3 minute read
Irving ISD Student Champions
Three first-grade students welcome visitors with big hugs when they enter LaDawn Gomez’s room at John Haley Elementary School in Irving ISD. Looking at the smiles on their faces, you never would have guessed that just a few minutes earlier, the boys were involved in a dispute that got a little out of hand. After the warm greeting, the boys sat back down with Gomez and started talking about what happened, how it made them feel, and how they can manage their emotions to try and avoid situations like that in the future.
Gomez serves as the Student Champion on her campus - a new role Irving ISD created at each campus to support students’ social-emotional health. The district used Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds for these new positions, and each staff member who serves as Student Champion was previously a classroom teacher or has a social work background.
“Because of the pandemic, there are things that I notice with student behavior when they come to see me; there’s a lot of crying, and the students are dealing with a lot of stressors,” Gomez explained. “When a student comes into my room, I want them to feel safe. I want them to know that they’re loved. I am not here to degrade or to judge them. I want them to know that I am separating the behavior from them to determine what they need at that moment.”
Gomez has created a calm and inviting space where she works with small groups of students who need social-emotional support. In her role as Student Champion, she also spends time supporting and coaching teachers on implementing Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) strategies in their classrooms.
“Prior to COVID, we were having conversations about trauma-informed restorative practices, but then never implemented those new ideas. In a way, COVID catapulted those ideas and served as a catalyst,” Gomez said. “I am now able to step into classrooms and support teachers by modeling how they can weave the SEL competencies into what they’re already doing. This is something that has been needed for so long.”
Amanda Neuwirth, who now serves as the Student Champion at Nimitz High School, saw the need for this work years ago and began building SEL practices into her lessons as the campus art teacher. “Feeling safe in our bodies and in our environment and feeling like we belong is a prerequisite to learning. It’s not only the right thing that we should do to support our students and our staff, but it’s going to help kids be successful,” Neuwirth shared.
Neuwirth explained that sometimes students come to see her because they simply need someone to talk to, and other times they may be dealing with something that requires a referral to talk to a counselor. No matter the issue they’re facing, she tries to help students “build their toolkits” when it comes to their socialemotional health. Ultimately, her goal is to build a campus-wide network of support that will benefit both students and staff.
“It helps students to feel seen and heard for us to be able to slow down and support them,” Neuwirth said. “I am so grateful that Irving ISD was able to meet this need for our educators and our students. I can just imagine three or five years from now the impact that it will have made, and I just think it’s really going to be life changing for a lot of kids.”
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