Teacher Education Programs Don't Adequately Prepare Teachers For Urban Schools.

By Anthony L. Hubbard

So, you just graduated from a 4-year college with a teaching degree. You did some student teaching at a local suburban elementary school – but that’s not where your passion is. You’re interested in teaching at an urban school in the most challenging neighborhood.

Why?

Because  you want to make a difference. You want to change lives. You want to teach the kids who are the neediest and help them escape a terrible situation.

Or at least, that’s what you think you want. The truth is, most teacher education programs leave you unprepared to deal with the day-to-day reality of teaching in an urban school. To be completely honest, urban schools are a tough environment – for both teacher and students.

Poverty leaves its mark on every student – and many of them cope by turning away from teachers and authority figures.  They enter your classroom with distrust and guarded.  Many have suffered trauma that has gone untreated, while others don’t see the importance of education. 

So let us take a look at some of the most common things that surprise teachers who attempt to teach in urban schools, and discuss why education programs don’t adequately prepare teachers for this educational environment.

Relationships Are At The Core Of Your Ability To Teach

Here’s the thing about young people in urban schools – they’ve seen it all before. A white, middle-class teacher comes into their classroom, freshly out of college or Graduate school. They’re raring to go – and they want to have their “O Captain, My Captain,” moment with their class, and change their lives.

Then, as the year goes on, the teacher gets frustrated. The kids are cynical, mean, or ignoring them – and don’t seem to have any interest in learning. Teachers become snarky, disengaged and frustrated.  After a year, the teacher is so discouraged that he/she leaves – probably to teach in a charter school or a cushy suburban school.

The leaving of potentially great educators happens over and over again, and the reason is simple – relationships are more important in urban schools than anywhere else. If you want to have an effect on the lives of your students, you must connect to them on a personal level, and genuinely show that you care about them.

This is in contrast to the attitude that many first-time teachers enter with; the idea that their students need “saving,” and that they’re the ones to do it. Students don't need to be saved by you. They need to be empowered. Students in this environment don’t want your pity.  They want to feel normal.  And if you can connect with your students, be honest with them, and create a meaningful relationship, you will get through to them.

Conflict Is Normal – And You Need To Manage It

Poverty and the stress of life associated with it takes a severe mental toll – especially on developing children. Many kids will react by becoming combative and aggressive or withdrawing completely into their shells. These behaviors are especially prevalent in teenagers and pre-teens.

Most teacher programs have a minimal focus on conflict resolution skills. These programs operate in a sort of “bubble” where your classroom is obedient, respectful, and conflict-free – and this is never the case.

You’re going to need good conflict resolution skills. If the conflicts are minor and don’t escalate, it’s best to provide your students with the tools required to solve them on their own and act as a facilitator. Because if you rely on school administrators and school resource officers to solve the conflict, you’re going to alienate yourself from your students.

Some Things Are Out Of Your Control – And That’s Okay

There is no mistake that when you teach in an urban school, within a disenfranchised neighborhood, with students living in constant state of crisis - there will be things that are out of your control. You can’t make sure all of them have a warm bed to sleep in at night, clean clothes, or enough money for lunch. You’re not their savior, and you can’t do everything on your own.

But what you can do is teach. When students are in your classroom, you’re in control, and you really can make a difference if you persist, form great relationships, and connect with your students, you will be able to watch them improve – and that’s the best feeling you can have as a teacher.  Remember, the mission here is to equip your students them with a strong educational foundation that will give them a fighting chance of improving their life outcomes. 

Teaching In Urban Schools Is Hard – But Don’t Be Discouraged

If you’re looking to teach in an urban school, that’s great! I’m glad that you’re thinking about using your talents to reach young people who are disadvantaged, and who may lack a strong mentor or role model.

But it’s important that you understand that this will be difficult. There is a reason that some urban schools have a 3-year turnover rate of over 50% – most teachers are not properly equipped by their education programs to handle the stresses of teaching the nation’s most challenging students.

But if you understand that you’re a teacher – not a savior, that you must build relationships with each one of your students, and that you can encourage learning by facilitating an open, safe environment for your students, you’ll have a much better chance of success.  Make no mistake, there will always be students that latch on to you, and you will become their superhero, the cool teacher, their mentor - but just let it happen naturally. 

It will be hard. You may want to quit. But if you persist, you’ll be rewarded – and you’ll truly make a difference in the lives of your students.

