Reply to Children's mental health and the pandemic

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=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 [i]slightly[/i] 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.[/quote]

Amen teacher your last paragraph. [/quote]

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