Fostering Child and Adolescent Mental Health in the Classroom

Raymond J. Waller

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN:
  9781412909075
  9781412909068
• eBook ISBN:
  9781452279091
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Fostering Child and Adolescent Mental Health in the Classroom provides educators and school personnel with a thorough, readable guide to some of the most common mental health issues they are likely to confront in the classroom. Editor Raymond J. Waller offers pre-service and in-service educators strategic tools to help take the proper steps toward addressing the mental health issues of their students.    

Key Features:

• Encourages effective collaboration between teachers and mental health professionals: While most books related to children?s mental health are written for mental health personnel, this book offers strategies that teachers can use in their classrooms to help children with mental health issues. The chapters in this book are written by experts in the field and address contemporary, common mental health issues experienced by children and adolescents.
• Gives teachers confidence in having a positive impact: Educators are often among the most influential people in the lives of children and this book offers helpful and practical roles for educators in promoting mental health in all children. Real-life vignettes demonstrate how various mental health problems may manifest in the classroom and how these problems can be addressed effectively in the school setting.
• Helps identify mental health problems in the classroom: Few teachers are specifically taught to identify student behaviors that may potentially result in severely reduced functioning or risk of harm to self or others. This text will assist educators in recognizing symptoms of crisis and offer practical suggestions rather than treatment or diagnosis, which is beyond the purview of most educators.  

Intended Audience:
This is an excellent supplementary textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on Classroom Management. It can also be used in a variety of courses in Education, Special Education, Educational Psychology, School Psychology, School Counseling, and School Social Work.

Part I

INTRODUCTION TO CHILD AND ADOLESCENT MENTAL HEALTH

Chapter 1

THE EDUCATOR’S ROLE IN CHILD AND ADOLESCENT MENTAL HEALTH

Raymond J. Waller

Diane J. Bresson

Katherine S. Waller

PREREADING QUESTIONS

As you read this chapter, reflect on the following questions and issues:

1. We frequently hear about the shortage of classroom teachers. What are some of the reasons that you think a shortage exists?
2. What would you guess are some of the most common job-related difficulties reported by veteran teachers?
3. Do you think that students today face the same challenges as children from previous decades, or do children today experience more significant challenges? What are those challenges?
4. Should teachers play a role in fostering mental health in their students? If so, what responsibilities do they have? If not, who is responsible for meeting the mental health needs of students?

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Teaching is more demanding today than it has ever been. Few researchers would disagree with this statement, and even fewer professional educators would disagree. Myriad factors intermesh to contribute to the challenge. Poor pay has been a longtime complaint. Newer factors related to the difficulties that teachers report include (a) increased bureaucratic demands; (b) the contradictory demands of federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, which many teachers feel places them in the position of being “accountable” based on measures that do not measure the effectiveness of their teaching; (c) the cumbersome requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which many teachers have not been educated about; (d) concerns about institutional safety in a time of several high-profile episodes of horrific school violence; (e) heightened concerns about personal liability in an era of resolution through civil mediation; and (f) what seems to be an all-time low in the credibility afforded to teachers by the body politic. It is not surprising, therefore, that a drastic shortage in teachers is forecast to worsen in coming years. Perhaps many prospective education graduates find themselves asking the same question as Ogden (2002), who pondered rhetorically,

Why would a bright student … go into a low-paying, low-respect job where the primary responsibility is to expose … a small group of people, a sizable proportion of whom could care less about anything of an intellectual nature, in a place where they do not wish to be, to something that all but a few will find totally irrelevant. (p. 367)

What does surprise many is that this shortage is not due primarily to the number of people who enter the field but is instead the result of teacher attrition (Harrell, Leavell, van Tassel, & McKee, 2004; National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future [NCTAF], 2003). Teacher training, like most areas of professional training, involves intense commitment, sacrifice, and expense. Unlike most other college training curricula, although there are a few other exceptions (e.g., nursing), teacher training prepares students to leave the college classroom and immediately obtain employment doing a specific job. Although the following example is extreme, it seems as unlikely for teachers to successfully undertake obtaining a degree in education and then to leave education as it would be to see a physician go through medical school and then leave the field of medicine. Many people obtain college degrees in a given field of study (although they are not trained to obtain a specific job in that field) and, after graduation, obtain employment in a field unrelated to their course of study. Intuitively, one would not expect this to be the case in education. Therefore, the issue of attrition of professional educators warrants consideration.

