The first of my thoughts on “Bad Therapy: why the kids aren’t growing up” by Abigail Shrier. #grownostr #education

quoting note1ft4…d26a

I am not a therapist

Part one of a three-part series called “Breaking my silence on social-emotional learning” I’ve been suspicious of “social-emotional circles” since I learned about them, several years ago. My first concern was how to fit this practice into a curriculum in which two snow days can mean I have to cut content. However, my second and more substantive concern, was that, put simply, I am not a therapist and am not equipped to lead an exercise like this. After reading Bad Therapy: Why the kids aren’t growing up, by Abigail Shier, I’m not only convinced that I shouldn’t do these in my classroom, I think they should rarely be done in classrooms at all.

While this and the next couple of posts will focus on circles, the book has raised many flags for me about things we routinely do in schools intended to help kids’ mental health. She argues we, the well-intentioned people who work with young people, frequently commit iatrogenesis (harm caused by those attempting to heal) and argues that many of our best-intentioned interventions likely cause more harm than benefit. I chose circles for a couple reasons. First, it’s relevant to many teachers because it – along with restorative practices, social-emotional learning (SEL) generally, and trauma-informed education – has become quite popular over the last several years. Second, it provides a concrete case study that exemplifies broader issues with SEL in schools.

For those of you unfamiliar with restorative circles, I’ll try to give you the TL:DR. A teacher puts the students in her class in a circle. Basically she then goes around the circle and everyone has the opportunity to share something. There are many variations on this. The teacher might ask students to share how they are feeling that day (check-in style circle), something their struggling with recently or something good that’s happened, or how something that happened in class - like an outburst by a student, for example - made them feel. All of these types or circles have been suggested in the trainings that I’ve attended to varying degrees. (You can read more about restorative circles here, which explains in detail more or less the what I’ve learned about them in trainings.)

For now, I want to focus on the more “meaningful” types of circles, not the “check-in” types. These are designed to help students build empathy and other social-emotional skills as well as help students process something they, or the class as a whole, is going through. (Although Shier has convinced me that the check-in style circles are a bad practice as well – an argument I plan to flesh out in part three.)

I am not a therapist

You might be wondering, if a teacher has time to do them, what could be the harm in doing these regularly with students? Wouldn’t they help build a stronger classroom community?

Let’s suppose that time is not an issue. The biggest problem I see is that I am not a therapist and nearly every teacher is not trained as a therapist either.

I remember sitting in trainings and imagining situations in which I’m running a circle and a kid shares something and bursts into tears. Or shares something deeply personal that maybe they shouldn’t have shared with me or their peers. Or calls out another student in class for some reason, creating a conflict in front of the entire class. Whenever circles were described to me it felt like a description of group therapy, and I am simply not trained to handle the variety of situations that might arise in group therapy. In fact, if you really want to see how closely they resemble each other, check out this page by the counseling Center Group for group therapy in New York City and compare it the description of circles in the article I linked above. You’ll find a lot of common themes, although the group therapy article emphasizes repeatedly that trained therapists will be leading the groups.

I’ve raised this concern with individual colleagues and in various meetings over the last several years, including recently at a district-level diversity, equity, and inclusion task force meeting. This is not a direct quote, but I’m most often met with some flavor of the following, either from a teacher who uses circles often, an education consultant leading professional development, or an administrator who has seen teachers run them:

Most of the time these concerns aren’t an issue. Kids don’t share those kinds of things. If anything gets shared beyond what you think you can handle, you can always end the circle and bring in a school counselor to help you with that individual student or to help you run the circle again to address what happened. Maybe you should work with a teacher who does circles often to help you feel more comfortable.

Sometimes other tips are also shared at this point – a sort of ad hoc list of group therapy hacks. Start doing circles with light-hearted prompts to help build community, they might say. Make sure students know they can “pass” and don’t have to share if they don’t want to share. Don’t pass judgement on what students share, be empathic, ask open questions instead of closed questions. And so on.

This is akin to taking a truck driver and giving him a three-hour training on driving a school bus and telling him he can start a bus route next week. When he says he’s not sure that he can actually pull that off, he’s told that “opening the door is actually pretty easy to figure out, remember to take wide turns, and don’t forget to stop at every railroad crossing. I’ll let you talk with Sam – he’s been driving bus on the side for years! I’m sure you’ll do great!”

Are there similarities between driving a semi-truck and trailer and a school bus? Of course. Are there some truck drivers who could make the switch and be just fine after some practice? Certainly. Will there be many accidents, some of which are avoidable and catastrophic? If this practice continues long enough – absolutely.

Similarly, some interpersonal skills required to teach overlap with those needed by therapists, surely some teachers would be good therapists with minimal training, and having this as a practice by an institution will almost certainly lead to kids being victims of mishandled situations (iatrogenesis).

Bad therapy in circles - a specific example

Undoubtedly, many bad therapy practices are hidden from me because I don’t have the expertise to know what I don’t know, but I want to share one bad practice that Shier writes about to help make my point – therapist self-disclosure.

When educators are taught about circles we are told that if we share personal stories then we will build trust with our students and this will encourage them to share more as well. From the Edutopia article linked above, we are told, “Share authentically of yourself. This gives others permission to do the same.”

Unfortunately, this is usually unethical according to Shier (she cites this paper, which doesn’t argue that self-disclosure is always unethical, but that it is a very nuanced question in psychotherapy and that generally erring away from self-disclosure is best; which reiterates my argument since, as I’m not trained in psychotherapy, I’m not even aware of the aspects of it which are nuanced or settled or debated. But, I digress). Shier writes about a teacher (Kendra Jones, cited from this Education Week article) who is “very vulnerable” with her students and goes on to say the following:

Interestingly, were Jones an actual therapist, such self disclosure would be considered unethical. Anytime a therapist might be inclined to share her personal history in order to gratify her own need, she must abstain in order to prioritize the clients needs. And here’s where things get tricky: teachers aren’t actually trained in psychotherapy, and they aren’t bound by its ethical guidelines, either. Setting up an “emotional sharing” session may sound good, but typically, therapists perform this function under ethical guidelines, so that they don’t inadvertently exploit or betray their patients.

Are the nuances of psychotherapy explored in trainings about restorative circles? Of course not. Because the trainers know that we aren’t therapists! Again, when I have raised this issue I’m told that this should not really be a concern - if you think anything is beyond what you can handle, get support from one of the school counselors.

SEL circles exist in a superposition of importance; they are simultaneously innocuous enough that a teacher needn’t worry about not being trained in psychotherapy, but important enough that every teacher should be working to integrate them in all of their classes.

The problems with SEL circles go beyond my lack of training in psychotherapy. In the next post I will explore the issues of confidentiality in circles and in part three explain how even if I was a therapist and we could somehow erase the issue of confidentiality, we still shouldn’t try to make circles a common practice.

Disclaimer: I realize that in writing this and publishing it publicly I run the risk of upsetting some friends, colleagues, and, potentially, administrators. Unfortunately, there are times when that risk must be taken in order to say what is true, needs to be said, and is not being said. I write this while passing no bad judgement on any educator who has implemented restorative circles or other restorative and social-emotional learning practices in their school or classroom. We have had countless trainers in countless hours of professional development the last several years telling us that this is best for kids – that kids will learn better and be more emotionally healthy if we do this. I don’t fault anyone for doing what we were told by the experts was best practice. I hope only to illuminate a contrary perspective that, in my opinion and experience, has significant ramifications if we are to truly do what’s best for our students.