Equity Over Grit, What Black Boys Need to Succeed in Our Schools

If you’ve been paying attention to what’s happening in our educational institutions, you’d probably have noticed the sudden attention to non-cognitive skills or  “soft skills” development. The idea here is that our boys, especially the ones from African-American background, need to adopt a mindset for growth and acquire “grit” to succeed in their endeavors.

On the surface, there is some truth to all of this. However, if you were to dig a little deeper, you would find that “grit” and a “good attitude” isn’t what black boys need. What they need is to be treated as equals.

Anything else is a glorified attempt at discrediting the racial prejudice that exists within the halls of our hallowed institutions.

More harm than good

The idea of grit is actually harming our young black men; quite contrary to how it has been portrayed. Ebony McGee, an Assistant Professor for Diversity and Urban Schooling at the Vanderbilt University, tells us that the concept of grit has only caused the black boys to suffer from psychological and physical ailments.

As part of a study, McGee found that many black students worked themselves to a point of illness only to avoid being tagged as intellectually inferior. The professor goes on to state that concepts such as grit overshadow the real issue here, which is societal racism.

In fact, one could go so far as to say that the prevalence of racism within educational institutions is what’s driving black boys to work harder than they need to.

Grit is a term that refers to the measurement of success through the instilling of specific characteristics that are deemed necessary for achieving goals. However, the concept of grit doesn’t factor in the discrimination that black students encounter on their way to success.

Resiliency is a great value, but, black students have the added burden of overcoming racism before they prove their intellectual worth.

In fact, studies show that ideas such as “grit” harm everybody. One study found that “grit” only makes people goal oriented at the risk of their individual well-being. When faced with tasks, “gritty” individuals force themselves to attain goals without even considering that there probably could be an easier solution or no solution at all.

To put it simply, grit forces people to keep going even when the risks outweigh the benefits.

The solution

Communities and concerned bodies from the arenas of education and politics must seek reforms in existing policies. Our black boys need support, not soft skills training.  The system needs to be fixed. There are programs out there that already help with this. Unfortunately, public schools aren’t a part of these efforts. 

So, let’s start by addressing the public school system. We need better teachers, qualified ones that can make a difference. Additionally, there need to be more scholarships and improvements within the public education setup. Nurturing environments must be created where African-American youth can thrive.

Students shouldn’t be told that they need to be more resilient. They need to be taught to question inequality and demand justice.

All the grit in the world cannot help one overcome barriers that are embedded deep into the system. It requires a collaborative effort from all sides.

Embracing Conversations about Race in Schools.

By Anthony Hubbard

Discourse about race dominates American life

'Race' is the ugly word that dominates American life in a near complete negative manner despite the fact that large portions of the country voted twice to elect an African American president. The term race forces us to confront horrid factors such as institutionalized discrimination, widespread poverty and paranoia, distrust and despair, criminal justice failings, police brutality, and widespread racial discrimination.

In the current scenario, conversations about race extend well beyond the plight of millions of blacks. It covers Latinos, Asians, Muslims, and several persecuted minorities. Open up a prominent national newspaper or switch on cable news, and you'll find several horrific news stories that ensure that racism remains an omnipresent conversational topic and with good reason. At most schools and colleges, we fail to sensitize America's children about race issues at an age when their minds are very vulnerable to internalizing subtle forms of racism. Successful classroom engagement is essential to reducing problems related to race in our society.

Educators must engage in race-related topics objectively

In urban settings, at times, it can feel like America exists as a post-racial society, and this is often the first myth that educators should dispense off with an evidence-based approach. Before engaging the classroom on the topic of race, teachers must gather all the facts that support their argument and methodically incorporate it into their classroom environment. Interracial conversations about race are bound to be dangerous and can go off track very quickly, hence, it is essential to be prepared with as much care as possible.

Engaging in conversations about race in your classroom could impact generations of individuals, as education is the only way we can end the racial differences at the core of our society. Colleagues may not be enamored about an educator's desire to talk about race, and confronting your colleagues about its importance requires a significant degree of courage and education.

Your courage could shape the way students think about race forever

Educators must understand that opening up a dialogue about race is far better than leaving it unsaid or unspoken. Having a direct, objective, and courageous conversation about race could positively impact the life of all your students. At the least, bringing up the topic in the classroom will provide it with legitimacy, and convey the importance of discussing it with students of all races.

