GSE in the News

Sabrina Musson, clinical assistant professor in the UB Graduate School of Education, and Diane Elze, associate dean for academic affairs and associate professor in the UB School of Social Work, argued that police forces are ill-equipped to handle mental health crises. “It is time for Buffalo to follow the lead of Los Angeles, Denver, and Eugene, Ore., and stop using the police as first responders to mental health crises and allow social workers and mental health professionals to respond to these calls without police involvement,” the authors write.

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Claire Cameron, associate professor of learning and instruction in the Graduate School of Education, discussed in a report how parents and teachers can talk about the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol with children.

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Julie Gorlewski, chair of the learning and instruction department in the Graduate School of Education, about women who are both moms and teachers. Researchers explored the experiences and challenges facing teacher-mothers who perform the roles of educator in the classroom and parent at home, while also typically carrying out more household labor than their partners. Gorlewski said that technology that blurs the lines between work and home, inadequate parental leave policies, and low teacher pay can all exacerbate these responsibilities, “Balancing a teaching career and motherhood seems to be becoming more difficult. Both roles carry an expectation of selfless nurturing and can result in physical and emotional exhaustion,” said Gorlewski.

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Corrie Stone-Johnson, associate professor of educational leadership in the Graduate School of Education, was quoted on the difficulties of grading students attending school remotely. “Given that they are still remote and that there remains equity challenges in terms of parental or caregiver support in the home and access to technology, it makes sense to think about a more flexible grading structure for those students,” she said. The story added that during the lockdown last spring, Regents exams were cancelled and schools focused on students’ social and emotional needs. “What we found is that teachers still taught and students still learned,” said Stone-Johnson, who was involved in a national study looking at how principals in 19 states responded to school closures in the spring.

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The Daily Mail reported that the lockdowns resulting from the pandemic have contributed to weight gain among children. The story cited research by Myles Faith, professor and chair of the Department of Counseling, School and Educational Psychology in the Graduate School of Education, who said: “Recognising these adverse collateral effects of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown is critical in avoiding the depreciation of hard-fought weight control efforts among youths afflicted with excess weight.”

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Higher Ed Dive quoted Nathan Daun-Barnett, associate professor of educational leadership and policy, in an article on California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal of guaranteed admission to the state’s four-year universities for certain community college graduates. California’s proposal could put further strain on the state’s public colleges, said Daun-Barnett. “I would think that Berkeley would have a tough time, UCLA would have a tough time,” he said. “Even a couple of the others would have a tough time accommodating everybody who choose that institution.

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WGRZ-TV spoke to Stephanie Frederick, associate director of the Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention, about how to help children process what they hear and see in news reports ranging from the pandemic to police violence. “One of the things that I recommend is that you really let your child’s questions kind of guide these conversations," Frederick said. “We need to make sure that we have an understanding of the events that are going on and we need to talk about it in a way that is rational.”

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CNN quotes Amanda Nickerson, director of the Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention at UB, in a story on how lockdown drills affect U.S. children. The article discusses research co-authored by Nickerson, including a 2019 study where fifth and sixth graders were split into two groups: one that completed a lockdown drill, and one that learned origami. “What we found was that students that were taught the drill procedures and then had to do them were able to gain the knowledge, do the actual steps of the drill, and then there were no differences in anxiety and perceptions of school safety between those kids and the kids that did the origami,” Nickerson said.

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Futurity reported on UB research that found mental health support at boarding schools helps only male students feel emotionally safe from bullying. The study – led by Stephanie Fredrick, associate director of the UB Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention – found that mental health support did not have the same effect for female students.

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Channels Television interviewed Adetola Salau, doctoral candidate in the Graduate School of Education and senior special assistant on education to the governor for Lagos State in Nigeria, on plans and procedures for opening schools and establishing COVID-19 safety and learning parameters in the state.

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