Holding a School in Mind: Mentalization to Support Social-Emotional Learning

Dr. Ayelet Gottesman

The practice of school psychology has shifted heavily in the direction of behaviorism, with a focus on reducing target behaviors through the use of behavior modification plans. There is a heavy reliance on labels and diagnoses, which are undoubtedly useful tools, but I’d like to propose that they are only a piece of the picture. What they lack is an understanding of the why—why is Dovi hitting and pushing during recess? Why is Shifra failing in her limudei kodesh classes, but passing limudei chol with flying colors? Why is Eli putting his head down during math class every day?
If the goal is compliance, we could easily label Dovi as “ADHD” or “oppositional,” and Shifra as “at-risk.” We could say Eli needs an incentive to motivate him and create a chart to reduce off-task behaviors. I would argue that these labels and solutions might give us a sense of comfort, but are limited in their utility and can potentially be misleading or even harmful to our students. If the goal is to help our students become responsible people who are in touch with their feelings, who can have strong relationships, collaborate with peers and resolve conflicts, then we need to do more than manage behavior. And there is so much more we can do. This approach is about the so much more.
The School as a Holding Environment
What factors best promote the healthy growth and development of a baby from a state of complete dependence on adults for survival, into an independent, resilient, joyful child and ultimately, adult? To understand this, we need to go back to the early days of infancy. British pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott (1965) insightfully described the necessary conditions for this growth. He called it a holding environment. In a holding environment the baby’s primary caretaker is attuned and responsive to both the physical and emotional needs of the baby, at least most of the time. She can remain calm and regulated enough in order to soothe her cranky baby. She can consistently provide enough structure and care while the baby needs it, then recognize when the baby is ready for more independence and allow for that natural growth to occur. In a “good enough” parent-child relationship, the child develops a sense that the world is good, safe and predictable, and that others can be trusted. He internalizes a sense of self-acceptance and agency, and develops the capacity to self-reflect and regulate his emotions and behavior.
If we zoom out from this lovely, heartwarming image of mother and baby, we see that surrounding this parent-infant pair there is an extended family supporting and guiding the new parents as they adjust to parenthood. Surrounding the family there is a community, or many communities, stemming from religious/spiritual, educational, work and other environments. Looking out even further, there is the broader socio/political context, the climate and natural environments. Many interdependent layers surround and “hold” the child, influencing and hopefully enabling the blossoming of the child’s individuality within the context of these many and varying relationships.
Outside of the family, schools have the potential to be tremendously powerful holding environments (Hyman, 2012). Many students spend more time at school than at home with their families. A growing body of research suggests that positive teacher-student relationships may be the most significant predictor of student success, especially for at-risk students (Eppler-Wolff, et al, 2020). So how do we help our students feel held? How can we promote the kinds of positive relationships necessary to facilitate the growth of the whole child, holding in mind their individual emotional, physical and spiritual needs?
Build Relationships through Increasing Mentalization
Current scientific research on attachment has affirmed Winnicott’s theories. Particularly relevant to our discussion is the concept of mentalization. Mentalization, as formulated by Fonagy and Target (1998), is defined as the awareness and recognition that others have minds of their own, that one’s actions stem from unique motivations, beliefs, wishes, desires, ideas, thoughts and feelings. At the core of a mentalizing approach is a curious, not-knowing stance—an awareness that we cannot know with certainty what another person’s internal experience is until they explain it to us. In the context of the parent-child relationship, mentalizing is often described as holding a child’s mind in mind. Mentalization is key in the development of a secure attachment; having one’s mind recognized in the mind of another as separate is foundational in developing empathy, flexible thinking, and a sense of basic trust in the world. Only by first having one’s mind understood and reflected on by another can one begin to understand their own and others’ minds.
Mentalization-based interventions have been employed in a variety of clinical and therapeutic settings. But for many schools, a mentalizing approach requires a really significant shift in mindset. As educators, we are used to being the ones who “know”. But a mentalizing stance recognizes that we can never fully know what is going on inside another person’s mind. We can wonder and get curious, even try to imagine what the other person thinks and feels, but we cannot know. In addition, teachers bear heavy workloads and experience rapid burnout. They sometimes have chaotic classes to run, with the needs of many students to balance; slowing down to think and reflect may be not only unfamiliar to many teachers but may also seem completely at odds with effective classroom management.
In this vein, a nested mentalization model ensures layers of support as we work to promote mentalization in not just our students but our teachers and administrators as well. Adapted from a treatment model for high-risk mothers and babies (Cohen, et al, 2016), the nested mentalization model as designed by Eppler-Wolff (2020) places the students at the center of the nest. They are held by their teachers, who are in turn held by trained clinicians. Clinicians themselves are held by a supportive and reflective supervision group. Clinicians use a variety of interventions to promote mentalization in teachers, but the primary intervention is mentalization itself. Clinicians form trusting relationships with teachers by inviting them, in a nonjudgmental way, to share the full range of their feelings and ideas, including frustrations, fears and worries, and also to reflect and wonder about why their students are acting the way they do. The experience of being mentalized and held by a supportive other enables them to do the same for their students.