It is important to repeat your points in a clear, lucid manner that definitively reiterates the core of your message. Repetition is one of the most important tools in the hands of educators, and it is vital to ensure that students hear what you are saying instead of what they think you may be saying. Clarity and engagement are the best things educators can provide to their students in such discussions. Reinforce factual information without resorting to gross generalizations and statement of biases. Provide students with the platform to air their views and encourage arguments that steer clear of emotional agitation and name-calling. Allow all students, not just minority students, to state what they feel so that you can understand how incorrect opinions can be altered for good.

Expect discomforting discussions and arguments

One factor educators cannot control is a student's previous engagement with racism, picked up from the world around them. Naturally, discussion of such a controversial topic is bound to lead to awkward and discomforting situations. As individuals, we are constantly socialized into differing views on race based on our external environment.  This can lead to excessive degrees of cognitive dissonance when one person's opinions do not align with the opinions of the surrounding others. As an educator, you must allow students to argue with you and each other without 'otherizing' the opposite views or views you may completely disagree with.

Educators may need to set basic standards for decorum before proceeding with a discussion about race. Elucidate to the students the importance of rational conversations based on facts and logic instead of emotional conversations based on inherent stereotypes and biases. Educators must strive to normalize the presence of differing perspectives before clearly imparting the fundamental mistakes behind certain views. When you are trying to explain to a student why, for example, constantly passing jokes about all blacks being thieves, is incorrect, you should not belittle a student, but expose the dangerous statements and very real statistics behind such statements. Make the intellectual appeal and not the emotional appeal.

Speak the truth and encourage students to do the same

Beyond all else, the truth requires absolute courage. Share your experiences with racism and its impact on individuals in your life. Share your truthful opinions even if it may be unpopular with colleagues and students. When educators share their honest opinions, their colleagues and students may be able to point out inherent misconceptions and mistakes.

Conversations about race can be a two-way learning experience and you may become aware of your incorrect beliefs and misconceptions, which may have seemed based on facts. The truth is capable of setting both you and your students free. Addressing honest misconceptions and incorrect opinions are much easier once heartfelt sentiments have been shared.

Accept a lack of closure

Conversations about race will typically provide no conclusion, and at the very least, competent educators can encourage students to think differently about long-held beliefs. As an educator, your primary job is to ensure that students are aware of the severity of the problem at hand and encourage them to empathize with the problems of millions of people around the country.

At the end, students should be able to realize that, classroom discussions cannot provide closure for burning issues that are not closed in the real world. At the very least, students must be sensitized to the plight of racial minorities, and as a result of your discussion, they could be encouraged to seek tangible solutions to the multi-faced problems at hand.

Effective Instructional Practices for Educators Working with Students Afflicted with Bipolar Disorder

By Anthony L. Hubbard

Despite the advances in designing instructions for students with learning disabilities, a lot of educators across the country still face significant challenges in addressing the needs of students who suffer from behavioral and emotional disorders. To add to this existing conundrum, there are a lot of students exhibiting bipolar characteristics who remain undiagnosed. Despite the existing federal mandates to better integrate disabled students with their peers, the plight of educators has not been addressed sufficiently. Let us take a closer look at the classroom characteristics of bipolar disorder.

·      Impact on cognitive and academic functioning – Adolescents and children with bipolar disorder struggle in the classroom with regards to their cognitive functioning and academic achievement. There have been a lot of studies exploring neurocognitive impairments in students with bipolar disorder. It has been found that these students score more on their verbal measures than on their spatial-visual measures, suggesting that they have difficulties with math and decoding of nonverbal social cues. Studies have also shown that students with bipolar disorder are impaired in verbal memory, executive functions, self-monitoring, systematic problem-solving, planning, set-shifting/inhibition, and spatio-visual tasks. 

·       Impact on social functioning – Studies have shown that students with bipolar disorder tend to have few friends. Children suffering from this condition have also reported a lot of difficulties with their peers, and parental reports have more or less confirmed these difficulties. In one of the studies, teachers reported that children in the age group of 8 to 11 had moderate to severe difficulties with interpersonal skills, antisocial behavior, and self-management. They were also reported to exhibit higher levels of aggression that their peers.

Classroom accommodations

Students who have bipolar disorder can benefit a lot from environments that reduce distractions and help them in organizing and attending to tasks. Here are a few helpful tips.