One third of beginning teachers leave the field within 5 years (Darling-Hammond, 2001), and the attrition rate is even higher in schools in communities with high poverty rates (Ingersoll, 2001) and in urban locales (McCreight, 2000); attrition is the most severe for teachers in the field of special education (Brownell, Sindelar, Bishop, Langley, & Seo, 2002). Issues such as those listed earlier in the chapter are among some that are the targets of familiar investigation, but two that occur with great frequency have yet to be mentioned: job dissatisfaction and the behavior of students. Job dissatisfaction is inferred to be a given, since teachers leave the profession of education in greater numbers than people leave most other professions. In fact, dissatisfaction with the field often goes hand in hand with the behavior of students, which many new teachers find to be appreciably more challenging than they had anticipated.

We have heard—rarely, we are glad to say—that the students of today are “getting worse,” and popular media and impression often reinforces this belief.

Although we disagree with statements such as this on both philosophical and evidentiary grounds, there is a point here that is worthy of exploration. Furthermore, the unanticipated level of challenge presented by student behavior to new teachers is exacerbated by a common criticism debated both within the professional literature and too often heard by professional educators, which is that “most professors do not expand on the realities but concentrate on the theories [of teacher education]” (Walters, 2004, p. 58). We agree that teacher training should focus primarily on practical applications to classroom problems, including effective instruction strategies and behavior management approaches. Moreover, teachers routinely take courses in behavior management in fulfillment of degree requirements. However, we also acknowledge that the needs of children in many areas are more momentous and complex than teacher education programs have systematically addressed. Children with atypical behavior problems, particularly children experiencing mental health problems, are in need of specialized behavior management strategies and, more important, behavioral supports that most teachers are not trained to provide. Thus, this book has two primary foci: (a) to respond to the need for practical strategies to support students with mental health issues and (b) to redress the need to provide educators with specific training in the mental health issues commonly seen in school-age children and adolescents.

Gratefully, the data show that, at least in some domains, things are improving for students in this country. For example, the Child Welfare League (2005) reports the following:

• The high school dropout rate has decreased.
• The number of children in juvenile justice facilities has decreased.
• The number of arrests for children under the age of 18 has decreased.

From the standpoint of mental health, however, America’s students are in crisis. In addition, both the incidence and prevalence of many of the mental health issues that affect school-age children show clear signs of increasing. At any given time, 1 of every 10 school-age children suffers from a mental health problem significant enough to disrupt that child’s functioning in a major area of life, but fewer than 20% of these children receive any form of mental health treatment (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000). One of the best national studies available reported that the highest prevalence rate of mental health issues occurs in people aged 15 to 24 (Kessler et al., 1994), and this study did not evaluate children younger than 15. In fact, some studies indicate that most children will experience a diagnosable mental health problem during the child and adolescent years.

IDEA and NCLB have both encouraged the inclusion of students with identified disabilities into the general education setting, and teacher training programs have responded to the need by providing inclusive teaching strategies in the curricula of many college programs. The special education label that predominately serves students who have been identified for special education services is emotional disorders (EDs), also referred to as emotional/behavioral disorders (EBDs). Students who are identified as having an ED are likely to be placed into the regular education setting. Unfortunately, research findings consistently reveal that teachers in regular education feel unprepared to meet the needs of students with disabilities (Pivik, McComas, & LaFlamme, 2002), even though, in the 1998 school year, 47% of students with identified disabilities were educated in general education classrooms 79% of the time (U.S. Department of Education, 2001). From this standpoint, it is in one’s best professional interest to be familiar with the strategies outlined in the following chapters, as the following veteran teacher discovered:

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My 25th year of teaching elementary school has been the most challenging. In all my years of teaching, I have never had a more needy class. Most of my 28 fifth-grade students struggle academically, and 10 of them have standardized test scores that qualify them for intervention services. Three of my students speak no English, and 1 of those students is also legally blind, which obviously makes communication even more difficult. Six of my students are labeled with disabilities and are served part-time in a special education resource classroom. These special education students present some of my biggest challenges.

