#21 - School Based Stressors with Tiffany Westphal - The School Can't Experience

Episode Transcript
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Leisa Reichelt (00:05):
Hello and welcome to the School Can't
Experience Podcast.
I'm Leisa Reichelt, and thispodcast is brought to you by the
School Can't Australiacommunity.
Caring for a young person who isstruggling to attend school can
be a stressful and isolatingexperience, but you are not
alone.
Thousands of parents acrossAustralia and many more around
the world face similarchallenges and experiences every

(00:27):
day.
Today we are talking about thetop school-based stressors with
Tiffany Westphal, Director atSchool Can't Australia.
We're going to unpack the topsix school stressors identified
in a survey conducted for theSenate Inquiry into School
Refusal.
This is gonna help us help ourkids identify their own

(00:47):
stressors more easily, as wellas help us consider how they
could be better supported toreduce distress at school.
Right! Tiffany Westphal.
Thank you very much for joiningus for our podcast episode
today.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) (01:01):
So delighted to be here.

Let's get started.
I know loads of people willalready know or know of you,
Tiffany, but can you give us aquick introduction to yourself
and also maybe a quickintroduction to School Can't
Australia.
For anyone who doesn't know,what is that organization?
What does it do?
I.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her (01:19):
Yeah, so, I wear many hats.
I am first and foremost a mum,and I have a nearly 17-year-old
daughter who has a long historyof on again, off again, School
Can't.
And it was through thatexperience that I came to
discover School Can't Australia.

Tell us about School Can't Australia.
What's its story?

So School Can't Australia was
formed in 2014 by a parent whowas seeking community, seeking
connection with other parentswho were experiencing similar
sorts of experiences to her.
And it's grown rapidly over thelast 11 years.
Doubling in size almost every410 days up until a couple years

(02:04):
ago when we had to kind of putthe brakes on a bit and slow
things down.
Yeah.
So it's got now about 16,000members and all of them are
parents and carers supportingyoung people struggling with
school attendance distress aboutschool or disengagement from
school.
Most parents in our group aresupporting kids who have

(02:25):
disability, most commonlyautism, ADHD or learning
difficulties.
And I, myself support a childwho has all three of those
things.
And that's how I came to jointhe group, was because of her.
am also a social worker and Iwork in this space too.
And have been involved inpartnering with universities for
research.

(02:46):
Yeah, that's me.

Well, today we wanted to talk about research
commissioned by School Can'tAustralia around school-based
stressors, which I know is oneof your favorite topics, Tiff.
Can you give us a little bit ofbackground to this research and
how it came into being?

We didn't exactly commission it.
We just decided we were gonna doit.
so we put a call out in ourgroup saying, are there any
people who've got skills usefulfor such a research project?
It was in relation to uspreparing a Senate Inquiry
submission that we started theresearch project.
We had previously done surveysof our group for other

(03:28):
submissions.
But I think this is one of thebiggest research projects we've
embarked on.
And it's unusual that it was asenate inquiry into school
refusal.
So it was our topic, this wasour thing.
And we got together a group of,people with different skills.
One of them was a statisticianand there were a couple Louisa,
myself from the moderation team.

(03:49):
And everybody had a differentrole to play.

Before we get into the results, I would love
you to talk a little bit aboutthe nature of a stressor.
Can you unpack that a little bitfor us?

Yeah you know, there are lots of
things that can be consideredstressors.
A stressor is something thatrequires energy of us in order
to respond to, and our nervoussystems are always scanning the
environment, looking for signsof threat and signs of safety.
And, am I okay here?
Do I feel okay about myself inthis situation, in this context?

