The School Can't Experience

#21 - School Based Stressors with Tiffany Westphal

• School Can't Australia • Season 1 • Episode 21

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This episode features a conversation with Tiffany Westphal, Director at School Can't Australia. With host, Leisa Reichelt, Tiffany helps us explore the top six school-based stressors identified in a survey conducted for the Senate Inquiry into School Refusal. 

They discuss the nature of stressors, and the key findings from the research, providing valuable insights for parents, carers, and educators to better support children struggling with school attendance and distress. Discover practical advice on identifying and addressing stressors and empowering students to self-advocate for their needs.

00:00 Welcome to the School Can't Experience Podcast

01:04 Introduction to Tiffany Westphal and School Can't Australia

02:48 Understanding School-Based Stressors

06:38 Key Findings from the Research

08:01 Top Stressors Affecting Students

09:25 Challenges in Communicating Distress

12:49 Schoolwork not of Interest

17:21 Teacher and School Expectations

19:21 Difficulties Meeting Expectation of Self

19:45  School Placing Responsibility on Student to Change 

21:15 Strategies for Supporting Students

25:54 Conclusion and Resources


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The content of this podcast is based on personal lived experiences and is shared for informational and storytelling purposes only. It should not be treated as medical, psychological, or professional advice under any circumstances. If you have concerns about your health or well-being, please seek guidance from a doctor, therapist, or other qualified professional.

Leisa Reichelt:

Hello and welcome to the School Can't Experience Podcast. I'm Leisa Reichelt, and this podcast is brought to you by the School Can't Australia community. Caring for a young person who is struggling to attend school can be a stressful and isolating experience, but you are not alone. Thousands of parents across Australia and many more around the world face similar challenges and experiences every day. Today we are talking about the top school-based stressors with Tiffany Westphal, Director at School Can't Australia. We're going to unpack the top six school stressors identified in a survey conducted for the Senate Inquiry into School Refusal. This is gonna help us help our kids identify their own stressors more easily, as well as help us consider how they could be better supported to reduce distress at school. Right! Tiffany Westphal. Thank you very much for joining us for our podcast episode today.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

So delighted to be here.

Leisa Reichelt:

Let's get started. I know loads of people will already know or know of you, Tiffany, but can you give us a quick introduction to yourself and also maybe a quick introduction to School Can't Australia. For anyone who doesn't know, what is that organization? What does it do? I.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah, so, I wear many hats. I am first and foremost a mum, and I have a nearly 17-year-old daughter who has a long history of on again, off again, School Can't. And it was through that experience that I came to discover School Can't Australia.

Leisa Reichelt:

Tell us about School Can't Australia. What's its story?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

So School Can't Australia was formed in 2014 by a parent who was seeking community, seeking connection with other parents who were experiencing similar sorts of experiences to her. And it's grown rapidly over the last 11 years. Doubling in size almost every 410 days up until a couple years ago when we had to kind of put the brakes on a bit and slow things down. Yeah. So it's got now about 16,000 members and all of them are parents and carers supporting young people struggling with school attendance distress about school or disengagement from school. Most parents in our group are supporting kids who have disability, most commonly autism, ADHD or learning difficulties. And I, myself support a child who has all three of those things. And that's how I came to join the group, was because of her. am also a social worker and I work in this space too. And have been involved in partnering with universities for research. Yeah, that's me.

Leisa Reichelt:

Well, today we wanted to talk about research commissioned by School Can't Australia around school-based stressors, which I know is one of your favorite topics, Tiff. Can you give us a little bit of background to this research and how it came into being?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

We didn't exactly commission it. We just decided we were gonna do it. so we put a call out in our group saying, are there any people who've got skills useful for such a research project? It was in relation to us preparing a Senate Inquiry submission that we started the research project. We had previously done surveys of our group for other submissions. But I think this is one of the biggest research projects we've embarked on. And it's unusual that it was a senate inquiry into school refusal. So it was our topic, this was our thing. And we got together a group of, people with different skills. One of them was a statistician and there were a couple Louisa, myself from the moderation team. And everybody had a different role to play.

