BRIDGE LAB FOUNDATION
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Mission Statement
Our mission is to end systemic oppression in education through mental health-based group work with students, teachers, and their communities
About This Cause
At the B.R.I.D.G.E. Lab, we Build Resilience through Inclusively Designed Guidance and Education. We don’t aim to “fix” communities; we collaborate with them to identify problems and solutions. Our group-based curriculum pulls from Systems and Polyvagal Theories, Cognitive-Behavioral and Narrative Therapies, and Somatics. We created this program to end systemic oppression in education through the lens of mental health. Students currently living through adversity and trauma do not receive the resources and support they need to succeed. Counselors, when available, are forced to serve an impossible number of students. Instead, affected students are typically funneled through the punitive School-to-Prison Pipeline, which disproportionately targets minority youth and students of lower socio-economic backgrounds. How Our Program Works: Before school starts, teachers are led through the curriculum. This primes them with the language and concepts we will be using so they can incorporate them with students in their own classrooms. Doing this before school begins is critical, as teachers have the best understanding of their students. Their knowledge guides our customized lesson plans. Once classes begin, students are guided through the curriculum at a specific time during the school day (typically during homeroom or a free period) one to two times per week. For new schools, we begin with a pilot group for each grade level supported under our MOU, customizing the build-out plan to fit the specific circumstances of each district, adding cohorts as need arises. Typical intervention programs only focus on the most “high risk” students, missing many young people who fall through the cracks into a progression of detention, expulsion, and even prison. The B.R.I.D.G.E. Lab establishes a touchpoint for continual mental health evaluations of all students, helping each one build tools to bolster their resilience and overcome adversity. This will be of critical importance during the post-COVID transition to in-person learning. Each student will handle this dramatic change differently, and students who typically might not need mental health resources may now require them due to the resulting stress. The group setting is critical, as most experts agree young people respond better to group work than individual sessions. Groups allow students to more comfortably engage with the material, while learning how to give and receive feedback directly from their peers. Our group work is broken up into four sections: Movement, Psychoeducaiton, Skill Building, and Processing. During each group session, students engage with a new, developmentally appropriate lesson (topics include but are not limited to: communication, empathy, emotional intelligence, resilience, trauma, and social justice). This also increases young people’s self-awareness and higher level thinking skills, and prepares them to engage critically with the systems and narratives that surround them. We currently perform group work with 150 students, as well as their teachers and caregivers, in schools serving Los Angeles’ most disadvantaged communities. Our program has shown improvements in their grades, relationships, and overall well-being. So far, our interventions have been incorporated into the University of Colorado’s curriculums, and we have been invited to present at national SEL Summits. Why The B.R.I.D.G.E. Lab? Neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage correlate directly to developmental trauma and higher ACE Scores (Adverse Childhood Experiences) in individuals. Due to historical discrimination like redlining and unequal resource distribution based on income tax, these neighborhoods are significantly more likely to be communities of color. Black Americans are nearly four times more likely than average to live in neighborhoods where the poverty rate is over 40%. Students who experience ACE scores of 4+ are: 4.5x more likely to use illicit drugs 4x more likely to have difficulty controlling anger 1.33x more likely to experience memory impairment When a young person’s environment is overburdened and under-resourced, particularly due to COVID-19, it severely increases social and emotional distress. Current programs that address trauma in young people lack an awareness of healing and regulation through somatics. They also typically only focus on acute causes and symptomatology, which neglects the systemic forces that increase instances of negative and prolonged trauma responses in minority youth. A cohesive treatment plan for trauma must equip students with the skills to handle future adversity, while also engaging the adult populations that surround and support students (i.e., teachers and caregivers).