The DESSA System supports proactive identification of students who may need support and helps educators foster emotional resilience and student wellbeing.
“Our approach to student support used to follow a more traditional pyramid of academics and behavior, but over the past few years we noticed a significant need for social, emotional, and mental health services to be integrated into that, and a new model was created to guide practices at our schools.”
— Duane Woelfel Port Washington-Saukville School District
“Being able to look through all of the data and identify what resources we needed to mobilize for schools to meet their students’ needs was really helpful. Mental health support had been talked about anecdotally, now we had data to back it up.”
— Patrick Farrell Charlottesville City Schools
Integrating a Resilience Program to Address a Student Mental Health Crisis
For a long time, mental wellness support in Charlottesville City Schools was viewed as something schools outsourced. Educators began receiving real-time data on students’ mental health that they could use to more promptly integrate support to address their needs.
Address Behavior Challenges with a Comprehensive Resilience System
Implementing effective programming for identifying, monitoring, and promoting students’ skills can serve as building blocks toward a strategic and comprehensive school mental health system.
If behavior data is not used, then it is useless. Results should help school teams make decisions.
