By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

While New York Mills students attend their classes, complete assignments and work with their peers, they have a resource that isn’t available in every school across the country.  ¶  Angela Wright joined the NY Mills school staff this school year as the SEL (Social Emotional Learning) Interventionist to continue the work of Kelly Tumberg. She described the job’s aspects as focusing on five main elements: self-awareness, self-management, decision making, relationship skills and social awareness.  ¶  “Those are the five main things that it breaks down to and those are the things that I help students with and talk through,” said Wright. “To be more specific, it’s stuff like self-esteem, social skills—whether that’s making friends or being able to interact with classmates or teachers—organizational skills, motivation.”

“Motivation in class is a big one,” she continued. “For students I try to figure out, ‘what motivates you?’ Even if they don’t have a career set up for themselves after school right now, what are they interested in? If they don’t have anything motivating them right now, they’re not going to get stuff done, they’re not going to strive for a certain grade, they’re not going to do stuff just because people are telling them to.”

Another skill that Wright assists students on is the handling of emotions, something children are still learning while in school. She acknowledged that high school can be a stressful time for students and she herself remembers what it was like to be saddled with a high school workload, figuring out a social life and continuing to learn and grow in that setting.

“I’ve always been a very empathetic person,” she said. “I’ve always been someone that has just really cared about mental health and has always felt that it’s a really big part of the school. And also just having a person, whoever it is, to just say what you’re feeling and be a little bit more open is really really important.

“It’s just giving them a space, high school and middle school can be a very confusing and scary time for sure,” she continued. “I had a pretty positive experience, but I felt, I’m sure some of the of feelings they all are feeling now, so I’ve always wanted to work with this population to make it less scary and have them know that someone is there for them and someone is supporting them and just helping them to navigate this time because there are so many feelings going on.”

Wright said that even though in her position, she assists students with a host of different aspects of high school life including mental health, she commented that there is a line between where her professional ability ends and where a mental health professional’s duties begin.

“There are therapists and counselors and there’s a line between what I can do,” she said. “But I always say ‘whatever you have going on, come and tell me about it if you need to talk to someone.’ If I can’t help you, I can always connect you with somebody that can.” It’s a lot about finding out what they’re really struggling with and finding some different tactics and strategies to manage that.”

Wright attended North Dakota State University and graduated in May 2024 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. She is planning on attending grad school for a Masters degree in Social Work this fall. Currently, she works with all students the high school end in the first half of the day and works as a paraprofessional with the Special Education students in the second half of the day, assisting with the same education framework.

“I started seeing kids from the Special Education program who have IEPs,” she said. “I started meeting with those students specifically and offered the lunch group opportunity to them. The first student I brought it up to was like, ‘yeah, absolutely!’ That was someone who didn’t really have a lot of relationships or was spending lunch alone and now, consistently, every day since then they have been coming to my room and we play games and other people have just started to join in.”

“We would go out into the library and students would walk by and say, ‘Oh, I love this game!’ and then start playing with us,” she continued. “This is really good because we’re incorporating in those natural relationships, which is really important. I’ve realized that having these games, it gives them specific instructions and they’re not having to think of conversation topics and it’s not that anxiety of what am I going to say or how am I going to act, you know what you have to do because there are rules to follow within the game and I think that takes a lot of the initial social anxiety away.”

Last week, Wright made up flyers to distribute around the high school to open her classroom’s lunchtime to everyone. The flyer sought out students who wanted something to do during the leftover time after lunch or who didn’t want to spend their lunch period alone.

“We’re going to be doing group games during both lunches,” she said. “Students who are interested can come sign up. You can bring you lunch in here if you need more time, we don’t want students skipping lunch. It’s obviously not required that you come everyday, it’s a space if you don’t want to sit alone at lunch and want something to do.”

“I’m really hoping it will grow and will continue,” she continued. “It’s a mix of students. Lunch cane be a stressful time, so giving them a space that’s a bit more positive is the goal.”

One point about the position that Wright commented on was the fact that the SEL Interventionist is a newer position and she wasn’t sure how common it was for schools around this area to have that role. She acknowledged that not only is she finding her groove in the position in NY Mills, but that she knows that not everyone completely understands the position’s goals.

“This is a position that a lot of teachers are grateful to have and I’m very grateful to be here,” she said. “Some schools will have social workers or they will have counselors, I don’t know how common this specific position is at schools, but I do think it’s really important. Self esteem, social skills, handling emotions, this is such a huge part of the school experience. If your self esteem is low or you don’t really have positive social interactions, that stuff will affect absolutely everything.”

“It’s really important to have a space to talk about those things where they feel comfortable doing so,” she continued. “I hope that this position and positions like this continue to grow in the coming years and I hope there will be a visible change from my time here. I meet with 30-40 students now. Knowing that there are other factors at play and there’s not just one person that benefits from this, really everyone can. There’s definitely a need for it and it’s been a lot of trial and error navigating it, but a lot of it is just having a space for someone to listen to students.”