Look for the Helpers

Colin Denby Swanson, MFA MBA
Executive Director, Mainspring Schools
Published April 2, 2025
Read the original on LinkedIn

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“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

― Fred Rogers

The sanitation workers have developed a routine when they arrive at the dumpster behind Mainspring Schools . They back in carefully, past the pre-k playground, a set of classroom windows, another set of classroom windows, and finally the toddler playground. They do it slowly and with purpose because they know they are being watched.

After idling for a moment, the sanitation workers pull forward and empty the dumpster. They honk the horn. Then, about 50 children under the age of 5, who have been silently pressed against windows and fence panels for the entirety of this ritual, roar their enthusiastic support. Trash pickup is a weekly triumph.

Recently, Mainspring classrooms were visited by a series of community helpers, including fire fighters, police officers, our regular postal worker, and one of our friends from the sanitation truck.

Afterward, students made their own mail trucks from construction paper. They proudly wore their fire department stickers. They read books about different jobs and different ways that people contribute to a city.

Our friendly neighborhood postal worker!

Being a helper is not just about classroom jobs, or even about grownup jobs.

Thanks to a grant from the City of Austin, Mainspring teachers have been doing intensive training in trauma responsive techniques like Trust Based Relational Intervention (with local partner Nurturing Change) and Conscious Discipline. Twenty teachers have completed 18 hours each of TBRI Caregiver Training. Our entire staff have had two full days of training in Conscious Discipline along with three days of classroom coaching.

The Conscious Discipline techniques have included Nurture Groups, where kids and grownups practice taking care of each other. Most recently, one of our pre-k classroom practiced a Nurture Group Band-Aid activity, in which each child asked their buddy, “Do you have a hurt?” and offered a Band-Aid as a gesture of caretaking. (The buddy could decline the Band-Aid if they didn’t want it.)

Later that week, the pre-k class was outside on the playground. One friend was having a very hard day and had gotten quite upset. The child was standing apart from the rest of the class, lost in that combination of anger and sadness that is completely overwhelming at four years old.

Three classmates – unprompted by any grownup – approached the child together and asked, “Do you have hurts? Can we help you feel better?”

Listen, ya’ll.

Listen to that phrase: “Can we help you feel better?”

They recognized a need and asked that question entirely on their own.

In recounting the moment, their teacher said, “Yeah. This is what drives me. This kind of impact.”

At Mainspring, we pride ourselves on building brains. Expanding a child’s language center. Getting them prepared for kindergarten. And we succeed – with 90-100% readiness rates year over year.

But these moments when children show themselves not only as young learners but also as helpers for each other – now, that’s breathtaking.

And here’s why.

Being helpful to adults is sometimes a survival strategy. Children who have had significant Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) may have learned that cooperating with a grownup results in more food, more stability, less yelling, less danger.

Kids at this age who voluntarily help each other are not responding to an uneven or threatening power dynamic. They are acting with authentic emotional intelligence to a situation that may not even benefit them directly – except that they feel good when their peers feel good. They learn to be witness, to be resourceful, to be leaders in wellness.

I think about this a lot for personal reasons as much as professional ones. My son was a Mainspring student. He enrolled here just before he turned two.  In every classroom, with every teacher, he checked in with his friends, and his friends checked in on him. It was a specific script, with that specific phrase. They all worked for emotional regulation together.

In elementary school, that practice abruptly stopped. The culture was just different. And it was disorienting. My son is autistic and ADHD, so he looked for familiar patterns – and didn’t find them. When he was dysregulated or upset, he was sent out of the room to calm down on his own. When he was pulled for “social skills,” his lessons were about how to meet his classmates’ emotional needs. His classmates did not have to learn to meet his. He even asked one afternoon, “Why does no one check on me?”

Ugh. Heartbreak.

But beyond my personal mom response, I firmly believe this was a missed opportunity for everyone – and a lesson we increasingly miss in the broader world as well.

How to be helpers.

At Mainspring, it’s an intentionally inclusive educational philosophy that scaffolds inquisitiveness with emotional intelligence. We strive to meet every child where they are, including on their most challenging days. We approach grownups the same way, with a 2-gen family services program that builds relationships across the community. We try to use our words. We try to hold space for folks of all ages who don’t yet have the words – or who can’t access them. We acknowledge the big feelings. We offer each other Band-Aids and a path to heal the hurts.

These are the ideals, at least. We don’t get it right all the time or enough.

Still, we strive to check in on each other on a regular basis.

We want to learn together, even if we learn differently.

And we hope that the young children who are with us every day will grow up to be helpers across our community.

What if we all could envision ourselves this way?

The joy of the real live fire truck.

Not as an expert in child development or policy. Not as a firefighter, police officer, or EMT. Not as a sanitation worker or postal worker or bus driver or educator or any other literal job.

All kinds of people in all kinds of roles can be community helpers. What does being a helper look like for you? 

Become a helper. Donate to Mainspring here.