Jeremy is labeled as emotionally disordered. He was already being served in special education when his mother passed away last year. She died suddenly with no warning that she was ill. The grandmother is now raising Jeremy and his sister. Jeremy does very little class work. It’s not that he doesn’t try, but he moves and writes so slowly that he has barely gotten his name on a sheet of paper before the rest of the class has completed the assignment. Jeremy rarely speaks or interacts at all with any of his teachers or classmates.

Tamara’s mother also died a couple of years ago. Her mother was murdered. Like Jeremy, Tamara is also labeled as emotionally disordered. Tamara’s response to her mother’s death has been the opposite of Jeremy. Tamara is very loud, disruptive, and often disrespectful. She has yelled and made insulting comments to some of the other teachers. Most of her disrespectfulness toward me has been with defiant comments that she mumbles very quietly. Tamara does not get along well with girls, and she has been in two fights this year. With the boys, Tamara is quite flirtatious. In her fourth-grade year, Tamara was sexually abused and possibly raped by a male relative. Since then, Tamara has had several incidents at school involving sexual comments and notes to male classmates.

Jackson is in special education part of the day because of his ADHD. His mother is in jail for drug possession. Jackson has an explosive temper, and he often lashes out at classmates. Carlos also fights with classmates, although he is not labeled with any sort of disability. He was considered for the gifted program, but his disruptive behavior disqualified him for that program. Carlos was recently suspended for beating a younger, smaller student in the face and head as the younger child sat defenseless on the bus.

I have to keep Bill far away from Jackson and Carlos. Although he is very bright, Bill is served in special education for ADHD, but recently he has been diagnosed with other mental health problems. His counselor says that he is hearing voices, and he has attempted to stab a family member with a knife. At school, Bill is targeted for teasing and bullying by the other children. Bill is always very sweet and respectful toward me, though. He rarely does any written work, but he generally gets all the answers right on the weekly tests and quizzes.

Many of my students are struggling with issues like divorce and family violence. I know that their behavior at school is related to all the things going on at home. Each morning, as the students arrive I go to their desks and say, “Good morning. How are you? I’m glad you’re here.” I ask them about things that I know are going on in their lives, and I give them a hug or a pat on the back to let them know I care. I have tried to build a bond with my class. Even with all the challenges going on in these children’s lives, we go on with learning. No one considers the personal lives of children when standardized test scores are analyzed. These children will be expected to do as well as children from more privileged homes and neighborhoods.

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Many students with mental health problems do not qualify for special education services. Therefore, children with a variety of mental health needs will be in your classroom, and you will be the primary source of school-based support for these students. To be eligible for services under the label ED, the problem must, according to the federal definition, negatively affect student academic performance. This is problematic for a variety of reasons. A student may suffer quietly with depression without necessarily having any noticeable drop in academic performance. Yet another student may be extremely fastidious about her schoolwork but be experiencing suicidal thoughts. Obviously, the academic performance of all students who are suffering will not be negatively affected. There are several other criticisms of the definition of ED, but they can be summed up by a major researcher in the area of ED, who has referred to the definition as being close to “nonsense” (Kauffman, 2005, p. 18). Thus, even if a student appears to be experiencing a clear mental health problem, the subjective nature of defining ED and...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Introduction to Child and Adolescent Mental Health
• Part II Mental Health Issues Frequently Confronted in the Classroom
• Part III Mental Health Issues Involving Significant Risk to Self and Others
• Part IV Moving Beyond the Classroom
• Glossary
• Index
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors