How Can We Help Concussed Students?

flashback to freshman year, I was a three season athlete

competing to the best of my ability and loving sports.

I played the very beginning of my sophomore year.

That all changed Three weeks in the field hockey season.

I took a ball right to my head, conveniently, just

barely missing my goggles since I didn't pass out, I

convinced my coaches and myself that I was fine to

keep playing, but after just about 10 minutes I was

so dizzy that I could barely see and I felt

like I was going to be sick and staying at

the same time 2.5 years later.

Today, I sometimes still experience that same feeling from physical

activity or even from school work.

Many people don't realize that even modern concussions can have

prolonged and even permanent physical and mental concussion effects following

my injury.

Both my athletic and academic high school life has been

turned upside down by post concussion syndrome.

My story is just one example of thousands of high

schoolers who struggle with post concussion effects.

My personal journey has motivated me to want to help

other students who are also struggling with concussions and post

concussion effects.

I feel it is essential to prevent as many teenagers

as possible from dealing with serious concussion effects, which I

feel it would be best achieved by reforming school policies

to aid students with concussions and related conditions.

In addition to negative physical, athletic and mental health components

are also a lot of academic limitations that a concussion

or post concussion syndrome can impose on students in massachusetts,

there are currently concussion protocols in place, but I have

noticed several flaws in them.

The biggest being that progression through the phases is based

on time.

Ultimately, I decided to create my own return to learn

policy that I thought would be more helpful to students

with concussions, post concussion syndrome or other related effects.

My plan includes specific accommodations to help students be successful

academically despite their condition and unlike other plans, progression through

phases is based on student symptoms alone.

I'm in the process of implementing my plan it into

her high school and I want to help as many

struggling students as possible and prevent as many head injuries

as we can.

The driving question for my project is what are the

consequences and long term effects of a concussion?

And how can we reduce the risk of these conditions?

To answer this question, I explored these conditions more in

depth through secondary research to find out how exactly a

concussion leads to them.

In addition to exploring how one can reduce the risk

of getting further condition after concussion, I also really wanted

to focus on helping those who already deal with these

conditions to address this.

My essential question is how can we reform school policies

to aid students who are struggling with concussions and related

effects in high intensity academic settings, both when returning to

school and in the long term.

In terms of my secondary research, there's a lot of

research out there that explores the effects of concussions in

the long term and the impact that these conditions can

have on learning specific topics.

Are diagnosis effects on learning.

Return to learn approaches prevention strategies and the current laws

and regulations that are in place.

The sources helped to answer my driving an essential questions,

but they also show what further research needs to be

done and what additional school policies should be implemented to

help students in return to learn experiences.

The sources, I found are mostly medical references, scholarly journals

and state document publications.

A lot of the sources I found described post concussion

effects and conditions.

Doctors believe that any cognitive activity that negatively reinforces symptoms

should be avoided during recovery.

Medical professionals also recognize that all recovery processes are different,

but those with post concussion syndrome do not retain structural

changes in the brain, just cognitive changes.

Sources also described that students face struggles when returning to

school with a concussion in some specific cognitive deficits that

can occur our attention concentration, memory processing speed and efficiency.

Um, and verbal fluency.

I explore different methods of testing that can show before

and after abilities for athletes.

And some sources explained that student athletes made purposely underperform

when taking these tests so that if they do get

concussed, they can appear to be testing normal and further

regard to concussions and athletics.

I explored sports safety, um, gear such as helmets and

other protective gear and medical professionals found that they are

not as effective as we often believe them to be.

Sports regulation, like fair play policies and education for coaches

and athletes have proven to be effective.

In terms of statistics studies on high school football players

Found that concussions go frequently unreported in seasons, only 47.3%

of participants reported concussions sustained during their most recent season.

Even though concussion rates are so high, some sources suggest

that they might be even higher in reality.

In terms of academics, there are return to learn approaches

in 10 states, but that means that 80% of states

don't have any of these protocols at all.

During a return to learn phase, medical professionals recommend a

complete rest phase, but not for an extensive period of

time. Rather, they promote a gradual return to school as

soon as seemed possible.

Concussed students and schools are supposed to be constantly observed

and monitored and they have to follow a really gradual,

slow return to class work.

Educational staff are supposed to complete concussion training and coaches

are required to teach athletes to minimize concussion.

Um, place that can promote concussions.

Lastly, I explore the mental health components that are involved

in concussions and found that mental health is greatly influenced

by concussions.

