Episode 1: Youth Mental Health, Trauma and Trauma-informed Practice
Working with youth as a Teaching Artist comes with privileges and responsibilities. Hosted by Louise Campbell with guest Alyssa Kuzmarov, the Arts and Youth Mental Health Podcast dives into issues in mental health that can arise in the classroom when working as a teaching artist, and some of the ways in which teaching artists can, and can’t, help. Episode one addresses the basics of youth mental health, trauma and trauma-informed practice as it relates to the role of being a Teaching Artist.
Transcription:
Louise: Welcome to the arts and youth mental health podcasts. My name is Louise Campbell. I’m a musician and teaching artist and your host for this series. The Arts and Youth Mental Health Podcast delves into youth mental health and well being as it relates to the practice of teaching artists. Our guest is filmmaker, teaching artist and social worker Alyssa Kuzmarov. Alyssa, welcome to the podcast.
Alyssa: Thanks so much! Happy to be here.
What Does Being A Teaching Artist Mean To You?
Louise: To get us started, can you tell us a bit about yourself and what being a teaching artist means to you?
Alyssa: Absolutely. Grateful to be here, thank you so much for having me here.
Being a teaching artist is a very special role for me. I’ve been a social worker for about 25 years working with youth. My training is in social work. However, over the course of my career and personal journey, I’ve discovered that being an artist is actually what I like to say I’m more of, if I could put it that way. I think my career has evolved into balancing both, that I integrate my social work and my art. I’m very, very passionate about the art I do, and youth, of course.
Louise: So what is a teaching artist?
Alyssa: It’s hard for me to define that role, because I think there are so many ways that everyone uses that role. For me, a teaching artist is creating a very special space for youth to open up, to express themselves, explore themselves, to explore different mediums, to just have a space to rage, to be sad, to have fun, to laugh. It’s quite a privilege, really, because we go into a space where we don’t know youth so well, and yet we get to know them very well in a very short amount of time. It’s a very privileged position.
Louise: A teaching artist can often engage with youth over a very short term. I know that for myself, sometimes that short term element can be even just once, maybe up to three or five times, if I’m lucky. And where do you do this work?
Alyssia: I do it in all sorts of settings: community centers, I work a lot with youth in the protection system (I made a film about youth in the protection system), I work in schools… Yeah, all different settings and venues.
And it’s true what you’re saying, the idea of going in for a short amount of time can feel very limiting. But on the other hand, I feel like, as teaching artists, we really dive in quickly and deep and get to know youth quite well in a very short amount of time
Louise: Absolutely. And I find that it’s also a very privileged role because it’s short. We’re a different adult. We’re somebody that they don’t know, necessarily, and because of the creative process, sometimes that brings up things that might not have a chance to surface otherwise.
Alyssa: 100%. I’m in the middle of a project right now with some youth in the protection system. I’m really astounded by how much they open up in a very quick and short amount of time. It’s what you said, it’s a privileged position where an adult comes in outside of their lives with the intention of getting to know them and getting to express themselves so, and they feel the genuineness of that mission and goal.
Louise: I also think that it means that with our role comes a lot of responsibility. This is a lot of why we’re talking about youth mental health, in this podcast.
What Is Mental Health?
Today, our topic of conversation is about mental health as well as trauma and trauma informed practice. Do you want to get us started off on this topic?
Alyssa: Absolutely. So I agree with you that there’s a big responsibility. I think it’s great and I think as teaching artists, we do have to learn more about what youth go through so that we can be better prepared to deal with some of the stuff that might come up in workshops. As much as we say it’s a privilege, as you said, it’s a responsibility too, because if they share and open up so quickly and deeply, then as teaching artists, we have to be prepared to properly give them a space where they can express in a safe way.
A great place to start is to look at ‘what is mental health’? To me, this is a very general definition, of course, but just the idea of people feeling good about their lives, a general sense of well being, a sense of emotional well being, a sense of spiritual well being, if some people are inclined that way, positive coping mechanisms… The truth is, we all go through very difficult things in our lives, but to me, positive mental health means that we can deal with whatever comes up, and that in general in our lives, we’re feeling pretty good about stuff.
