Children's mental health and the pandemic

[Anonymous]

I did read the article. In my NOVA school, teachers spend 20-30 minutes on social-emotional skills every day. We are trained in how to screen and refer students for mental health care, and we know that they often don't get the care they need because of staff shortages or insurance issues. I would love to give even more time to social-emotional skills, but I have a master schedule to adhere to, and if I am not teaching what I am supposed to when I am supposed to, I get dinged by my administrators and need to account for why I am not doing the academic instruction that I am paid to provide. I have students in my class who deal with severe anxiety, suicidal feelings, exposure to drugs at home, abuse at home, neglect at home, and histories of trauma, and I am working hard to support all of them in the way that they need. Most of my students aren't able to access private mental health care, so our counselor, psychologist, and social worker are full up and I deal with the slightly less severe issues on my own, with no background in psychology or counseling. Our mental health team can't coach every individual teacher on how to help every individual kid's issues, so we are all doing what seems best based on our anecdotal experiences and trial-and-error.


OP, I don't disagree with you at all that it is my job to serve the whole child. What I need to support students' mental health is smaller class sizes and recognition from administrators that children can't learn as effectively when they are traumatized or mentally ill and may need more time, support, and staff to meet their goals. I need my evaluation to reflect that my work entails helping a whole child develop and not just demonstrating a year's measurable growth in reading, writing, and content knowledge. I need the school system to hire more mental health personnel for my school so I am not trying to guess at the best way to support a child when I don't even know the full extent of their issues. I need additional staff in my classroom so that like yesterday, I am not choosing between teaching the lesson on identifying a story's theme to 25 students or attending to the 3 students who are melting down (one yelling and refusing because of anxiety, one crawling under chairs and crying because of trauma, and one literally climbing furniture for reasons I haven't yet ascertained). I agree my job is to help these students, but I need HELP to do everything I am trying to do.

[Anonymous]

Might I suggest that illegal immigration is not something that’s beneficial to schools or teachers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did read the article. In my NOVA school, teachers spend 20-30 minutes on social-emotional skills every day. We are trained in how to screen and refer students for mental health care, and we know that they often don't get the care they need because of staff shortages or insurance issues. I would love to give even more time to social-emotional skills, but I have a master schedule to adhere to, and if I am not teaching what I am supposed to when I am supposed to, I get dinged by my administrators and need to account for why I am not doing the academic instruction that I am paid to provide. I have students in my class who deal with severe anxiety, suicidal feelings, exposure to drugs at home, abuse at home, neglect at home, and histories of trauma, and I am working hard to support all of them in the way that they need. Most of my students aren't able to access private mental health care, so our counselor, psychologist, and social worker are full up and I deal with the slightly less severe issues on my own, with no background in psychology or counseling. Our mental health team can't coach every individual teacher on how to help every individual kid's issues, so we are all doing what seems best based on our anecdotal experiences and trial-and-error.


OP, I don't disagree with you at all that it is my job to serve the whole child. What I need to support students' mental health is smaller class sizes and recognition from administrators that children can't learn as effectively when they are traumatized or mentally ill and may need more time, support, and staff to meet their goals. I need my evaluation to reflect that my work entails helping a whole child develop and not just demonstrating a year's measurable growth in reading, writing, and content knowledge. I need the school system to hire more mental health personnel for my school so I am not trying to guess at the best way to support a child when I don't even know the full extent of their issues. I need additional staff in my classroom so that like yesterday, I am not choosing between teaching the lesson on identifying a story's theme to 25 students or attending to the 3 students who are melting down (one yelling and refusing because of anxiety, one crawling under chairs and crying because of trauma, and one literally climbing furniture for reasons I haven't yet ascertained). I agree my job is to help these students, but I need HELP to do everything I am trying to do.

Amen teacher your last paragraph.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Might I suggest that illegal immigration is not something that’s beneficial to schools or teachers?

