Disasters like Hurricane Ian can affect academic performance for years to come

Posted Date: 10/21/2022

When leaders at a middle school in New Orleans asked me to help students who were struggling after the city had been struck by Hurricane Katrina, we didn’t see eye to eye.

They wanted me to focus on helping the children overcome test anxiety. Their concern was enabling the children to pass a high-stakes standardized test.

As a developmental psychologist who specializes in how children respond to adverse events that cause stress and anxiety, I – and my colleagues – had something else in mind. We wanted to learn more about the severity of the children’s trauma. We wanted to know how they were coping with any lingering effects of having their lives uprooted by the hurricane. Our objective was to develop an intervention to reduce their overall anxiety, not just help kids do well on a test.

Based on the destruction I saw surrounding the school – which was located in one of the hardest-hit areas of the city – we felt strongly that our cause was the more noble of the two. I reflected on my time in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina after I saw how hard Florida had been hit by Hurricane Ian.