Resources to support AAPI Students

AAPI Not a Monolith (“Model Minority Myth”)

• NPR 2021: 6 Charts That Dismantle The Trope Of Asian Americans As A Model Minority
• Obama National Archive: Critical Issues Facing Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
• USC Student Voice: Debunking the Model Minority Myth
• Video: Breaking Down the Model Minority Myth

AAPI Adolescent Mental Health Stats (pre-Covid)

• Model Minority at Risk 2009
• CDC Suicide Rates 1999 & 2014
• Asian American LGBTQ Mental Health
• Trapped and Suffering — Inside the Asian American Mental Health Crisis

AAPI Adolescent Mental Health Stats (during and after Covid)

• Mental Health During Covid
• LGBTQ+ and Other Stats ca.gov 2022

AAPI Adolescent Stressors: Mental Health stigma, Less likely to be referred and get help, cultural barriers, relentless striving

• Model Minority at Risk 2009
• 2019: Office of Minority Health
• Factors Associated with Mental Health Help-Seeking
• Psychology Today 2022

AAPI Adolescent Stressors: Discrimination, Increase in Asian hate

• Anti-AAAPI Racism 2021
• Breaking the Silence
• Covid and Racial Trauma Stress 2022
• AAPI LGBTQ+ Mental Health Challenges
• Civil Rights Report 2023

Contact Information

The post Improving AAPI Adolescents’ Mental Health appeared first on Challenge Success.

Listen in as the Challenge Success Student Advisory Council shares about student mental health in this recent podcast episode.

Listen Here

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Katherine (Katie) attends the Chapin School in New York City, Class of 2025. Katie is passionate about being involved in her school community, where she has a deep-rooted commitment to fostering a safe, engaging space for the discovery of authentic diverse voices, both academically and socially, whether it is serving in her school’s student government since 8th grade, to informally checking in with her peers. Believing that education is an equalizer, she enjoys serving as a Teaching Fellow with the Summer STEPS kindergarten readiness program, building upon her experiences gained from tutoring with Reading Partners. She seeks to look past the dominant voices in history to unearth the quieter, often overlooked voices, illuminating their contributions to humanity. Her passion for history scholarship has led her to intern at New York museums, engage in research projects, and establish her school’s History Club. As a nationally ranked triathlete and varsity athlete, she believes in the benefits of physical activity to maintain her holistic well-being.“Be the change you wish to see in the world” – Mahatma Gandhi

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In its recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary and Trends Report, the CDC recognized that improving youth mental health requires an understanding of young people’s environments and how these environments affect their behaviors and experiences. As a result, their latest survey includes a question about “school connectedness,” which is the feeling among students that people at their school care about them, their well-being, and success.

While the research shows that school connectedness has long-lasting protective effects for adolescents, only 61% of students in the CDC survey feel close to people at school. In the Challenge Success Student Survey, we look at belonging and connection in school through a variety of dimensions. We have found that: 

• only 69% have an adult at school they can go to with a personal problem
  
• only 38% feel they can really be themselves at their schools most or all of the time
  
• only 36% feel like a part of the school community most or all of the time

Understanding the Link Between Learning and Belonging

We have known for years that social, emotional, and cognitive processing are all neurologically intertwined. When students of all ages and stages feel they belong to a community, they are more likely to thrive — and students don’t learn as much when they feel uncertain about their belonging.

When we combine our findings from our survey questions around engagement with the belonging questions, we find that students who are fully engaged are also more likely to feel a strong sense of belonging in school. This association between belonging and engagement is bidirectional, meaning that students’ sense of belonging in school is also significantly positively correlated with feeling engaged in their schoolwork. 

These kinds of findings are a powerful tool in helping you to understand how students in your school are actually doing, but once you gather the data, how you choose to use it is what really makes a difference.    

Below, we have included three of our top strategies to improve connection in schools. And, if you are interested in learning how students in your school are doing, we can help. Together we will go beyond merely collecting the data. Our expert research team offers deep analysis of your results and works with you to co-develop a customized plan to focus your efforts on the students who are struggling the most to improve their well-being, engagement, and belonging right away.