You can say it all you want, it doesn't change the reality it's off topic here and solving it is not as easy as voting for the GOP. If they really wanted to stop illegal immigration they would insist on regularly prosecuting businesses that hire undocumented immigrants. They don't because they know undocumented workers are a huge asset to the economy but as long as they demonize them they can keep exploiting them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A feature in the Washington Post magazine delves into the question of children's mental health in the pandemic. I think it's really interesting and cuts through the "the pandemic destroyed every child's mental health" vs "the kids are all fine! If your kids have problems it's because you're a bad parent!" binary. Our family's own experience is that our daughter definitely has a genetic predisposition to anxiety, but the isolation most certainly made it worse, and pandemic restrictions make it very difficult to treat when the treatment involves exposure to social situations. The reality is our mental health system is terrible, was terrible during the pandemic and now the system is even more stressed and children with mental illness are struggling more. While I'm so glad my child doesn't have to wear a mask anymore, ending mask mandates will not solve this problem and it hasn't cured my child's illness. I think stopping school closures was so much more important. But more than that, we need investment in mental health care in a way we have never done before, not during the pandemic or before the pandemic. I really like the idea of giving better training to PCPs, school counselors, teachers and also training parents, that's such an important piece.

Contracting with big and profitable companies like Cigna, Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield shouldn’t amount to charity work. Yet economic realities make it so. Nationwide, insurance payment rates for primary care physicians (who consistently rank among the lowest paid doctors) are almost 24 percent higher than for mental health practitioners — including psychiatrists. In 11 states, that gap widened to more than 50 percent, a report from the Bowman Family Foundation noted in 2019.

That discrepancy points not only to the historical devaluing of psychiatry as a discipline, it also sheds light on a major problem with the relative status of different kinds of interventions. In the health-care world, where values are defined by insurance company reimbursement rates, talk — the essential component of thoughtful medication management, therapy or counseling, and, for that matter, any successful form of healing — has long been compensated at rates that trail far behind those that insurers pay for medical procedures. “Our system is set up so that I get paid more to see a child and do an asthma breathing test than I do to spend an hour with the family of a child who might be thinking about hurting themselves,” noted Chung of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

That dollars-and-cents reality plays an enormous role not only in who gets care, but in who can afford to provide it, and how. Mental health parity laws adopted over the past 26 years were supposed to directly address this issue. But the insurance industry has been almost diabolically adept at skirting those laws; as one of the largest contributors to PACs, political parties and candidates, they’re not likely to face real pressure to change anytime soon. Another seemingly obvious big fix for the supply-chain issues plaguing children’s mental health care — tuition reimbursement incentive programs for medical students who choose to specialize in child psychiatry and are willing to commit to working with underserved populations (a definition that really ought to include all families that can’t afford to shell out hundreds of dollars for every out-of-pocket visit) — has never worked in the past. And even if those programs were to be expanded and improved, they’d take so long to show results that they’d do nothing for the children who are struggling right now.

Fortunately, families don’t have to wait. Over the past decade, a growing number of frustrated practitioners and researchers have taken matters into their own hands, creating and often collaborating on low-cost solutions that work around the current system. At base, they all center on creating a new mental health workforce, which means training the people who are already on the ground day-to-day with kids — primary care providers, school nurses and counselors, teachers, and, yes, parents — in elemental forms of mental health care.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/03/21/childrens-mental-health-crisis-politicization/?itid=hp_health-science

