The boy was silent and withdrawn, his face barely visible in his hoodie, his jacket zipped to his eyes. He barely interacted with his classmates, and, with 18 students to manage, his teacher, though concerned, didn’t have the time to delve into his situation.

In many schools, this disturbing scenario would have gone unaddressed. But at this one, Helen Feldman (M.A. ’20), then a Teachers College student and a Classroom Consultant for the College’s School-Based Mental Health Collaboration (SBMHC), began stopping by the boy’s desk each Monday morning. After a while, he began to talk to her. In class, he raised his hand to ask a question. And one day, right after Feldman taught a lesson on understanding one’s own emotions by paying attention to physical feelings, the boy asked to speak with her privately.

“We went to a corner of the classroom, and he began speaking about challenging things going on at home,” recalls Feldman. “It was like a dam had loosened — he was putting words to so many complex feelings.” Feldman has since moved on to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology at City College, CUNY, but she says, “at least this child is now on the radar of this year’s Clinical Consultants. And I like to think that just having someone there — an adult who’d say ‘Yes’ when he said ‘Can I talk to you?’ — is something that will stick with him.”

Created five years ago by Nancy Eppler-Wolff, a New York City psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice who is also a TC adjunct faculty member, SBMHC — funded by a generous donor — is a partnership between the College and local public schools employs a psychodynamic approach aimed at improving the social and emotional lives of underserved schoolchildren.

SBMHC focuses on “mentalization” — the ability to reflect upon and understand one’s own state of mind, and to have insight into what one is feeling and why. The initiative delivers support to kids “in vivo” through Clinical Consultants (CCs) like Feldman — students in TC’s programs in Clinical, Counseling and School Psychology, some of whom are in training at the College’s Dean Hope Center for Educational & Psychological Services. The CCs spend many hours each week in schools, working with teachers and students.

“I’ve been working in education for 25 years, and I’ve seen schools with mottoes on the wall like ‘respect, understanding and community,’” Eppler-Wolff says. “The kids do SEL [social and emotional learning] exercises in the morning, and by the afternoon, they’re punching each other on the playground. So, there’s a need to dig deeper. We can’t help children if we don’t understand their underlying thoughts and feelings.” 

“Our goal is to be there in the classrooms, to meet teachers and principals, and to help them better understand kids and the meanings for their behaviors,” Eppler-Wolff says. “If a child is getting up from his seat all the time, you have a better chance of lessening this behavior if you know why he’s doing it. Maybe there’s a language processing issue going on, maybe he is worried about a parent who is ill, or maybe he has ADHD or some other executive functioning problem. Each requires a different strategy.”

Can the SBMHC model be replicated on a broad scale?

Eppler-Wolff is quick to acknowledge that the program is an outlier in the world of school psychology. Because schools often lack resources — especially in the poorest districts, where kids typically have the greatest need — most psychological interventions with students usually employ cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a typically short-term approach aimed at changing thoughts and behaviors.

“Research that investigates the success of cognitive behavioral treatments has been well documented, and it’s caught on, because given the number of kids in our schools who are suffering, people want a quick fix,” she says. “But recently, many studies have examined the effects of psychodynamic treatment. This research has indicated that the change with psychodynamic treatment is deep. It goes beyond symptom reduction to contribute to long-lasting changes in interpersonal relationships, enhance the ability to meet life’s challenges, and increase self-reflectiveness and self-confidence.”

[Read a paper, “In the Nest: Case Studies from the School-Based Mental Health Collaboration,” co-authored by Eppler-Wolff; Jessica Albertson, SBMHC supervising psychologist; Siân Martin, Program Assistant; and Lily Infante (M.A. ’19), a graduate of TC’s Counseling Psychology program who works as a middle-school counselor at International School of Brooklyn. Read a profile of Helen Feldman.]

In the era of COVID, when students are more isolated and teachers are coping with even greater workloads, promoting that kind of resilience is especially important. 

“We’re looking for signs of distress in students, and especially since COVID,” says Michelle Verdiner, Principal of the pre-K–8 Teachers College Community School (TCCS), where SBMHC has been working for several years, and where the program has been operating via Zoom since spring 2020. “Some of our families have lost people, and parents are dealing with all kinds of new pressures. It’s very helpful to have people in the classroom who are trained to spot the way these issues are affecting our kids, and who can help embed social and emotional learning skills throughout our curriculum. So, I think this is a model that can help many schools.”

Alexandra Espinosa, a second-grade teacher at the TCCS lower school, adds that the SBMHC Clinical Consultants have been especially valuable in recognizing the different culture within each classroom.

“The students in each classroom have different experiences and needs, and it’s really helpful to have a second adult in the room who can bring them to our attention — because there’s so much going on that sometimes we don’t see it,” Espinosa says. “They can also adjust the way they teach SEL to meet those particular needs.”

Certainly, the funding that an initiative like SBMHC requires is significant, but the expense is short-term, with a long-term payoff.

“Our goal isn’t to stay in a school permanently,” Eppler-Wolff says. “It’s to infuse the culture with an awareness of what children and families are dealing with. And if we can make that investment, we help children to make big changes that will benefit them throughout their lives.”