Brianna Cunniff: Hello, and welcome to In Session, a podcast where we speak with change makers working towards safe, supportive learning environments within their communities. Our guests include state and local education agencies and their partners, all grant recipients from the Department of Education, using their funding to advance school-based mental health services, support mental health service professionals, and establish trauma recovery and prevention programs.
Annie Knowles: I'm Annie, and this is Brianna, at the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments, and we produce In Session. On this episode, we speak with Sharon Fishel, Education Specialist at the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development about Alaska's trauma recovery grant work and trauma engaged framework.
All right, hello. Sharon, thank you so much for joining us today. We're excited to be talking with you today about Alaska's DOE trauma recovery. Before we dive in, we wanted to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself and the topics we'll be discussing today.
Sharon Fishel: Hi everyone. My name's Sharon Fishel, I'm with the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development. I've been with the department for over 20 years in various roles. I've been on the health and safety team for about 13 years, and I am now the lead of the health and safety team, and that is where the Trauma Recovery grant lives is with our team, and I've been the project director of that since we got it.
Brianna Cunniff: Great. Thanks Sharon. So our first question is about this AK-RISES project or initiative. Could you just kind of talk us through that, describe this initiative?
Sharon Fishel: Sure. Our trauma recovery grant is different than the other four that were awarded. When we wrote the grant, we wanted to write it so it was something that we could actually do and maintain. So our grant is actually written to work with one school district in four of their schools with one community provider, the Alaska Child Trauma Center in Fairbanks. And so that's different than the other grants in that the other grants we're working with all school districts, all providers, or a lot more than just one of each. And that's how we wrote it, and we were funded, so that's how we've been delivering our project.
The unfortunate thing about our project is it was set to launch when COVID hit. And so that's added some struggles, but we've been able to work through it maybe even a little bit easier than some of the other states with this grant because we were working with one district and one community provider.
Annie Knowles: Wonderful. Yeah, I think it's always interesting to hear how the different grants affect the programs differently, and that's an important distinction. So why did you decide to do this, or what need were you trying to meet with this program?
Sharon Fishel: The state of Alaska has been doing a lot of work around trauma-engaged practices. And I say trauma-engaged instead of informed and sensitive because it's one thing to be informed about trauma, it's another thing to be sensitive about the effects of trauma, but it's different to be engaged with and doing promising practices to help prevent or alleviate the effects of trauma on kids.
And so it kind of dovetailed very nicely into the broader project that we have done in our state. We've created a framework on trauma. It's the Transforming Schools, a Trauma-Engaged Practice for Alaskans, which can be found on our website, educationalaska.gov. But anyway, it just really dovetailed nicely into the work that we've been creating around trauma in our state for our districts, because we found that a lot of districts were recreating the wheel saying that they wanted to be a trauma-engaged school or trauma-sensitive or trauma-informed.
And we met with the Association of Alaska School Boards and the Alaska Mental Health Board and we came together and over our process of a couple of years put out our framework. Which has been very helpful for districts because like I said, they were either recreating the wheel or throwing a lot of money at something to pull off the shelf that just really didn't fit. And Fairbanks was one of those districts that helped in the creation with our framework as well as the Alaska Behavioral Health with the Alaska Child Trauma Center at Fairbanks that houses the Alaska Child Trauma Center. And we've been partners with Josh Arvidson, and through the whole writing of our project he was one of the writers of our framework.
And so it just kind of all really dovetailed nicely in looking at the model for AK-RISES, which is the community provider is our grantee, and they hire clinicians to work in these four schools and provide trauma-specific services to the students. We also have a project AWARE grant with SAMSHA that is different in that the school district is hiring the clinicians or social workers to work in four schools in Fairbanks also, and to see there are two different ways to deliver the same type of service. And so it's been really interesting to see how they work and function within the same school district, and which one might be more sustainable for the school district in providing services to kids.
Annie Knowles: That was great. Can I just ask a more clarifying question? So when we talk about trauma and you said not trauma-informed, but trauma-engaged what exactly does that look like with your providers?