The reality is that families do have to wait, many have no choice but to pay out of pocket, and others get left out entirely. The sad state of availability and insurance coverage for mental health treatment should have been considered when making school closure decisions. Instead, the health and well-being of adults were valued over that of children. While that might not have been the wrong decision at the beginning, continuing with our current system means that many kids will not recover from the trauma of the pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did read the article. In my NOVA school, teachers spend 20-30 minutes on social-emotional skills every day. We are trained in how to screen and refer students for mental health care, and we know that they often don't get the care they need because of staff shortages or insurance issues. I would love to give even more time to social-emotional skills, but I have a master schedule to adhere to, and if I am not teaching what I am supposed to when I am supposed to, I get dinged by my administrators and need to account for why I am not doing the academic instruction that I am paid to provide. I have students in my class who deal with severe anxiety, suicidal feelings, exposure to drugs at home, abuse at home, neglect at home, and histories of trauma, and I am working hard to support all of them in the way that they need. Most of my students aren't able to access private mental health care, so our counselor, psychologist, and social worker are full up and I deal with the slightly less severe issues on my own, with no background in psychology or counseling. Our mental health team can't coach every individual teacher on how to help every individual kid's issues, so we are all doing what seems best based on our anecdotal experiences and trial-and-error.


OP, I don't disagree with you at all that it is my job to serve the whole child. What I need to support students' mental health is smaller class sizes and recognition from administrators that children can't learn as effectively when they are traumatized or mentally ill and may need more time, support, and staff to meet their goals. I need my evaluation to reflect that my work entails helping a whole child develop and not just demonstrating a year's measurable growth in reading, writing, and content knowledge. I need the school system to hire more mental health personnel for my school so I am not trying to guess at the best way to support a child when I don't even know the full extent of their issues. I need additional staff in my classroom so that like yesterday, I am not choosing between teaching the lesson on identifying a story's theme to 25 students or attending to the 3 students who are melting down (one yelling and refusing because of anxiety, one crawling under chairs and crying because of trauma, and one literally climbing furniture for reasons I haven't yet ascertained). I agree my job is to help these students, but I need HELP to do everything I am trying to do.

What I am hearing you say is you need more support to help your students with mental health issues, which I agree with. I think smaller class sizes are great but that by itself does little for my child if the teacher is inadvertently reinforcing her anxiety for hours each day, which is why the training piece is important too. I get that your job is hard (AS IS MINE) which AGAIN is why I hate asking anything of teachers, as I know it often comes with a lecture just like this one, but the alternative is to not advocate for my child and continue to pay for weekly therapy that will never end, even though her condition is treatable, because she actually CANNOT get better if her condition is being reinforced each day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did read the article. In my NOVA school, teachers spend 20-30 minutes on social-emotional skills every day. We are trained in how to screen and refer students for mental health care, and we know that they often don't get the care they need because of staff shortages or insurance issues. I would love to give even more time to social-emotional skills, but I have a master schedule to adhere to, and if I am not teaching what I am supposed to when I am supposed to, I get dinged by my administrators and need to account for why I am not doing the academic instruction that I am paid to provide. I have students in my class who deal with severe anxiety, suicidal feelings, exposure to drugs at home, abuse at home, neglect at home, and histories of trauma, and I am working hard to support all of them in the way that they need. Most of my students aren't able to access private mental health care, so our counselor, psychologist, and social worker are full up and I deal with the slightly less severe issues on my own, with no background in psychology or counseling. Our mental health team can't coach every individual teacher on how to help every individual kid's issues, so we are all doing what seems best based on our anecdotal experiences and trial-and-error.


OP, I don't disagree with you at all that it is my job to serve the whole child. What I need to support students' mental health is smaller class sizes and recognition from administrators that children can't learn as effectively when they are traumatized or mentally ill and may need more time, support, and staff to meet their goals. I need my evaluation to reflect that my work entails helping a whole child develop and not just demonstrating a year's measurable growth in reading, writing, and content knowledge. I need the school system to hire more mental health personnel for my school so I am not trying to guess at the best way to support a child when I don't even know the full extent of their issues. I need additional staff in my classroom so that like yesterday, I am not choosing between teaching the lesson on identifying a story's theme to 25 students or attending to the 3 students who are melting down (one yelling and refusing because of anxiety, one crawling under chairs and crying because of trauma, and one literally climbing furniture for reasons I haven't yet ascertained). I agree my job is to help these students, but I need HELP to do everything I am trying to do.

