While the Jr. Bills were sleeping in on Monday morning, the faculty of St. Louis U. High were making the trek to school business as usual for a packed day of Faculty Formation.

        Faculty Formation days typically consist of staff training which exposes them to the constantly evolving needs of the student body. Monday’s meeting more specifically focused on three main topics: the purpose of school, the purpose of academic rigor, and the purpose of social/emotional learning. Staff were informed on various methods of professional development and the characteristics of expert teachers.

The day started off with faculty meetings which would usually begin with an introduction from Jim Linhares, Assistant Principal for Mission. However, Linhares was not present due to being sick.

After the meetings, the faculty split into two groups— one listened to a presentation by Amy Maus from the West County Psychological Center that revolved around anxiety, both what it looked like scientifically and what it looked like in students. Mass had previously spoken with faculty consistently before the pandemic on topics such as teenage suicide and other mental health issues.

The group discussed strategies they could use as teachers to help students dealing with anxiety. “Our students have just gotten over the pandemic, and some of their families have been in turmoil. Some of their parents have lost not only their jobs, but their entire livelihood, their businesses,” said theology teacher Richard Wehner. “I think we really need to take that into account and that really made me think about how I interact with my students. [The presentation] was a very positive thing for me.” Red flags of anxiety students might discreetly display in a classroom setting were also discussed so that teachers can better connect with some of the deeper hardships students may be harboring just beneath the surface.

“She gave us a good definition of anxiety,” said Kevin Foy, Assistant Principal for Academics. “She talked about how the current generation was parented differently and that leads to different sets of skills of coping with anxiety, many of which are not as good. The generation of parents tends to be more anxious and anxiety bleeds up and down through generations.”

With post-pandemic stress and anxiety being ever-present realities to some degree in nearly every SLUH student, Monday’s meeting proved to be absolutely essential to letting teachers better comprehend and address student anxiety.

“I was able to form a better understanding of what kids go through just by having better language about what anxiety is,” said Foy.

The other group went upstairs to read a synopsis of an article by Dr. John Hattie, a researcher in education and the Director of the Melbourne Educational Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia. The article mainly focused on how teachers can best apply their strengths and weaknesses, building connections with students, and maximizing instruction that caters to how students learn.

“I believe in investment,” said Foy. “When we take time away from teaching students, that is a miss. However, if by taking this time we can become better at our jobs, then that is an investment worth making.”