For example, 30% of concussion patients um, can experience depression.

These secondary sources show what research has been done to

help with the issue of concussions and what further research

still needs to be done, as well as what additional

protocols need to be created in order to help concussed

students in educational settings.

Specifically changes in requiring and regulating athlete and school staff

compliance to concussion protocols, Creating protocols and the remaining 80%

of states and raising general awareness for the effects of

a concussion on learning and mental health really needs to

be prioritized.

The secondary research also influenced me to create my own

return to learn plan where I could implement all the

medical suggestions for recovery as well as create a survey

to better assess how concussion awareness levels are and over

high specifically.

So I'll get into talking about these two components of

my primary research.

I believe that my return to learn plan that I

created for primary research addresses the problems that exist with

the current plans in place.

Uh, like I said, plans like this do currently exist.

However, I found that they are difficult to adhere to

properly and it's also unclear when students should progress to

the next phase.

The return to learn plan that I created has six

outlined phases with clear direction of what protocols to follow.

The biggest difference between my return to learn plan and

others that I have seen is that progression through the

phases is based solely on students symptoms alone rather than

time base.

And when I made my plan, I took into account

all medical and professional suggestions that I found during my

secondary research.

And then the other part of my primary research was

my survey and the survey that I created was intended

to be taken by school administrators, students, teachers and parents.

The survey included a variety of questions that are all

meant to assess the knowledge levels and awareness levels and

also concerned levels about concussions.

At end of our high school and 33 people took

my survey.

The first section of data is from school administration Over

all the data in this section shows that teachers and

other school faculty are aware of the problem with concussions

at the high school, which was to be expected When

asked about the number of students that teachers had to

accommodate two in the classroom for head injuries.

The number greatly varied.

Um, and this data is helpful because it shows that

some teachers are well aware of the academic limitations of

a head injury while others have never experienced this in

their classroom.

And then this graph shows administrators opinions on the level

of concussion education they receive in many saw as not

enough, they also left helpful, um, open ended ideas for

potential accommodations based on what they have seen helpful, which

gave me good insight into where accommodations need to be

available to the students.

The next section of the survey was for students, and

it describes what they know about concussions.

Although most reported never having had a concussion themselves, most

did know someone who had had a concussion if not

just a regular concussion, of serious concussion.

Most were pretty aware of what post concussion syndrome is,

as well as the potential symptoms of head injuries.

The image here shows what most students believe, um that

more prevention can be taken in high school sports, and

they offered suggestions on what further precautions to take.

The majority also said that either they, themselves or their

parents or both had been wary of their participation in

certain sports and activities at the high school due to

the potential risk of head injury.

The last section of the survey is intended for parents

to test awareness and concern levels of concussions for high

schoolers, the parents who took the survey seemed less aware

of what post concussion syndrome is than the students.

They voted similarly to students regarding the amount of concussion

prevention in sports.

100% of parents who took the survey said that they

felt like student athletes live by the severity of the

symptoms in order to return to athletics.

Parents seem concerned also about the rates of concussions, but

they were unsure whether or not concussion rates have spiked

in recent years, and they did not have strong opinions

regarding the amount of concussion training for teachers.

Interestingly, parents were far more likely than the teachers to

say that they struggled to tell when their child is

struggling as a result of an invisible head injury.

Lastly, the image here depicts that parents greatest concerns with

their child getting a head injury, our physical health, cognitive

ability and changes in temperament.

Um, well, mental health and athletic capability ranked lower as

concerns. The suggestions given by all sections of those who

took the survey are helpful in guiding what changes need

to be made both in academics, academics and athletics as

prevention and treatment at the high school.

Some of the responses displayed a general understanding of concussions,

while others displayed a lack of proper knowledge and perhaps

a lack of concern where there should be more.

One specific problem that really stood out to me is

that mental health ranked as such low importance to parents

when it came to the symptoms that their child faces

when getting a concussion, which either shows that they're unaware

that mental health is a concussion symptom or it's just

not being prioritized the same way that academic capability and

physical health is being prioritized.

I took my plan to my guidance counselor for review

and I really hope that I returned to learn plan

like mine can be implemented and over high.

And I also hope that my research will encourage school

administrators to better educate teachers and coaches and even students,

as well as just making high school sports safer.

Thank you for your time and listening to my caps

presentation, and I hope this was helpful in teaching.

Um, what more we can be doing to help students

that are struggling with concussions and related effects at end

of our high school.

Thank you.

How Can We Help Concussed Students?

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