What I am hearing you say is you need more support to help your students with mental health issues, which I agree with. I think smaller class sizes are great but that by itself does little for my child if the teacher is inadvertently reinforcing her anxiety for hours each day, which is why the training piece is important too. I get that your job is hard (AS IS MINE) which AGAIN is why I hate asking anything of teachers, as I know it often comes with a lecture just like this one, but the alternative is to not advocate for my child and continue to pay for weekly therapy that will never end, even though her condition is treatable, because she actually CANNOT get better if her condition is being reinforced each day.

You cannot expect a teacher to cater to one child's anxiety. You aren't being reasonable. If you want smaller classes and catered to, go private or pay for an 1-1 aide. You also need to do more than just weekly therapy and try different medications. Clearly what you are doing isn't enough and demanding others handle the situation isn't reasonable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please don’t try to train me, a teacher. I am also a parent and like you, have kids of my own and see them effects of the past two years. Also like many, we are on wait lists to get an appointment for therapy. I am not qualified to be a therapist, even with training. That’s really more than I can do and still teach.

This times a million. Teachers already have enough on their plate without being expected to also be their student's therapists. It is an unfair ask for the teacher and it is not giving students the therapeutic services they truly need and deserve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please don’t try to train me, a teacher. I am also a parent and like you, have kids of my own and see them effects of the past two years. Also like many, we are on wait lists to get an appointment for therapy. I am not qualified to be a therapist, even with training. That’s really more than I can do and still teach.

This times a million. Teachers already have enough on their plate without being expected to also be their student's therapists. It is an unfair ask for the teacher and it is not giving students the therapeutic services they truly need and deserve.

If this kid has such severe needs, they need to be in a proper setting, and this isn't the right one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did read the article. In my NOVA school, teachers spend 20-30 minutes on social-emotional skills every day. We are trained in how to screen and refer students for mental health care, and we know that they often don't get the care they need because of staff shortages or insurance issues. I would love to give even more time to social-emotional skills, but I have a master schedule to adhere to, and if I am not teaching what I am supposed to when I am supposed to, I get dinged by my administrators and need to account for why I am not doing the academic instruction that I am paid to provide. I have students in my class who deal with severe anxiety, suicidal feelings, exposure to drugs at home, abuse at home, neglect at home, and histories of trauma, and I am working hard to support all of them in the way that they need. Most of my students aren't able to access private mental health care, so our counselor, psychologist, and social worker are full up and I deal with the slightly less severe issues on my own, with no background in psychology or counseling. Our mental health team can't coach every individual teacher on how to help every individual kid's issues, so we are all doing what seems best based on our anecdotal experiences and trial-and-error.


OP, I don't disagree with you at all that it is my job to serve the whole child. What I need to support students' mental health is smaller class sizes and recognition from administrators that children can't learn as effectively when they are traumatized or mentally ill and may need more time, support, and staff to meet their goals. I need my evaluation to reflect that my work entails helping a whole child develop and not just demonstrating a year's measurable growth in reading, writing, and content knowledge. I need the school system to hire more mental health personnel for my school so I am not trying to guess at the best way to support a child when I don't even know the full extent of their issues. I need additional staff in my classroom so that like yesterday, I am not choosing between teaching the lesson on identifying a story's theme to 25 students or attending to the 3 students who are melting down (one yelling and refusing because of anxiety, one crawling under chairs and crying because of trauma, and one literally climbing furniture for reasons I haven't yet ascertained). I agree my job is to help these students, but I need HELP to do everything I am trying to do.

If a child has that level of severe needs they need to be in a specialized classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Might I suggest that illegal immigration is not something that’s beneficial to schools or teachers?

