The recent industrial action reflects our school system’s breaking point — and brings to the fore the incontrovertible truth that the social needs of students have overtaken its capacity to cope.

Studies have proven that classroom environments, including peer influences, can positively or negatively alter the course of teaching and learning outcomes in schools with one study, on The Long Run Effects of Disruptive Peers, showing that exposure to a single disruptive student can have a long-term effect of reducing earnings by $100,000 over the other students’ working lives.

This series takes a look at the five strategic priorities of Plan 2022 and examines in more detail the underlying problems, starting here with the issue of challenging behaviour.

In my capacity as executive director of the Bermuda Education Network over the past nine years, I have seen that the problems in middle schools are mere manifestations of problems that start much earlier.

There is an initiative under way to implement a framework for identifying student behavioural challenges, starting at primary.

The Multi-Tier System of Support comprises three tiers. A tier one, “universal” programme supports all children’s social emotional development — eg, related to teamwork and kindness.

Tier two support is provided in small groups usually by school counsellors, and tier three support is offered one-on-one by social emotional learning specialists.

The BEN has a programme that is an example of a tier one initiative serving all the students in the P5 year group. We provide experiential field trips that integrate social emotional learning into lessons about science and history.

School systems have developed a variety of programmes to address all three tiers. For example, public schools in Chicago, Illinois, have created a Department of Personalised Learning, which supports the delivery of evidence-based strategies for improving school climate and effective, inclusive classroom management strategies.

The department has become a centralised resource for schools as they attempt to integrate the social, emotional and academic needs of their students into instructional design, school management and MTSS processes.

The personalised learning department also provides those on the “front lines” with a professional learning community — planned workshops and meetings of professionals, through which they build their capacity to facilitate effective learning.

Starting afresh with a new department to spearhead social emotional learning throughout the schools could be a good idea for Bermuda.

Even though there are several strategic actions listed in Plan 2022 that relate to social emotional learning, at present the programmes and interventions are insufficient and inconsistently implemented.

The Bermuda Union of Teachers has highlighted the need for job descriptions for education therapists, but I think we also need a few more senior positions — persons with advanced degrees and years of experience in social emotional learning, who are available for research, troubleshooting, advising and coaching the school-based staff.

Last September, the BEN convened a group of counsellors, behaviour therapists, deputy principals, physical education specialists and staff from the Success Academy initiative, an alternative programme based at Heron Bay, to examine common areas of concern.

We provided a presentation on mindfulness as a classroom strategy for students to improve self-regulation and for educators to manage stress. We also discussed whether mindfulness could be a strategy to recommend to parents.

The question arose as to who in the schools has responsibility for supporting parents when their child’s behaviour is causing problems in the classroom. The consensus was that this is not at all clear.

What is clear is that many parents are stressed to the limit and that there should be better provision for helping them. Counsellors, principals or deputy principals often will take the role of a listening ear, but they do not have enough school-based resources to do more and generally have to refer the parents to other agencies, which has a stigma attached.

It would be far better if we were able to bring the social emotional specialists together within a well-funded and organised plan to support parents and students.

It was poignant to hear from attendees that our fairly “ad hoc” workshop was the first time they had been brought together.

Chicago’s creation of the Department of Personalised Learning has helped to ensure that there will be regular opportunities for staff to meet and examine issues.

Other successful school systems such as in Singapore dedicate a significant amount of time during the school day for cultivating professional learning communities.

Yes, these are far larger school systems, but the basic principle remains that schools are too busy firefighting to get to the root causes of the challenging behaviour and we need to provide the resources to change that.

Schools need sufficient time and centralised support to follow through fully on existing initiatives, preferably one at a time. In the short term, they need access to para-educators that are trained to help them meet the demands of challenging student behaviour and to assume the challenges of teaching when teachers must be absent.

In the longer term, we need a change to the Department of Education’s organisational structure in order to build the capacity needed to reverse the behaviour trends that are crippling our system.

• Becky Ausenda is a public education activist who founded the Bermuda Education Network, a registered charity that since 2010 has supported students and teachers in public schools. Her education work in Bermuda includes collaborations with several other education organisations to create teaching conferences, design curriculum for the BEN’s programmes, help schools with project implementation and teach experiential learning lessons to primary students. She has also served on the Bermuda Educators Council. In 2018, she graduated from Harvard University with a Master’s degree in Education, specialising in language and literacy, and returned in July to continue leading the BEN as executive director