Sharon Fishel: An example would be if somebody's trauma-informed, they know what ACEs... I presented to a group yesterday that were migrant coordinators from around the country. And when I asked everybody if they knew what Adverse Childhood Experiences was, they all knew what ACEs was. So they were informed. But when I asked them, how does that relate to your migrant program? How do you instill that through your migrant program? What are some practices that you can do or change? They couldn't answer that question.
And so it's how you respond, how you build relationships, how you work with students maybe a little bit differently because you don't know what happened to them before they walked in your door in the school. And so that's not an example, but that's kind of the premise around the difference between being informed about something and actually doing something about it and making things better for students.
Annie Knowles: Right. Great. Thank you. Thank you for that. And that makes a lot of sense too. It's one thing to be informed, it's another to actually know how to help the students.
Sharon Fishel: Right.
Annie Knowles: Okay. So our next question, and you already touched a little bit on some of the partnerships that you all have engaged in. But can you talk a little bit more about who was involved in this process, maybe how you formed those partnerships?
Sharon Fishel: We've always worked really closely with the Association of Alaska School Boards, and they've been a critical partner in a lot of our trauma work. They're not part of AK-RISES because it's a pretty specific grant as far as direct service to students, and they're more of a training for educators as well as for school boards. But I also sit on the Alaska Mental Health Board, and that's kind of where our trauma work started on the policy side was with the Alaska Mental Health Board and Pat Sidmore who was a colleague and is now a team member, which is really kind of cool is that we're both working on the same team. And so as a planner for the boards, he kind of pulled different people together that were kind of doing the same thing and trying to help respond to district's questions, and so that's kind of where the partnership started.
And the other partners that were part of creating the framework was the Statewide Suicide Prevention Council, which actually has funded a lot of our trauma work outside of these grants. The development of our framework, we have a online professional development program that we use for all of our mandatory trainings and all other types of professional development that's free to educators.
And we have over 13 trauma courses on that system, which is really, we have over 90 programs, 90 courses, and over 30,000 users for that program. But as partnerships, again, it was Alaska Behavioral Health, which has the Alaska Child Trauma Center in Anchorage and Fairbanks, the boards, the first Alaskans Institute, the Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, and the Afterschool Network were the primary partners in the development of our framework. And when this grant came out, we immediately called Josh Arvidson at the Alaskan Behavioral Health, he was the director of the Alaska Child Trauma Center at the time. And we were like, "Are you game to do this with us?" And we knew Fairbanks was ready to do something like this, the school district, and so that's why we approached the Fairbanks School District to be partners in this project with us.
Brianna Cunniff: That's fantastic, it sounds like you had so many substantial courses and programs at the ready. And as you mentioned earlier, it's not about reinventing the wheel, and so those partnerships are so critical to building these programs. So our next question for you is, do you have any advice or any lessons learned that might be helpful to share to the field for anyone that might want to do something similar with trauma recovery?
Sharon Fishel: Don't do it in a vacuum. Figure out who your partners are and work with your partners, because you can't do it in isolation because it doesn't work. The whole thing around being trauma-engaged is building those relationships between teachers and students, as well as building relationships between Department of Ed and school districts and other Department of Health, Department of Health and Social Services, and other community providers. And knowing who your partners are and just building that relationship with those partners I think is the more critical, don't try to do it in a vacuum.
We're fortunate we're very large in size, but we're very small people wise, and so you really know who's trying to do what. And so with not as many people is a lot... Our health and safety team that covers everything for health and safety is four people. And one of those people just manages our online professional development. And so the three of us take care of everything else that is health and safety. And I know that there's other Departments of Ed that have a whole bunch of people that are doing what the three of us are doing, and so you've got to pull in your partners, you've got to work with others to be able to accomplish things for kids and staff.
Annie Knowles: And that is a great segue. So what impact have you seen with the students, the schools in general?
Sharon Fishel: We're going to be finding out about what our impact has been probably in about a year. Last October and December we worked with REL Northwest, the Regional Education Lab Northwest. They got an Institute for Educational Sciences grant from USDOE to do some research work around all of our trauma stuff. So we sent out a trauma-engaged policies and practices implementation survey to all of our districts, all of our schools. We had almost 500 schools that were eligible to send the survey to them. We sent it to every principal, and we had a 58% response rate to that survey on the awareness and usage and implementation of our framework. And so they're taking that data that they got from the survey, they're looking at school climate connectedness data, they're looking at suspension and expulsion data, and almost whatever other data that they can find to see where our schools and our districts are at as far as implementation.
