Reply to Children's mental health and the pandemic

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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]

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. [/quote]

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.  [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

You don't sound like you think accomodations for SN are valid. Sorry, but federal law disagrees.[/quote]

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