It has been five years since that fateful moment in March 2020 when the world as we knew it changed. Three years later, the federal government declared that the COVID-19 pandemic was no longer an emergency.
Of course, we still see its ramifications, particularly in terms of mental health impacts. The National Institute of Mental Health says that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the mental health of both adults and children, specifically in terms of anxiety, depression, and substance use disorder. Overnight, youth lost their social interactions with teachers and peers, creating a sense of isolation and loneliness. According to a recent article in the Atlantic, we are all spending more time alone, which can be particularly harmful for adolescents and youth.
When I speak with educators, they generally describe their current educational context—in relation to “pre-pandemic”—as the “new normal.” But what is the “new normal?” It isn’t that the structural challenges educators face are new; those existed long before the pandemic. But the youth in their classrooms are bringing new challenges, as evidenced by rises in their rates of depression and anxiety. Pandemic-era increases in the number of migrant, refugee, and asylum seekers, particularly those who bring the trauma of fleeing a violent or unstable situation, may also add to mental health concerns teachers see in their classrooms.
These factors—pandemic uncertainties and the precarity of immigrant integration in the United States—have combined to amplify effects on linguistically and culturally diverse children’s wellbeing. In Maryland, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute, the percent of children under age 18 living in poverty with one or more foreign-born parents jumped from 16 percent in 2000 to just over 40 percent in 2022. In neighboring Washington, D.C., the percent jumped from 16 percent in 2000 to 25.5 percent in 2022. More families are facing the challenges of poverty while also experiencing potentially precarious immigration status and situations, causing instability and an increasing amount of uncertainty—especially given the recent change in federal leadership and the new administration’s anti-immigration agenda. The recent executive order from the White House declaring English as the national language will likely only add fuel to the fire.
These combined pressures are affecting immigrant communities, children of immigrants, and the teachers who work with them. TCF’s focus groups with teachers who work with English learners (ELs) found that educators are committed to supporting their ELs but need support from the school community.
Mental Health Concerns Now Start at a Younger Age
A 2023 study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that adolescents ages 13–17 experienced more symptoms of anxiety and depression and accelerated brain development compared to a pre-pandemic comparison group. These findings were validated by a veteran teacher from San Diego, who shared her perspective:
From before [the pandemic], I remember seeing mental health concerns like at the high school level, but now I’m seeing them like even at younger ages, and like serious mental health concerns, not just depression or anxiety, but like serious ongoing mental health concerns.… I’m seeing [a lot] more dual designation, like special education and language ELD [English Language Development]. That also impacts not only their development but their social emotional [development]…. We’re quick to identify the need, but we’re slow to provide the how-to or what to use when we have a certain situation.
In California, the UCLA Center for Transformation of Schools found that chronic absenteeism for English Learners tripled after the pandemic, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation published this brief with recommendations to address the negative effects of the pandemic on education, including a call for states to gather and report on absenteeism data. New immigration enforcement policies and enforcement actions in the early weeks of 2025 appear to be producing further drops in attendance for children of immigrants.
“Social Isolation Stigma”
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, over 47 million children have been displaced by conflict and violence since 2023. Children are disproportionately displaced in these situations; they only represent one-third of the global population but are over 40 percent of the world’s refugees. The United States’ historical role as a haven for refugees has meant that our schools have grown increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse. For example, in Prince George’s County, Maryland, the number of newcomer students in pre-K to twelfth grade was over 4,000 between July 1 and September 30, 2024.
These students come from different countries, with different languages and different lived experiences. Many teachers described a sort of social isolation stigma, or the loneliness experienced by students, particularly when they are the only speakers of their language. One teacher shared, “I think because we have such a plethora of languages, we’re not high on one language…. It also makes it a little harder for the kids to find someone to latch on to and have that connection.”
This issue is particularly magnified for students from refugee countries, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, and Syria (among others), which have the largest population of refugees in the United States, according to 2024 data from Global Refugee, but who speak lesser-spoken languages and are often dispersed across communities in the United States.
A veteran teacher shared her perspective specifically related to Afghani refugee students:
Because it’s like, a lot of them are speaking different languages from Afghanistan. It’s not even like they can even speak with each other in a common language. The only common language is if they’re siblings. It’s pretty isolating.… What can we do to connect their home language to English when we don’t even know anything much about their home language?
The social isolation may not be due to linguistic diversity but the lack of school support for ELs. In some schools, students only get one block of English Language Development (ELD). We had one teacher share:
It’s just, other than the 90 minutes of ELD and ELA [English Language Arts], it’s sink or swim. The teachers are doing what they can, like Google translate, and they’ll pair a bilingual student with a primarily Spanish-speaking student, but there needs to be more support throughout the day for ELs, especially your level one and level two, rather than, “okay, you’re on your own for the rest of your classes.”
A veteran teacher from Modesto, California, cited a similar problem:
They get one at the high school level in our city, they get one 45 minute ELD elective, and that’s it, regardless of their English level.… They need to start looking at diverse profiles, because that ELD elective in high school…it’s just, it’s like a catch-all. It’s like basically a compliance; check the box to the state saying we’re providing ELD.
New Challenges, Old Solutions
Some teachers hoped the lessons learned during pandemic would provide and stimulate a sense of public urgency for school reform by revealing faults in the system. A Massachusetts-based teacher said:
What I have found, too: I was hopeful that the pandemic and all the trauma that we went through as a society and a global society was going to change things and make teaching more humane, less data-based, everything. My impression is that it’s quite the contrary. We have gone back to what we were before the pandemic, but even because of the apparent learning loss—which is real—we are using methods and strategies that were obsolete…before the pandemic.
She warned that the post-pandemic approach to serving ELs in her school was thoroughly monolingual and would deliver potentially concerning short- and long-term effects:
They get ESL for a certain amount of years and they get out of the system and now, out of the ESL program, and they become English-only speakers to the eyes of the world.… What that does to their social-emotional learning, to the emotional self-being, to their whole identity as people who manipulate two cultures and two languages.… How many more generations of students are going to lose their languages before we make dual language instruction more extensive and more accessible to as many bilingual children as possible?
Given what research shows about the best way to meet ELs’ needs, this is particularly discouraging.
Not All Doom and Gloom
No doubt we are living in challenging times, particularly for newcomers and their educators. But nonprofits and local districts are harnessing the experiences with their students to demonstrate and emphasize these stories of persistence. One teacher shared with me the resilience that she saw in her newcomer students through their journeys to the United States:
If you think about the journey of those who come by foot… they have learned problem solving; they have been able to be without water or food for maybe hours at a time, walking without shoes…. That’s why they tend to be resilient but also grateful, motivated and ready to learn…. It’s really impressive how they can tell you their journey and the countries they navigated, and what you eat in each place, and what varieties of Spanish people speak in Guatemala and Mexico…. Even though they’ve been through those traumatic experiences, they speak about them as an experience, as a fact. I have been inspired by so many of those stories throughout the years…. I learned so much more from them than they possibly can learn from me.
Nonprofit organizations such as The Imagination Project, which fosters compassion through writing, can help address student mental health concerns by empowering students through their own stories. The Story of Our Schools, based in Washington, D.C., empowers schools and communities to create their own history-based exhibits through the diverse voices present. Districts like Prince George’s County are empowering newcomers through sharing their voices within their communities.
Chicago Public Schools has seen an increase in its English learner population in recent years, including an 11 percent increase from 2023–24 to the current school year. A school in Brighton Park uses a method called STRONG (Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups) to help students understand and cope with their stress, particularly as it relates to trauma. This method is one way that school counselors can support and build resilience in recent arrivals and shows promising results.
In states such as Texas, provider shortages are leading to a deficit in the amount of families who can receive mental health services and some local alliances are trying to get lawmakers to commit more funds for programs such as the YES (Youth Empowerment Services) Waiver. The program is in high demand because it provides access to mental health services for youth while maintaining much of their regular routines.
But schools and organizations are stepping in to equip counselors to work with the unique challenges that newcomer and English language learner students bring. Nonprofits like Momentum seek to equip school counselors for equity-driven mental health services in DC Public Schools. The University of Maryland, College Park, has partnered with Prince George’s County Public Schools for a Post-Masters’ Certificate to Support Immigrant Students.
We—policymakers, administrators, advocates, and researchers—need to be sure that teachers have access to the resources they need to show up and support their English learners.
Tags: mental helth, dual language education, English Language Learners
English Learners Are Increasingly Struggling with Mental Health Challenges
It has been five years since that fateful moment in March 2020 when the world as we knew it changed. Three years later, the federal government declared that the COVID-19 pandemic was no longer an emergency.
Of course, we still see its ramifications, particularly in terms of mental health impacts. The National Institute of Mental Health says that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the mental health of both adults and children, specifically in terms of anxiety, depression, and substance use disorder. Overnight, youth lost their social interactions with teachers and peers, creating a sense of isolation and loneliness. According to a recent article in the Atlantic, we are all spending more time alone, which can be particularly harmful for adolescents and youth.
When I speak with educators, they generally describe their current educational context—in relation to “pre-pandemic”—as the “new normal.” But what is the “new normal?” It isn’t that the structural challenges educators face are new; those existed long before the pandemic. But the youth in their classrooms are bringing new challenges, as evidenced by rises in their rates of depression and anxiety. Pandemic-era increases in the number of migrant, refugee, and asylum seekers, particularly those who bring the trauma of fleeing a violent or unstable situation, may also add to mental health concerns teachers see in their classrooms.
These factors—pandemic uncertainties and the precarity of immigrant integration in the United States—have combined to amplify effects on linguistically and culturally diverse children’s wellbeing. In Maryland, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute, the percent of children under age 18 living in poverty with one or more foreign-born parents jumped from 16 percent in 2000 to just over 40 percent in 2022. In neighboring Washington, D.C., the percent jumped from 16 percent in 2000 to 25.5 percent in 2022. More families are facing the challenges of poverty while also experiencing potentially precarious immigration status and situations, causing instability and an increasing amount of uncertainty—especially given the recent change in federal leadership and the new administration’s anti-immigration agenda. The recent executive order from the White House declaring English as the national language will likely only add fuel to the fire.
These combined pressures are affecting immigrant communities, children of immigrants, and the teachers who work with them. TCF’s focus groups with teachers who work with English learners (ELs) found that educators are committed to supporting their ELs but need support from the school community.
Mental Health Concerns Now Start at a Younger Age
A 2023 study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that adolescents ages 13–17 experienced more symptoms of anxiety and depression and accelerated brain development compared to a pre-pandemic comparison group. These findings were validated by a veteran teacher from San Diego, who shared her perspective:
From before [the pandemic], I remember seeing mental health concerns like at the high school level, but now I’m seeing them like even at younger ages, and like serious mental health concerns, not just depression or anxiety, but like serious ongoing mental health concerns.… I’m seeing [a lot] more dual designation, like special education and language ELD [English Language Development]. That also impacts not only their development but their social emotional [development]…. We’re quick to identify the need, but we’re slow to provide the how-to or what to use when we have a certain situation.
In California, the UCLA Center for Transformation of Schools found that chronic absenteeism for English Learners tripled after the pandemic, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation published this brief with recommendations to address the negative effects of the pandemic on education, including a call for states to gather and report on absenteeism data. New immigration enforcement policies and enforcement actions in the early weeks of 2025 appear to be producing further drops in attendance for children of immigrants.
“Social Isolation Stigma”
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, over 47 million children have been displaced by conflict and violence since 2023. Children are disproportionately displaced in these situations; they only represent one-third of the global population but are over 40 percent of the world’s refugees. The United States’ historical role as a haven for refugees has meant that our schools have grown increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse. For example, in Prince George’s County, Maryland, the number of newcomer students in pre-K to twelfth grade was over 4,000 between July 1 and September 30, 2024.
These students come from different countries, with different languages and different lived experiences. Many teachers described a sort of social isolation stigma, or the loneliness experienced by students, particularly when they are the only speakers of their language. One teacher shared, “I think because we have such a plethora of languages, we’re not high on one language…. It also makes it a little harder for the kids to find someone to latch on to and have that connection.”
This issue is particularly magnified for students from refugee countries, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, and Syria (among others), which have the largest population of refugees in the United States, according to 2024 data from Global Refugee, but who speak lesser-spoken languages and are often dispersed across communities in the United States.
A veteran teacher shared her perspective specifically related to Afghani refugee students:
Because it’s like, a lot of them are speaking different languages from Afghanistan. It’s not even like they can even speak with each other in a common language. The only common language is if they’re siblings. It’s pretty isolating.… What can we do to connect their home language to English when we don’t even know anything much about their home language?
The social isolation may not be due to linguistic diversity but the lack of school support for ELs. In some schools, students only get one block of English Language Development (ELD). We had one teacher share:
It’s just, other than the 90 minutes of ELD and ELA [English Language Arts], it’s sink or swim. The teachers are doing what they can, like Google translate, and they’ll pair a bilingual student with a primarily Spanish-speaking student, but there needs to be more support throughout the day for ELs, especially your level one and level two, rather than, “okay, you’re on your own for the rest of your classes.”
A veteran teacher from Modesto, California, cited a similar problem:
They get one at the high school level in our city, they get one 45 minute ELD elective, and that’s it, regardless of their English level.… They need to start looking at diverse profiles, because that ELD elective in high school…it’s just, it’s like a catch-all. It’s like basically a compliance; check the box to the state saying we’re providing ELD.
New Challenges, Old Solutions
Some teachers hoped the lessons learned during pandemic would provide and stimulate a sense of public urgency for school reform by revealing faults in the system. A Massachusetts-based teacher said:
What I have found, too: I was hopeful that the pandemic and all the trauma that we went through as a society and a global society was going to change things and make teaching more humane, less data-based, everything. My impression is that it’s quite the contrary. We have gone back to what we were before the pandemic, but even because of the apparent learning loss—which is real—we are using methods and strategies that were obsolete…before the pandemic.
She warned that the post-pandemic approach to serving ELs in her school was thoroughly monolingual and would deliver potentially concerning short- and long-term effects:
They get ESL for a certain amount of years and they get out of the system and now, out of the ESL program, and they become English-only speakers to the eyes of the world.… What that does to their social-emotional learning, to the emotional self-being, to their whole identity as people who manipulate two cultures and two languages.… How many more generations of students are going to lose their languages before we make dual language instruction more extensive and more accessible to as many bilingual children as possible?
Given what research shows about the best way to meet ELs’ needs, this is particularly discouraging.
Not All Doom and Gloom
No doubt we are living in challenging times, particularly for newcomers and their educators. But nonprofits and local districts are harnessing the experiences with their students to demonstrate and emphasize these stories of persistence. One teacher shared with me the resilience that she saw in her newcomer students through their journeys to the United States:
If you think about the journey of those who come by foot… they have learned problem solving; they have been able to be without water or food for maybe hours at a time, walking without shoes…. That’s why they tend to be resilient but also grateful, motivated and ready to learn…. It’s really impressive how they can tell you their journey and the countries they navigated, and what you eat in each place, and what varieties of Spanish people speak in Guatemala and Mexico…. Even though they’ve been through those traumatic experiences, they speak about them as an experience, as a fact. I have been inspired by so many of those stories throughout the years…. I learned so much more from them than they possibly can learn from me.
Nonprofit organizations such as The Imagination Project, which fosters compassion through writing, can help address student mental health concerns by empowering students through their own stories. The Story of Our Schools, based in Washington, D.C., empowers schools and communities to create their own history-based exhibits through the diverse voices present. Districts like Prince George’s County are empowering newcomers through sharing their voices within their communities.
Chicago Public Schools has seen an increase in its English learner population in recent years, including an 11 percent increase from 2023–24 to the current school year. A school in Brighton Park uses a method called STRONG (Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups) to help students understand and cope with their stress, particularly as it relates to trauma. This method is one way that school counselors can support and build resilience in recent arrivals and shows promising results.
In states such as Texas, provider shortages are leading to a deficit in the amount of families who can receive mental health services and some local alliances are trying to get lawmakers to commit more funds for programs such as the YES (Youth Empowerment Services) Waiver. The program is in high demand because it provides access to mental health services for youth while maintaining much of their regular routines.
But schools and organizations are stepping in to equip counselors to work with the unique challenges that newcomer and English language learner students bring. Nonprofits like Momentum seek to equip school counselors for equity-driven mental health services in DC Public Schools. The University of Maryland, College Park, has partnered with Prince George’s County Public Schools for a Post-Masters’ Certificate to Support Immigrant Students.
We—policymakers, administrators, advocates, and researchers—need to be sure that teachers have access to the resources they need to show up and support their English learners.
Tags: mental helth, dual language education, English Language Learners