Mental Health and Safety are Focus of New ELPS Hires
East Lansing Public School (ELPS) District welcomes three new hires who will focus on mental health and safety for students and staff.
Director of Health and Safety Matthew Morales, District Mental Health Coordinator Heather Findley and Behavior Systems Specialist Paul Shanks all come to East Lansing from the Holt Public School (HPS) District. And all three said they are looking forward to a great year and career with ELPS.
Matthew Morales comes to ELPS hoping to build a “safe and welcoming community.”
Morales most recently worked as the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for HPS. After receiving both his bachelors and masters degrees in criminal justice, Morales worked in the court system with adjudicated youth.
He shifted his focus to an education setting in 2018 when he was hired as the associate principal at East Lansing High School.
Morales is looking forward to returning to ELPS.
“East Lansing Public Schools and the greater community is very near and dear to my heart,” Morales said. “It’s the place where my family lives, and so I’m very humbled and honored to be able to re-engage with this great learning community once again. And I’m looking forward to creating long-lasting relationships that I believe will create a greater culture and climate within our school district.”
As Director of Health and Safety, Morales plans to work on developing and implementing new safety systems in the district. He wants to focus on threat assessment, the emergency operations plan and building a more collaborative relationship with local law enforcement.
“An overarching position for my role, as well as us working collaboratively as an office, is really creating a safe and welcoming school district,” Morales said.
He also emphasized a need to have a greater understanding of what crisis communication should look like for the district and trying to be as transparent as possible with that process.
Morales hopes to help ELPS create a community where all members can “feel seen, heard and valued.”
In order to do that, he plans to build lasting relationships and hear from individuals about what is important to them.
Joining ELPS is coming home for ELHS grad Heather Findley.
Findley also was most recently employed in HPS as their Director of Mental Health Services, where she augmented and supported mental health programming for a district of 5,000 students.
Before that, she spent over 12 years as a social worker, working in a shelter for children experiencing abuse and neglect, and spent about a decade working in hospital settings providing psychiatric evaluations. For the last four years, Findley has worked in education, emphasizing a focus on wellness and mental health.
Findley returns to ELPS as an alumni who graduated from East Lansing High School (ELHS) 20 years ago. She looks forward to re-engaging with the community and returning to a place she called home.
“I believe it’s an opportunity to give back to a community that I feel was really helpful in many ways for me as a young person,” Findley said.
Findley will work as the Mental Health Coordinator for the district, focusing on the district’s commitment to mental health and wellness. She will also be leading the district crisis team.
“We know that our students can’t really be asked to engage academically if they’re not feeling well emotionally or mentally or not having the support they need,” Findley said. “We really want to have a proactive approach in response to those needs.”
Findley echoed Morales’ goals to create a safe environment for students and staff, not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally. She emphasized this need to put a student’s mental wellbeing first, before one can expect them to be a student.
“How can we create these expectations for students if that student doesn’t have something to eat or they’ve been up all night caring for a relative,” Findley said. “Those have to be considered. Because they are not just sitting getting lectured at, they are a whole person.”
Paul Shanks will work to put relationship building at the center of behavior systems.
Shanks comes to ELPS with seven years of experience as a classroom teacher where he focused on utilizing restorative practices. The concept of restorative practices, according to the We Are Teachers website, focuses on mediation and agreement rather than punishment.
“One of the reasons I work in education, in general, is because of my experiences as a kid,” Shanks said. “It was just always a positive part of my life and so, I really enjoy being able to be part of a group that is working to make some positive shifts in creating some more proactive approaches for kids to feel more connected, a better sense of belonging and ultimately having some more positive learning experiences.”
Most recently, he also worked in HPS as a Restorative Practices Coordinator for the district.
“Restorative practices, at their heart, are really about engaging kids in the conversation, people in the conversation, being able to see things from their own experiences, from their perspectives, and then also trying to build a strong sense of community with people,” Shanks said.
At ELPS, Shanks will work as a Behavior Systems Specialist, coordinating and calibrating behavior systems for the district, utilizing socioemotional learning components and his work with restorative principles.
His goal in this role is to create behavior systems that are more proactive across the district and calibrating them in all of the schools, so kids are having similar experiences no matter which building they are in.
Shanks hopes to shift the stigmatized version of behavior systems that carry a negative connotation with them. He hopes to put relationship building at the center of these systems.
“We’re excited to be at East Lansing Public Schools,” Morales said. “Truly, this is great work, very important work, and work that, I think, ultimately is going to be successful because multiple stakeholders have a willingness to dive in and be reflective and really have that commitment to learn and grow on a daily basis.”