You can say it all you want, it doesn't change the reality it's off topic here and solving it is not as easy as voting for the GOP. If they really wanted to stop illegal immigration they would insist on regularly prosecuting businesses that hire undocumented immigrants. They don't because they know undocumented workers are a huge asset to the economy but as long as they demonize them they can keep exploiting them.

And one of the reasons why we have so many job shortages right now is because there are just fewer immigrants (documented and not) participating in the workforce

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did read the article. In my NOVA school, teachers spend 20-30 minutes on social-emotional skills every day. We are trained in how to screen and refer students for mental health care, and we know that they often don't get the care they need because of staff shortages or insurance issues. I would love to give even more time to social-emotional skills, but I have a master schedule to adhere to, and if I am not teaching what I am supposed to when I am supposed to, I get dinged by my administrators and need to account for why I am not doing the academic instruction that I am paid to provide. I have students in my class who deal with severe anxiety, suicidal feelings, exposure to drugs at home, abuse at home, neglect at home, and histories of trauma, and I am working hard to support all of them in the way that they need. Most of my students aren't able to access private mental health care, so our counselor, psychologist, and social worker are full up and I deal with the slightly less severe issues on my own, with no background in psychology or counseling. Our mental health team can't coach every individual teacher on how to help every individual kid's issues, so we are all doing what seems best based on our anecdotal experiences and trial-and-error.


OP, I don't disagree with you at all that it is my job to serve the whole child. What I need to support students' mental health is smaller class sizes and recognition from administrators that children can't learn as effectively when they are traumatized or mentally ill and may need more time, support, and staff to meet their goals. I need my evaluation to reflect that my work entails helping a whole child develop and not just demonstrating a year's measurable growth in reading, writing, and content knowledge. I need the school system to hire more mental health personnel for my school so I am not trying to guess at the best way to support a child when I don't even know the full extent of their issues. I need additional staff in my classroom so that like yesterday, I am not choosing between teaching the lesson on identifying a story's theme to 25 students or attending to the 3 students who are melting down (one yelling and refusing because of anxiety, one crawling under chairs and crying because of trauma, and one literally climbing furniture for reasons I haven't yet ascertained). I agree my job is to help these students, but I need HELP to do everything I am trying to do.

What I am hearing you say is you need more support to help your students with mental health issues, which I agree with. I think smaller class sizes are great but that by itself does little for my child if the teacher is inadvertently reinforcing her anxiety for hours each day, which is why the training piece is important too. I get that your job is hard (AS IS MINE) which AGAIN is why I hate asking anything of teachers, as I know it often comes with a lecture just like this one, but the alternative is to not advocate for my child and continue to pay for weekly therapy that will never end, even though her condition is treatable, because she actually CANNOT get better if her condition is being reinforced each day.

The point of therapy for anxiety is to learn how to develop strategies to cope with anxiety. It is not realistic to assume a person is never going to be in a high anxiety situation and unfortunately so many young people with anxiety are just being told that they can avoid any situation that triggers their anxiety to a point where they are terrified to take any risks or be uncomfortable

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did read the article. In my NOVA school, teachers spend 20-30 minutes on social-emotional skills every day. We are trained in how to screen and refer students for mental health care, and we know that they often don't get the care they need because of staff shortages or insurance issues. I would love to give even more time to social-emotional skills, but I have a master schedule to adhere to, and if I am not teaching what I am supposed to when I am supposed to, I get dinged by my administrators and need to account for why I am not doing the academic instruction that I am paid to provide. I have students in my class who deal with severe anxiety, suicidal feelings, exposure to drugs at home, abuse at home, neglect at home, and histories of trauma, and I am working hard to support all of them in the way that they need. Most of my students aren't able to access private mental health care, so our counselor, psychologist, and social worker are full up and I deal with the slightly less severe issues on my own, with no background in psychology or counseling. Our mental health team can't coach every individual teacher on how to help every individual kid's issues, so we are all doing what seems best based on our anecdotal experiences and trial-and-error.