(04:23):
How am I doing?
How are the other people aroundme responding to me?
Do I feel too hot?
Do I feel hungry?
Do I feel cold?
Those things demand a responsefrom our bodies, and our brains.
I guess this idea of thingsbeing stressful.
I think about it in terms ofSometimes we say things like,

(04:44):
everybody has to go to work andyou have to go to school.
That's your work.
At one level we have thisconcept that school is like a
child's occupation, at anotherlevel to an adult, we would say,
well, if your workplace isstressful, then the natural
thing to do is to eitherself-advocate and say, this is
really stressful and I need moreof this, or less of this or this

(05:05):
kind of adjustment made or thiskind of support and then you
share with your manager this iswhat I need, and see if you
can't make it better.

Hmm.

But children don't have often the
power to do that in the contextof school.
Or nobody notices their distressor it's considered just normal
that kids don't wanna go toschool.
And so we don't validate thedistress.
When you go back to theoccupational example, if you are
in a workplace and you arereally stressed and you
self-advocate and you getresponse that is helpful, you

(05:39):
can carry on, right?
Means you've got energy to keepgoing.
You can manage the situation abit more effectively, but when
you advocate and nothingchanges.
Then you're stuck.
You either have the power to dosomething yourself to make a
change, or you don't.
And if you don't have the powerto make that change, it starts

(06:00):
to impact your willingness to goto work.
Your energy and the way you feelabout going to work.
It starts to get harder to getup in the mornings and take
yourself out the door to go towork.
you might, take days off ormental health days it uses up
energy to do something that'scontinually asking more of you

(06:22):
than you have the capacity for.
And I think it's the same withschool.
We need to be conscious of howmuch capacity children have and
are we asking more of them thanthey have capacity?
Is this balance between capacityand demand?

Let's talk about some of the results from the
research.
Tiff, what if you were gonnasummarize the key findings How
would you describe what welearned from this research?

We asked about a range of different
kinds of stressors.
Relational things.
So stressors associated withpeer relationships and student
staff relationships.
We asked about schoolenvironment or the structure of
the school day.
Ability to engage in school workto demonstrate knowledge to

(07:11):
access curriculum All sorts ofthings.
And I think it was reallyinteresting when we got the
results back we, displayed thedata in a graph and it wasn't a
spiky graph, it was a quite flatprofile graph.
Out of the 57 stressors, about75% had received a positive
response Three quarters of thestressor had been chosen by half

(07:34):
the sample population of 441parents and carers who did the
survey.
On average parents and carerschose eight items.
Some quite a bit more and someless.
But, it wasn't just one thingthat parents and carers were
reporting.
There often is a number ofthings troubling A child at
school.

Let's dig into some of those key stressors.
There's something interestingabout the top four results.

Yeah.
So the top four were'LimitedSafe People and Places at
School'.
that's about difficulty, whenyou're distressed in finding
somebody who can help you feelbetter, comfort you provide
reassurance or co-regulate orplaces at school to calm down or
to feel okay.
And then'Staff Unable toIdentify Signs of Distress'.

(08:23):
So that one's sort ofself-explanatory when a, a
student's distressed, but staffaren't able to realize that
that's what the case is.
'Difficulties CommunicatingStudent Distress'.

I think communicating distress is an
interesting one, right?
Because this is not a situationwhere, or maybe it is, the kids
are going up to, teachers aregoing, I'm feeling really upset,
and the teachers are like, Idon't understand what you're
saying.
there's a broad nature to the,types of communications and what
gets identified and whatdoesn't.
Yeah.

Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, when you think aboutthe nervous system and you think
about fight, flight and youthink about a shutdown response.
When a student's having a fight,flight response, often there is
visible signs of distress.
There's behavior that onenotices, crying anxious thoughts
or there might be, you know,complaining of, of tummy ache or

(09:13):
there'll be some kind of visiblesign of distress, but when
somebody's experiencing ashutdown collapse or a fawn
response, it can be much harderto tell that somebody's
distressed and they can gounnoticed.
Parents often say, the schoolsays they're fine at school.
And that can get in the way ofidentifying early signs of

(09:33):
distress.
It's a bit confusing for parentsbecause the school says, they're
fine after you leave.
They're often not fine.
They're just masking.
Which was the, the fourth thingon the list.
So there are lots of barriers tocommunication.
It's a very vulnerable thing.
When you think about when we asadults are distressed we often

(09:54):
hide that distress from peopleunless we know them quite well.
Because it's a very vulnerablething to disclose that one is
feeling distressed aboutsomething.
You don't know how the otherperson's gonna respond.
You don't know whether they'regonna turn it back on you and
say, well, you just need to bemore resilient.
You just need to try harder.

