Education for Students with Brain Injury Shifts due to COVID-19

By Brenda Eagan-Johnson, Ed.D., CBIST, BrainSTEPS Program Coordinator

Since 2007, Pennsylvania’s BrainSTEPS Brain Injury School Consulting Program, comprised of almost 300 brain injury educational consultants on 30 teams, has functioned virtually. Our internal BrainSTEPS work among teams has always been conducted using zoom, email, phone, and conference calls. So, when the COVID-19 shutdowns occurred, BrainSTEPS teams were well-prepared.

However, BrainSTEPS also works directly with students and schools, offering daily consultation, support and training through in-person meetings, student observations, evaluations, and live staff trainings. We had to suddenly shift all of those activities online. We quickly discovered that meeting online with the parents, school team, and student actually makes it easier for all parties to coordinate and participate. I envision schools moving many of their future IEP and 504 Plan meetings online, once school buildings re-open. Although, as a brain injury education consultant, I recognize that nothing virtual can replace in-person student classroom observations to gather functional data.

The first week of the shutdown, Janet Tyler, Ph.D., CBIST, and I collaborated to create a guidance document for school staff and parents that provides targeted academic adjustments to use with students participating in remote online learning during the pandemic in Pennsylvania and Colorado. After brain injury, students may experience increased symptoms and difficulty learning online due to issues related to visual scanning, visual attention, visual memory, and cognitive fatigue. The online academic supports document can be accessed here.

Often students after brain injury experience anxiety, depression, panic, social anxiety, and even school phobia. My colleagues and I are concerned about the short- and long-term effects of the stay-at-home orders for those students. As a direct result, our Montgomery County Intermediate Unit #23 BrainSTEPS team created a virtual teen brain injury support group to proactively help these students. It is very exciting and innovative.

Overall, I am seeing some positive things occur. First, the stay-at-home orders inadvertently forced a national paradigm shift forward for those schools who had resisted implementing technological advances in the past. Second, there has been an increase in the number of school staff viewing Pennsylvania’s online brain injury training because their administrators are searching for learning opportunities while educators are at home. Third, the stay-at-home orders allow students post-brain injury the ability to recover without falling too far behind in their schoolwork because the work has been reduced so much for all students. Last, healthcare providers and other community-based providers have been attending more school-based meetings to discuss student needs from their perspective because the meetings are virtual. These professionals are critical members of the multidisciplinary team who often could not attend in-person school meetings in the past.