In our school we have begun integrating a nested mentalization model, adapted to meet the needs and realities of our school. We are a very small girls’ high school in a small community and we needed a system that would efficiently maximize our minimal resources. As consulting psychologist, I am present at the school for four hours each week. Rather than working directly with students, I focus on meeting with the administrative team, consisting of the menahales and the general studies principal, as well as our administrative/educational assistant. This forms the core of our Care Team, tasked with ensuring that students who need academic or social/emotional support receive it. In our meetings I aim to facilitate a holding environment by bringing open, active curiosity and inviting differing perspectives, and maybe, most importantly, by making space for expressing our feelings—including feelings we may not be so proud of—and for reflecting on our own group process.
We then meet together with our teachers to discuss the needs of particular students and use these growing reflective skills to facilitate collaborative problem-solving. We view behavior as communication and wonder together about what our students may be telling us through their actions, or what feelings or experiences may be underlying their behavior. Our teachers come from different backgrounds and have very different teaching styles. We aim to foster a space that is safe enough for teachers to reflect and learn from each other about what they can do differently to meet the needs of individual students. Creating this holding space for teachers hopefully enables them to go back into their classrooms feeling supported by their colleagues and administrators, and with greater understanding and empathy for their most challenging students. Regardless of what interventions are decided upon and implemented, we believe that the meeting itself, the thinking together with genuine curiosity about the student, is a crucial intervention in and of itself.
Fortify Your Structures
Imagine for a moment living in a shack with walls made of cardboard and a roof of grass. To enter and exit, a flap needs to be lifted very carefully so as not to disturb the rest of the precariously placed cardboard. With any movement too strong, any accidental push against the wall, even as benign as rolling over in bed, the whole house could crumble. If it rains or the wind gets too strong, the shack will need to be completely rebuilt. You would likely become quite anxious, hypervigilant, unable to focus on most regular daily tasks for fear of knocking your house down. In a sturdy brick house, on the other hand, you feel free to move around and go about your day in a relaxed way, trusting that the house will stay standing even if you push hard against the walls. You can go out into the world to explore, play, and learn, knowing that your house will still be standing when you return.
In order to feel calm and regulated enough to learn, our students need to feel that the structures around them are sturdy and that their own actions won’t cause the walls to cave in. They need to feel that the boundaries will be there consistently and reliably, and that they are neither overly confining or excessively loose. The right balance looks different in every school. In our school, we have attempted to fortify our structures by creating a formal system for identifying students who need extra support or enrichment, and ensuring that those who need accommodations and modifications are receiving them consistently, while students who do not need them are not able to rely on getting easier work as a crutch. Likewise, with parents, we have found that holding our ground and speaking directly and confidently with parents about their children’s challenges, about our limits as a school and mistakes we have made, has led to greater trust and collaboration.
We also often reflect on our school rules and policies and think about whether they are practically enforceable and if our expectations are realistic. We are working towards enforcing our rules more consistently, despite students vociferously protesting. We have often found that the students who push up against the rules the most seem to require the firmest boundaries, as if they are testing the walls to see how sturdy they are, and once they feel that the structure around them is secure, they can calm down and get back to learning and having fun. It is often tempting to ease the rules when students complain, or to let students off the hook from work when they are struggling, but accountability and structure gives them the opportunity to rise to the challenge and feel the triumph of success.
Make Space for Feelings
All that being said, limits, rules and boundaries need to go hand in hand with love and empathy. Many schools, and frum schools in particular, try, understandably, to keep the atmosphere positive and to minimize expressions of the so-called negative emotions, including fear, sadness, frustration, disappointment, and especially anger. Some may worry that allowing those emotions to be expressed could lead to lashon hara, and that things could get out of control. But big feelings are real, and if we want our students to learn how to regulate their emotions, we need to listen to them, hold them, and help them work through them. The same is true for faculty and administration. Students, parents, and sometimes other teachers and administrators can stir up very strong feelings in us. We need to be honest and open about these feelings so that we can stay regulated and so that we don’t unintentionally make decisions based on feelings we may be trying to repress.
In a holding environment, all feelings are not just welcome, but encouraged. It may happen that there is a student who is so disruptive, provocative, and infuriating, that her teachers and even the principal feel, but don’t want to admit, that it would just be so much easier if she were no longer in the school. Having a space to acknowledge those feelings and wishes and to wonder about the feelings she is invoking in others, is crucially important before any decisions are made. Is she provoking this reaction because that is the only way she knows how to get people to notice her? Has she experienced traumatic separations in the past and would prefer the relative safety of getting herself kicked out, rather than having to go through the pain of saying goodbye to a place she actually, on some level, likes? Would she truly benefit from a different school setting? Maybe. But without acknowledging our feelings we risk making a decision out of anger, rather than working collaboratively to think about what is actually in the student’s best interest.
Listening is the most powerfully regulating tool we have. Recently, I was teaching a lesson as part of our SEL curriculum and the girls seemed completely uninterested and fidgety. After a few minutes of trying to teach with no success, I stopped and said, “Hey, guys, what’s going on today? You seem really checked out.” They looked around at each other awkwardly and one girl finally spoke up, followed by a chorus of support from her classmates. “We’re just, we’re kind of, um… we weren’t expecting to have you today. We were in the middle of an important conversation with Mrs. X last week, and we were hoping to continue it today.” At this point, mildly insulted, I could have said, “Well, she’s not here, sorry. Let’s get back to business. This is a real class, you know!” But instead, I took a deep breath and said, “I’m so glad you told me. Sounds like you were pretty disappointed when I walked in the door instead of Mrs. X.” They agreed, shared more about it, and on their own, when they were ready, segued back into the topic of our SEL class. Listening to their feelings was all that was needed in order to help them regulate and refocus themselves.
The same is true for teachers. In a nested mentalization model, administrators allow space for teachers to vent, to express frustration, to feel held, so that they can then go back to their classrooms feeling more regulated and better able to approach their students. Teaching is stressful and students can trigger very painful emotions, sometimes even stirring up feelings related to our own pasts and histories. In the heat of the moment, teachers may react to behavior in ways they are not proud of. With this model, teachers have a safe, nonjudgmental space to talk about what happened and wonder about why they reacted the way they did.
Parents, like their children, can evoke strong feelings in teachers and administrators alike. They often come to meetings feeling angry and defensive, with long lists of things the school could be doing better for their child. But the school can become a holding environment for parents as well and relationships can become more trusting and collaborative. In our school we have begun taking time to acknowledge our own feelings prior to parent meetings, including fear that they will be mean, frustration or anger related to their parenting decisions, and shame about mistakes we’ve made. We also take some time to wonder about what they might be feeling coming to meet with us: Are they ashamed to meet with us yet again? Are they angry at their child or worse, themselves? Do they feel like they’ve failed as parents? Making this space for feelings has allowed us to enter parent meetings with less defensiveness and judgment, and greater empathy, which enables parents to lower their defenses as well. Over time, parents have begun to trust that we are interested in working with them as partners, not antagonists.
Empower Student Voices
If the student is at the center of our nest and if we recognize that we can never know what they are feeling or experiencing until they tell us, we need to be sure that we are inviting and empowering our students to share with us. In our Care Team meetings the number one question I find myself asking is, “Has anyone asked her about it?” We may have brilliant theories about why Shifra is failing or why Dovi is so aggressive, and even better ideas about how to solve those problems. But the reality is we may be completely wrong. Bringing students into meetings whenever possible and speaking to them, not about them, ensures that any interventions are attuned to what the student actually needs and align with their goals. When behavioral issues are involved, students can be given the opportunity to reflect on what triggers their behaviors. Taking a mentalizing stance, a teacher could say, “I noticed you often start talking very loud right when I hand out a worksheet. I wonder what’s going on for you right then?” Students of all ages, when given the opportunity in a safe, nonjudgmental space, can be surprisingly insightful and articulate about what is working for them and what is not.
Bringing students in is not just about getting their buy-in. By involving them in the process from the beginning and allowing them to make choices for themselves about where to focus interventions, students learn self-awareness, feel a powerful sense of agency, and, most importantly, feel that the adults in their lives have their backs, understand them, and want them to succeed.
Conclusion
In my short 1.5 years of work at our school, I have witnessed a powerful transformation in how we approach our students, parents, and each other. Having a safe, holding space to explore our feelings and ideas openly has reduced reactive, punitive measures, and drastically increased proactive, supportive interventions, flexibility amongst the administration to consider new ways of responding to challenging situations, and collaboration amongst the administration and faculty. When the administrative team feels held, mentalized, it has a powerful trickle-down effect, as they can then hold and mentalize for their teachers, who can then better mentalize for their students. If we want our students to develop greater capacities for self-reflection and self-regulation, we need to, and can, provide the right kind of environment to facilitate that growth. 

References
Cohen, P., Remez, A., Edelman, R. R., Golub, A., Pacifici, A., Santillan, Y., & Wolfe, L. (2016). Promoting Attachment and Mentalization for Parents and Young Children in the Foster Care System: Implementing a New Training and Treatment Approach in an Agency, Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 15:2, 124-134.
Eppler-Wolff, N. & Albertson, J., Martin, S., & Infante, Lily. (2020). In the Nest: Case Studies from the School-Based Mental Health Collaboration. Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy. 19. 371-392.
Fonagy, P. Target, M. (1998) Mentalization and the Changing Aims of Child Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 8(1), 87-114.
Hyman, S. (2012) The School as a Holding Environment. Journal of Infant, Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy, 11(3), 205-216.
Winnicott, D. W. (1965) The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment ed., Madison, CT: International Universities Press.

Dr. Ayelet Gottesman is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in St. Louis, MO. In addition to her private practice where she provides individual therapy to children, adolescents, and adults, she has worked as the consulting psychologist at Esther Miller Bais Yaakov since 2022. Dr. Gottesman earned her doctorate in School and Clinical Child Psychology from Yeshiva University.

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