LEARN MORE ABOUT
OUR SURVEYS

Three Ways to Nurture Connection in Your School & Improve Youth Mental Health

1. Solicit Student Voice: Empower students to build advocacy skills so that they learn how to ask for what they need. Provide communications channels for students to share their ideas with adults at school, such as a comment box, student advisory group, or focus group. Do you want to find out how students in your school are doing? Work with us to gather real data about students in your school and partner with our expert research and program teams to analyze your results and take steps to improve well-being, engagement, and belonging. Learn more here. 
   
   
2. Leverage Your Schedule: How time is allocated during the school day reflects what is important to the community, intentionally or unintentionally. The organization of time in the school schedule can facilitate or impede connections between and among the school staff and students. Learn more about our take on school schedules and well-being here, or contact us to be part of a select group of schools working on schedule change in our 2023-2024 School Program.
   
   
3. Make Learning Meaningful: The adolescent years are the peak of our identity development as human beings. Since teens are inherently curious about who they are, we can leverage this focus by creating ways for them to explore their identity through the curriculum. When teachers intentionally design lessons that are meaningful to their students, build an authentic climate of respect into their classrooms, and listen closely to students and incorporate their input, students’ sense of belonging and academic engagement are more likely to be high. Read more about the connection between belonging and engagement here and check out some strategies for peer-to-peer connection building here.
   

Upcoming Events to Support Youth Mental Health

• The Institute for Social Emotional Learning (IFSEL) is hosting a free TeachMeet on April 4th all about School Belonging as a Protective Factor. Their TeachMeets offer a simple structure to share resources and connect with people around the world who “get it”.
  
  
• Join us on May 10th for our flagship workshop, The Well-Balanced Student, which offers schools and families research and strategies that encourage a more balanced student experience, including topics like homework, sleep, cheating, and more. If you have or work with children younger than third grade, join us May 24th for The Well-Balanced Child instead, where we share strategies for healthy PK-2nd grade child development.

If the cost of attending an event is a barrier for you or students you work with, please reach out about our financial assistance.

A: After seeing the data, I felt it was even more important to have well-being, engagement, and belonging…Frosh year I was really scared coming in, because I went to public MS and was not the minority race, coming into HS where I was minority race, that was really scary for me. That’s why I cofounded Asian Cultural Alliance – so students like me could find people going through the same experience.

Q: How has the Challenge Success survey data expanded your awareness around well-being, engagement, and belonging?

-Emma, Student Advisory Committee Member

The post How to Mitigate the Youth Mental Health Crisis in Schools: Connection + Belonging appeared first on Challenge Success.

We were saddened to see the data in the report of the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey that shows that all youth are struggling with threats to their health and well-being and that many of these trends have worsened over the last decade. The report reveals stark rates of mental health challenges for certain groups of students in particular: girls and those who identify as non-heterosexual.

We have seen similar trends in our surveys of more than 250,000 students over the past decade. While we don’t ask questions about sexual orientation in our survey, we do cover gender identity and dig into the causes of stress for students. We are particularly concerned about the higher rates of poor mental health and stress-related health symptoms for girls and students who identify as non-binary, transgender, or genderqueer / gender non-conforming.

Our data shows a notable difference in the experience of students in these two groups this school year. Students who identify in this way are more likely than boys to report stress-related health symptoms, missing school for a physical or emotional health problem, and that mental health issues are a source of stress.

Data Gives You Power to Make Meaningful Changes

“The survey was so helpful and so powerful. Thank you so much. We can really see significant differences between these groups and now we can take some concrete action to improve things. This work is really going to make a tangible difference for our students and staff.”

-Administrator from De La Salle High School

Do you want to find out how students in your school are doing? Work with us to gather real data about sleep, stress, academic engagement, and more. Our powerful analytics allow school leaders to disaggregate data by identity markers such as race, gender, and gender identity.

Go beyond the data with our expert research and program teams to analyze your results and take steps to improve student well-being, engagement, and belonging in your school, especially for historically marginalized student populations.   

Upcoming Events to Support Youth Mental Health

• One of the biggest stressors for youth is the pressure of the college admissions process. Join us on March 9th to find out about a healthier approach to navigating this major transition point for kids and parents alike.
  