·      Frequent fluctuations in energy and mood – Make sure that the instruction and scheduling you provide allow for flexibility. Minimize the surprises and distractions, and maintain a stable environment with consistent expectations. It will provide the students with predictability and structure, and reduce the level of undesirable reactivity to the instructional demands.

·      Decreased stamina and low tolerance – Pay attention to the characteristics of agitation, fatigue, tolerance, and frustration levels that can magnify the bipolar symptoms. Modify the instructional pace, opportunities to practice, activity level, work demands, and the students’ degree of interaction with their peers.

·      Non-compliance and irritability due to rapid mood cycling – Provide your students with additional time to assimilate and practice academic skills. Use strategies like “big ideas” and categorization, graphic organizers, concept mapping, and guided notes.

·      Irritability and anxiety – Make a picture schedule of the sequence of activities that the student has to go through during the day. It will help you to preplan better. If there are going to be any changes in the daily activities or the classroom environment, make sure that you give your student advanced notice. Develop a “down time” plan for the unstructured periods in a day.

·       Regulating emotion and performance – Teach your students to develop long and short term goals. Use visual organizers and daily planners, assignment completion checklists, to-do lists and provide more feedback. If there is a manic episode, assist students in taking up more realistic projects and extracurricular activities. Work with their parents to develop a more structured and consistent routine across their school and home environments.

Social and behavioral management accommodations

While medication has known to assist students in controlling their behavior, they are reactive to fluctuations in their impulses, moods, and the surrounding environmental stimuli. Here are a few strategies to help them manage their behavior.

·       Staff knowledge and response

o   Maintain calm, positive, patient, firm, encouraging, and consistent interactions with the students

o   Educate the school personnel about the disorder

o   Facilitate long-term changes to their lifestyle through positive, proactive, and functional interventions and strategies

o   Ensure that there is a “safe” adult that the student may seek out when he/she is feeling overwhelmed

·       Behavioral/social, vocational, and academic deficits

o   Design interventions to address the skill deficits that result from the disorder

o   Foster an inclusive environment in the classroom through open discussion, peer mediation, and support. Protect the students from rejection or ridicule and set the occasion for collaborative, positive working relationships.

o   Include the students in more social skills groups, and increase their lunch and playground time supervision, so that you can avert any problems during those times

o   Identify the possible triggers that precede loss of control

o   Allow the students to take walks or breaks when they become frustrated by the academic or social demands

o   Have a game plan for managing crises, explicit instructions for managing unsafe behavior, backup plans if the safe place does not work, and recovery procedures for the people involved in the crisis. 

Most of the children who are diagnosed with bipolar disorder are prescribed medication to address their symptoms and improve their functioning. They undoubtedly result in a number of side effects. Antidepressants and mood stabilizers can impact their attention and focus, cognitive functioning, alertness, learning, cognitive functioning, stamina, and memory. It also causes a lot of physical side effects like increased thirst and frequent urination, not to mention rebound effects like weepiness, irritability, and hyperactivity. Instructors need to understand all possible side-effects and work with parents and medical professionals to determine whether their in-school medication schedule must be adjusted.

Sources:

http://www.schoolbehavior.com/Files/tips_mood.pdf

http://ibpf.org/article/accommodations-students-bipolar-disorder-and-related-disabilities

http://www.helpguide.org/articles/bipolar-disorder/helping-a-loved-one-with-bipolar-disorder.htm

http://www.bphope.com/kids-children-teens/bipolar-college-success/

How Can Educators Create an Effective Connected Classroom?

A connected classroom is a smart-learning environment that is open to the outside world. With this approach, students get to learn from real-life situations and connect with other learners across the globe. With the widespread use of internet and web 2.0 technologies, creating connected classrooms has become much easier. Before we look at the web tools that you can use to open the classroom doors to a global audience, let us look at some of the academic advantages of adopting such an approach.