OP, I don't disagree with you at all that it is my job to serve the whole child. What I need to support students' mental health is smaller class sizes and recognition from administrators that children can't learn as effectively when they are traumatized or mentally ill and may need more time, support, and staff to meet their goals. I need my evaluation to reflect that my work entails helping a whole child develop and not just demonstrating a year's measurable growth in reading, writing, and content knowledge. I need the school system to hire more mental health personnel for my school so I am not trying to guess at the best way to support a child when I don't even know the full extent of their issues. I need additional staff in my classroom so that like yesterday, I am not choosing between teaching the lesson on identifying a story's theme to 25 students or attending to the 3 students who are melting down (one yelling and refusing because of anxiety, one crawling under chairs and crying because of trauma, and one literally climbing furniture for reasons I haven't yet ascertained). I agree my job is to help these students, but I need HELP to do everything I am trying to do.

What I am hearing you say is you need more support to help your students with mental health issues, which I agree with. I think smaller class sizes are great but that by itself does little for my child if the teacher is inadvertently reinforcing her anxiety for hours each day, which is why the training piece is important too. I get that your job is hard (AS IS MINE) which AGAIN is why I hate asking anything of teachers, as I know it often comes with a lecture just like this one, but the alternative is to not advocate for my child and continue to pay for weekly therapy that will never end, even though her condition is treatable, because she actually CANNOT get better if her condition is being reinforced each day.

The point of therapy for anxiety is to learn how to develop strategies to cope with anxiety. It is not realistic to assume a person is never going to be in a high anxiety situation and unfortunately so many young people with anxiety are just being told that they can avoid any situation that triggers their anxiety to a point where they are terrified to take any risks or be uncomfortable

There is a difference between exposing a person to anxiety, which is really important and something I work on daily with my child, versus creating the conditions that reinforce the anxiety. I'm sorry, I know it's frustrating that I'm not providing more specifics, but obviously this is a topic that a lot of people get upset about so I would like to protect my and my child's privacy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did read the article. In my NOVA school, teachers spend 20-30 minutes on social-emotional skills every day. We are trained in how to screen and refer students for mental health care, and we know that they often don't get the care they need because of staff shortages or insurance issues. I would love to give even more time to social-emotional skills, but I have a master schedule to adhere to, and if I am not teaching what I am supposed to when I am supposed to, I get dinged by my administrators and need to account for why I am not doing the academic instruction that I am paid to provide. I have students in my class who deal with severe anxiety, suicidal feelings, exposure to drugs at home, abuse at home, neglect at home, and histories of trauma, and I am working hard to support all of them in the way that they need. Most of my students aren't able to access private mental health care, so our counselor, psychologist, and social worker are full up and I deal with the slightly less severe issues on my own, with no background in psychology or counseling. Our mental health team can't coach every individual teacher on how to help every individual kid's issues, so we are all doing what seems best based on our anecdotal experiences and trial-and-error.


OP, I don't disagree with you at all that it is my job to serve the whole child. What I need to support students' mental health is smaller class sizes and recognition from administrators that children can't learn as effectively when they are traumatized or mentally ill and may need more time, support, and staff to meet their goals. I need my evaluation to reflect that my work entails helping a whole child develop and not just demonstrating a year's measurable growth in reading, writing, and content knowledge. I need the school system to hire more mental health personnel for my school so I am not trying to guess at the best way to support a child when I don't even know the full extent of their issues. I need additional staff in my classroom so that like yesterday, I am not choosing between teaching the lesson on identifying a story's theme to 25 students or attending to the 3 students who are melting down (one yelling and refusing because of anxiety, one crawling under chairs and crying because of trauma, and one literally climbing furniture for reasons I haven't yet ascertained). I agree my job is to help these students, but I need HELP to do everything I am trying to do.

