Five years ago, Jessica Florer thought her career was finished. After more than a decade of teaching, she had decided to pay it forward during her retirement.
“I taught for 14 years in a private Christian school environment,” Florer said. “I Thought I was done. I was just going to volunteer at the Children's Shelter. I thought that's what I was interviewing for, actually. And then when they were like, ‘Tell us what you know about Hope Academy,’ I said, ‘I have no idea what you're even talking about.’”
The Hope Academy is Arkansas’ first public charter school that uses trauma-centered education. It serves kids who can’t function in a typical school setting with specially trained staff and an emotion-based curriculum designed to help them learn how to process their feelings.
It’s an extension of the Northwest Arkansas Children’s Shelter and sits on the same campus, but the school is not exclusive to kids who have spent time in the shelter. Children throughout northwest Arkansas from any background can attend, but many have endured abuse or spent time in foster care.
Florer said she knew it would be difficult sharing her pupils’ trauma but persisted with teaching at Hope Academy anyway. She’s now a behavior specialist at the school.
“To be completely transparent, I went home and cried every day for the first two months of the school year,” she said. “Not for myself, but just to see the brokenness. It's, I mean, I grew up in this community, and I had no idea that this little pocket of things was happening. I know about foster care, and you know about, you know you see on the news the things that are happening in families, but you don't think about that from a school perspective. I surely didn't even being a private school teacher. That was just such a thing, and that's its own pocket. So then you come here, and you see that these kids are trying to function, and they have no idea, and the parents have no idea. I think that Hope Academy was started on a seeing a need and a big dream of how we can make an impact, a cycle-breaking change in this little corner of the world that needs it so desperately as does the entire nation, right?”
The Hope Academy is entering its fifth year, and 50 children from across Benton and Washington Counties currently attend classes there. Their days start like any other elementary schooler’s- by getting out of mom or dad’s car. Staff are immediately handy because leaving loved ones can trigger intense emotional reactions from both children and parents.
“So there's a lot of coaching that happens even before they come in the mornings,” Florer said. “We've got a lot of families that are very apprehensive about school. They've got– not school trauma necessarily, but if they've come here, they were not successful. And so that makes the whole family feel unsuccessful. They need just as much encouragement as their kiddos do. So this is the spot. There's five or six of us out here in the morning cheering them on. ‘Hey, you're doing a great job. Look. They got out of the car finally,’ or we'll go to the car. And kind of coach parents, if they've got this wide-eyed look, ‘I don't want to drag my kid out of the car in front of you.’ And we're like, ‘It's what we're here for.’”
That emotional coaching and encouragement follow students throughout their days at Hope Academy. Florer said that each classroom is staffed with one teacher and two paraprofessionals who focus primarily on guiding students through their feelings, whatever they may be.
Classroom walls feature posters reminding kids of ways to express themselves healthily. Visual aids are an essential element of Hope Academy, as they allow children a way to assign meaning to their abstract emotions. Educators use a variety of methods to reinforce SEL or social-emotional learning among their pupils– especially when moving between spaces– reminding them of their security and different ways to process their feelings or “share their calm.”
“That's that piece that, again, teaches I know how I feel, but I don't have the words for that,” Florer said. “So we're teaching them frustration, anger, sad, disappointed, worried, all of those things that you and I have the words for these kiddos might not be familiar with that. So when I'm angry, I know that I can get up and blow about in the room. Maybe knock some things over. And instead, it's ‘Man that felt really hard, but it didn't fix your problem. I didn't really know how you felt or what you needed,’ and a lot of times, they don't either. So we can teach those lessons through lots of different avenues throughout the day, and it's not something that happens at 8 a.m. and then we pack it up. This is every time they get ready to transition out of the classroom, whether that's recess, lunch specials or whatever, they're being reinforced on what these things look like now that we're leaving the classroom because our classroom has been safe, but now we have to go to recess, and that looks really different than sitting in a chair or going to the cafeteria, and there's other kids and it's loud. So it's that reinforcement every time they get ready to go into the next thing, so that I'm not trying to hold on to something you told me at 8 o'clock in the morning, And now it's noon, and I'm about to lose it. It's ‘Wait. I'm safe. My teachers are all going to keep me safe, and I have the skills to do it.’”
There are also specially designed spaces to help students act out their emotions outside of the classroom, cafeteria or playground, away from others.
“So this space is when they're not able to regulate in the classroom,” Florer said. “That might cause some more shame or dysregulation, or it's so disruptive to the other class, we want to give them an opportunity to be able to regulate in a neutral space. So that's what this is. This is a neutral space. You can come out here and be as mad as you want to be, say all the things, do all the things, and there's no consequence for that.”
This safe space is brightly colored. Toys, books and a rope swing sit inside the padded room, along with a student and a teacher. As the child plays, his educator asks him about what he’s thinking and how he’s feeling, using their expressions as talking points. They also refer to a visual guide on the wall, which utilizes a spectrum of green, yellow, then red as a way to communicate positive or negative emotions.
“Some of the language that we will use is ‘Wow, your face looks like this. Do you see how my face looks?’ and kind of mimic what they're doing,” she said. “Because, again, they're not recognizing that in themselves. Or I can say, ‘Oh, your hands are at your side and they're clenched really tight, and your shoulders are drawn up.’ And then you see them start to think, and they're like, ‘Oh, well, I'm not doing any of those.’ So it's just kind of reframing. I'm teaching you to recognize what you feel in yourself. And then we're able to co-work together. We're problem-solving together, and then we're able to move on and see how do we get back to at least yellow?”
Hope Academy is a place of growth, and kids often grow out of being there.
Students stay for as long as they need– Sometimes setting their own goals of when they want to return to a typical classroom setting.
“We've got one of our fourth graders that is now a fifth grader,” Florer said. “He was with us for two years. When he first came in, we were not sure he was ever going to be able to function in a public school classroom. We thought he'll finish our program. He'll probably have to do work from home. But he did the work. We built a lot of deep connections. He learned to trust adults. His family was one of those that needed a lot of support. And we were able to go in and teach the parents some parenting things and just daily coping skills, which they were able to carry into their kiddos. And then the kiddos were here all day, and so they were learning, and then you watch the whole family put that together, that collaborative problem-solving piece. As a family, we were able to pull back a little bit as they were learning to do that for themselves. And now both kiddos, I just got a report Monday that they are doing great. It's only the first part of school, so there's gonna be some hiccups, but they're functioning and they're doing it, and the family is all, I mean, they're all so proud of each other.”
Open enrollment occurs early next year. If more than ten students enroll per grade level, an independent third party will conduct a lottery to determine placement.
Florer said she tries to emphasize to prospective families that they are not a school for “bad kids.” The comprehensive emotional education Hope Academy offers could prove useful to almost anyone.
“Because even as adults, we sometimes need somebody to come and go, ‘Man, you look like you're having a hard time. Do you want to chat? You doing okay?’ Get a pat on the back,” Florer said. “So, as long as they can at least allow somebody to come in and do that, then we're able to say they look like they're ready to go back to a public school setting. They're going to get the supports that they need in there. They can handle it. At the end of the year, we go through all of our kids as a staff, we sit down together and say they're meeting a lot of great markers, but it looks like one more year would really cement that foundation for them, because that's what we're doing. We're taking that crumbled up Foundation, putting it back together, laying a really good groundwork so that then they can go out and be successful.”
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
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