Connected classrooms can help students:

• Practice and learn a foreign language with native speakers of the tongue
• Discuss problems with other learners from far off locations
• Invite experts in a particular field to the virtual classroom and learn from them
• Expose themselves to other cultures and develop a more holistic global awareness
• Set up virtual trips to places of interest

Skype and Google Hangout are great tools to create a connected classroom. They stand out for a number of reasons:

• They are completely free to uset is easy to set them up and you do not need any in-depth technical knowledge to operate them
• They are web-based and don’t require software installation
• You can do both video and text chat on them 
• They offer group calling services
• Hangout videos and Skype calls can be recorded and shared with anybody
  Let us take a look at a practical way in which we can use Google Hangout and Skype to create a connected classroom

The Mystery Hangout/Skype

A Mystery Hangout/Skype is an educational classroom game where students from different parts of the country get to meet each other on Skype or through Hangout video and get to ask each other questions about each other's locations. The aim of this game is to help the students guess the location of their peers’ class. In the process, they get to practice a number of academic skills like web searching, speaking, note taking, writing and a lot more.

This activity is suitable for children of any age group and can also be used to teach subjects like geography, history, mathematics, languages and science.  There are various ways in which you can go about selecting the class to partner with. For instance, you can use the Hashtag #mysteryskype or go to this page to find out more about the different classes that are featured there. If you want to organize a Mystery hangout for your class, you can check Google Plus’ Mystery hangout Community. If you find a class that you want to connect with, get in touch with its teacher and set up a meeting. But before you get started with the Mystery Hangout/Skype class, make sure that your students are adequately prepared. Here are a few handy tips to get them ready for their first connected learning experience:

• Make sure that your students fact check the information that they are going to provide in their answers. They can use the internet to look up information on their geographical location, the population of the city they live in, the languages they speak, the historical monuments, their city’s economic mainstay and more. 

• If you want to connect with classes that are in a different time zone, you need to know the time differences between both the locations. You can use the following tools to overcome the problem:

• Online conversion 
• Meeting planner 
• World clock 

If you want your students to make the most of the time they spend connecting with their guest class, make sure that you assign each one of them a specific task to carry out. Some of the roles include – greeters (the students who will greet the guests when they connect), the questioner (students who pose the questions), note takers (students who are entrusted with taking detailed notes) and photographers (students who are entrusted with taking pictures during the call). If you want a more detailed web resource with a list of tasks that you can assign to your students, check out this page.

Why is it a Big Mistake to Label Kids?

By Anthony L. Hubbard

We have all been through high school. As a junior, we are sure you remember the fellow student in your class who was always glancing up at the clock. You might have caught yourself wondering – “Is he anxious to get to work?” “Does he want to go smoke a cigarette?” “Is he waiting to leave the classroom?” Would your perception change if you knew that the student was being assigned to an alternative school where students who were “at-risk” of not graduating were being sent? Would it change if you found out that he just got accepted into a prestigious college?

Look closely at the above example. Firstly, you are making an attribution about the student’s cause of behavior. Secondly, you are implicitly considering the characteristics of the person exhibiting the behavior. Thirdly, the descriptions that are provided about the student sets in motion a host of beliefs and stereotypes about the causes of the said behavior. This should give you a fair idea of the kind of negative impact that can be caused by labeling students as “at-risk”. 

Effects of an academic label on attributions

Attributions are made because they are convenient cues and the human brain is primed to follow the path of least cognitive stress. However, the subtle cascading effect of negative labeling is something that we should better acquaint ourselves with. Let us take an example. How many times have you found yourself in a situation where someone put you down unfairly and it just threw you off your rhythm for the rest of the day? We’d venture to guess that it has happened at least once in the last two months. Now imagine if that were to happen on a daily basis. Just think about what that would do to your morale? 

Behavioral psychologists have a term called the Pygmalion effect, which refers to a phenomenon where higher expectations lead to an increase in performance. The more we expect from our kids, the more motivated they are to live up to the expectation. SO, it is always for the better to call them out on their strengths instead of admonishing them for their weaknesses. Worse still, if we categorize children by their family’s income bracket, ethnicity or special education needs, then we are making the assumption that the child has a deficit. How would you feel if you were called an ‘at-risk’ educator because you failed to reach out to a kid?

Labeling faux pas educators should strive to avoid

• Never discuss children in front of other children or parents. They listen to and understand a lot more than we realize.

• Comment on their behavior, not on their character. For instance, it is always better to say “Lisa, you have put a lot of hard work into your art project” instead of saying “Lisa, you are a great artist”. 
• Never use labeling as a motivational or a behavioral tool. You cannot motivate an overweight kid to exercise by calling him fat. Similarly, you cannot get them to perform better by calling them stupid. 

