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The Role of the Teacher in School Behavioral Health
- Classroom/Teacher Oriented Interventions
- Identifying students in need of more support
- Combating Mental Health Stigma
- Classroom/Teacher Oriented Interventions
- Identifying students in need of more support
- Special Education and MTSS
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The Role of the Teacher in School Behavioral Health
A special thanks to the USC School Behavioral Health Team's undergraduate research assistants who helped to prepare this newsletter
Hunter Bury,
Darien Collins,
Whitney Garland, and
Riley Kassel.
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Teachers play a vital role in not only individual student mental health, but also cultivating effective school behavioral health systems. Although the teachers’ role is to educate, the emotional and behavioral needs of their students often create a barrier to learning. This often places teachers in the position of being a default mental health support for their students. While 89% of teachers agree that schools should be involved in addressing the mental health needs of children, only 34% of teachers report that they have the skills necessary to support these needs in children. (Reinke, Stormont, Herman, Puri, & Goel, 2011) Furthermore, only 6% of teachers agree that they have the skills necessary to support the mental health needs of students when these students are culturally different from themselves (Reinke et al., 2011).
The old adage “a craftsman is only as good as his tools” comes to mind as teachers don’t always have the best tools for dealing with their students’ mental health needs. This newsletter is a brief overview of some research-based strategies that can be one of the many tools teachers use in crafting the minds of our youth.
Classroom/Teacher Oriented Interventions:
Narrative Therapy:
The use of Narrative Therapy has been found to facilitate change in understanding “difficult behaviors”, thus changing classroom practices in response to mental health and behavior (Gilling, 2016). The inclusion of the teacher in the Narrative Therapy process allows individuals to identify experiences associated with behaviors in the classroom, changing the language used to describe and address the behavior (Gilling, 2016). Interventions such as the Tree of Life (ToL) intervention use Narrative Therapy to highlight student strengths, including existing skills and creative abilities (German, 2013). Use of this intervention in the classroom setting has been found to enhance self-esteem and self-concept in children by creating a shared Forest of Life that fosters classroom community (German, 2013).
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The Good Behavior Game (GBG):
Classroom-wide, teacher-implemented interventions such as the Good Behavior Game (GBG) have been found to significantly reduce disruptive behaviors (Kellam et al., 2011). The GBG aims to improve classroom behavior and promote the child’s role as a student and member of the classroom community by utilizing the teacher to establish classroom rules and providing incentives when students comply with these rules (Kellam et al., 2011).
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Yoga/ Mindfulness Intervention/ Transformative Life Skills (TLS):
Teachers can incorporate yoga and mindfulness techniques into their curriculum and use breathing strategies throughout the day, which has been shown to facilitate the development of self-regulation skills (Razza, Bergen-Cico, & Raymond, 2015). The Transformative Life Skills (TLS) intervention is a yoga-based intervention that has been found to improve student engagement as well as reduce unexcused absences and detentions among middle and high school students (Frank, Kohler, Peal, & Bose, 2017). |
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Additionally, yoga-based interventions have been found to improve:
- Self-regulation/ effortful control (Razza, Bergen-Cico, & Raymond, 2015)
- Gratification delay (Razza et al., 2015)
- Primary and secondary stress-coping strategies (Frank et al., 2017).
- Emotional regulation (Frank et al., 2017).
- Positive thinking (Frank et al., 2017).
- Cognitive restructuring in response to stress (Frank et al., 2017)
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Identifying students in need of more support:
Although teachers can more accurately identify students in need of intervention for externalizing problems (such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder) than parents, both teachers and parents have difficulty identifying internalizing problems (Dwyer, Nicholson, & Battistutta, 2006). To identify students who currently possess or are at risk for these issues, teachers can look for these symptoms.
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Anxiety Disorders (Gresham & Kern, 2004)
- Becoming easily irritated by peers, which can result in verbal or physical altercations (APA, 2013)
- Referring to oneself in a negative view (e.g., “I am a bad kid,” “No one likes me,” “I’ll just mess everything up,”)
- Skipping class
- Displaying truancy
- Leaving class for long periods of time
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Mood Disorders (including depression; Gresham & Kern, 2004)
- Difficulty completing school work
- A rapid increase or decrease in weight
- Complaining of stomach pains
- Becoming disinterested in activities they previously enjoyed or quitting activities in which they were previously heavily involved
- Being persistently tired, and complaints of tiredness, or falling asleep in class
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Teachers Role in Combating Mental Health Stigma
Teachers have identified stigma as a major barrier to student access to mental health care (Reinke, Stormont, Herman, Puri, and Goel, 2011). Fortunately, mental health literacy training programs have shown to be effective in improving teacher mental health literacy and ultimately reducing stigma (Kutcher et al., 2016). Students who felt stigmatized by school faculty and staff have used words like “demeaning,” “underestimated” and “stigmatized” to describe how they felt (Moses, 2010). However, some students have reported receiving positive attention for their mental health diagnoses and have described feelings of “support” and “help” from school staff (Moses, 2010). Unfortunately, teachers do not always positively engage with students they perceive as more difficult in the same way they engage more compliant peers, which can negatively impact academic achievement (Cameron and Sheppard, 2006).
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Teachers Role in Special Education and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support:
Check and Connect has shown to be an effective intervention in reducing student disengagement by setting goals for grades, office discipline referrals, and attendance (Eagle, Dowd-Eagle, Snyder, & Holtzman, 2014). To help students meet their goals general education teachers serve as mentors who look over data, support problem solving, and discuss the importance of school with students at weekly meetings (Eagle et al., 2014).
