In schools across Texas, educators are being asked to support learning while also responding to rising levels of anxiety, trauma, and emotional distress among students. But what if schools weren’t just responding to these challenges, but designing new systems to meet them? In conversation with Beth Hines, principal of Arp Elementary School in East Texas, we explore how educators can become architects of change — building environments where social-emotional well-being is part of the foundation of learning.

• Op Ed: Safe and supportive schools for every Texas student
• COVID-19 and Our Schools
• Children of Change: Supporting Youth Mental Health in an Uncertain World

This episode closes out the Policy arc of our season, an arc focused on how systems change happens, and how mental health policy is shaped not just by moments of urgency, but by sustained leadership. Today’s conversation looks at what it takes to avoid ‘reform whiplash’ — the cycle where systems lurch forward during crisis, only to stall or regress once public attention shifts.

Austin City Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, who represents District 2, has been deeply involved in shaping policies related to housing stability, public safety, and community well-being — areas where mental health intersects with nearly every decision. She gives her perspective on what it means to govern after a crisis — and how to turn short-term responses into long-term, people-centered systems.

• Policy: Telling Your Story
  
• Policy: What's in it For Me?

In a special bonus segment, Hogg Foundation policy fellow Maddie Garza, along with returning guest Ayaan Moledina of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), discuss the Lived Experience Storytelling Primer, a toolkit designed to encourage people with lived experience to engage in advocacy while using a trauma-informed lens to take care of themselves and their stories.

• Lived Experience Storytelling: Primer for Advocacy
• Policy: What's In it For Me?

• Rising Voices: Telling Your Story

• Three Things to Know About Meeting with Policymakers