• Encourage kids to explore all kinds of activities. They should never be limited in their opportunities just because it does not fit our ideas of what their weaknesses or strengths are. 

What are educators missing out on?

If we want our mental health and education systems, which should be operating in collaboration, to better serve our diverse and multicultural youth population, we must make sure that they are adapted to be culturally responsive, strength-based and youth-centered. 

A lot of the time, educators fail to take into account that most kids from underprivileged urban areas beat some really great odds to show up to school. From lack of parental support to growing up in tough neighborhoods without enough money, they go through a lot every single day of their lives. They must be encouraged for braving their daily ordeals instead of being put down for not living up to the standardized set of rules and behavior. Labeling them as delinquents, at-risk or hopeless is not doing anybody any good. It does not give us or the student a better understanding of the situation.

You need to put yourself in the shoes of those kids. For them, the microaggressions they face in the classroom is not very different from what they have to face in their daily interactions. It creates a hostile and invalidating climate in the school campus, perpetuates the stereotype threat, assails their mental health and affects the problem solving abilities and the academic productivity of the kids. 

How can we reduce instances of microaggressions in the classroom?

Racial ignoring and racial spotlighting are two of the most common instances of racial microaggressions. Racial ignoring is when students of color do not receive any recognition or acknowledgment by the white students or teachers. Racial spotlighting is when these same students frequently find themselves being the object of uninvited attention, like when they are asked to give their opinion on racial matters just because they are a part of that racial group. It happens more often than most teachers would like to let on. 

To make a difference, educators need to be more self-aware of their own conduct in the class. As long as the microaggressions remain invisible, hidden, unspoken and excused as an innocent slight, people will continue to demean, insult, alienate and oppress the marginalized groups. It is up on the educators to make sure that they take every step to recognize and address instances of microaggressions when they see them. 

Mental Health in Urban Schools

Mental Health in Urban Schools

When it comes to the issue of mental health, urban schools have a lot of untapped strengths and assets which reside within the students and their families, the school staff and the community resources. Urban schools are ripe for exploration as we understand the importance of promoting a healthy emotional development and also because of the critical issues faced by students during the school year. Some of the students misbehave, some go through physical or sexual abuse, some of them are emotionally upset and others have difficulty getting along with their peers or adjusting to the school requirements. The central question behind any mental health approach should be – How can the schools engage these challenges?

What is it all about?

A lot of people think “mental illness” when they hear the term “mental health”. Others think it is all about counseling and therapy. But that isn’t the whole picture. Mental health is also about:

·      Instituting programs to promote emotional-social development, preventing the occurrence of psychological problems and enhancing the protective buffers and resiliency of students.

·      Providing services and programs to intervene as soon as behavior, learning and emotional problems are detected.

·      Supporting and nourishing the mental health of school staff and families.

·      Engaging in capacity building so that school staff can address the barriers encountered in learning.

·      Addressing the systemic issues which affect mental health, like high stakes testing and practices which lead to bullying, alienation and disengagement from any form of classroom learning.

·      Drawing on the empirical evidence to develop a multifaceted, cohesive and comprehensive continuum of community-school interventions to address the barriers to learning and promote a more holistic development.

What does the urban school system currently provide?

Most of the urban schools have some programs in place to address mental health and psychosocial concerns, like school adjustment, problems with attendance, dropouts, sexual and physical abuse, substance abuse, emotional upset, relationship difficulties, violence and delinquency. Some of them are funded by the schools themselves while others are a result of links with youth development agencies and community service. Some of the programs are district-wide while others are linked to specific schools. The intervention might be offered to all the students or those recognized as “at risk”. The recommended activities might be implemented in either regular or special-ed classrooms or even as a pull out program. They are designed either for an entire class, individuals or groups.

The personnel who assist with mental health concerns include “support services” or “pupil services” specialists, like counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers as well as a number of paraprofessionals. Most of them focus on the student as a problem or as having a problem.

The students and the staff who work in schools are a diverse bunch, They vary in gender, ethnicity, race, national origin, migration and refugee status and experiences, spirituality, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, language, communication modality, group identity, levels of assimilation/acculturation, developmental stages, workplace culture, lifestyle and family, and popular culture.

Interventions must consider the significant group and individual differences. The personnel must be competent enough to deal with diversity in their daily practice. Despite the range of activities, few schools have actually come close to having the adequate resources to deal with the complex mental health and psychosocial problems through the traditional responses.