And I think that's really going to be really cool data once we have it. And I think they'll be able to share the final report, I think they're saying late summer, early fall. And then they're also doing interviews with Alaskan educators on where are they at as far as trauma-engaged practices. What'll be interesting to look at is to see whether the Fairbanks School District looks that's a part of AK-RISES looks any different than any of the other districts.
We've distributed over 13,000 copies of our framework since January of 2019, so it's getting out there. And I would say... I'll highlight a couple of other districts other than Fairbanks. Kuspuk School District, their superintendent is like the... Lower Kuskokwim School District and the Kuspuk School District, both of those superintendents are very bought into the framework. They use strategies, they use things from our framework in everything that they do with their schools.
It's just kind of ingrained in the pedagogy of what they do with their educators moving forward. And so it'll be really exciting when we have that final report on what is going on with awareness and usage of all of the trauma stuff that we... Because we've got a lot of stuff out there, and we want to know if it's being used. We want to know, what else do you need?
And we just launched another project with REL last Friday with our alternative schools. We have 13 alternative schools in our state. Our definition of an alternative school in our state is different than most of the alternative schools in other states in that it's not a disciplinary model. Our students are not there because they got in trouble, for the most part. They're there because they don't work within the traditional school setting. And our alternative schools are really where all of our trauma work started in our state as far as in schools. Back in 2008 is when they really started coming together, talking about it and moving forward. So all of the trauma work that we've done kind of bloomed out of what our alternative schools were trying to do to get the kids, their students, what they needed.
Annie Knowles: That's incredible. You have such a well-grounded program and so many resources and information out there, that's fantastic. And I'm sure once you get that final report back, because as you touched on, it's so important to know what is being used and which things are most helpful, and where to go from there. Yeah, but that's awesome. I think you're in a really good place, and that also leads us really well into our next question which is, where do you plan to go from here, and what will sustainability look like for you all?
Sharon Fishel: As far as AK-RISES, we've been having conversations about sustainability, because we're in year five. The grant is done at the end of the year, whatever year that is, whether it's a school year or the fiscal year, we have yet to determine when this project is really going to end for us. But the district is committed to figuring out how to make this work, and to continue the partnership that they have with the Alaska Child Trauma Center and Fairbanks. And so I'm hoping that I'll be going up there in a month to meet with the leadership, the superintendent and the team that I usually meet with up there, and the principals and that kind of thing. We need to figure out what our lessons learned were from this project, and see if they're going to be able to sustain it. It'll probably look different because in reality, the Child Trauma Center will be able to serve more kids because they'll be able to bill Medicaid outside of this project that they can't within the project.
And so where we go from here is really kind of contingent on what is found out through all of the research that's being done around our stuff right now. And so our partnership with the Association of Alaska School Boards continues, and we continue to meet and create new things. They also have a research grant to provide coaching around trauma-engaged practices with different schools. And so once we get, we're going to be so data-rich to be able to look at what's working, what's not working in the future. We don't have it yet, but we're getting there. We'll still keep working and doing things for kids and staff.
Annie Knowles: I appreciate that you're saying that as far as sustainability goes, you really just have to wait and see what the data tells you from this project. It is really very much based off of what works and what doesn't. So thank you for that.
Yeah, that is the last question that we had for you. We just want to thank you so much for taking the time to be with us and share with us Alaska's trauma recovery and trauma-engaged framework that I think the field and grantees will really enjoy learning about. And we're really excited to see this data that you get and where you all decide to go from here. So thank you so much, Sharon.
Sharon Fishel: Thank you.
Annie Knowles: In Session is brought to you by the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments, or NCSSLE, at the American Institutes for Research. This podcast is funded by the US Department of Education. If you'd like to learn more about NCSSLE, visit safesupportivelearning.ed.gov. For all questions or feedback you can email us at ncssle@air.org. Thanks for listening. Please note, the contents of this podcast do not necessarily represent the policy or views of the US Department of Education, nor does it imply endorsement by the US Department of Education.
