of that money. And of that amount, almost part of the district’s reports went to intellectual health.
But when COVID relief money came to Bridges, the school ended up with $20,000 in intellectual fitness priority. The money wasn’t even enough for a full-time single therapist with benefits, which costs about $160,000.
The district says it has not yet spent all the resources and it is an area of investment. He says last year the school applied for the investments they were looking for based on their wishes and had the opportunity to spend the money.
Comelo and staff will use their $20,000 to rent a part-time clinical therapist for two hours a week. Inga and the part-time doctor will begin a six-week organizational treatment consultation with 8 to nine students, almost all local Mom’s Speakers.
“At first, everyone was calm and shy,” Inga said. In the past, Inga had worked with other young people in detention camps along the border, and it is possible that she simply identifies as an immigrant. “My parents brought me here when I was 15, and I didn’t have that support. . . my reports brought me here in this group,” he said.
Among the academics who joined the first newly formed preventive treatment organization, Heymer Domingo Godinez, 10.
“When I arrived at Bridges Academy, I was scared. I cried because I was afraid of the students,” Heymer said in Spanish.
Heymer had arrived from Guatemala with her father in first grade, screaming, kicking and crying when he dropped her off at school. I was afraid to go to school because in Guatemala I was too young to go.
Heymer and his teachers describe having to carry Heymer to calm her down and keep her in class. In fourth grade, Heymer says he only had one friend. Inga says young people like Heymer cared about his position at school.
“They didn’t really feel like they could just accept as true to others,” Inga explained. “Like once they got here, there wasn’t a space to really communicate about themselves and their culture. “At its most sensitive, the pandemic has hit families like Heymer’s, who lives in East Oakland, hard; their parents lost their jobs and nearly lost their homes, before the school stepped in to help them raise funds.
When Heymer and the other academics gathered for the small organization’s treatment session, Inga asked everyone to bring something to represent them. Inga said Heymer asked her if she could wear her huipil et cortes tejido, the classic Mayan garments she wore. home.
Heymer nervous and a little scared to be under the microscope. “Because other people look at us and other people think, ‘Why does a woman wear a cut like this?’she said.
Inga told her students that they may just expect to get their peers’ attention, but that they deserve to see it as an opportunity rather than anything they wanted to avoid.
“Look, some other kids may look at you strangely, but that’s because they haven’t been exposed to other cultures,” Inga told them. “And if they ask you or say something nasty, it’s like, you know, ‘Just let me tell you about my culture, let me tell you what that means. ‘”
As the organization’s treatment sessions unfolded, so did efforts through the school’s teachers, aimed at creating a greater sense of belonging for Mam’s students.
“I know that at parent-instructor conferences, I, and I’m pretty sure other instructors have done so as well, explicitly told students in front of their families, ‘Please keep practicing with your mom. We don’t need you to lose that. ‘” language,” said fourth-grade instructor Vivian Yen.
Yen said some teachers have taken Mam language classes, while others are critically rethinking their programs.
“I know my school-level team, as well as grades 5 and 3, have done this. We were in our ELA [English language arts] program because all the texts are so white-focused,” Yen said.
“I think the George Floyd type of homicide led us to adjust our curriculum and make it a little more focused on social justice and more ethnic studies-focused. It’s so that academics also have time to think about their own identity, to think about how they have compatibility and can counter those racist narratives that we are given all the time,” Yen said.
The joy Heymer and the other scholars felt while wearing their courts spread: more Mam-speaking academics began using their classic cuts on Fridays.
“Even the boys!” Inga said, “It’s just beautiful. “
When fifth-grade graduation arrived, it was Heymer who welcomed parents to the occasion in Mam and directed the show. And for the first time, all the students who submitted recited poems in English, Spanish and Mam.
Teachers see this as a culmination and a watershed moment in the cultural change they have worked for.
“Honestly, I think it’s just the accumulation of a bunch of little things that led to this move,” Yen said.
This year, Heymer celebrates his sixth year at Elmhurst United in East Oakland. As she walks 8 blocks to her new school, she enjoys singing songs from her church, Gospel Church of God Heals Doctrine in Oakland. She says it makes her feel satisfied and calm.
Heymer saw the school before the categories began, scanning photos of staff on the bulletin board outside the school office, looking for faces and names of teachers she said might speak Spanish.
She says she worries about going to a new school, now she’s more confident about who she is and what she can do.
“I need to learn. I don’t care what others say about me. I only care about my brain and the realization of my dreams,” he said.
Heymer says that if she has to, she will call her ex at Bridges Academy to help her.
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