What are the emerging trends?

The central problem is that activities that are related to mental health and psychosocial concerns are not given a high priority in schools. They gain visibility in the case of an event, like a student suicide, shooting on campus or an increase in the bullying of students. The efforts that are undertaken are developed in a piecemeal, ad hoc, and marginalized way. This has led to redundancy, fragmented approaches, and inadequate results.

Modern approaches focus on much more than the one-on-one interaction of the older models. It advocates a more comprehensive approach that strengthens the families, schools, students and the neighborhoods in ways that can maximize caring, learning and well-being. We need to fully integrate an agenda for mental health into the urban school framework.

Although one-on-one interactions with troubled students are effective and must be appreciated for the amount of clinical work put in by the counselors and psychologists, we need to focus on building better bridges so that we avoid problems even before they occur. However, many people still believe that education must be the primary concern of schools and mental health is not their business.

How can schools use the natural opportunities to improve the mental health of their students?  

We can group the natural opportunities available at schools for countering mental health and psychosocial problems into two major categories:

1.     Daily opportunities – Schools are a vibrant and active social milieu. Students get to interact with many of their peers and adults during the day. All the school staff, especially the teachers, must be trained in ways to make use of the encounters and minimize transactions which work against positive growth. Are students being instructed in ways that strengthen the development of interpersonal skills? Is their understanding of themselves and others getting better? Is sharing and cooperative learning promoted? Is the climate supportive, safe and caring? Are the interpersonal conflicts suppressed when they happen, or are they used as learning opportunities? Is every student given a role to be a positive helper in the school and the community at large? How safe do the staff and students feel when they are at school? Having metrics to answer each of these questions will be the right way to go forward.

2.     Yearly patterns – The beginning of a school year is a period of hope. As time progresses, a number of stressors emerge, from increasingly difficult homework assignments, interpersonal conflicts, and grading and testing pressures. Holidays, sports, social events, grade promotions and graduations give rise to additional stressors with their own developmental experiences. Having monthly themes to reduce the stress would be a great way to go.

a.     September – Get off to a good start.

b.     October – Enable adjustment to the school.

c.     November – Respond to referrals in a way that can actually stem the tide.

d.     December – Re-engage the students and use their time off in a way that will pay off.

e.     January – A time for a new start for everybody.

f.      February – The mid-point of the year accompanied by conferences and report cards. It presents another challenging opportunity.

g.     March – Reduce the stress and prevent burnouts.

h.    April – Springtime can be a period of high risk for the students.

i.      May – This is the time to help families and students plan for a successful transition to a new school/grade.

j.      June – Summer can be a great time for the kids to get a taste of the world of adults and learn to be independent by getting some seasonal work.

k.    July – Use the down time to plan for better ways in which everyone can work together to provide a better learning support.

l.      August – Develop ways by which you can avoid burnouts.

How can schools provide a mentally healthy living environment to their students?

Schools should be more proactive in developing a positive atmosphere for their students and staff. Literature advocates:

·      Providing a caring, welcoming and a more hopeful atmosphere.

·      Social support mechanisms for the staff and students.

·      Offering an array of options so that students can pursue their goals.

·      Meaningful participation by both the staff and students in decision making.

·      Changing the infrastructure of the classroom from a bigger set into a number of smaller units that are organized to maximize the intrinsic motivation of students for learning.

·      Providing instruction and responding to the problems in a more personalized way.

·      Using a number of strategies for addressing the problems as soon as they arise.

·      An attractive and healthy physical environment which is conducive to teaching and learning.

Every school needs a welcoming induction and continued support for creating a more positive sense of community. It will facilitate student and staff adjustment and performance. The strategies must be school-wide and must enable the students, staff, and families to positively interact with each other and identify with the school and its goals. 

References:

1.     https://www.epa.gov/schools/implementing-coordinated-school-health-guidelines

2.     http://www.maine.gov/education/mainecshp/tools/advocacy/practices.doc

3.     http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec09/vol67/num04/Coordinated-School-Health@-Getting-It-All-Together.aspx

4.     http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15326985ep3304_1

5.     http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/promoting-student-success-through-collaboration/

6.     http://www.ocde.us/PBIS/Documents/Articles/Addressing%20Barriers%20to%20Learning.pdf

7.     http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/schoolsupport.htm