Don't Force It: How to Get into College without Losing Yourself in the Process

Mental Health for Asian American Students

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Happy New Year! In this year’s first episode, I sit down with Chris, the Director of College Counseling at Stony Brook School, and Lisa, a high school counselor, to discuss the mental health challenges Asian American students face. We explore how early support and open conversations with parents can make a difference. Tune in to discover practical ways to support our students and create a healthier path forward.

Bio

Chris Loo has been working with young people for most of her career. For the last 13 years, she has been a college counselor. She is currently Director of College Counseling at The Stony Brook School, where she works with a diverse student population. Outside of work, she is on the Board of Directors for NACAC, a member of both the NACAC and ACCIS AAPI SIG and a faculty member of NYSACAC’s Summer Institute. Her interest in exploring and discussing issues of diversity stem from her own experience as a Korean-American immigrant and her work with students from all over the world at SBS, where she serves as the faculty advisor for the Asian Student Union. She is a frequent speaker at conferences and workshops, especially on topics about diversity, equity and mental health. She holds both a B.A. in American History and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania. Follow Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-loo-78b2b370/

Li Hsiang (Lisa) Chung (she/her) is the College and Career Counselor/Specialist at La Canada High School in La Canada, CA. She joined La Canada Unified School District in 2022, where she played a key role in establishing the La Canada High School College and Career Center. With over 20 years of experience in high school counseling, Lisa began her career at Granada Hills Charter High School, the largest charter school in the nation, and has dedicated her career to empowering students and enhancing educational outcomes in public high schools. In addition to her counseling experience, Lisa has taught as an adjunct professor at California Lutheran University’s Graduate School of Education and has worked as a Senior Learning Skills Counselor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. She has presented on topics such as “Unseen & Unheard: Elevating AAPI Adolescents’ Mental Health” at various conferences. Follow Lisa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-chung-lchs-c3/

Resources:
https://www.instagram.com/yellowchaircollective/?hl=en, https://challengesuccess.org/, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/705868/but-what-will-people-say-by-sahaj-kaur-kohli-maed-lgpc/, https://www.jennywangphd.com/new-page, https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/jimmy-o-yang/how-to-american/9780306903502/

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Access free resources and learn more about Sheila and her team at Signet Education at signeteducation.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheilaakbar/.

Chris Loo:

When you are working in a school, one of the measures of a student's well being is actually grades and GPA. That's one of the things that we look at when we kind of have our students of concern meeting like who is failing and below what we consider sort of a healthy threshold. And sometimes, because our Asian American students are high performing. We don't actually ask the other question of, are they doing okay?

Sheila Akbar:

Hi folks. Happy New Year, and welcome back to the podcast. I am rested, but unfortunately, right at the end of my break, I did get COVID, so I'm just getting over it. You're gonna hear me sniffling a little bit in this introduction, or maybe a little hoarseness in my voice, but I hope you'll bear with me. Today, I have a really great set of guests to introduce to you, Chris Liu and Lisa Cheung. Chris is a Director of College Counseling at a independent school in New York, and Lisa lives in LA here near me, and is a school counselor. And I heard these two really wonderful, just amazingly intelligent, insightful women speak at last fall's NACAC conference, that's the National Association of College admissions counselors, and they gave a presentation that was called unseen and unheard, and it was all about mental health in The Asian American community, particularly for high school students. And I thought it was such a brilliant presentation, really brought to light a lot of things that I think a lot of people don't realize or don't even stop to think about. And I invited them to come on the podcast so we could talk about, let's see the model minority myth, advising Asian American families and students and helping us just find some common ground from which to move forward. So take a listen. I hope you'll enjoy this conversation. Chris and Lisa, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really excited about this conversation and for our audience to get to hear a little bit more about the perspectives you take when working with particularly AAPI students, but also just your approach to working with students in general. So we'll get into the content that you presented at this conference that we were all at last fall in just a moment. But before we do that, I would really love for each of you to take just a couple of seconds to introduce yourself and tell us how your educational journey led you to where you are now. Chris, let's start with you.

Chris Loo:

Sure. Thanks so much for having us today. Sheila, it's really, really awesome to be here. I'm currently Director of College Counseling at the Stony Brook school. I've been here for the last 10 years, I've had a I've done a bunch of different things in my career, which I won't go into right now, but I really love working with students. I'm also an immigrant. I came here when I was just about six from South Korea with just my immediate family and just growing up, there was a huge emphasis on education, and just a lot of emphasis on doing well in school. And so I think that was for my family. I think the dream was to get into an Ivy League school, you know, get the job, the spouse, the children, and then hopefully that they would also get into high ranking schools. And so feel like, yeah, have lived a sort of a, you know, quote, unquote, typical Asian American immigrant experience here in the US.