(10:15):
Or, um, so it's a, it's a very,it's a risky thing to share that
one is in distress.
And adults don't always respondfavorably.

I was gonna say, I think that a lot of our kids
probably have experienced beingdismissed so many times, or
unheard so many times as well.
I think about my son and hishistory, he tried to tell us
plenty of times what was goingon and we were always like,
you'll be right.
It'll be fine.
Everyone has bad days.

Yeah.

Like it became very difficult to get him to
talk about anything, but I thinkthat's because we almost taught
him inadvertently that it waspointless trying to tell us.
I'm sure kids experienced thatat school as well.

Yeah, well, we're busy.
Parents are busy in themornings, and when a child's
distressed you're task focused Ineed to get out the door.
I've gotta get the other kids toschool on time, or I've gotta
get to my job.
Gotta get to work.
And teachers are busy too, inclassrooms.
You know, there's lots of kidsin a classroom and they all have
lots of them often needattention and support and you

(11:18):
often tend to the squeakywheels, you know, the kids who
are having the visible signs offight flight, causing disruption
or causing distress to otherpeople.
And so the quiet ones often gounnoticed.
Yeah.

So those top four stressors are very much
about not feeling able tocommunicate the distress they're
experiencing, not feeling thatif they try to communicate that
distress that's being heard andrecognized, and acted on.

Or not being able to get relief
somehow, or assistance to feelbetter, recover.
So being stuck, they're verystuck.
And I, I think that's what'sdisturbing about fact that those
four were the most commonlysuggested by parents as
contributing to the experienceof School Can't is this

(12:08):
overwhelming sense of just notbeing able to resolve it and
being stuck.
Yeah.
So this powerlessness that astudent feels, it's interesting
that those all come right at thetop of the list

Well, I can understand why they would
contribute to a sense ofhelplessness and hopelessness,
don't they?

I think it's a real challenge for
teachers and schools to considerhow can we reduce these barriers
that exist to talking aboutdistress, to having language
that makes it safe to talk aboutdistress Seek help.

Does appear to be like eminently solvable
though, doesn't it?

I'd like to think it is.

moving down the list.
the next one that really popsout, I think is the Schoolwork
Not of Interest.
Can you talk to us a little bitabout that one?

That one's really interesting.
I've heard that one a lotactually.
My ears have become quitesensitive to picking up
conversation around this topic.
I know that for ourneurodivergent kids doing
something that's of interest isquite effortless.
But it's much harder to applyoneself to something that's not

(13:19):
of interest.
I was at a, a youth voiceconference recently and there
were students there who wereschool leaders in their school
communities, and they quitestrongly were also saying that
one of their bug bears, one ofthe things that they struggle
with at school, one of thethings they'd like to change
about school is the fact thatthey feel the schoolwork they're

(13:42):
being asked to do is notrelevant to them or of interest
to them.
So I think it's a commonexperience of lots of students,
not just neurodivergentstudents.
that they feel they're beingasked to do work that doesn't
seem relevant to them or doesn'tseem like it's gonna be work
that they use later down thetrack.

(14:03):
And I think, saying something'sboring can mean lots of things
to a student.
I would encourage people to becurious about the impact of
having to do things that don'tfeel relevant.
think about what that might belike if you were an adult at
work having to do monotonous,boring work or work that you

(14:23):
didn't feel was relevant toachieving the objectives that
you had in your job, forinstance, or the objectives of
your employer and howfrustrating that might be.
It's a challenge to think aboutwhat that means for education
and what that means for how westructure curriculum and how we
resource education.
This desire to engage in workthat's of interest.

