Youth mental health is in crisis—and school-based mental health providers play a key role in helping children and teens cope with depression, anxiety, and trauma, address behavioral issues, and build resilience. When the DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) reached out in 2024 to ask about foundational training in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) with youth, we welcomed the opportunity to support a cohort of social workers, professional counselors, and psychologists with training in evidence-based CBT adapted for school-based settings. BI expert faculty member Dr. Kerrie Smedley led the trainings and provided group consultation to ensure that the providers received ongoing support and guidance as they implemented new skills and techniques.
The training was part of the ARROW initiative, which was created to “launch recruitment and retention activities that build knowledge, skills, professional opportunities and job satisfaction for school behavioral health professionals to enter and remain in the workforce.” We know from our decades of experience providing training to organizations, systems, and agencies, that when staff receive adequate training and support—and when they see the positive impact the training has on their practice—they feel empowered. Organizations frequently report less staff turnover, and lower levels of burnout following training.
We were excited to partner with OSSE to learn more about the positive impact our training had on staff member Caroline Molieri, LICSW, MPA, a school social worker at Bunker Hill Elementary School.
How long have you been a school-based mental health provider?
I have been a school-based mental health provider for nine years, having spent eight of those nine years with DC Public Schools in both middle and elementary settings.
Why were you interested in the CBT training?
I was very interested in the CBT training specifically because it was being delivered by The Beck Institute, where CBT was founded, and because it was specific to school-based providers. Over the years, I have noticed that school-based providers deal with unique challenges in delivering therapy versus providers in outpatient clinics.
What did you like most about the training?
I was grateful for Dr. Kerri Smedley’s engaging delivery of the material, and her organized method of presenting. She also would always ask us at the outset of each of the three days of the training whether any questions arose that we would like to discuss.
She took us through each of the modules of CBT (Assessment, Psychoeducation, Behavioral Interventions, Exposure) and gave specific examples from her work with clients, covering a range of disorders, including anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), depression, trauma, and school refusal.
OSSE also very graciously gave participants the opportunity to consult with Dr. Smedley in the months following the training so we could receive technical assistance with the effective implementation of the training.
How have you been able to utilize the skills from the CBT training?
I have been able to utilize the CBT training to further engage my students in understanding connections between their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and how to analyze peer situations after the fact to determine if there is anything they might have done differently, and what other options there are on a behavioral level. On the feelings level, I have encouraged utilization of mindfulness strategies to shift how the student feels in the moment.
I have also been able to incorporate playful strategies to help the kids better make these connections – I encourage the students to draw the event either on a smart board or dry erase board so that we can envision the scenario together. I also will sometimes invite them to do a rewind, reset, and replay like YouTube so that students can examine their actions on the behavioral level and decide where they could have intervened that might have set the trajectory toward an alternative and more positive outcome.