• Join us for Mental Health on Purpose on April 19th, a free webinar with Lynn Lyons that is part of our commitment to the U.S. Surgeon General’s Call to Action on Youth Mental Health. Co-sponsored by our friends at REACH Student Life Management.

The post CDC Survey Shows Youth Are Struggling appeared first on Challenge Success.

Explore data from the Challenge Success-Stanford Survey of Student Experiences about gender-diverse students’ mental health struggles and supports schools can use to improve their school experience.

This article appears in ASCD. Read the article here.

The post How Can Schools Support Gender-Diverse Students’ Well-Being? appeared first on Challenge Success.

I tell people all the time that on September 27, 2019 (yes, I remember the exact date!), I was sitting with my Challenge Success team in a conference room on the Stanford Campus, and we were asked to share what we did for our version of Playtime, Downtime, and Family Time (PDF) — what brought us joy? 

I only half-listened to everyone on my team sharing because I was contemplating the entire time whether to lie and say something generic or tell the truth—that I don’t engage in any (or extremely limited) PDF in my own life. I was mortified and sad at the same time. I was the principal of an amazing school–a nationally ranked school full of beautiful, stressed-out, anxiety-ridden humans, but as their leader, I saw that I was also part of the problem. I knew as much as our school needed some healthy changes, I also had to lead by example. 

When I got back home I took to some pretty deep reflection and made some pretty drastic changes in my own life – changes that I could be proud of.  

I decided I needed to be less available at work and set some boundaries because I could not engage in PDF if I was always working. I used to wear it like a badge of honor that I was accessible 24 hours a day. That changed. 

I made appointments that benefited my own physical and mental health and treated them as I would a work meeting. Those meetings could not be changed, and it was okay to prioritize being healthy, working out, and being present for my family and friends. 

I prioritized eating foods that made me feel good. 

I eliminated friendships and projects outside of work that were not healthy.

I started taking a day off here and there. I had accumulated over 6 months of paid time off in my 8 years! 

By the time the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, I had created a life I was so happy with and so proud of that not even a pandemic could get me down. I counted the pandemic as a blessing to focus even more on my family, my health and spending time doing meaningful PDF. 

During this time I had also started a book club for students on my campus to talk about a growth mindset and perfectionism. I spoke candidly with students about how even as an adult I still had to work on these things that were difficult for them too. I think it is important as adults that we share with students that we are not perfect and that taking care of ourselves is important too. 

Some times I have to be incredibly intentional about PDF, and other times it comes naturally. Through this re-focusing, I am a healthier leader with more realistic expectations and more empathy for both my faculty and students. I am walking the talk, and I am thankful that Challenge Success was able to show me that, as educators, we still have a lot to learn and that it is important to model the same healthy habits we want our students and families to use.

Dr. Amy Cislak first started working with Challenge Success in 2019 while she was the principal of nationally ranked University High School in Tucson, Arizona. She now leads one of the state’s top high schools, Tanque Verde High School where outstanding relationships, culture, and community are at the forefront of every decision.

The post Adults Need PDF Too appeared first on Challenge Success.

Technology and Teen Mental Health: What We Know and Don’t Know

With anxiety and mental health issues in youth on the rise over the last few years, parents and educators have scrambled to find the culprit and have identified a likely one in new technology and smartphones. The rise in the ubiquity of smartphones has coincided with the rise in psychological distress among teens, and there are more than a few intuitive reasons to believe the two trends are connected. Smartphones and social media have given teenagers, who are in the process of developing a sense of self, an unbridled ability to compare themselves and new mediums through which to be bullied by “angsty” peers. Throw in the ability to escape from the world and its problems anywhere they go through games, movies, and other forms of media, and it is easy to see why parents are concerned that “smartphones have destroyed a generation.”

Having grown up during the smartphone revolution, I understand the validity of these concerns and related worries. But from personal experience, I also know that there are a number of other factors that influence my well-being and the well-being of my peers. With a topic such as mental health that has so many determinants, it is important to be cautious about assuming that a correlation confirms our hypotheses and look instead to what the research says about the importance of a particular variable. Thus far, the research has been mixed: many studies have confirmed the correlation, but none have found a causal link that can confirm technology or social media are leading to an increase in teen mental health issues. 

