Transcript The Essential Role of Classroom Teachers in Promoting Academic Success and

The Essential Role of Classroom Teachers in
Promoting Academic Success and
Social/Emotional Well Being
Robert Burke
Department of Elementary Education
Ball State University
Carl E. Paternite
Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs
Department of Psychology
Miami University
Presentation at the 5th Annual Conference on Curriculum and Pedagogy
October 28, 2004
The Essential Role of Classroom Teachers in
Promoting Academic Success and
Social/Emotional Well Being
Instructional Focus:
 Conceptual linkage between curriculum studies and the
integration of mental health and education
 Current status of child/adolescent mental health in the U.S.
 Rationale for linking child/adolescent mental health with teacher
education curriculum
 Exemplars
 Closure and conversation
The Crisis of Youth Mental Health
About 20% of youth, ages 9 to 17 (15
million), have diagnosable mental health
disorders, (and many more are at risk or
could benefit from help)
Between 9-13% of youth, ages 9-17 years,
meet the federal (not special ed.) definition of
serious emotional disturbance (SED)
The Crisis of Youth Mental Health
Less than 30% of youth with diagnosable
disorder receive any service, and, of those
who do, less than half receive adequate Tx
(even fewer at risk receive help)
For the small percentage of youth who do
receive service, most actually receive it
within a school setting.
See Handout
SW Ohio Survey of Students
The Crisis of Youth Mental Health
These realities raise questions about the mental
health field’s insufficient attention to delivery of
ecologically sensitive and effective services;
And they reinforce the importance of:
– a community-based continuum of mental health
supports,
– commitment to a public health model of mental
health, and
– expanded school mental health programs and
services.
Schools: The Most
Universal Natural Setting
Over 52 million youth attend 114,000
schools
Over 6 million adults work in schools
Combining students and staff, one-fifth of
the U.S. population can be found in
schools
From New Freedom Commission (2003)
Why Put MH Services
in Schools?
Access to youth
Clinical efficiency and productivity
Reduced stigma; Increased youth/family comfort
Outreach to youth with “internalizing” problems
Enhanced ability to promote generalization
Enhanced capacity for prevention/MH promotion
Broadened roles for clinicians
Growing Focus on School-Based
Mental Health (SBMH)
Federal investments
U.S. Surgeon General Reports (1999, 2000)
President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental
Health Report (2003)
American Academy of Pediatrics Policy Statement
on SBMH Services (2004)
Progress in localities and states (e.g. Ohio’s Mental
Health—Schools—Families Shared Agenda Initiative)
“No Child Left Behind” Mandate
Collaborative research-practice networks
Report of President’s New Freedom
Commission on Mental Health
http://www.mentalhealthcommission.gov
“…the mental health delivery system is fragmented and in
disarray…leading to unnecessary and costly disability,
homelessness, school failure and incarceration.”
Unmet needs and barriers to care include (among
others):
Fragmentation and gaps in care for children.
Lack of national priority for mental health and suicide
prevention.
July, 2003
New Freedom Commission on Mental Health
Goal 4: Early Mental Health Screening, Assessment,
and Referral to Services are Common Practice
4.1 Promote the mental health of young children.
4.2 Improve and expand school mental health programs.
4.3 Screen for co-occurring mental and substance use
disorders and link with integrated treatment strategies.
4.4 Screen for mental disorders in primary health care, across
the lifespan, and connect to treatment and supports.
New Freedom Commission on Mental Health
Critical importance of partnership with schools
in mental health care:
“The mission of public schools is to educate all students. However,
children with serious emotional disturbances have the highest rates of
school failure. Fifty percent of these student drop out of high school,
compared to 30 percent of all students with disabilities. “
“While schools are primarily concerned with education, mental health is
essential to learning as well as to social and emotional development.
Because of this important interplay between emotional health and school
success, schools must be partners in the mental health care of our
children.”
July, 2003, p. 58
School-Based Mental Health
Full array of mental health care for youth in special and regular
education
– Screening and assessment
– Treatment
– Case management
– Prevention (all levels)
– Mental health promotion
Related Services
– Classroom observation
– Consultation
– Training with school staff, families, and community members
– School wide initiatives (e.g., media, outreach, climate)
SBMH Advantages
Moves toward MH—Education systems
integration, providing critical support to
education, and enhancing access to youth
for mental health care
Expands and connects education and
mental health knowledge bases and
promotes interdisciplinary collaboration
Assists in the development and delivery of
a true system of care
SBMH Impacts
Based on an early and limited knowledge
base, there is evidence that SBMH, when
done well
– Assists in reaching underserved youth
– Is associated with strong satisfaction by
diverse stakeholder groups
– Improves student outcomes (e.g., behavior,
attendance)
– Improves school outcomes (e.g., climate,
special education referrals)
In Schools With SBMH
The agenda to coordinate and provide a full range of
programs and services remains large, and involves:
– Coordinating work of school-employed and community MH
personnel
– Establishing mechanisms for identifying and referring youth in
need, ensuring service efficiency and avoiding service
duplication
– Ensuring that MH staff are well trained and supervised
Schools are Usually Not Equipped
for SBMH
Norm of limited evaluation and
consultation services, primarily for youth in
or being referred into special education
Generally poor quality of mental health
services for youth in special education
School leaders may resist the mental
health agenda
Problems with School Systems Taking
on a Mental Health Agenda Alone
Added responsibility, burden and cost
Less than optimal mental health resources
and expertise
Bias of mental health work in relation to
educational structures (e.g., connecting all
services to IDEA or 504)
In Schools Without SBMH
Barriers to mental health care are more pronounced
There are pressures to increase referrals to special
education for students to receive MH care
MH care within special education is generally very far from
achieving principles associated with best practice,
including:
– short latency between referral and treatment
– treatment by well trained providers
– adequate duration of treatment
– connection of treatment to quality improvement and
empirically supported practice
In Addition to Parents, Teachers are on
the Mental Health “Front Line”
Yet, teachers/educators are very poorly trained
in problem recognition and mental health
promotion
Significant need to enhance teacher/educator
training based on analysis of issues confronted
in the classroom/school
Related significant need to enhance training of
mental health professionals to prepare them to
engage with educators and function effectively
in/with schools
An Observation
 Clearly, intellectual, social, and emotional education go hand-
in-hand, and all are linked to creating safe schools, building
healthy character, and achieving academic success:
The proper aim of education is to promote significant learning. Significant
learning entails development. Development means successively asking broader
and deeper questions of the relationship between oneself and the world. This is
as true for first graders as it is for graduate students, for fledgling artists as
graying accountants.