Leisa Reichelt:

Before we get into the results, I would love you to talk a little bit about the nature of a stressor. Can you unpack that a little bit for us?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah you know, there are lots of things that can be considered stressors. A stressor is something that requires energy of us in order to respond to, and our nervous systems are always scanning the environment, looking for signs of threat and signs of safety. And, am I okay here? Do I feel okay about myself in this situation, in this context? How am I doing? How are the other people around me responding to me? Do I feel too hot? Do I feel hungry? Do I feel cold? Those things demand a response from our bodies, and our brains. I guess this idea of things being stressful. I think about it in terms of Sometimes we say things like, everybody has to go to work and you have to go to school. That's your work. At one level we have this concept that school is like a child's occupation, at another level to an adult, we would say, well, if your workplace is stressful, then the natural thing to do is to either self-advocate and say, this is really stressful and I need more of this, or less of this or this kind of adjustment made or this kind of support and then you share with your manager this is what I need, and see if you can't make it better.

Leisa Reichelt:

Hmm.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

But children don't have often the power to do that in the context of school. Or nobody notices their distress or it's considered just normal that kids don't wanna go to school. And so we don't validate the distress. When you go back to the occupational example, if you are in a workplace and you are really stressed and you self-advocate and you get response that is helpful, you can carry on, right? Means you've got energy to keep going. You can manage the situation a bit more effectively, but when you advocate and nothing changes. Then you're stuck. You either have the power to do something yourself to make a change, or you don't. And if you don't have the power to make that change, it starts to impact your willingness to go to work. Your energy and the way you feel about going to work. It starts to get harder to get up in the mornings and take yourself out the door to go to work. you might, take days off or mental health days it uses up energy to do something that's continually asking more of you than you have the capacity for. And I think it's the same with school. We need to be conscious of how much capacity children have and are we asking more of them than they have capacity? Is this balance between capacity and demand?

Leisa Reichelt:

Let's talk about some of the results from the research. Tiff, what if you were gonna summarize the key findings How would you describe what we learned from this research?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

We asked about a range of different kinds of stressors. Relational things. So stressors associated with peer relationships and student staff relationships. We asked about school environment or the structure of the school day. Ability to engage in school work to demonstrate knowledge to access curriculum All sorts of things. And I think it was really interesting when we got the results back we, displayed the data in a graph and it wasn't a spiky graph, it was a quite flat profile graph. Out of the 57 stressors, about 75% had received a positive response Three quarters of the stressor had been chosen by half the sample population of 441 parents and carers who did the survey. On average parents and carers chose eight items. Some quite a bit more and some less. But, it wasn't just one thing that parents and carers were reporting. There often is a number of things troubling A child at school.

Leisa Reichelt:

Let's dig into some of those key stressors. There's something interesting about the top four results.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah. So the top four were'Limited Safe People and Places at School'. that's about difficulty, when you're distressed in finding somebody who can help you feel better, comfort you provide reassurance or co-regulate or places at school to calm down or to feel okay. And then'Staff Unable to Identify Signs of Distress'. So that one's sort of self-explanatory when a, a student's distressed, but staff aren't able to realize that that's what the case is.'Difficulties Communicating Student Distress'.

Leisa Reichelt:

I think communicating distress is an interesting one, right? Because this is not a situation where, or maybe it is, the kids are going up to, teachers are going, I'm feeling really upset, and the teachers are like, I don't understand what you're saying. there's a broad nature to the, types of communications and what gets identified and what doesn't. Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah. Yeah. You know, when you think about the nervous system and you think about fight, flight and you think about a shutdown response. When a student's having a fight, flight response, often there is visible signs of distress. There's behavior that one notices, crying anxious thoughts or there might be, you know, complaining of, of tummy ache or there'll be some kind of visible sign of distress, but when somebody's experiencing a shutdown collapse or a fawn response, it can be much harder to tell that somebody's distressed and they can go unnoticed. Parents often say, the school says they're fine at school. And that can get in the way of identifying early signs of distress. It's a bit confusing for parents because the school says, they're fine after you leave. They're often not fine. They're just masking. Which was the, the fourth thing on the list. So there are lots of barriers to communication. It's a very vulnerable thing. When you think about when we as adults are distressed we often hide that distress from people unless we know them quite well. Because it's a very vulnerable thing to disclose that one is feeling distressed about something. You don't know how the other person's gonna respond. You don't know whether they're gonna turn it back on you and say, well, you just need to be more resilient. You just need to try harder. Or, um, so it's a, it's a very, it's a risky thing to share that one is in distress. And adults don't always respond favorably.