(14:47):
It was interesting at theconference I was attending, one
of the teachers said it's somuch easier when you've got 300
students in secondary school toadminister a test.
You know, you teach them all thesame stuff and then you
administer a test and themarking's done.
In a couple hours you've gradedall those tests.
But if you had each studentworking on a project of interest
to them, it would take a lotlonger to review the projects,

(15:09):
grade them and provide feedback.

An efficiency measure there that might be
impacting the quality of thecontent.
Yeah, I can see that.
I'm sure that for as long asthere's been school, there's
probably been kids saying,what's the point of this?
I'm never gonna use this once Ileave school.
When am I ever gonna needalgebra?
Kids have been saying that foras long as schools have been
around.
But, a lot of kids just pushthrough get to the end and, and

(15:37):
put it behind them, andhopefully find something to do
that is a little bit morerelevant to them.

yeah let's think about that for a
minute.
You know, so if your experienceof life is not one of chronic
stress, then you've probably gotcapacity to push through and do
something.
But if you are feelingchronically stressed and the
expectations of you are biggerthan the capacity you have all

(16:02):
the time.
You're constantly being, youknow, you're in arrears on the
bank account of energy.
you don't have capacity to pushthrough.
You have less capacity to dothings that are not of interest.
Lots of neurodivergent peoplewill tell you that existing in a
space that's not designed by andfor neurodivergent people where

(16:26):
there are inadequateaccommodations and supports is
chronically stressful And thatimpacts their capacity.

Yeah.
If you're gonna put yourselfthrough all of that stress and
it feels like it's for acompletely pointless purpose...

A bit hard to be motivated.
Why would you keep doing it?

Mm mm

I think it's really interesting
that when we look at what lotsof the schools that are involved
in the re-engagement space aredoing the students have more
voice and more agency over whatthey learn and how they
demonstrate learning.
And seeking to engage aroundstudent interest.

That project based work around a special
interest, is something the BigPicture schools do quite a bit,
isn't it?
Progressive schools in the US aswell, and UK that I've come
across also often are very much,you choose a topic, we'll do
project and build some of thecurriculum outcomes into that.
Yeah.
Let's talk about,'Teacher andSchool Expectations' and those

(17:23):
difficulties that that kids arehaving.
This is the sixth one on ourlist, I think What kinds of
things pop up there do youthink?

I think there's a lot of pressure
for performance, especially inhigh school.As you're getting
towards the end of your highschool years.
And so there are lots ofexpectations, but I think this,
and, and also the one about the'Length of School Day' is also
talking about the difficultythat students are having,
balancing the energy they haveor the capacity they have with

(17:54):
the demands that are made ofthem.
Lots of kids will say, well, Ijust, run out of energy.
I just think the day should beshorter.
'cause by the end of the day, Iam completely spent.
And that was interesting too,because lots of kids tell me
that they have difficulty witheating at school.
Your blood sugar levels start todrop the further the day goes

(18:14):
on.

what, when we are talking about these
expectations, what are the kindsof things that would fall into
an expectation here that iscausing these difficulties?

I think it could be quite diverse.
It could be little things likethe expectation to sit still and
be quiet instead of be able tomove while you listen.
But it could also be,difficulties associated with
expectation of doing timedtests, for instance.
I know that was one that wasparticularly difficult for my

(18:46):
daughter was this expectationthat tests would be done within
a particular timeframe.
Would make her feel quitestressed her brain would shut
down and she wouldn't be able todo the thing.
There can be a lot of differentexpectations that students
struggle with.
Yeah, lots.

School is just like a plethora of expectations
laid over, expectations, I havean expectation that you should
be able to write an essay thatwill get 80 marks out of a
hundred.
And if you're not doing that,then you're letting me down

Tiffany Westphal (she/he (19:17):
you'll enjoy all the subjects, and even
if you don't enjoy it, you'lljust do it.