Sheila Akbar:

And how did you come into counseling work?

Chris Loo:

Oh, I'm actually a licensed mental health counselor. And so initially, I actually worked at a refugee resettlement organization helping refugees assimilate and acclimate to the US. Somehow I ended up working in a bunch of different schools, and eventually was actually working as a school counselor. And then the college counselor retired, and my principal was like, you know, do you want to try this? And I was like, Sure, I'm up for anything. And so that's how I ended up in college counseling.

Sheila Akbar:

That's wonderful, and clearly you have all the skills and perspectives needed for it. Just before we turn on the recording, you were saying it's, it's the best year your school has ever had with early admissions results. So that's

Chris Loo:

Yeah, I'm really, really proud of our students, awesome. and like, a very positive vibe right now on our campus.

Sheila Akbar:

That's so great. Lisa, how about you tell us about what you do and how you came to do it?

Lisa Chung:

Sure. So I'm currently at La Canada High School. This is only my third year here. I've been a public high school counselor for over 20 years. So love what I do. Love motivating students and helping parents and working within the school system. So prior to that, I worked for UC San Diego. I was in a Department of Psychiatry. I've also worked at Juvenile Hall, so a little bit of everything. Like Chris, I was an immigrant. I came from Taiwan when I was seven years old. So you know, I guess maybe typical except that we lived in El Centro, which is the southwest corner of California, right next to Mexico. So a lot of cultural identity, like, who am I and how do I fit in this American landscape? So a lot of survival mode, you know, issues to deal with. So, you know, I came into counseling really want to make a difference, and just have enjoyed every minute.

Sheila Akbar:

Well, that's fantastic. So as I mentioned in my introduction, I heard you both give a talk on supporting Asian American students mental health through the college process at the annual NACAC conference. It's the National Association of College Admissions Counselors, of which all three of us are members. And you drew quite a large audience, which I was really happy to see. And it wasn't just Asians in the audience, so there were a lot of us, and I thought that the material you presented was really sharp and impactful, and things that you know. I know you've been dealing with in most of your career, but I think people haven't really been talking about it explicitly until maybe just the last two or three years. So I'm curious if you can tell us where the idea for that panel come from, and why did you feel like we needed this information now?

Lisa Chung:

Well, as a public high school counselor, a lot of times we're dealing with crisis, or we're dealing with D's and fails or things that you know walk through our door. So the conversation that Chris and I started having was unseen and heard really thinking about Asian Americans. Sometimes they don't walk through our office with crisis. And many times when we do see them in crisis, it's like we're hitting rock bottom. So we really want to see if there's things that we could do before we get to that point. And so that was the genesis of, okay, I think it's time to discuss Asian American mental health. And when we look at stats, it's surprisingly that Asian Americans have one of the lowest mental health seeking rates. So we're like, wow, this is not good. We need to do something about it now.

Chris Loo:

I think. And just to add to that, Sheila, you know, even though Lisa works at a public school and I work at a private school, I was seeing the same thing among my AAPI students, right? Except that the D was not the fail, it was the B, you know, and it's and so they were just carrying a lot. They were under a lot of stress and pressure from families and expectations. And then if Lisa and I talked, I also shared my own personal experience of having grown up with mental health issues and not always feeling like there was a safe space for me to actually talk about it myself.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you brought up, both of you brought up two really, I think important factors here. One is the unseen and unheard. We don't really always recognize when a student from another culture, let's just say, is struggling, especially, I think, in our Asian cultures, where academic excellence is just expected, and so the standards, like you're saying Chris for failure is a little bit different, right? It's not the D. It may be even an A minus brings up, you know, the kind of emotions and sense of failure that someone else getting a D or an actual fail would so I know at the heart of that both of those things is the model minority myth. Can you give us a quick definition of what that is and how it impacts Asian students?

Lisa Chung:

So the model minority myth really stems from that, you know, Asian Americans are fine, that you know they are, you know, the go getters. They're getting straight A's, they're they're quiet in the class, and they're hard working. So anything that doesn't fit that is like censored, and people don't believe it. And so we're also then pitted up against other groups and minorities, and so that it becomes almost like a struggling Olympics, like who has a greater struggle, and Asian Americans you don't so you be quiet. So model minority myth has a lot of nuances to it. That is not the best.

