In That Number

Kelli’s Story

Both of my parents are educators, retired educators now, but my mom was an English teacher for almost 30 years and my dad was a band director, assistant principal, principal, central office employee, and then he retired in his 60s leading the school in a juvenile detention center. While I never originally wanted to go into education, it was all around me my entire life. I was actually just talking to my mom recently about the things I remember as a child when she’d come home from school. I remember her grading papers all the time and reading the journals of her students, because she taught AP English and made them write all the time. I don’t remember her feeding us, though, but I know that that happened! Needless to say, education was all around me.

My name is Kelli Jordan and I’m the Director of School Support and Improvement at the Orleans Parish School Board. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and had a wonderful educational experience at public schools. I say that because it is really important that we have great public schools in our cities for everyone to attend. I left Atlanta and went to undergraduate at Hampton University, and then immediately pursued my doctorate at the University of Tennessee in school psychology, but my pre-doctoral internship is what led me to New Orleans. 

When I was in graduate school my professors shared that in my interview I said there was something about New Orleans that I loved, and in four or five years, when it was time for me to do my internship, I was going to go to New Orleans. Fast forward four years and we had to go through a match system similar to medical school and I ended up matching in New Orleans. This was four years post-Katrina. So I moved to New Orleans to work in St. Bernard Parish schools, thinking that I immediately wanted to go back to Atlanta. I was planning to go back and I was about halfway through my first year here, but then I was like, “I don't think so. Not right now. My work isn't done here.” There was so much work to be done, particularly in St. Bernard Parish, but I just realized if I leave, I'm doing the very thing that is contradictory to what we know is needed in this area right now. And that is stability, consistency, relationships with students, parents, everything. So I joke around now and say, one year turned into      two years, and then year two turned into year three. And here I am now 10 years later, still fighting the good fight. While my positions have changed over the years in education, the reason that I'm here has not changed at all.

The most important thing to provide to a young person is consistency. Relationships are so, so important. Relationships are our protective factor and it hurt my heart at times to see the transient nature of education systems - all over the place, actually. Teacher retention is an issue everywhere. Just being there for students and being there for families can be the support that they never knew they needed. Now on the other side of things, whenever there are not good places, supportive places, safe places for students and families, that is the worst-case scenario. Just not doing right by kids, not doing right by families is the worst-case scenario. Schools are trusted to do so much all of the time, and it's a very hard job. But given that these are our most precious resources in the world - our babies - not handling our students with care and love is the worst thing that can happen.

The main two things that I see in our students and families is violence and family separation. We have a high prevalence of violence here in the city and I think the number of students that are exposed to violence continues to grow. We have to think about why that is the case. And it's cyclical. The poverty, the housing crisis that we have, low wage jobs, all of those things contribute to some of the trauma our kids experience. Their parents aren't able to be there for them and aren't able to provide the relationships that they need to have with adults outside of the school building, outside of school hours. We can do a lot of work from 8am – 3pm, but after that we have to trust our babies with other adults. And when you have to work two, three, four jobs to keep up and keep the lights on at home in a neighborhood that is probably already overpriced, all of that contributes to the trauma that our kids are showing up with every day. And this is one of the worst times for the accumulation of trauma because those developmental years, they matter the most.

I'm going to talk about the student who has probably impacted me the most in this work. That student experienced a significant number of deaths in his immediate family in a matter of three of four years for different reasons. I didn’t mention this earlier, but the death of loved ones is another large kind of trauma that shows up in our schools and our kids. And the student’s guardian at the time was having to work outside of the city in order to make ends meet. So the student was constantly having to stay with different family members who didn't have guardianship and therefore faced a number of barriers in accessing the different mental health supports that I think were needed for the family. And his guardian struggled at times to understand what he was going through – both the experience and the impact of not addressing the experiences he was having as soon as possible. We supported him to the extent possible at the school, but we needed so much more assistance to help the family realize what was really going on, name what was going on and then build understanding to drive to action. They knew something happened, but then how were they going to address this with the student, and then themselves live a healthy, productive life moving forward? And a lot of the time I actually think it’s good to come right back into school in that safe environment after something tragic has happened. It's a safe environment for you to get back to your routines. But when you're in those routines and aren't addressing the issues, they’re bound to come out in some way, shape, or form. And some of that work is getting the adults in students’ lives to understand what's happening, to get it addressed, and not to band aid and downplay it and say, “Oh, no, everything's fine,” because it’s bound to show up later.

What I will say is that staff members at schools are doing the best that they can with the resources and the time that they have. One of the things that I love to see is home visits. I love to see when teachers and administrators and counselors can take the time to go out to visit a home to learn more about the neighborhood that a student lives in. Just taking the time to build those relationships, that's what it really comes down to for me in this work. As educators we’re charged with doing so much every single day, but just taking the time out to get to know students, get to know families, and get to know their challenges, makes all the difference in the world. I would also say that when you ask a student - or any of us, for that matter - what they remember most about school, it’s very rare that you hear “I remember that geometry formula that I learned in the 10th grade,” or “I remember U.S. history from 1892 to 1893.” That's not what students remember. They remember the people who impacted their lives the most - the teachers, the counselors, the mentors, the administrators. Those are the stories that get told forever and ever.

So training and ongoing support is always an area of need. A lot of us as adults have gone to trainings and come back and go, “Wow, that was a lot of information. Now what?” And so I really think it's important as we think about sustaining the systemic kind of change needed in any school setting to recognize that a one and done training is not going to be enough. Going back to another $50 million idea, or however much it will cost, I would love for any school that's interested in implementing or shifting to a more trauma-informed approach at their school, that there be some ongoing consultation and support provided to the school for those practices to be sustainable over time. Otherwise everyone is kind of wasting their time if it's only impactful for a year or two. And I tie that to money because the reality is training costs money. Bringing in experts to teach our schools best practices, all of that costs money. But we have to rethink the models that we've traditionally used for professional development, specifically for trauma-informed schools to exist beyond the life of a grant.

Lastly, I’d just say that licensed mental health providers are important, but wraparound services are what our students need the most; we need more case management. The ability to support a family to get the primary care appointments that they need, help them get access to insurance (if that is a need for them), get them psychiatric and mental health supports, that’s key. We really need to have people who can support students and families and take the time to support them in navigating all the spaces of need. In a lot of our schools we have people there, but when you look at the number of kids and we look at the need, there just isn't enough time in the day to provide that level of intensive case management. So in my perfect world, every school has access to an unlimited number of individuals who have the training to provide those wraparound support services that extend beyond the school day, outside of the classroom.