Yeah.
the flip side of that of courseis the Difficulties Meeting
Expectation of Self.

Yes.
And that's challenging.
Some kids have high expectationsfor themselves and we encourage
that as a society, you know,having high expectations.
It makes you stop and think,what does our culture value?
Where are we headed with this?
There's challenging things tounpack.

And then there's another one in there, which is
school placing responsibility onstudent to change instead of
creating accommodations,

I find this one so sad because I
know that this is, 70% of theparents and carers who responded
to this survey were parentssupporting kids who are
neurodivergent kids who havedisability.
I myself have seen, supportplans that looked like a laundry
list of things that a studentwas gonna do differently rather

(20:13):
than a list of things that theschool was gonna do differently
to support that child and thatyoung person.
And I think we need to reallyexamine what are the
expectations that we have on astudent and what's reasonable
and what's not.
And really challenge this ideathat comes from a very ableist,

(20:35):
understanding of disability,where our disabled kids should
be less disabled in order tofunction and meet our
expectations at school.
I find this one quite sad to seeon the list.
Quite distressing.

Is that also linked to that kind of older way
of thinking about it throughthat behaviorist lens.
where we need to change behaviorfrom this to that, rather than
going, okay, well obviously thisis a very stressed child.
what can we be doing toalleviate the stress impact on
the child?

I think jumping, to seeing a
misbehaving child rather than adistressed child or distressed
young person is a problem.

Tiff, once we have this knowledge, we know
that these stressors are theones that are causing a lot of
issues for kids about being ableto communicate stress
effectively, about being able todo work that's of interest to
them, about being able to have aschool that's looking to reduce
stress rather than changebehavior.

(21:36):
What can we as people who aresupporting kids experiencing
School Can't, or perhapseducators trying to educate kids
in a school setting, what can wedo with this information?
How can we apply it?

Yeah, I think it's really important
that we remember that they'renot misbehaving.
They're responding to stress.
And that leads us to be curiousabout what's going on for them,
what they're finding difficult,how can we better support them
so that they're less stressed.
So they have capacity to engageat school, participate and enjoy

(22:13):
learning.
Identifying stressors can bequite challenging.
I often say to people when Ispeak to parent carer groups,
take this list and have a lookthrough it, and see is there
anything that, that triggers anidea for you that you might ask
your child, Do you have troublewith this or do you have trouble
with that?
I read that some kids havedifficulty with this and I
wonder if that's the way it isfor you and be curious.

(22:34):
Because the more we understandabout what's causing the child
difficulty, the more likely weare to be able to understand
what sort of environment theywould do better in, or what kind
of support they might need.
Understanding what's causing youdifficulty is extremely
empowering.
it means you can advocate foryourself.

(22:57):
So as children and young peoplegrow up through school, having
that knowledge that, actually Ifind the lights in the classroom
just suck energy out of mebecause they slightly flicker or
they're too bright and I need towear a hat in class.
Or I'd prefer to wear tintedglasses, or I'd prefer if we

(23:17):
only turn the bright lights onwhen we're actually doing
reading or writing.
uh, To be able to self-advocatefor one's needs and feel it's
okay to do that.
Adults might respond favorablywhen you make an effort to
self-advocate for what you need.
Yeah, I think that's reallyimportant information As parent
carers, we are those advocatesoften for our young people and

(23:42):
the bridge between our youngperson and their school in terms
of trying to help navigate thedifference between what our kids
need and getting it at school.
Does that make sense?

Yeah, I'm reflecting a little bit also on
the conversation that we hadwith Dr.
Ross Greene recently.
Are some of these stressorsthings that parents could take
to their kids Maybe this is thebeginnings of a list that they
could be going, which ones ofthese resonate with you?
Just to help get thatcommunication going, but then
also to be able to take that tothe school and go, look, these

(24:15):
are the things that we need toresolve

Yeah.

having that information gives you something
to talk about and then hopefullywe can all be better at hearing
it.
Tiff you've got the StudentStress Investigation cards can
you talk a little bit about whythat sort of card based approach
is a useful one too?