Annie Knowles: I'm Annie, and this is Brianna, at the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments, and we produce In Session. On this episode, we speak with Sharon Fishel, Education Specialist at the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development about Alaska's trauma recovery grant work and trauma engaged framework.
All right, hello. Sharon, thank you so much for joining us today. We're excited to be talking with you today about Alaska's DOE trauma recovery. Before we dive in, we wanted to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself and the topics we'll be discussing today.
Sharon Fishel: Hi everyone. My name's Sharon Fishel, I'm with the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development. I've been with the department for over 20 years in various roles. I've been on the health and safety team for about 13 years, and I am now the lead of the health and safety team, and that is where the Trauma Recovery grant lives is with our team, and I've been the project director of that since we got it.
Brianna Cunniff: Great. Thanks Sharon. So our first question is about this AK-RISES project or initiative. Could you just kind of talk us through that, describe this initiative?
Sharon Fishel: Sure. Our trauma recovery grant is different than the other four that were awarded. When we wrote the grant, we wanted to write it so it was something that we could actually do and maintain. So our grant is actually written to work with one school district in four of their schools with one community provider, the Alaska Child Trauma Center in Fairbanks. And so that's different than the other grants in that the other grants we're working with all school districts, all providers, or a lot more than just one of each. And that's how we wrote it, and we were funded, so that's how we've been delivering our project.
The unfortunate thing about our project is it was set to launch when COVID hit. And so that's added some struggles, but we've been able to work through it maybe even a little bit easier than some of the other states with this grant because we were working with one district and one community provider.
Annie Knowles: Wonderful. Yeah, I think it's always interesting to hear how the different grants affect the programs differently, and that's an important distinction. So why did you decide to do this, or what need were you trying to meet with this program?
Sharon Fishel: The state of Alaska has been doing a lot of work around trauma-engaged practices. And I say trauma-engaged instead of informed and sensitive because it's one thing to be informed about trauma, it's another thing to be sensitive about the effects of trauma, but it's different to be engaged with and doing promising practices to help prevent or alleviate the effects of trauma on kids.
And so it kind of dovetailed very nicely into the broader project that we have done in our state. We've created a framework on trauma. It's the Transforming Schools, a Trauma-Engaged Practice for Alaskans, which can be found on our website, educationalaska.gov. But anyway, it just really dovetailed nicely into the work that we've been creating around trauma in our state for our districts, because we found that a lot of districts were recreating the wheel saying that they wanted to be a trauma-engaged school or trauma-sensitive or trauma-informed.
And we met with the Association of Alaska School Boards and the Alaska Mental Health Board and we came together and over our process of a couple of years put out our framework. Which has been very helpful for districts because like I said, they were either recreating the wheel or throwing a lot of money at something to pull off the shelf that just really didn't fit. And Fairbanks was one of those districts that helped in the creation with our framework as well as the Alaska Behavioral Health with the Alaska Child Trauma Center at Fairbanks that houses the Alaska Child Trauma Center. And we've been partners with Josh Arvidson, and through the whole writing of our project he was one of the writers of our framework.
And so it just kind of all really dovetailed nicely in looking at the model for AK-RISES, which is the community provider is our grantee, and they hire clinicians to work in these four schools and provide trauma-specific services to the students. We also have a project AWARE grant with SAMSHA that is different in that the school district is hiring the clinicians or social workers to work in four schools in Fairbanks also, and to see there are two different ways to deliver the same type of service. And so it's been really interesting to see how they work and function within the same school district, and which one might be more sustainable for the school district in providing services to kids.
Annie Knowles: That was great. Can I just ask a more clarifying question? So when we talk about trauma and you said not trauma-informed, but trauma-engaged what exactly does that look like with your providers?
Sharon Fishel: An example would be if somebody's trauma-informed, they know what ACEs... I presented to a group yesterday that were migrant coordinators from around the country. And when I asked everybody if they knew what Adverse Childhood Experiences was, they all knew what ACEs was. So they were informed. But when I asked them, how does that relate to your migrant program? How do you instill that through your migrant program? What are some practices that you can do or change? They couldn't answer that question.