So then, if we look at the opposite of that, there’s mental illness, mental health issues or mental health disorders. It’s a whole spectrum. That would be the opposite of what I just described. So if youth are feeling a general sense of dis-ease with their lives, they’re generally unhappy or frustrated or they’re shut down emotionally or do not have positive coping mechanisms, that could be a way to look at ‘what are mental health issues’?
I do feel we’re seeing more and more of this. Teaching artists will definitely be exposed to all sorts of different things. We can’t fully do justice to this topic in a very short amount of time. It’s a huge topic with much depth, but just what might we face in the classrooms or community centers or wherever teaching artists might work?
Definitely, anxiety and depression are very prevalent these days amongst youth. Again, there’s a huge spectrum of that: there’s the youth who is sad and upset about stuff to really not being able to get out of bed. It’s a whole continuum and a whole spectrum. Same for anxiety. There are kids who have panic attacks, and then there are kids who feel quite anxious. Body image, issues like eating disorders and things like that rose quite a lot during the pandemic. Suicide is something that we know youth face and really affects them. Again, not a huge percentage, but it is a big percentage of mental health issues youth face. ADHD. So we’re going to encounter all sorts of things.
I think the most important thing to know is we might or we might not have to understand all of what youth are going through. Just be aware that they are going through lots of things. We’re going to talk about trauma-informed care, and how we can best address some of these things in our role as teaching artists.
Louise: Right, and as a teaching artist, you’re not going to get the diagnosis, it’s more that it’ll come out in the behaviors or some of the reactions that you might be seeing in the youth you’re working with.
Alyssa: Absolutely, absolutely. Even in my hat as a social worker, we don’t do diagnoses. But yes, that’s exactly how you said it was. It’ll come out in behaviors. It’ll come out in our sensitivity as teaching artists to the fact that youth are going through some tough stuff.
Louise: So our responsibility in this matter isn’t to do a diagnosis. Obviously, we don’t have that training or that capacity. It’s more to create a situation in which we will be able to interact best with youth.
Alyssa: Absolutely, I love how you said that. The topic of the second podcast is more about behavior specifically, but my general summary is we won’t always know what’s going on behind the behaviors of youth, but we can have a sensitivity and an awareness that there are some really deep things going on (which, again, I think is intuitive to artists in a general way) and then find and acquire tools that can help us cope with some of those behaviors, given our sensitivity to what might be behind the behaviors.
Louise: I think whenever people do this kind of work, it’s quite obvious. These things come out loud and clear, and it’s more about figuring out how to deal and how to respond, and potentially when and where to access support for the youth.
Alyssa: Yes. Yes, exactly.
What Is Trauma And Trauma-informed Practice?
Louise: In your work as a social worker, I know that you bring different tools, different baggage with you than many teaching artists necessarily would. That’s a lot of why you’re the guest here. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you understand mental health in social work?
Alyssa: Well, I’d like to bring in trauma, if that’s okay at this point. To talk about ‘What is trauma?’, and ‘What is trauma-informed care?’, and ‘What is trauma-informed practice?’ These are very big buzz words nowadays. People hear about them, and they know about them a lot. Social work in general is getting more and more into that sort of orientation, that we have to be much more sensitive to traumas.
So what is trauma? Like I was saying earlier, every youth, every person, goes through difficult things. And adolescence, by definition, is a very difficult time. It’s a turbulent time, whether it be the hormones or self discovery, or all sorts of things, peer issues, peer pressure and all sorts of pressures in general. So youth will be going through traumas.
But when does trauma become a problem? For example, let’s take divorce. Divorce is a very prevalent issue that many, many youth face. Fifty percent of families go through that. So when does that become a trauma? It is a trauma for every youth that goes through a situation like divorce. However, what’s going to differentiate between something that youth can move through or something that they might get stuck in? And that’s where it could be helpful for teaching artists to understand.