Leisa Reichelt:

I was gonna say, I think that a lot of our kids probably have experienced being dismissed so many times, or unheard so many times as well. I think about my son and his history, he tried to tell us plenty of times what was going on and we were always like, you'll be right. It'll be fine. Everyone has bad days.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt:

Like it became very difficult to get him to talk about anything, but I think that's because we almost taught him inadvertently that it was pointless trying to tell us. I'm sure kids experienced that at school as well.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah, well, we're busy. Parents are busy in the mornings, and when a child's distressed you're task focused I need to get out the door. I've gotta get the other kids to school on time, or I've gotta get to my job. Gotta get to work. And teachers are busy too, in classrooms. You know, there's lots of kids in a classroom and they all have lots of them often need attention and support and you often tend to the squeaky wheels, you know, the kids who are having the visible signs of fight flight, causing disruption or causing distress to other people. And so the quiet ones often go unnoticed. Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt:

So those top four stressors are very much about not feeling able to communicate the distress they're experiencing, not feeling that if they try to communicate that distress that's being heard and recognized, and acted on.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Or not being able to get relief somehow, or assistance to feel better, recover. So being stuck, they're very stuck. And I, I think that's what's disturbing about fact that those four were the most commonly suggested by parents as contributing to the experience of School Can't is this overwhelming sense of just not being able to resolve it and being stuck. Yeah. So this powerlessness that a student feels, it's interesting that those all come right at the top of the list

Leisa Reichelt:

Well, I can understand why they would contribute to a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, don't they?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

I think it's a real challenge for teachers and schools to consider how can we reduce these barriers that exist to talking about distress, to having language that makes it safe to talk about distress Seek help.

Leisa Reichelt:

Does appear to be like eminently solvable though, doesn't it?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

I'd like to think it is.

Leisa Reichelt:

moving down the list. the next one that really pops out, I think is the Schoolwork Not of Interest. Can you talk to us a little bit about that one?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

That one's really interesting. I've heard that one a lot actually. My ears have become quite sensitive to picking up conversation around this topic. I know that for our neurodivergent kids doing something that's of interest is quite effortless. But it's much harder to apply oneself to something that's not of interest. I was at a, a youth voice conference recently and there were students there who were school leaders in their school communities, and they quite strongly were also saying that one of their bug bears, one of the things that they struggle with at school, one of the things they'd like to change about school is the fact that they feel the schoolwork they're being asked to do is not relevant to them or of interest to them. So I think it's a common experience of lots of students, not just neurodivergent students. that they feel they're being asked to do work that doesn't seem relevant to them or doesn't seem like it's gonna be work that they use later down the track. And I think, saying something's boring can mean lots of things to a student. I would encourage people to be curious about the impact of having to do things that don't feel relevant. think about what that might be like if you were an adult at work having to do monotonous, boring work or work that you didn't feel was relevant to achieving the objectives that you had in your job, for instance, or the objectives of your employer and how frustrating that might be. It's a challenge to think about what that means for education and what that means for how we structure curriculum and how we resource education. This desire to engage in work that's of interest. It was interesting at the conference I was attending, one of the teachers said it's so much easier when you've got 300 students in secondary school to administer a test. You know, you teach them all the same stuff and then you administer a test and the marking's done. In a couple hours you've graded all those tests. But if you had each student working on a project of interest to them, it would take a lot longer to review the projects, grade them and provide feedback.

Leisa Reichelt:

An efficiency measure there that might be impacting the quality of the content. Yeah, I can see that. I'm sure that for as long as there's been school, there's probably been kids saying, what's the point of this? I'm never gonna use this once I leave school. When am I ever gonna need algebra? Kids have been saying that for as long as schools have been around. But, a lot of kids just push through get to the end and, and put it behind them, and hopefully find something to do that is a little bit more relevant to them.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

yeah let's think about that for a minute. You know, so if your experience of life is not one of chronic stress, then you've probably got capacity to push through and do something. But if you are feeling chronically stressed and the expectations of you are bigger than the capacity you have all the time. You're constantly being, you know, you're in arrears on the bank account of energy. you don't have capacity to push through. You have less capacity to do things that are not of interest. Lots of neurodivergent people will tell you that existing in a space that's not designed by and for neurodivergent people where there are inadequate accommodations and supports is chronically stressful And that impacts their capacity.

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah. If you're gonna put yourself through all of that stress and it feels like it's for a completely pointless purpose...

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

A bit hard to be motivated. Why would you keep doing it?