Both special education and general education teachers are increasingly used as interventionists in MTSS, but often have difficulty finding time to collaborate on effective classroom interventions (Evans & Weiss, 2014). To facilitate collaboration, teachers can set aside time for regular face-to-face meetings regarding the implementation of individual interventions and students’ progress with these interventions (Evans & Weiss, 2014).
Teacher-led curriculums targeting self-determination in high school students with an intellectual or learning disability have also shown to improve self-determination (Wehmeyer, Palmer, Shogren, Williams-Diehm, & Soukup, 2010) through the use of curriculums such as:
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The
ChoiceMaker
Curriculum (Martin, Marshall, Maxson, & Jerman, 1993)
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Self-Advocacy Strategy (Van Reusen, Bos, Schumaker, & Deshler, 2002)
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Steps to Self-Determination (Hoffman & Field, 2005)
Whose Future Is It Anyway? (Wehmeyer et al., 2004) |
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References:
American Psychiatric Association. (2013).
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.
Cameron, M., & Sheppard, S. M. (2006). School discipline and social work practice: application of research and theory to intervention.
Children & Schools, 28(1), 15-22.
Dwyer, S. B., Nicholson, J. M., & Battistutta, D. (2006). Parent and teacher identification of children at risk of developing internalizing or externalizing mental health problems: A comparison of screening methods.
Prevention Science, 7(4), 343-357.
Eagle, J. W., Dowd-Eagle, S. E., Snyder, A., & Holtzman, E. G. (2014). Implementing a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS): Collaboration between school psychologists and administrators to promote systems-level change.
Journal of
Educational and Psychological Consultation, 25(2-3), 160-177.
Evans, C., & Weiss, S. L. (2014). Teachers working together: How to communicate, collaborate, and facilitate positive behavior in inclusive classrooms.
Journal of the International Association of Special Education,
15(2), 142-146.
Frank, J. L., Kohler, K., Peal, A., & Bose, B. (2017). The effectiveness of a school-based yoga program on adolescent mental health and school performance: Findings from a randomized controlled trial.
Mindfulness,
8(3), 544-553.
Gilling, J. A. (2016). What can narrative therapy bring to our understanding and practice around mental health and behavior? Constructing preferred stories in the classroom.
Educational & Child Psychology, 33(4), 80-95.
German, M. (2013). Developing our cultural strengths: Using the 'Tree of Life' strength-based, narrative therapy intervention in schools, to enhance self-esteem, cultural understanding and to challenge racism.
Educational & Child Psychology,
30(4), 75-99.
Gresham, F. M., & Kern, L. (2004). Internalizing behavior problems in children and adolescents. In R. B. Rutherford, M. M. Quinn, & S. R. Mathur (Eds.),
Handbook of research in emotional and behavioral disorders (pp. 262–281). New York, NY: Guilford.
Hoffman, A., & Field, S. (2005). Steps to Self-Determination (2nd ed.). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed
Kellam, S. G., Mackenzie, A. C., Brown, C. H., Poduska, J. M., Wang, W., Petras, H., & Wilcox, H. C. (2011). The good behavior game and the future of prevention and treatment.
Addiction Science and Clinical Practice, 6(1), 73-84.
Kutcher, S., Wei, Y., Gilberds, H., Ubuguyu, O., Njau, T., Brown, A., . . . Perkins, K. (2016). A school mental health literacy curriculum resource training approach: Effects on Tanzanian teachers’ mental health knowledge, stigma and help-seeking efficacy.
International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 10(50), 1-9.
Martin, J. E., Marshall, L., Maxson, L. L., & Jerman, P. (1993). Self-Directed IEP. Longmont, CO: Sopris West.
Moses, T. (2010). Being treated differently: Stigma experiences with family, peers, and school staff among adolescents with mental health disorders.
Social Science & Medicine, 70(7), 985-993.
Razza, R., Bergen-Cico, D., & Raymond, K. (2015). Enhancing preschoolers' self-regulation via mindful yoga.
Journal of Child & Family Studies, 24(2), 372-385.
Reinke, W. M., Stormont, M., Herman, K. C., Puri, R., & Goel, N. (2011). Supporting children's mental health in schools: Teacher perceptions of needs, roles, and barriers.
School Psychology Quarterly,
26(1), 1-13.
Reipe, M. S. (2005). A school mental health issue survey from the perspective of regular and special education teachers, school counselors, and school psychologists.
Education and Treatment of Children, 28(3), 279-298.
Van Reusen, A. K., Bos, C. S., Schumaker, J. B., & Deshler, D. D. (2002). The self-advocacy strategy for enhancing student motivation and self-determination. Lawrence, KS: Edge Enterprises.
Wehmeyer, M., Lawrence, M., Kelchner, K., Palmer, S., Garner, N., & Soukup, J. (2004). Whose Future Is It Anyway? A student-directed transition planning process (2nd ed.). Lawrence, KS: Beach Center on Disability
Wehmeyer, M. L., Palmer, S. B., Shogren, K., Williams-Diehm, K., & Soukup, J. H. (2010). Establishing a Causal Relationship Between Intervention to Promote Self-Determination and Enhanced Student Self-Determination.
The Journal of Special Education,46(4), 195-210.
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This newsletter is made possible through a grant funded by the South Carolina Department of Education to establish the Behavioral Alliance of South Carolina |
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