The way I like to define trauma comes from Peter Levine, a great expert on trauma. Trauma is about how a person perceives an event that happens to them. If they perceive that event as life threatening, then it becomes a problematic trauma for them. If the person perceives it as a really terrible event, a really hard event, but not life threatening and not like they have to go into survival mode, then they can move through it.
So take that same example of a youth who goes through a divorce. They have two supportive parents that talk to them, that explain to them that it’s not their fault. The parents maybe are in contact, have a good relationship. The youth themselves can get support, whether it be from their friends or from health professionals or from somebody. They have outlets like art or sports or some other kind of outlet. They have a positive experience at school. Then they can move through that trauma. It’s still a trauma, but they can move through it, and they can integrate new ways of coping, and they can move forward in their lives.
Where it becomes problematic is if in that same divorce, the parents are really fighting, or there’s violence in the house, or the youth somehow integrates that it’s their fault that their parents are getting divorced because of them, or they have no supports, all the opposite of what I said before. They don’t have any outlets, they don’t have a channel, they don’t have people that they can talk to. That’s when they can get stuck in their trauma, and that’s when it becomes really problematic.
And in today’s world, a lot of youth are left on their own, unfortunately, to deal with stuff, and so the trauma that potentially could be something difficult that they move through can become really problematic, and they can get stuck in it.
Louise: And if they don’t necessarily have support, sometimes that’s when, as a teaching artist, you come in and you ask them to express themselves through art, that’s sometimes when some of these things can surface.
Alyssa: Yes, and I think truthfully, why they might turn to us as teaching artists is because of exactly that: that they don’t have people that ask how they feel, ask what they’re living, ask them to express themselves on different subjects. That doesn’t come up in their daily worlds. And so we become extra important as teaching artists, because there we are opening doors that they actually really desperately want to open, to talk and share, and just don’t have anyone or anywhere to do it.
Louise: For sure. I think this leads quite naturally into trauma-informed practice or care. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Alyssa: Absolutely, trauma-informed care. There are a lot of different principles that are involved in trauma-informed care. So what is it? Well, I could list a whole bunch of things, but one thing that’s very important to understand is that in social work, there has been a shift. Typically in social work, we look at the problems: what is the problem? Then we focus on the problem and fixing the problem. So it’s all about problem, problem, problem, as opposed to this idea of trauma-informed care, which brings in this notion of, instead of asking people ‘Well, what’s the problem?’, we ask, ‘Well, what happened? What is behind? What’s actually going on here?’
Although that might seem like a tiny shift, it’s a huge shift. I’ll use that example, the divorce. As opposed to ‘What’s the problem here’, it’s more like, ‘What happened? Share and tell about your experience’. So that shift might seem subtle, but it’s instead of ‘What’s wrong with you?’, it’s ‘What is happening to you?’, or ‘What has happened to you?’
And that is huge. Might seem subtle, but it’s quite huge, and it brings this idea of sharing and hearing people, actually hearing their stories and what they have gone through. Seems very basic and might be more intuitive for artists, but it’s a shift in the social work world.
A Strengths-based Approach to Teaching Artistry
Alyssa: So what does that actually look like? There are a few more technical terms, like strengths-based approach. What a strength-based approach means is focusing on people’s strengths and how they get through, focusing on how they do cope and what has helped them, what outlets they have, or what resources, inner or outer, they’ve tapped into.
So that’s one thing which I think is quite intuitive to artists, is to point out people’s strengths. Like to focus on what a kid does do well, for example, or what a youth does bring to a project, or how creative they are. I think to me, it’s a bit more intuitive for artists to focus on that and really praise kids, as opposed to seeing the problem only. But that’s a big shift in social work to making it more strength-based. So we look at people’s strengths.
There are a lot of other things like safety, making a classroom or a workshop feel safe. Actually, I’m going to turn the question back to you: how do you do that in your classrooms? What kind of things do you do to make sure people, the youth that you work with, are feeling safe in the classroom?
