The Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning at the University of Indianapolis has teamed up with Fairbanks to identify the most promising strategies for teaching the significant number of school-aged children who come from homes impacted by substance abuse and addiction. This collaboration is expected to lead to a better understanding by schools and child-serving agencies of how to recognize and address the particular academic, behavioral and school readiness problems of Substance-Impacted Students (SI Students).

A field study completed by Dr. Sig Zielke, clinical specialist at Fairbanks, captured the struggles of local educators with the SI child’s overall school performance. Teachers and administrators noted that many SI Students lacked consistent adult care and came to school with several deficits. Too often, these children were unable to follow instructions, could not adequately self regulate, or make sense out of what they were being taught.

“These children are referred to the principal’s office often over discipline problems. Their behavior and learning problems can demand a significant amount of time and energy from the faculty and staff” said Dr. Zielke. “For many schools, these children are scattered here-and-there throughout classrooms. However, for schools serving neighborhoods where there is a high density of substance abuse, SI Students represent a critical mass of students, who not only present individual problems, but as a group, negatively impact the school climate.”

Susan Zapach, a fellow for CELL asserts, “The initiative could not be timelier. In the era of ‘No Child Left Behind,’ public law has mandated that factors associated with student failure need to be addressed. In the past two decades, researchers have suggested that many SI Students have various deficits that put their academic performance and life success at risk. In the face of this, all too often, teachers have felt a sense of helplessness because parental and caregiver substance abuse is seen by them as a home problem and out of the schools ‘locus of control.’ This simply is not true. By empowering teachers with effective tools, strategies and support, the outlook for individual substance-impacted students can dramatically improve.”

The SI Students and the School Project is invested in the effort to break the cycle of addiction and the subsequent school problems of SI Students. Objectives included in this effort are the provision of statewide professional development offerings and resource materials for educators and other child-serving providers that will enable them to better help these children at school and in life.

For more information on this program you can visit HERE.