Yeah, because there's so many
stressors often that kids areexperiencing, it's difficult for
them to articulate, what's goingon.
And having prompts can go,'oh,yeah.
Nobody's ever asked me aboutthat before.
But yes, that's a problem'.
The kids sort the cards and theygo, is it normal to have so many
things that cause you difficultyat school?

(24:58):
And I'm able to reassure themand go, yeah, kids who are
struggling to go to school,often choose over 30 different
cards and say, these are thingsthat are causing me difficulty
at school.
It's not unusual, but the goodthing is that when we've
identified those things, we cango have a conversation with the
school about how we might changethose.
And you've got this informationfor you to help assist you and

(25:21):
your family to advocate for thesupports that you need.
I've had students empowered byhaving this information, take
their list of stressors into aninterview at a new school and
say, Hey, these are the thingsthat cause me difficulty at my
last school.
How would you be able to supportme at this school these things

(25:42):
and help them make a decisionabout whether that other school
might be a, a better environmentor an easier place for them to,
learn.
So it's can be really helpfulinformation to have.

Fantastic.
Well, this research is reallyvaluable in helping us
understand what are some ofthose real high impact
stressors.
And hopefully it's helpful forparents, carers, educators,
everybody to be able to see whatsome of those big issues are.
Because some of these they arevery solvable, aren't they?
Some are harder, but certainlythe communication one feels like

(26:17):
one that we could all be workingon immediately.
And identifying those stressorsand being able to have those
discussions around them feelslike a really important starting
place.

Often we have to be really creative in
how we respond to these thingsand think outside the box Just
because we've tried to solve adifficulty and it didn't get
solved the first time, doesn'tmean it's not gonna get solved.
It just means we need to keeptrying, and try something else.
I think it's also worth pointingout that, you know, a child's

(26:48):
distress story, how long they'vebeen distressed for also impacts
what happens when we respond tostressors, We can get a list of
20 different stressors at schooland then find solutions for
those stressors.
But the child might still not beable to go back to school
because they remember how bad itfelt before.

(27:09):
And so we might have some, somework to do yet in order help
them feel safe at school andthat that can take time.

Tiff, do you wanna tell us where we can find
more information about the listof stressors?

Yeah, you can find this list of
stressors on our website underarticles.
There's an article aboutstressors.
you can also read our submissionto the Senate Inquiry as well.
There's a link to that on ourwebsite It's chapter 10.

Thanks very much, Tiff.
Really appreciate your time.

Thank you

Well, a big thanks to Tiffany, not just for
this podcast, but for all thework she puts into the School
Can't community and all theeducating and advocating she
does on our behalf every day.
And thanks to all the wonderfulvolunteers who contribute in so
many different ways tosupporting our School Can't
community.
I have put links to the articleabout stressors as well as the

(27:59):
Senate inquiry submission intothe episode notes.
And you'll also find a link toTiffany's Student Stress
Investigation cards, which canbe very helpful for kids to help
identify their own school-basedstressors.
If you found this podcasthelpful, please do take a moment
to share, subscribe, or maybeeven give us a rating or a
review.
It really does make a hugedifference in helping us get the

(28:21):
podcast in front of more peoplewho have School Can't kids, but
have not yet found our communityand all the information and
support that we share.
Do you have some feedback for usor perhaps you would like to
share your own School Can'tlived experience?
We would love that.
Please drop us an email toschoolcantpodcast@gmail.com.
That's schoolcantpodcast, oneword, no apostrophe,@gmail.com.

(28:46):
If you are a parent or carer inAustralia and you are feeling
distressed, remember you canalways call the Parent Helpline
in your state.
A link with the number to callis in the episode notes.
Thank you again for listening.
We will talk again soon.
Take care.

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#21 - School Based Stressors with Tiffany Westphal

Episode Transcript

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#21 - School Based Stressors with Tiffany Westphal