And so it's how you respond, how you build relationships, how you work with students maybe a little bit differently because you don't know what happened to them before they walked in your door in the school. And so that's not an example, but that's kind of the premise around the difference between being informed about something and actually doing something about it and making things better for students.
Annie Knowles: Right. Great. Thank you. Thank you for that. And that makes a lot of sense too. It's one thing to be informed, it's another to actually know how to help the students.
Sharon Fishel: Right.
Annie Knowles: Okay. So our next question, and you already touched a little bit on some of the partnerships that you all have engaged in. But can you talk a little bit more about who was involved in this process, maybe how you formed those partnerships?
Sharon Fishel: We've always worked really closely with the Association of Alaska School Boards, and they've been a critical partner in a lot of our trauma work. They're not part of AK-RISES because it's a pretty specific grant as far as direct service to students, and they're more of a training for educators as well as for school boards. But I also sit on the Alaska Mental Health Board, and that's kind of where our trauma work started on the policy side was with the Alaska Mental Health Board and Pat Sidmore who was a colleague and is now a team member, which is really kind of cool is that we're both working on the same team. And so as a planner for the boards, he kind of pulled different people together that were kind of doing the same thing and trying to help respond to district's questions, and so that's kind of where the partnership started.
And the other partners that were part of creating the framework was the Statewide Suicide Prevention Council, which actually has funded a lot of our trauma work outside of these grants. The development of our framework, we have a online professional development program that we use for all of our mandatory trainings and all other types of professional development that's free to educators.
And we have over 13 trauma courses on that system, which is really, we have over 90 programs, 90 courses, and over 30,000 users for that program. But as partnerships, again, it was Alaska Behavioral Health, which has the Alaska Child Trauma Center in Anchorage and Fairbanks, the boards, the first Alaskans Institute, the Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, and the Afterschool Network were the primary partners in the development of our framework. And when this grant came out, we immediately called Josh Arvidson at the Alaskan Behavioral Health, he was the director of the Alaska Child Trauma Center at the time. And we were like, "Are you game to do this with us?" And we knew Fairbanks was ready to do something like this, the school district, and so that's why we approached the Fairbanks School District to be partners in this project with us.
Brianna Cunniff: That's fantastic, it sounds like you had so many substantial courses and programs at the ready. And as you mentioned earlier, it's not about reinventing the wheel, and so those partnerships are so critical to building these programs. So our next question for you is, do you have any advice or any lessons learned that might be helpful to share to the field for anyone that might want to do something similar with trauma recovery?
Sharon Fishel: Don't do it in a vacuum. Figure out who your partners are and work with your partners, because you can't do it in isolation because it doesn't work. The whole thing around being trauma-engaged is building those relationships between teachers and students, as well as building relationships between Department of Ed and school districts and other Department of Health, Department of Health and Social Services, and other community providers. And knowing who your partners are and just building that relationship with those partners I think is the more critical, don't try to do it in a vacuum.
We're fortunate we're very large in size, but we're very small people wise, and so you really know who's trying to do what. And so with not as many people is a lot... Our health and safety team that covers everything for health and safety is four people. And one of those people just manages our online professional development. And so the three of us take care of everything else that is health and safety. And I know that there's other Departments of Ed that have a whole bunch of people that are doing what the three of us are doing, and so you've got to pull in your partners, you've got to work with others to be able to accomplish things for kids and staff.
Annie Knowles: And that is a great segue. So what impact have you seen with the students, the schools in general?
Sharon Fishel: We're going to be finding out about what our impact has been probably in about a year. Last October and December we worked with REL Northwest, the Regional Education Lab Northwest. They got an Institute for Educational Sciences grant from USDOE to do some research work around all of our trauma stuff. So we sent out a trauma-engaged policies and practices implementation survey to all of our districts, all of our schools. We had almost 500 schools that were eligible to send the survey to them. We sent it to every principal, and we had a 58% response rate to that survey on the awareness and usage and implementation of our framework. And so they're taking that data that they got from the survey, they're looking at school climate connectedness data, they're looking at suspension and expulsion data, and almost whatever other data that they can find to see where our schools and our districts are at as far as implementation.
