By now, most people are familiar with the story of Rowan Stringer. The McCrae Secondary School rugby player died in May 2013 from second impact syndrome, the result of multiple head injuries in rapid succession. She was 17.
In the years since her death, Rowan’s parents Gord and Kathleen Stringer have been strong advocates for better education on concussions. They’ve pushed for a new bill – named Rowan’s Law – that would ensure young athletes are removed from play when they sustain a concussion.
With increasing awareness about the dangers of concussions, parents and policy-makers alike are thinking long and hard about how best to support students in their return to the classroom after a head injury. Ontario’s Ministry of Education issued a memorandum two years ago insisting all school boards in the province develop a concussion protocol by the 2015-16 school year.
This is just past the halfway mark of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board’s first academic year with a concussion protocol.
The protocol is lengthy – 20 pages, for those policy nerds who wish to read it at their leisure. It includes everything from the clinical definition of a concussion to a memory function test that can be administered in just a few minutes. Like most protocols, it also details who is responsible for what in the event a concussion takes place. For example, coaches must inform parents about concussion risks using concussion tools included in the document.
Where the protocol is most interesting is in an appendix that details hallmark post-concussion symptoms. An expansive table lists how each symptom impacts learning, and provides accommodations that teachers can use to help students in their “returning to learning.” Those possible accommodations range from things as simple as using a day planner to map out assignments, to allowing a student to eat lunch “in a quiet area with a few friends.” It’s an incredibly useful tool. Anyone who knows a friend, relative or employee living through the aftermath of a concussion would do well to read it and heed its advice.
This chart is where the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board champions the success of students returning to the classroom after a head injury. It’s also where the board fails them.
Most of the accommodations are valuable, and involve changing the environment or constraints a student often experiences in the classroom (noise, due dates that are clumped together, anxiety about the task at hand). But too much focus is on providing solutions to the cause, rather than addressing the effect.
Changing an assignment deadline doesn’t necessarily mean the student has the right tools to complete the assignment. Moving them to a quiet area may actually slow down their healing, if they become accustomed to the silence and insist on working there full time, even when they’re not symptomatic.
We’ve come a long way in bolstering awareness about head injuries and we’re better at diagnosing them. But when it comes to treating them, we fall short. Schools need to be at the frontier of innovative solutions.
Parents trust teachers to keep their children safe and to help them learn and grow. When it comes to concussions that means challenging students and equipping them with tools to cope with the symptoms of their injury.