O.D. Wyatt wants to help students build resiliency. Free groceries are a bonus.

A high school in southeast Fort Worth is launching a program designed to help students build connections at school and work on the emotional health and resiliency skills that many didn’t have a chance to develop during the pandemic.

The program, called THRIVE, will give O.D. Wyatt High School students access to web-based training modules designed to teach them skills like conflict resolution, behavior management and coping with grief. By completing those modules, students earn points that they can then use to buy groceries in a student-run market on campus.

The program is funded by a grant from the Texas Health Resources Foundation, which funded a similar program at an alternative high school in the Sanger Independent School District beginning in 2019.

Training modules teach students resiliency, interpersonal skills

The program is set to begin this fall. O.D. Wyatt officials plan to replace an aging portable building on campus with a new structure to house the grocery store. Once the store is open, students will be able to volunteer there, giving them an opportunity to develop job skills.

Marsha Ingle, director of community health improvement for Texas Health, said the resiliency training modules are designed to teach students healthier ways of managing their own behavior. Often, students who went through traumatic experiences like abuse, neglect or growing up in a home with a parent who struggles with addiction don’t have resiliency skills to help them cope with the stress that comes along with those experiences.

As they get older, many of those students will turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms like drug and alcohol abuse or risky sexual behaviors to help them manage that stress, Ingle said. The lessons help students understand what’s driving their own behavior and how to cope with stress in healthier ways, she said.

For example, one module works with students who are at risk of skipping school. It helps students think through the reasons they want to skip school, she said, and helps them understand the consequences of truancy. Then, it helps them develop short- and long-term plans to keep them in school.

“So, for example, I don’t want to go to school. But I’m going to go today so that I can figure out why I don’t want to go to school. And then I’m going to go tomorrow and see if I can address why I don’t want to go to school,” Ingle said. “So it has action items on how they work through this problem.”

Other modules are geared toward parents, including lessons on how to build strong families and how families can deal with death.

The program also places a guidance counselor at O.D. Wyatt to work with students who need help beyond what the modules can offer, Ingle said. Unlike typical high school counselors, who also work with students on college essays and scholarship applications, the counselor hired as a part of the grant will only focus on students’ mental and behavioral health, she said. If students need more intensive mental health treatment, the counselor will be able to refer them to a therapist in the community, she said.

The foundation selected O.D. Wyatt for the grant because it’s located in one of Tarrant County’s highest-need areas, Ingle said. The US Department of Agriculture classifies the neighborhood around the high school as a food desert. Last year, 97% of the school’s students were economically disadvantaged, according to the Texas Education Agency. The area also has a higher prevalence of high blood pressure and diabetes than the rest of the city, according to Texas Health’s 2022 Community Health Needs Assessment.

Many O.D. Wyatt students face unique challenges

Howard Robinson, the principal of O.D. Wyatt, is quick to point out that the fact that his students are dealing with more challenges than many of their peers doesn’t mean they aren’t just as smart. But those challenges make his students’ lives more complicated before they even make it to school, he said.

Robinson compared their lives to the winter storm that knocked out power and water to much of North Texas in 2021: When electricity was cut off, many people switched into survival mode, he said. They stopped thinking about their jobs and other responsibilities and started worrying about where to get food and clean water. Many students at O.D. Wyatt live their entire lives that way, he said.

The pandemic and the school shutdowns that came along with it added to those challenges, Robinson said. When students came back last year, Robinson could see how their social skills had been affected by just walking down the hallway. Minor disagreements turned into arguments, and arguments turned into physical fights, he said. Although things are a bit better this year, he can still see the lingering effects of school shutdowns and other trauma the pandemic created, he said.

Those issues aren’t unique to O.D. Wyatt, or even to the Fort Worth Independent School District: In a federal report released last year, more than 80% of the 850 school leaders surveyed said their students showed stunted social-emotional and behavioral development as a result of the pandemic.

Robinson said school leaders will know the program has been successful if students’ attendance and grades improve, and if their families are more involved in their education. But more than that, the program will have succeeded if it gives students who participate in it something to take ownership of, he said. He hopes those students begin to feel a sense of pride in what they’re doing, in the same way that students on a winning athletic team or in a successful fine arts program might.

Program helped Sanger ISD students build connections

Anthony Love, principal of Linda Tutt High School in Sanger, said students who participate in the program at his school have built exactly the kinds of connections Robinson is hoping for. He’s seen students who struggled form better relationships with teachers and classmates. The students who volunteer in the grocery store are there because they want to be there, he said. In a few cases, he’s asked students if they would be interested in volunteering, but he’s never made it mandatory.

“It has to be 100% voluntary, because if you make it a class, then it becomes no fun,” Love said. “Then it’s something that they have to do.”

Linda Tutt is an alternative school, and many of its students were assigned there because of disciplinary issues at their home campuses. The school also has programs for students with mental and behavioral health issues and cognitive disabilities. Love said many of his students came to Linda Tutt because they were at risk of dropping out at their home campuses. Many of them weren’t successful academically, and they weren’t involved in extracurricular activities like athletics or fine arts.

Working in the grocery store gave some students a way to feel valued and connected at school that they’d never had before, he said. He’s seen students with extreme behavioral challenges, who have always had a hard time building relationships with teachers and other students, go through a major change when they get connected to the grocery store program.

“I think when students feel like they’re a part of the school, they care,” Love said. “They care a little bit more about school, they care about their grades a little bit more, they care about the way that they behave and the way that they treat others and the way that they act.”