Louise: There are lots of things that I do. I think probably the biggest thing that I do is I try to keep it light, and I start off with a lot of praise. If I’m walking into a classroom or school for the first time, I look around and see what’s already happening there. If there’s fantastic art on the wall, I’ll say, ‘Wow, I love all the art that you’ve done here. It’s such a beautiful place to be’. There’s always something to admire. And so starting off with that something to admire, I think, helps to start to create that trust.
And then, personally, I’m not a social worker, I would never ask, ‘What happened in your parents divorce’? That’s not where I would go. If it comes out in the artistic process, that’s okay. But I set up an artistic process where there is choice for the youth to decide what they want to explore and how they want to explore. Frankly, most of the time it’s usually pretty light hearted stuff, or for some youth, it’s more typical blood and gore or teenage angst that I wouldn’t necessarily think is an indicator of any other deep seated problems.
I think making sure that whatever situation I’m putting in place allows choice for the youth is where that sense of ‘I’m okay here’ happens. And then if they want to get into deeper topics, they can, but there’s never any obligation to do so.
Alyssa: Okay, so if I pick out all the things you just said, you’ve touched on many of the points of trauma-informed care, and you see, you do it naturally. That justifies my earlier point that artists do some things very naturally, like you mentioned, building trust. Trust is one of the keys of trauma informed practice. How do you do that? What you described is wonderful. There are other ways to do that as well.
You talked about giving youth choice, which, again, is one of the key elements of trauma-informed practice. If we go to an extreme situation, people who have experienced trauma often feel that they don’t have choice. So if someone’s experienced a lot of abuse or neglect, there’s often no choice. By giving people choice, you just said that so naturally, that’s a big thing, right? If we come in and we force youth to do something one way which our school system typically does, right? and more traditional social work as well… If we give people choice then they can take back a little bit of the control that really gives them a sense of empowerment, and that shifts, once again, the whole dynamic that now they can feel competent and able to choose for themselves.
You talked about strength-based because you talked about walking into the classroom and finding things to admire and focus on the positives, which, again, is one of the elements. So, all that to say, you touched on a lot of the key bases of what trauma-informed care is actually all about.
I am glad you also said that, yeah, youth don’t have to go there and talk about deep things. Absolutely not. My film programs are really about fun, and if deep stuff comes up, that’s wonderful. The space is there for them, if they feel safe enough, which, to be honest, a lot of the time they do, maybe more because I’m doing writing or different activities. But not always, and sometimes it really stays light and fun.
And yes, in the role of a teaching artist, we’re not going to explore what happened to you. I wanted to just talk about that because it’s a shift in an approach, not necessarily that it’s our role as teaching artists to explore that. So I’m glad that you specified that.
To add to trauma-informed principles, you mentioned most of them, the only other thing I would add is acknowledgement and non-judgment. When we walk into a classroom, I would say 50% of the kids are going through some rough stuff. Might be more in some schools, might be less than others, but there’s a lot going on in our world, whether it be internationally, politically, in people’s homes, or on social media, there’s just so much going on for youth in their lives. Just to acknowledge that and have that in the back of our heads is a big thing. Also the school system, they go through so much in a day. It could just be that they have to sit still all day, and that that’s a really difficult thing for a lot of people, a lot of youth.
And the only other thing I want to mention is compassion and collaboration. Collaboration goes hand in hand with choice, which you talked about. To get practical for a second, as a teaching artist, it could be as simple as coming in and saying, ‘Today everybody, we’re going do film, but you have the choice of what kind of film’. Or, ‘Today we’re going to work on trailers, but if you don’t want to work on a trailer, you can work on another type of project. And here’s the second option’. That sounds like a simple thing, but that is giving kids options when, often, in a day, they don’t have that. It allows them just one more step of freedom to express themselves and feel excited about the process that we’re bringing to them as teaching artists.