Leisa Reichelt:

Mm mm

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

I think it's really interesting that when we look at what lots of the schools that are involved in the re-engagement space are doing the students have more voice and more agency over what they learn and how they demonstrate learning. And seeking to engage around student interest.

Leisa Reichelt:

That project based work around a special interest, is something the Big Picture schools do quite a bit, isn't it? Progressive schools in the US as well, and UK that I've come across also often are very much, you choose a topic, we'll do project and build some of the curriculum outcomes into that. Yeah. Let's talk about,'Teacher and School Expectations' and those difficulties that that kids are having. This is the sixth one on our list, I think What kinds of things pop up there do you think?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

I think there's a lot of pressure for performance, especially in high school.As you're getting towards the end of your high school years. And so there are lots of expectations, but I think this, and, and also the one about the'Length of School Day' is also talking about the difficulty that students are having, balancing the energy they have or the capacity they have with the demands that are made of them. Lots of kids will say, well, I just, run out of energy. I just think the day should be shorter.'cause by the end of the day, I am completely spent. And that was interesting too, because lots of kids tell me that they have difficulty with eating at school. Your blood sugar levels start to drop the further the day goes on.

Leisa Reichelt:

what, when we are talking about these expectations, what are the kinds of things that would fall into an expectation here that is causing these difficulties?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

I think it could be quite diverse. It could be little things like the expectation to sit still and be quiet instead of be able to move while you listen. But it could also be, difficulties associated with expectation of doing timed tests, for instance. I know that was one that was particularly difficult for my daughter was this expectation that tests would be done within a particular timeframe. Would make her feel quite stressed her brain would shut down and she wouldn't be able to do the thing. There can be a lot of different expectations that students struggle with. Yeah, lots.

Leisa Reichelt:

School is just like a plethora of expectations laid over, expectations, I have an expectation that you should be able to write an essay that will get 80 marks out of a hundred. And if you're not doing that, then you're letting me down

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

you'll enjoy all the subjects, and even if you don't enjoy it, you'll just do it.

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah. the flip side of that of course is the Difficulties Meeting Expectation of Self.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yes. And that's challenging. Some kids have high expectations for themselves and we encourage that as a society, you know, having high expectations. It makes you stop and think, what does our culture value? Where are we headed with this? There's challenging things to unpack.

Leisa Reichelt:

And then there's another one in there, which is school placing responsibility on student to change instead of creating accommodations,

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

I find this one so sad because I know that this is, 70% of the parents and carers who responded to this survey were parents supporting kids who are neurodivergent kids who have disability. I myself have seen, support plans that looked like a laundry list of things that a student was gonna do differently rather than a list of things that the school was gonna do differently to support that child and that young person. And I think we need to really examine what are the expectations that we have on a student and what's reasonable and what's not. And really challenge this idea that comes from a very ableist, understanding of disability, where our disabled kids should be less disabled in order to function and meet our expectations at school. I find this one quite sad to see on the list. Quite distressing.

Leisa Reichelt:

Is that also linked to that kind of older way of thinking about it through that behaviorist lens. where we need to change behavior from this to that, rather than going, okay, well obviously this is a very stressed child. what can we be doing to alleviate the stress impact on the child?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

I think jumping, to seeing a misbehaving child rather than a distressed child or distressed young person is a problem.

Leisa Reichelt:

Tiff, once we have this knowledge, we know that these stressors are the ones that are causing a lot of issues for kids about being able to communicate stress effectively, about being able to do work that's of interest to them, about being able to have a school that's looking to reduce stress rather than change behavior. What can we as people who are supporting kids experiencing School Can't, or perhaps educators trying to educate kids in a school setting, what can we do with this information? How can we apply it?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah, I think it's really important that we remember that they're not misbehaving. They're responding to stress. And that leads us to be curious about what's going on for them, what they're finding difficult, how can we better support them so that they're less stressed. So they have capacity to engage at school, participate and enjoy learning. Identifying stressors can be quite challenging. I often say to people when I speak to parent carer groups, take this list and have a look through it, and see is there anything that, that triggers an idea for you that you might ask your child, Do you have trouble with this or do you have trouble with that? I read that some kids have difficulty with this and I wonder if that's the way it is for you and be curious. Because the more we understand about what's causing the child difficulty, the more likely we are to be able to understand what sort of environment they would do better in, or what kind of support they might need. Understanding what's causing you difficulty is extremely empowering. it means you can advocate for yourself. So as children and young people grow up through school, having that knowledge that, actually I find the lights in the classroom just suck energy out of me because they slightly flicker or they're too bright and I need to wear a hat in class. Or I'd prefer to wear tinted glasses, or I'd prefer if we only turn the bright lights on when we're actually doing reading or writing. uh, To be able to self-advocate for one's needs and feel it's okay to do that. Adults might respond favorably when you make an effort to self-advocate for what you need. Yeah, I think that's really important information As parent carers, we are those advocates often for our young people and the bridge between our young person and their school in terms of trying to help navigate the difference between what our kids need and getting it at school. Does that make sense?