And I think that's really going to be really cool data once we have it. And I think they'll be able to share the final report, I think they're saying late summer, early fall. And then they're also doing interviews with Alaskan educators on where are they at as far as trauma-engaged practices. What'll be interesting to look at is to see whether the Fairbanks School District looks that's a part of AK-RISES looks any different than any of the other districts.
We've distributed over 13,000 copies of our framework since January of 2019, so it's getting out there. And I would say... I'll highlight a couple of other districts other than Fairbanks. Kuspuk School District, their superintendent is like the... Lower Kuskokwim School District and the Kuspuk School District, both of those superintendents are very bought into the framework. They use strategies, they use things from our framework in everything that they do with their schools.
It's just kind of ingrained in the pedagogy of what they do with their educators moving forward. And so it'll be really exciting when we have that final report on what is going on with awareness and usage of all of the trauma stuff that we... Because we've got a lot of stuff out there, and we want to know if it's being used. We want to know, what else do you need?
And we just launched another project with REL last Friday with our alternative schools. We have 13 alternative schools in our state. Our definition of an alternative school in our state is different than most of the alternative schools in other states in that it's not a disciplinary model. Our students are not there because they got in trouble, for the most part. They're there because they don't work within the traditional school setting. And our alternative schools are really where all of our trauma work started in our state as far as in schools. Back in 2008 is when they really started coming together, talking about it and moving forward. So all of the trauma work that we've done kind of bloomed out of what our alternative schools were trying to do to get the kids, their students, what they needed.
Annie Knowles: That's incredible. You have such a well-grounded program and so many resources and information out there, that's fantastic. And I'm sure once you get that final report back, because as you touched on, it's so important to know what is being used and which things are most helpful, and where to go from there. Yeah, but that's awesome. I think you're in a really good place, and that also leads us really well into our next question which is, where do you plan to go from here, and what will sustainability look like for you all?
Sharon Fishel: As far as AK-RISES, we've been having conversations about sustainability, because we're in year five. The grant is done at the end of the year, whatever year that is, whether it's a school year or the fiscal year, we have yet to determine when this project is really going to end for us. But the district is committed to figuring out how to make this work, and to continue the partnership that they have with the Alaska Child Trauma Center and Fairbanks. And so I'm hoping that I'll be going up there in a month to meet with the leadership, the superintendent and the team that I usually meet with up there, and the principals and that kind of thing. We need to figure out what our lessons learned were from this project, and see if they're going to be able to sustain it. It'll probably look different because in reality, the Child Trauma Center will be able to serve more kids because they'll be able to bill Medicaid outside of this project that they can't within the project.
And so where we go from here is really kind of contingent on what is found out through all of the research that's being done around our stuff right now. And so our partnership with the Association of Alaska School Boards continues, and we continue to meet and create new things. They also have a research grant to provide coaching around trauma-engaged practices with different schools. And so once we get, we're going to be so data-rich to be able to look at what's working, what's not working in the future. We don't have it yet, but we're getting there. We'll still keep working and doing things for kids and staff.
Annie Knowles: I appreciate that you're saying that as far as sustainability goes, you really just have to wait and see what the data tells you from this project. It is really very much based off of what works and what doesn't. So thank you for that.
Yeah, that is the last question that we had for you. We just want to thank you so much for taking the time to be with us and share with us Alaska's trauma recovery and trauma-engaged framework that I think the field and grantees will really enjoy learning about. And we're really excited to see this data that you get and where you all decide to go from here. So thank you so much, Sharon.
Sharon Fishel: Thank you.
Annie Knowles: In Session is brought to you by the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments, or NCSSLE, at the American Institutes for Research. This podcast is funded by the US Department of Education. If you'd like to learn more about NCSSLE, visit safesupportivelearning.ed.gov. For all questions or feedback you can email us at ncssle@air.org. Thanks for listening. Please note, the contents of this podcast do not necessarily represent the policy or views of the US Department of Education, nor does it imply endorsement by the US Department of Education.