Louise: I’m wondering if you can give us a concrete example of when you’ve walked into a classroom, provided some choices and seen a shift in a youth or a youth’s behavior.
Alyssa: Well, I have an example with a younger youth, but I think it could fit with what you’re asking. I started a film project in an elementary school with grade six kids. The idea was to do a film on inclusion. That was the theme that the teacher had picked out. I went with that. And so we had an activity plan where they would do little videos on inclusion. There was one boy that had some sort of mental health issues. I don’t know what they were. You brought this up earlier, it’s so true, we don’t have to know what the issues are. And again, we’re in and out, so we won’t know and that’s okay. But I definitely identified him as ‘this boy has something going on’. And the second workshop, it came out that he was very upset, and he was sort of clinging to me and really bothered. The whole workshop, he was really upset.
And so finally I took some time, and I said to him, ‘Okay, it’s hard for me, I have 25 youths here, and I can see that you’re quite upset. What’s actually going on for you?’ And it came out that he was really upset because he didn’t like the theme of inclusion. He really wanted to do something about superheroes and superpowers and something totally different, which normally would have been fine. And truthfully, it was fine. I’m sure the teacher would have been fine with that, but because we, the teacher and I didn’t give choices, he got upset by that. It was just a reminder to me that I really should have specified that this is what we’re doing, however, if you have another idea or something that you really feel passionate about, come and see me, and we can explore that as well.
Louise: I wonder if there might have been a way to turn the superhero theme into an inclusion theme?
Alyssa: Well, funny enough, I did. I told the youth that we had one final workshop (there were only three workshops). I brought the teacher in on it, and I said, ‘Look, he was very upset about this, and he would really like to do his film’. And he was like, really gung ho. I said, ‘It’s a bit on you now because I’m leaving for today, however, I’ll be back next time, and if you prepare, I will spend time with you, and we’ll make sure that we get a group together and have time to do your video. And we did, and he was very happy about it, and it worked out well.
It was a reminder for me, I give choices in workshops, and this time I didn’t. So again, we’re always learning and growing, and it was a good reminder how important it can be.
Louise: Well, it’s fun, because that led to an inclusive superhero.
Alyssa: And then, yeah, there’s a whole other story, which is the other boys. He felt excluded, ironically, because the theme was about inclusion. And so a few of the other boys agreed to do his project on the third workshop. It was actually quite a nice moment both for him and the other boys to realize they had to include this boy. So there was a lot of good learning that came out of that.
Louise: And very fitting with the theme of inclusion.
Alyssa: Wes, yes, some real life kind of experience and what it might mean to feel excluded and become more included. Yes, exactly, exactly. And to help him work through his feelings, which we did by bringing in the teacher. These are some things we’ll talk about in some of the other podcasts, the idea of ‘Who do you turn to?’ Because I didn’t know this kid, I’m very clear about when I’m a teaching artist and not a social worker. It wasn’t my job to deal with his behaviors. It was more ‘How can I get him some support?’
Louise: That sounds like it was a real clear shift in behavior for somebody that was maybe struggling with some sort of mental health issue, whether small or or somewhere else on the spectrum of mental health.
Alyssa: Yes.
Louise: I’m wondering if you could tell us a story about when a youth is sitting in a classroom and they haven’t exhibited a particular behavior and obvious need, but just suddenly comes out with something that you weren’t expecting.
Alyssa: Yes, I have a great example, actually. I was in a high school recently, a grade 11 class, and there were these two girls that really stuck out for me because they seemed quite creative, very reserved and not fully there. It was hard to name exactly what was going on. At one point, I felt their hesitation, and I went up to them and I said ‘I can’t name what’s going on here, but I want you to know that I feel, or a sense that you have some great ideas, and I’d really love to see you do them.’ They were sort of going to be lumped in a big group and I got the sense that some of the guys were going to take over, some of the male students, and that these girls would fade into the background. That was a bit of the sense that I got. And in fact, I was right. They did join this big group. There were about seven in the group, and they got lost in the ideas of other people. I just sort of kept nudging them quietly saying, ‘I hope you take your place’, something like that. And, long story short, they decided to separate from the big group. They did their own film just the two of them. And the film was absolutely brilliant. They did it on a theme related to mental health issues. This story was of a girl who talked to an imaginary friend because she felt very lonely. It was very creative and really in their own voices. And they were very proud of it in the end, and I was very proud of them. So it’s a really beautiful process, actually.
