Dr. Elizabeth Ericson

Educators are many things to many children going well beyond the teaching of academics. School administrators are responsible for ensuring that they have practices and personnel to support all learners' diverse needs. Children come to school each year with more and more burdens on their shoulders in the forms of abuse, trauma, or mental health disorders such as anxiety or depression.

However, despite modern challenges with students' diverse emotional needs, many school personnel have developed progressive and rigorous mission statements for their districts, such as "Every Student, Every Day." Notice that many mission statements say every student or all students. When a small percentage of students bring their burdens and traumas into the school setting in the form of emotional dysregulation, principals find themselves facing tremendous challenges of trying to find the best possible solution for all students, no matter their needs. Often principals do not believe that they have the background knowledge or training, time, or resources to determine what evidence-based practices to implement when supporting students with emotional dysregulation. Too often, administrators in Nebraska schools struggle to keep up with the ever-increasing demands of educating all students.