A good education ought to help people become more perceptive to and more
discriminating about the world: seeing, feeling, and understanding more, yet
sorting the pertinent from the peripheral with ever finer touch, increasingly able
to integrate what they see and to make meaning of it in ways that enhance their
ability to go on growing. To imagine otherwise, to act as though learning were
simply a matter of stacking facts on top of one another, makes as much sense as
thinking one can learn a language by memorizing a dictionary. Ideas only
come to life when they root in the mind of a learner. (Daloz, 1999, p. 243)
Learning is not a
Spectators sport
~Donald Blocher
Those who have been required
to memorize the world as it is
will never create the world
as it might be.
~Judith Groch
Education is not the
filling of a pail, but
the lighting of a
fire.
~William Butler Yeats
Children must be taught
how to think,
not what to think.
~Margaret Mead
The art of teaching is the art of assisting
discovery.
~Mark Van Doren
As knowledge
increases,
wonder deepens.
~Charles Morgan
If you can learn from
hard knocks, you can
also learn from soft
touches.
~Carolyn Kenmore
In education we are
striving not to teach
youth to make a living,
but to make a life.
~William Allen White
Public Policy Context:
SBMH and the No Child Left Behind Mandate
Two Important Interrelated Goals—
Achievement and Wellbeing
 1) Achievement promotes wellbeing
 2) Wellbeing promotes achievement
 School accountabilities often acknowledge 1 but
fail to acknowledge 2
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (U ncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Dialogue between a teacher and an administrator
regarding a teacher’s request for resource materials for
use with students who were being tutored because they
were struggling to pass the 9th grade proficiency test after
several tries.
T: What materials are available to me to help these students?
A: Just use the old tests, have them review questions and answers.
T: Rather than just helping them memorize questions and answers I’d
like to put some of this information in meaningful context so that they
understand what it is they’re learning. Are there some additional
materials available?
A: We don’t care about them learning. They don’t have to understand.
They just have to pass the test.
See Handout
Non-academic barriers to learning
exert a powerful negative influence
Environmental
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Poor nutrition
Family stress
Family conflict
Peer influences
Exposure to violence
Abuse, Neglect
Poor school
environment
Personal
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Attention difficulties
Behavioral problems
Depression
Anxiety
Social problems
Trauma reactions
See Handout
A QUESTION:
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES
OF VIOLENCE, OTHER
PROBLEM BEHAVIOR,
AND DISCIPLINE
PROBLEMS?
See Handout
Model: Influences on Violent versus
Non-Violent Behavior
(From Shapiro, 1999, Applewood Centers, Inc., Cleveland, OH)
School Effectiveness in Promoting
Achievement and the NCLB Mandate
Least effective: Limited focus on academic and
nonacademic barriers
More effective: Focus on academic barriers
Most effective: Integrated focus on academic and
nonacademic barriers
(CSMHA)
Ohio’s Mental Health, Schools, and
Families Shared Agenda Initiative
http://www.units.muohio.edu/csbmhp/sharedagenda.html
Phase 1—Statewide forum for leaders of mental health, education, and
family policymaking organizations and child-serving systems
(March 3, 2003)
Phase 2—Six regional forums for policy implementers and consumer
stakeholders (April-May, 2003)
Phase 3—Legislative forum involving key leadership of relevant house
and senate committees (October 9, 2003)
Phase 4—Ongoing policy/funding advocacy and technical assistance
to promote attention to the crucial links between mental health and
school success
See Handout
Guiding Principles for a
Mental Health,Schools,
Families Shared Agenda
Mental health is crucial to school success
There are shared opportunities for mental
health, schools, students and families to work
together more effectively
See Handout
Phase 4: An Immediate
Legislative Outcome
Senate Bill 2
Section 3319.61(E)
(effective June 9, 2004)
“The standards for educator professional
development developed under division (A) (3)
of this section shall include standards that
address the crucial link between academic
achievement and mental health issues.”
Mental Health and School Success Websites
National:
National Association of State Directors of Special Education
(www.nasdse.org)
Center for School Mental Health Assistance
(CSMHA, http://csmha.umaryland.edu)
Center for Mental Health in Schools
(http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu)
Ohio:
Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs
(http://www.units.muohio.edu/csbmhp)
Center for Learning Excellence, Alternative Education and Mental Health Projects
(http://altedmh.osu.edu/omhn/omhn.htm)
Ohio’s Shared Agenda Initiative
(http://www.units.muohio.edu/csbmhp/sharedagenda.html)
This PowerPoint Presentation is posted on the Center for
School-Based Mental Health Programs website
http://www.units.muohio.edu/csbmhp/