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah, I'm reflecting a little bit also on the conversation that we had with Dr. Ross Greene recently. Are some of these stressors things that parents could take to their kids Maybe this is the beginnings of a list that they could be going, which ones of these resonate with you? Just to help get that communication going, but then also to be able to take that to the school and go, look, these are the things that we need to resolve

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt:

having that information gives you something to talk about and then hopefully we can all be better at hearing it. Tiff you've got the Student Stress Investigation cards can you talk a little bit about why that sort of card based approach is a useful one too?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah, because there's so many stressors often that kids are experiencing, it's difficult for them to articulate, what's going on. And having prompts can go,'oh, yeah. Nobody's ever asked me about that before. But yes, that's a problem'. The kids sort the cards and they go, is it normal to have so many things that cause you difficulty at school? And I'm able to reassure them and go, yeah, kids who are struggling to go to school, often choose over 30 different cards and say, these are things that are causing me difficulty at school. It's not unusual, but the good thing is that when we've identified those things, we can go have a conversation with the school about how we might change those. And you've got this information for you to help assist you and your family to advocate for the supports that you need. I've had students empowered by having this information, take their list of stressors into an interview at a new school and say, Hey, these are the things that cause me difficulty at my last school. How would you be able to support me at this school these things and help them make a decision about whether that other school might be a, a better environment or an easier place for them to, learn. So it's can be really helpful information to have.

Leisa Reichelt:

Fantastic. Well, this research is really valuable in helping us understand what are some of those real high impact stressors. And hopefully it's helpful for parents, carers, educators, everybody to be able to see what some of those big issues are. Because some of these they are very solvable, aren't they? Some are harder, but certainly the communication one feels like one that we could all be working on immediately. And identifying those stressors and being able to have those discussions around them feels like a really important starting place.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Often we have to be really creative in how we respond to these things and think outside the box Just because we've tried to solve a difficulty and it didn't get solved the first time, doesn't mean it's not gonna get solved. It just means we need to keep trying, and try something else. I think it's also worth pointing out that, you know, a child's distress story, how long they've been distressed for also impacts what happens when we respond to stressors, We can get a list of 20 different stressors at school and then find solutions for those stressors. But the child might still not be able to go back to school because they remember how bad it felt before. And so we might have some, some work to do yet in order help them feel safe at school and that that can take time.

Leisa Reichelt:

Tiff, do you wanna tell us where we can find more information about the list of stressors?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah, you can find this list of stressors on our website under articles. There's an article about stressors. you can also read our submission to the Senate Inquiry as well. There's a link to that on our website It's chapter 10.

Leisa Reichelt:

Thanks very much, Tiff. Really appreciate your time.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Thank you

Leisa Reichelt:

Well, a big thanks to Tiffany, not just for this podcast, but for all the work she puts into the School Can't community and all the educating and advocating she does on our behalf every day. And thanks to all the wonderful volunteers who contribute in so many different ways to supporting our School Can't community. I have put links to the article about stressors as well as the Senate inquiry submission into the episode notes. And you'll also find a link to Tiffany's Student Stress Investigation cards, which can be very helpful for kids to help identify their own school-based stressors. If you found this podcast helpful, please do take a moment to share, subscribe, or maybe even give us a rating or a review. It really does make a huge difference in helping us get the podcast in front of more people who have School Can't kids, but have not yet found our community and all the information and support that we share. Do you have some feedback for us or perhaps you would like to share your own School Can't lived experience? We would love that. Please drop us an email to schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com. That's schoolcantpodcast, one word, no apostrophe,@gmail.com. If you are a parent or carer in Australia and you are feeling distressed, remember you can always call the Parent Helpline in your state. A link with the number to call is in the episode notes. Thank you again for listening. We will talk again soon. Take care.