The association between increased digital technology use and psychological distress is well documented. Psychological distress in general has increased in the United States over the last 10 years, at the same time that smartphone ownership has increased from 35% to 81%. This increase has been especially pronounced for Generation Z, the generation that has grown up with smartphones. Individual-level survey data show similar correlations, with data from multiple surveys across different locations and years showing that increased digital technology use is associated with increased psychological distress for individuals. 

These correlations have rung alarm bells, but researchers have yet to find a causal link confirming the negative effects of technology on mental health. Most importantly, they still have not determined the direction of the relationship between increased psychological distress and increased digital technology use. It could be that increased screen time is causing mood disorders, but it could also be that teens with mood disorders are more likely to spend time in front of screens. Published research in psychology has not yet produced a study that clarifies this relationship and confirms that it is indeed increased digital technology use that leads to mental distress, and not vice versa. Neuroscience research has been similarly fruitless, with nothing being found to suggest that increased digital technology use alters our brain and its functioning. 

We may, however, be looking and waiting in vain for a question that cannot be answered. Digital technology can take on many forms and mediums, each with different effects on the human psyche. Using technology to webcam a long-distance relative, for example, will likely alleviate feelings of loneliness, whereas spending hours scrolling through Instagram may exacerbate one’s social anxiety. Mental health is similarly broad, with technology affecting different aspects asymmetrically. I have friends for whom Netflix has helped boost their happiness through TV shows and providing a cultural connection to others, and others of whom it’s been a drain of time and a reason for their anxiety. We may never know what the effects of digital technology on mental health are, because it may be too broad of a question with different implications for different people. 

So, what do we know from the research about teens and technology? One major finding is the negative effect technology has had on teens’ sleeping habits. A recent survey report by Common Sense Media revealed that 68% of teens take their devices into the bedroom at night and 29% sleep with their devices in their beds. Many studies have shown the deleterious effects of technology use before bed, as the blue light emitted by smartphones disrupts the production of sleep hormones and thus decreases sleep quality. Even more alarming for parents, 36% of teenagers wake up and check their devices at least once a night. The survey confirms what parents may see themselves: that increased smartphone use in the bedroom, especially right before sleeping, has the potential to decrease both the quantity and quality of children’s sleep. And sleep, we know from many academic studies over the years, is a major determinant of mental stability. 

Although we don’t yet fully know all the effects technology has on teenagers, we do not need academia to illuminate everything before we make targeted interventions. Research has not shown that technology is the boogie man we think it to be, but we have little to lose and much to gain in promoting healthy technology habits. As with other instances of healthy habit promotion, it is more easily passed on when parents abide by the healthy habits themselves. Unfortunately, that is largely not the case for how adults use their smartphones and other devices. In the Common Sense Media report, the adults’ technology use and bedtime sleeping habits were just as poor as their children’s. 62% of parents kept their mobile devices near their beds, and 26% of parents woke up to check their devices at least once a night. To change teenagers’ technology habits, parents should model positive use themselves. Whether it be refraining from texting during conversations or mealtimes, or setting limits to the amount of time one uses their laptop in the evenings, teenagers will take more positively to advice from someone who themselves is making such lifestyle choices. By modeling these behaviors early, one is also more likely to have their child adopt these healthy habits with tech from a young age. 

Technology and mental health are complicated, and it is difficult to fully understand the relationship between the two. Some aspects of technology may have negative effects on mental health, while other aspects may have positive ones. Part of the reason we don’t fully understand the relationship between the two is that we have not asked enough specific, targeted questions. A question about how technology is affecting sleep is one example of a good one, and there are countless others that parents can ask and observe for answers that may be unique for their child. Whether it be wondering how technology affects their child’s ability to focus or how it affects their patience, parents should continue to closely watch for positive and negative patterns in behavior or attitude and experiment with media rules to find what fits their family’s needs. For some ideas on managing digital media, explore these tips and resources from Challenge Success. 

Shayan Lavasani is a Research Intern with Challenge Success. He helps aid the research process and parent survey data management. He is currently studying Public Policy Analysis with a concentration in Economic policy at Pomona College and hopes to work in education after graduating.

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