The Teacher's Guide to Student Mental Health

Course Description:

The number of students with mental health disorders seems to increase every year. Chances are that at least each classroom may have a student with a mental health disorder, possibly even severe. Are you prepared to provide the most successful educational experience for these students? This class will help teachers and school support staff to recognize mental health disorders, refer students for appropriate treatment, discover how these disorders may manifest themselves in the school environment and how they impact students' emotions, behaviors and abilities to learn. The author of the textbook for this class is a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist and serves as a consultant to school districts nationwide to assist teachers in creating effective classroom interventions to provide optimal educational experiences for their students. Participants in this class will learn how to develop their own interventions and tailor them to the specific needs of the students they work with. Educators will learn how to collaborate with school mental health professionals, including school psychologists, Response-To-Intervention and Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support teams and support district mental health policies to include the entire school staff.

 

Goals and Objectives

As a result of participation in this course, students should:

1. Learn about the symptoms and make appropriate referrals for the following: Mood, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity, Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive, Post-Traumatic, Stress, Substance Abuse, Oppositional Defiant and Conduct, Autism Spectrum, and Psychotic Disorders
2. Discover how these disorders manifest themselves in the school environment and how they impact student emotions, behaviors and abilities to learn.
3. Create effective interventions and learning plans specific to the needs of your students to provide optimal educational experiences.
4. Communicate, collaborate and coordinate with families, school support staff (school psychologists, social workers, RTI team, behavior intervention strategists, nurses, etc.) in order to implement successful mental health interventions.
5. Learn how to create a district mental health plan that defines the roles of and coordinates all school staff to meet student needs.

 

Texts/Readings

The required text is:

Dikel, W. (2014). The Teacher's Guide to Student Mental Health. New York: Norton & Company.