Again, we don’t know what people are going through. It’s true that sometimes there are extreme behaviors in the classroom, and it’s quite obvious that those youth are troubled or going through difficult things. Then there are many, many other youth that we can’t necessarily know what they’re going through, and they might present as not going through anything at all. It’s important not to overlook them.
Louise: You’re making me think that a lot of the skill of a teaching artist is being able to relate to people and finding a way to create these connections with youth and provide them with an opportunity to to express themselves in whatever way that they want to.
Alyssa: I love that you said it because you’re bringing back something I wanted to talk about earlier: how do we create that trust and that safety? And you said it so well. Even in the social work world, it’s the exact same thing. It really does come down to what you just said, which is making connections, making meaningful connections, being open, trying to explore what interests them.
I’ve had many youth that aren’t so into filmmaking, but when you pry a little or you dig a little deeper, they do have some passion that they could make a film about. There was one boy that had no interest in filmmaking at all, and yet he was very passionate about cars. So we ended up doing an ad on cars, and it was really funny. So that connection and the presence and caring and being genuine, all of those qualities make for a trusting and safe environment.
In social work, there’s a lot of talk of creating safe spaces. I have to say, personally, I don’t love that. I don’t think it’s possible in my opinion. I don’t think it’s possible to create a safe space, because I can never ensure that I won’t trigger someone with something I said, or I might say the wrong thing or… and again, I have a lot of experience. I feel confident in that, and still, I could say the wrong thing. I could offend someone. I could do an activity that somehow upsets them. So I don’t think we create safe spaces across the board. I think we can create safer spaces by doing some of the things we talked about earlier, by giving people choices, by trying to create those meaningful relationships you’re talking about, and not being shy to ask those questions about who they are, what they’re into, some basic stuff that can make us relatable to them, make them relatable to us.
Our role is so valuable and so important. There was one class where I hung back a bit because I was doing a French workshop, and I really pushed through that to say to myself ‘No, no, open, open, because they need us’. They really do. They need adults that will push them to be vulnerable or just to have fun and to explore areas they’ve never explored before, or express things they’ve never expressed before, or just have those choices we keep talking about: to do, to not do, what they want to do, how they want to do it.
Louise: That’s a great sum up of what it is to be a teaching artist, and some of the situations that we walk into. That leads well to our next podcast on classroom management, universal themes and different types of behaviors. Is there anything else you want to say about our current topic before we close?
Alyssa: I have this idea of trauma-informed glasses. We put on a lens where we’re just aware that there’s a lot of stuff going on out there for youth. We walk into a classroom, we might never know what that ‘stuff’ is, but if we put on those trauma lenses, then a lot of the behaviors which we’re going to talk about in the next podcast will just have a different angle to them, like a different perspective on how we see behaviors, given that youth are going through so much.
Louise: Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts with us today, Alyssa.
Alyssa: Thanks for having me.
Acknowledgements
Hosted by Louise Campbell, this podcast was recorded at ELAN’s Community Digital Arts Hub, with mixing and editing by Tyler Rauman. Music featured on this podcast was produced by Kuzmo, a youth involved in the creation of the soundtrack for the film RESILIENCE.
The Creative Care podcast is funded by the Community Health & Social Services Network (CHSSN), the Secretariat à la jeunesse and the Lucie and André Chagnon Foundation. The views expressed herein are based on the experience and professional training of the guests, and supported by information on mental health and wellbeing that were current at the time of recording in June 2024. These views do not necessarily represent the views of ELAN or the funders.