Sheila Akbar:

Chris, what would you add?

Chris Loo:

Yeah, I would say there is, it's the myth that the perception that we're always okay, we are high achieving, we are successful. I think the other thing I would say is that Asian Americans are often portrayed as people that don't speak up or push back, and so, yeah, we're we just kind of like, do what we're told. Old, and we get along with people, and we kind of fulfill all the expectations placed upon us. And so yeah, I think that those are some of the other components of the model minority myth.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, and it is difficult to encapsulate, because it has so many different interactions with other things, right? So, Lisa, you mentioned, we're being pitted against other minorities, right? If the Asians can immigrate here and be, quote, unquote, fine, why can't other ethnic groups, right? So we are used as a cudgel against other minority groups. And then there's the the suffering Olympics that you mentioned as well, like everybody's getting A's, and as an aggregate, Asian immigrants are the wealthiest immigrant group in the United States. So Asians are fine, right? But of course, as we start to dig underneath this, we can see why this is such a hurtful stereotype and harmful stereotype, because Asians aren't a monolith. There are lots of different types of Asian immigrants from immigrants like my parents. I don't know if this fits your families, but my parents came over as part of an immigration plan that was really trying to draw in highly educated, technically trained people to move to, you know, it's why I grew up in a rural area in Michigan. My father was a doctor, and, you know, he was, he was sort of recruited in and so, because my father came over as part of that kind of group, of course, education was a big part of their culture, because it was part of their culture, you know, in their in their home culture. But there are lots of immigrants who come over as refugees of wars and conflicts, people who are seeking asylum, people who you know, maybe a family member, brought them over, and they themselves don't have a lot of education, and so they are really starting from a different place when they get to the United States, right? So it's very unfair to paint everybody with a single brush. How do you see that play out in the work that you all do.

Chris Loo:

I just wanted to say this Sheila, and I think that it is really important for us not to assume that all the students we work with don't need financial aid, right, because they're from well off families, or they're all sort of, you know, headed toward the same goal that they're all a plus students, one of the things I did want to bring up when you are working in a school, one of the measures of a student's well being is actually grades and GPA. That's one of the things that we look at when we kind of have our students of concern, meeting like who is failing and below what we consider sort of a healthy threshold, and sometimes, because our Asian American students are high performing, we don't actually ask the other question of, are they doing okay? So I think for schools, they have to kind of figure out other measures, right of student well being, besides the bad GPA, because sometimes Asian students will not fall into that category, and they're not okay, which goes back to our the title of our presentation of unseen and unheard,

Lisa Chung:

Absolutely, and then the idea that, you know, because if you don't live up to that model minority standard, then you're a bad Asian and so you're like, it's a double whammy. You feel even worse about yourself. And Sheila, you alluded to the poverty rates, about the just discrepancy of different Asian American groups. And so it is vastly different. So while one, you know, minority Asian American group could be doing really well overall. There are definitely groups that you know have lower incomes and so forth. So taking the time to get to know each individual student, like Chris said, is pretty important.

Sheila Akbar:

That's, yeah, great to add. And I think, sorry, there was a question for me, and now it's gone a little bit, but it'll come back. What I'm thinking about now is why those students might not be okay, even if their grades are fine or great, right? They may be the highest achieving student in terms of grades. I think I mean Asian, American students are just like any other student, right? Teenagers go through things. There's a lot of new social dynamics and things like that happening in adolescence that they're, of course, struggling with. They live in the same world as everybody else. We're all struggling under whatever is happening in our particular corners of the world or communities that we care about. But Asian students also have to contend, especially if they come from an immigrant origin family. They may also be contending with the sort of after effects and the generational trauma that comes with immigrating. Can you speak about that a little bit?