What I am hearing you say is you need more support to help your students with mental health issues, which I agree with. I think smaller class sizes are great but that by itself does little for my child if the teacher is inadvertently reinforcing her anxiety for hours each day, which is why the training piece is important too. I get that your job is hard (AS IS MINE) which AGAIN is why I hate asking anything of teachers, as I know it often comes with a lecture just like this one, but the alternative is to not advocate for my child and continue to pay for weekly therapy that will never end, even though her condition is treatable, because she actually CANNOT get better if her condition is being reinforced each day.

You cannot expect a teacher to cater to one child's anxiety. You aren't being reasonable. If you want smaller classes and catered to, go private or pay for an 1-1 aide. You also need to do more than just weekly therapy and try different medications. Clearly what you are doing isn't enough and demanding others handle the situation isn't reasonable.

Wow, so many assumptions and so much ignorance here. Only an idiot would recommend "different medications" for a child they know next to nothing about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did read the article. In my NOVA school, teachers spend 20-30 minutes on social-emotional skills every day. We are trained in how to screen and refer students for mental health care, and we know that they often don't get the care they need because of staff shortages or insurance issues. I would love to give even more time to social-emotional skills, but I have a master schedule to adhere to, and if I am not teaching what I am supposed to when I am supposed to, I get dinged by my administrators and need to account for why I am not doing the academic instruction that I am paid to provide. I have students in my class who deal with severe anxiety, suicidal feelings, exposure to drugs at home, abuse at home, neglect at home, and histories of trauma, and I am working hard to support all of them in the way that they need. Most of my students aren't able to access private mental health care, so our counselor, psychologist, and social worker are full up and I deal with the slightly less severe issues on my own, with no background in psychology or counseling. Our mental health team can't coach every individual teacher on how to help every individual kid's issues, so we are all doing what seems best based on our anecdotal experiences and trial-and-error.


OP, I don't disagree with you at all that it is my job to serve the whole child. What I need to support students' mental health is smaller class sizes and recognition from administrators that children can't learn as effectively when they are traumatized or mentally ill and may need more time, support, and staff to meet their goals. I need my evaluation to reflect that my work entails helping a whole child develop and not just demonstrating a year's measurable growth in reading, writing, and content knowledge. I need the school system to hire more mental health personnel for my school so I am not trying to guess at the best way to support a child when I don't even know the full extent of their issues. I need additional staff in my classroom so that like yesterday, I am not choosing between teaching the lesson on identifying a story's theme to 25 students or attending to the 3 students who are melting down (one yelling and refusing because of anxiety, one crawling under chairs and crying because of trauma, and one literally climbing furniture for reasons I haven't yet ascertained). I agree my job is to help these students, but I need HELP to do everything I am trying to do.

What I am hearing you say is you need more support to help your students with mental health issues, which I agree with. I think smaller class sizes are great but that by itself does little for my child if the teacher is inadvertently reinforcing her anxiety for hours each day, which is why the training piece is important too. I get that your job is hard (AS IS MINE) which AGAIN is why I hate asking anything of teachers, as I know it often comes with a lecture just like this one, but the alternative is to not advocate for my child and continue to pay for weekly therapy that will never end, even though her condition is treatable, because she actually CANNOT get better if her condition is being reinforced each day.

You cannot expect a teacher to cater to one child's anxiety. You aren't being reasonable. If you want smaller classes and catered to, go private or pay for an 1-1 aide. You also need to do more than just weekly therapy and try different medications. Clearly what you are doing isn't enough and demanding others handle the situation isn't reasonable.

Wow, so many assumptions and so much ignorance here. Only an idiot would recommend "different medications" for a child they know next to nothing about.

Maybe your kids have problems because of you and you feel you need to name call.

If a child is having severe anxiety that isn't treated with therapy, yes, they need to try different medications. Why would you have your child suffer when there are multiple approaches to try. Maybe parenting is the problem.

Many of us are very aware of SN. The difference is we don't expect others to fix it and get our kids the help they need.