2021 Impact Report- Fall

With our return to in person programs this past summer and then school campuses in mid August an important conversation has been brewing among us as a community regarding learning loss. While that conversation is important there’s a separate and equivalent deficit to be addressed with regard to Social and Emotional wellness. Learning is a cornerstone of youth development but it is relationships and our ability to work together that propels society forward.

In March of 2020, like all of us, children across the nation severed ties with the outside world. We left schools and clubs and built these insulated pockets of humanity; together but still divided. Unlike Adults, however, the loss of contact to friends, extended family members, and mentors meant that skills we develop as children and rely on to be successful as adults were set aside. This included essential skills like emotional intelligence, relationship building, and community engagement which could not be practiced in a vacuum and have atrophied. Suppose for a moment that you are a child of 7. You’ve spent the last 18 months largely at home with older siblings. It has been a very different experience from your life as a first grader. You woke up that morning in March and the largest constant in your life, school, had shut down. The friends you had there, the teachers you loved, all of the normalcy and structure that gave you context to understand and interpret the world around you and your role in it vanished overnight. For the next year you were almost entirely reliant on your immediate family members and a school issued Chromebook for meaningful social and academic growth. You don’t do sleepovers anymore. The big family dinner every Sunday was cancelled. You don’t have the option to spend time with friends separately and then one day you are plunged back into the thick of it. You are cast from your very intimate bubble into a sea of children who are all struggling to adapt. The importance of learning loss is a large part of the story but not the whole story.

If you have kids, you have probably seen evidence of this behavior at home. How much TV are they watching? How much time are they spending on video games? How long have they been staring at their phone. In short, the hidden cost of the pandemic extends beyond the gradebook and into the fundamental shift in how our children interact with the world in the absence of

social contact, social expression, and most importantly social awareness. As a result, it’s on us as parents, teachers, and mentors to reset their environments by positively deconstructing a false normalcy induced as a result of safety concerns in the wake of the pandemic. That work isnt easy. School and afterschool relies on reinforced social norms and expectations and the transition back to school has been brutal for our younger kids. “They have no idea how to use a water fountain.” “When they walk into class they drop their things on the floor as they make their way to their desks. It takes us an hour every morning just to make sure that their things are stowed in their cubbies so that we can get to work.” These things seem small but they have a direct and cumulative effect on the student experience and their ability to learn.

Despite millions of dollars invested in digital learning and recovery in the county of Napa, we’ve paid little attention to social deficits associated with the pandemic. Those deficits continue to manifest in the form of social anxiety, behavioral outbursts, and continued isolationism. There’s hope though for those who recognize the opportunity. This type of learning isn't work you need a qualified professional to do. We all have the ability to have a lasting impact on the social and emotional health of our children by signing them up for activities and gently pushing them back into the world around us.

That’s why agencies like the Boys & Girls Club are so important as they create opportunities for youth to experiment with and master these skills in a safe and engaging environment. Just look at any of the programing available at the Club and you’ll see a variety of activities specifically and intentionally delivered to address these deficits. We do this through our fine arts programs which allow kids to express their emotional state through art. We do this through our sports programs, which keep our kids actively engaged and communicating as a team. We do this through our mental health programs which, with the help of Mentis Counselors, provide teens with a platform to talk about issues and personal struggles in a safe and productive environment. These critical opportunities force youth to breach the artificial and insular pockets we created during the pandemic and return to normalcy. You cannot hit the pause button on youth, but at the Boys & Girls Club, perhaps you can hit the fast forward button on growth.