Chris Loo:

Yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. We see generational trauma on two scales. One is the macro scale, and. It's exactly what you just mentioned, Sheila, you know, they can come from systemic and historical oppression. They may come from a country that has had years of, you know, decades of colonization. They may be victims of war and poverty, and so for students who have come from this kind of macro trauma, we really need to be understanding of the context right and the families from which they came. But I would say the other kind of generational trauma is on a micro scale, and this is kind of how cultural and parental expectations and beliefs are experienced in their day to day life. And so you know, whether it's a student who just comes from a family where you know I'd love you, I'm proud of you, are not phrases that you know they are hearing ever. And so it really gets tied into sort of this idea of, I am lovable, right? I am worthy because of what I achieve, not because of who I am. And so we could probably talk about this for a couple hours Sheila, which we don't have time for. But there's a great difference between guilt, right, I feel badly because of something I've done and shame, which is, I feel badly of myself because of who I am. And so I think for our students who have come from backgrounds where they're shame based cultures, a lot of this sort of micro generational trauma is really part of their story, but they find it really hard to talk about

Sheila Akbar:

Right, so like you said, we could talk about this for hours for sure, but we're gonna try to keep it to the size of a podcast episode here. But one of the things I'm also thinking about is why they're not talking about it, why they're not coming into your office. There are cultural stigmas against sharing these kinds of struggles, admitting that maybe within the family, something is happening that is negative, right? I know when I was raised, my parents were like, you keep family secrets in the family, right? Because there was a lot of to your point shame about what will other people think? What will other people say? We have to be better than everybody else in order to be treated normal. And of course, even if we were we weren't treated normal, quote, unquote, because there was this idea, again, Chris, like you were saying we had to earn respect. We had to earn a sense of human dignity, not that we were just automatically afforded it because we were human. So let's talk a little bit about these sort of cultural stigmas and how that can Well, we've already talked about, this is a double whammy. Maybe it's a triple whammy now that if they come forth asking for some help, or admitting, hey, this is not I'm not feeling good, then there may be even more pressure and shame keep upon them.

Lisa Chung:

Yeah, we see, you know, two folds. One is academically, like we kind of started talking about, there's a great meme out there that, you know, we're Asians, not Bsians. So like Chris said, B is like, not okay, and this is the standard. And so academically, we see students walking in, you know, a little bit stressed, and that's when we say, Hey, are you okay? The other side of the spectrum is we have students with serious mental health issues, and they're walking in saying, I need help, and now we have to convince the parents, we have to convince and get the wraparound support that the student needs. So I feel like there's two fold in the spectrum of different services and kind of where awareness of you know what their needs are for our students.

Chris Loo:

Yeah, I think the other thing is, you can actually, it's just, I would say overall, there's still a stigma attached to mental health struggles in it. I would say it's, it's pretty acute in the AAPI community, but just in general, right? It's just, like, not the thing that people talk about in general. But I do think that in the AAPI community, it is very acute. It's, there, there's all sorts of stigma and shame attached to it. And so I can just share with you my own experience growing up with, you know, mental health issues. I don't know that my parents, they kind of had a frame of reference. I don't know that they had sort of the tools to really talk to me about it, but I can tell you that they 100% loved and supported me because they paid for my counseling, right? But they would never talk to me about it. And I feel like that is a to me, sort of a the, you know, my parents way of saying, this is uncomfortable for us, but we love you, you know, so I do hope to someday see our students and our families say, hey, like this is part of your story, and this is good for us, to be able to talk about this part of your journey.

Sheila Akbar:

Well, since we're talking a little bit about parents, how do you approach parents who may or may not be aware that their child is struggling with something?

Lisa Chung:

I think, you know, Chris and I talk about this quite a bit, and we wish we had that magic wand, but getting to the same side as the parents is tremendously important saying, Hey, we all want what's best for Johnny, right? And from there, that's where you can plant the seed of, okay, so, you know, we may all struggle sometimes, and here in America, it's okay, you can get support without, you know, having a diagnosis or a disorder. Let's just talk about it, let's normalize it first a little bit and just get you to talk to somebody else. And I think that's how I kind of start helping my students on their mental health journeys, getting that little bit of buy in from parents that this is normal, this is okay. Everybody needs support sometimes.

Chris Loo:

Yeah, I would totally echo that. I think the first thing I try to do is to get all of us on the same page that we want what is best for the student. Once we can get agreement right with that as the objective, I think very often, we are able to kind of start the conversation about what is going on with the student and what are the next steps that are going to be in the best interest of the student, and very often, I will defer to our school counselor, you know, to really have those conversations. I also want to say, I think just on a practical level, it's, it's really, really great when you can get a an interpreter involved, if the family does not speak English as their first language. I think it just brings a measure of comfort to them to be able to hear about this right in a language that feels very, very comfortable for the family.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, that's a really good point. I feel like when, when we have had to deal with similar situations, I think being a bridge is really important. And so yeah, having a translator, having a even just a family friend who may be more sympathetic to the idea of getting a mental health support, someone who can help a family normalize that idea, is so vitally important. And I think, as both of you have immediately done. We don't start from a premise of the parent is the bad guy. They may have a lot to do with why the student is feeling the way they're they're feeling, but I think we need to recruit them onto the students I'm they are on the student side, but we need to really assure them like we're not blaming you. And you know, we're all here to help this go better for everybody. I think those are so important. I was talking to a parent earlier today, actually, who was like, I didn't need any of this help when I was going through these things, I just believed in myself. Why can't my student believe in their self? And I think one of the most important things to be able to do for a parent is to hold space for those thoughts, not in front of their kid, but let them say those things and help them realize the world is so vastly different than it was 20 30, years ago, when they were going through this process, or when they were a teenager, and just help them come to terms with that right, that that their child is going through something different than they did, that their child is not them, and that we've made progress, right? They, as a parent, may have had to struggle through this thing on their own. They of course, want something better for their child. They don't want them to struggle through it on their own. And so we can kind of make this sort of argument that that Here is your chance to make things better for your child than you had it, which, of course, we know you want. That's right? Yeah. Well, I know we have a list of topics we could go on and on about, but I think I'll end with what are some of your favorite resources, either for students or parents to start kind of exploring these ideas and beginning to have conversations about that.

Lisa Chung:

One resource that la canada high school uses is challenge success. They're a nonprofit out of the Stanford Graduate School of Education, so they have a bunch of free resources online, and it goes from just a healthier approach to college admission to, you know, what can you do with your students to help them with that? And, you know, young students. So one of my favorite things is they have this thing called PDF. You know, PDF is important, and that's Play time and Downtime and Free time. So amazing, right? There's research that shows that PDF is important, so I use that as a platform to help my students. Hey guys, you know, make sure you have that. And same thing for parents, right? I remember growing up, my dad said your free time is supposed to be spent reading dictionaries, Lisa and so, no, no, no. Okay, now we have Stanford to help us out and say No, Dad, you know what? Sometimes I need some play time that's not reading a dictionary. So I love challenge success and a lot of the free resources they have available.

Chris Loo:

I just want to give a plug for two books. One is called Permission to Come Home, and it's about mental health and Asian Americans, and that is by Jenny Wang. I think that that's excellent. The other book, which I've read more recently, is called but What Will People Say? And I'm sorry if I mispronounce her name, it's by Sahaj Kaur Kohli, but the the subtitle is Navigating Mental Health, Identity, Love and Family Between Cultures. I think that's a really good resource as well.

Sheila Akbar:

Absolutely, I haven't read Permission to Come Home, but I did recently read But What Will People Say? And I literally have five copies of it on the other side of my desk, because I'm giving it to all my friends. It's so fantastic. The other one that I would I would also highlight a group in California, but they have obviously a an international social media presence that I think is really great. It's called the Yellow Chair Collective, and they focus on mental health for Asian Americans. And they are a group of therapists who, you know, specialize in that, that sort of demographic. But of course, they're all sharing really great resources and things like that online.

Lisa Chung:

I have one more, yes, Oh, this one's a fun one. And I think sometimes we need to just hear other Asian voices and so that we're not so alone. How to American and Immigrants Guide to Disciplining your Parents? By Jimmy O Yang, it was fantastic. It's funny, and again, to share that Asian American experience and to relate to that. So that's a fun one.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, I just, I love that. I mean, these things didn't exist 1510, years ago even. So I just love that there. There's so many stories that are out there. They're voices that we can listen to to help us realize that this is really all normal and we all need each other. Well, I think that's a great place to leave it. Chris and Lisa, thank you so much for not only coming on the podcast, but for the work that you're doing and the perspectives that you're raising. I think it's so so important.

Lisa Chung:

Thank you.

Chris Loo:

Thanks so much for having us here, Sheila, this has been a great yeah, it's been great talking to you about these important issues.

Sheila Akbar:

Awesome. All right, thank you. Well, I really could have gone on talking to them for a very long time and excited to collaborate further with both of them in the future. If you look at our show notes, you will find links for all of the resources that we mentioned, the books, the websites you know, the organizations, and I hope you will check those out. And just a sort of programming note, we are going to be switching to an every other week release of the podcast, so be aware of that, and I am still looking for questions and situations to coach families through and students through. But if you just even have a question about college admissions or testing that you'd like to have answered on the show, you can submit that anonymously. Please see the show notes, and you will find a link to do that. All right, everybody, we'll see you next time. Thanks.