NESTT Center middle school room, photos by Sam McIntosh.
One in five children ages 13-18 have or will have a serious mental illness, and about 50% of students 14 and older with a mental illness drop out of high school, according to the Iowa Department of Education.
The Washington Community School District has implemented a new program this fall to address mental health for all students called the NESTT Center, which stands for Navigating Emotions and Stress Through Teaching. The program is funded in part by a state therapeutic incentive grant they received this year of $542,025 with an additional $100,000 they received from the state this fall. NESTT Center Director Nicole Gish is based at the middle school, and she describes how each building’s NESTT teacher serves the students, “Consistently across the district each NESTT teacher is providing evidence-based social, emotional skill building lessons. They’re building connections and relationships with students, providing responsive care for major life events that affect a student’s ability to learn and they also provide a safe place for students to process and regulate their emotions.”
Each NESTT classroom is tailored to that particular building’s student age group, with the middle school having art supplies, puzzles, and other tools to help students to be able to return to class. The mental health grants also helped the district create a new staff position of School Family Liaison for which Beth Dehogues was hired. Dehogues mentions that all district educators are receiving professional development for trauma response and mental health from University of Northern Iowa faculty, “Helping staff know how to be responsive to that and support anyone basically going through stressful times which I think is safe to say is all of us right now. So this has been a very important time to be getting that learning for everyone and his big focus is to work on how we can help our students and one another stabilize and how to gain a sense of safety within our own bodies to then go on and support one another.”
The NESTT Center operates on a three-tiered system of universal support, small group supplemental instruction for select students, and intensive individual support for a few students. Dehogues, Gish and Curriculum Director Veta Thode are in the planning stage for using their $100,000 grant, with hopes to make calm-down rooms and sensory paths for the school buildings. You can hear more about the program in today’s Halcyon House Washington Page on air and at kciiradio.com.