Amid Oklahoma’s licensed mental health professional shortage, Norman Public Schools is stationing practicum students from the OU School of Social Work’s master’s degree program at schools to assist existing counselors and provide additional support.
Through a partnership with the OU School of Social Work, NPS selects about a handful of master’s students to assist NPS students who need extra support with coping, communication, social or friendship skills, according to Heather Fronheiser, an NPS counselor and licensed clinical social worker. She also serves as the field instructor for OU’s practicum students in the school district.
“One of the things that the Norman Public Schools and the OU School of Social Work share is that we both, in our mission and our initiatives, seek to promote several areas, but the three where we overlap are inclusivity, service and collaboration,” Fronheiser said.
NPS has a counseling staff of almost 60 counselors, according to Kitrena Hime, director of Counseling and Student Advocacy at NPS. The district also has six student advocates who support students impacted by trauma. This trauma is mostly a result of sexual assault, child abuse or domestic violence, Hime said.
The American School Counselor Association recommends a student-to-counselor ratio of 250 students per counselor, but there isn’t a mandate requiring a certain student-to-counselor ratio in Oklahoma.
NPS has a total of 15,786 students across 23 schools, meaning it would need about 63 counselors to meet the American School Counselor Association’s recommendation.
Hime said NPS is ahead of many other school districts in terms of providing mental health support, but there’s still room to improve.
This academic year, the district stationed a licensed mental health professional at both high schools.
NPS Board of Education President Dirk O'Hara said he wants each NPS school site to have a licensed mental health professional.
An effort like this is inhibited by the shortage of mental health professionals in the state, O’Hara said.
The Health Resources and Services Administration designates each Oklahoma county as a mental health professional shortage area. Aside from licensed professional counselors, all psychosocial behavioral health providers are in short supply in Oklahoma.
“We don't have enough people going to the school at OU and other schools to fill the need that society is demanding,” O’Hara said.
NPS’ partnership with the OU School of Social Work provides extra support and services to its students amid the shortage, Hime said.
“If (master’s students) have an interest in providing services to students, then we will connect them with a school site and then that's another way that we can get additional support to our students, while also helping to train our next group of future licensed social workers and counselors,” Hime said.
Chase Lawson turned his practicum experience at Whittier Middle School into a full-time job as the school’s seventh grade counselor.
Lawson, a former social work master’s student, did his practicum at Whittier Middle School from January 2020 through May 2020 while at OU. He was hired at Whittier three months after he completed his practicum.
“Norman Public Schools has been a part of my life for a long time,” Lawson wrote in an email to OU Daily. “I was a Truman Trailblazer, a Whittier Warrior, and a Norman North Timberwolf. I couldn’t imagine working for any other district. My experience working in Norman has been great. It is surreal to walk the same halls now as a school counselor that I once walked as a student.”
Fronheiser said the practicum students provide supportive counseling to NPS students, working alongside the school’s counselor to help assess students and link them to resources.
Practicum students also spend time handling day-to-day tasks at NPS, like small group counseling.
When Lawson was a practicum student, his day-to-day job duties included checking in with students struggling academically and helping them with learning strategies to improve their grades.
“A lot of people don’t realize that school counselors really focus a lot on academics, too,” Lawson wrote. “Checking on students grades and assigning tutoring, as well as coming up with strategies with a plan to pull their grades up is something I still do to this day.”
Fronheiser said the biggest takeaways for students leaving their practicum are that they’re comfortable talking to kids, they’ve learned how to build rapport and encourage kids to be comfortable talking to other adults who aren't their teachers.
Lawson learned classroom management and how to teach in a classroom through observing his mentoring team of school counselors during his practicum.
“My time in my practicum greatly prepared me for this job,” Lawson wrote. “I got to see firsthand what it was like to be a school counselor as I worked alongside 3 great school counselors every day, as well as my advisor who was a school counselor at the middle school a few blocks away.”
The practicum students provide more support for kids at NPS, Fronheiser said, which makes it easier for them to get one-on-one help.
This support from the practicum students is among an array of mental health services provided by NPS, which is categorized into three tiers.
Tier one services are provided by NPS counselors and are for every student, Hime said. They can talk to any student regarding their mental health or emotional well-being and give presentations and lessons on anything related to mental health and social skills.
Tiers two and three services are for students with specific needs, such as individualized or small group mental health support.
Now that NPS has its own employed mental health professionals, students can utilize that free resource in school.
To receive support from the district’s mental health professionals, anyone can refer a student, including themselves. This resource is free, time-based and includes seven to eight sessions, Hime said.
After those sessions, if a student needs to continue treatment somewhere else, the district can refer them to an appropriate place and connect them with someone else.
O’Hara said being able to offer NPS students the ability to see a mental health professional if they need it may uncover unknown traumas, mental illnesses and diagnoses. He said the quicker a student’s mental struggles are understood and are getting proper care, the better it will be for them and their families and everyone who works with that child.
“We're understanding as a society that mental health is just as important as our physical health,” O’Hara said. “We still aren't to the point yet where we go have a mental health physical every year.”
He said a constant struggle to increase mental health awareness and treatment is educating parents.
If NPS employed more mental health professionals, they could diagnose students sooner, enabling them to provide treatment quicker, O’Hara said. Along with a lack of funding for this initiative and a low supply of mental health professionals, there is a lack of awareness regarding mental health, he added.
“As a society, if we know someone's diagnosed with cancer, we immediately want to help them,” O’Hara said. “If we know that someone is addicted to drugs or alcohol or has a mental health episode, it's harder for us to find the same empathy. We need to be balancing that empathy out and realize that those diseases choose the person. The person didn't choose the disease.”
This story was edited by Karoline Leonard, Taylor Jones, Anusha Fathepure and Ismael Lele. Nikkie Aisha copy edited this story.
