Back to School With a Twist: Improving Student Mindfulness and Academic Performance in a Post-COVID School Environment
Dr. Alina Diaz-Blanco • Cahn Fellow 2021
International Studies Preparatory Academy, a magnet public high school in Miami-Dade County, Florida, features a unique set of demographics reflecting our language program-based structure and curriculum. In addition to a largely-Hispanic student population, our school has a significant minority of European students, particularly from France, Italy, and Spain. Given the cross-cultural differences in processing and coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, our school was posed with considerable challenges to helping students adjust socially and scholastically after the resumption of in-class instruction during the 2021-2022 school year.
The consequences of the closing of schools and subsequent transition to a virtual learning model during the first year and a half of the pandemic required an innovative approach to social emotional learning (SEL) practices in order to improve student mental and emotional wellbeing, as well as academic performance. Our school action study demonstrated the tangible effects that implementing novel and tailored SEL strategies, such as creating support clubs and preparing reacclimatizing presentations, has had on our culturally-diverse student population from the all-virtual 2020-2021 school year to the in-person 2021-2022 year.
