D.C. Everest Senior High School Staff Update
Weekly Happenings
Interesting Information
May is Mental Health Awareness Month
May 3-8 is Children's Mental Health Awareness Week
A note shared by Erin Jacobson:
~Mental health is essential to everyone’s overall health and well-being, and mental illnesses are common and treatable.
~While 1 in 5 people will experience a mental illness during their lifetime, everyone faces challenges in life that can impact their mental health.
~Now more than ever it is critical to reduce the stigma around mental health struggles that commonly prevent individuals from seeking help.
~It’s important to accept the situations in life that we cannot change, actively work to process the mental struggles associated with big changes, manage anger and frustration, recognize when trauma may be affecting your mental health, challenge negative thinking patterns, and make time to take care of yourself
~Living a healthy lifestyle and incorporating mental health tools to thrive may not be easy but can be achieved by gradually making small changes and building on those successes.
~There are a number of state events to spread awareness https://children.wi.gov/Pages/CMHAD2021.aspx (More to come each week to keep the conversation going~ Please reach out if you need anything or have questions.
The following article is shared via a listserv that Dr. Lindell is a part of. It makes the case for a more comprehensive, all hands on deck, approach to mental health in schools. We will be talking more and more about this in the coming year.
“Time for Straight Talk about Mental Health Services and MH in Schools”
When you hear the term Mental Health in Schools or School Mental Health, what comes to mind?
Probably you think about students who have psychological problems, about what services they need, and how schools don’t provide enough of such services. This is not surprising given the widespread tendency for the term mental health to be thought of as referring to mental disorders (illness) and for relevant interventions to be seen as services (e.g., counseling/therapy).
As a result, many well-intentioned initiatives and policy reports limit discussion to expanding mental health services in schools. This is especially the case as a result of the increased concern about the mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This trend is having unfortunate consequences.
Bluntly stated, advocacy for more mental health services in schools often detracts from efforts to address the full range of mental health concerns confronting school staff, students, and their families. Providing clinical services continues to be too narrow a focus for meeting the nature and scope of student-related problems manifested at schools each day. And it often undercuts the importance of enhancing wellness (e.g., promoting social emotional learning and development).
Our analyses of school improvement policies and practices stress that a narrow agenda for MH in schools works against enhancing every student’s civil right to equity of opportunity for success at school and beyond. Our research stresses the following matters as key to advancing a broad approach to mental health in schools that is fully embedded in school improvement efforts.
The concept of mental health needs to be framed broadly so that it encompasses not only psychopathology but also:
- addresses the wide range of psychosocial and educational problems schools are confronted with on a regular basis and
- encompasses promoting healthy development (i.e., positive social and emotional development).
In this context, schools have a role to play in ensuring there is a full continuum of interventions designed to:
- promote positive mental health
- prevent learning, behavior, and emotional problems
- intervene as early as feasible when such problems arise, and
- help in the treatment of severe and chronic problems.
Those concerned with enhancing the role of mental health in schools must guide policy makers to a clear understanding of:
- the many factors interfering with learning and teaching
- the large number of students who are experiencing learning, behavior, and emotional problems
- the fragmented and marginalized state of affairs related to the limited set of services, programs, and initiatives currently provided as student/learning supports
- the small proportion of students currently reached
- the counterproductive competition for sparse resources
- the importance of promoting positive mental health
- the importance of developing a unified, comprehensive, and equitable system of student/learning supports
By embedding a broad definition of mental health in schools into a transformed system of student/learning supports, policy makers can
- avoid the unrealistic and often inappropriate call for more and more one-on-one direct services
- counter the mistaken view that collocating community services on school campuses can ever be a sufficient approach to filling critical intervention gaps at schools and for enhancing community and home engagement
- better address classroom, school-wide, and community interventions that can reduce the need for one-on-one services
- facilitate the weaving together of school, home, and community resources to gain economic benefits and enhance outcomes
- enhance coordination and cohesion of all resources (school, community, family) intended to support young people’s wellbeing and reduce the opportunity and achievement gaps.
The pressing nature and scope of need demands moving quickly in fundamentally new directions. With over 90,000 public schools in the U.S.A. and so many students who are not doing well, it is time to embed mental health in schools into a unified, comprehensive, and equitable system of learning supports. This will enhance the fit of mental health concerns with the mission of schools and contribute in a powerful way to school efforts to play a role in fully promoting social-emotional learning and comprehensively addressing barriers to learning and teaching.
Announcements/Week Ahead
Teacher appreciation week luncheon grab and go - Everybody please plan on swinging by the teacher's lounge during your lunch on Wednesday to enjoy some food with colleagues.
Congratulations to the following faculty and staff who are being recognized for their "Years of Service" with the district:
- 5 Years: Brooke Davis, Carla Kietlinski, Alexsandra Lemke, Brent Montague, Julieanne Raddenbach and James Sekel
- 10 Years: Elyse Davies and Maria Prust
- 15 Years: Joel DeBoer, Bryan Foster, and Kathleen Lee
- 20 Years: Karen Huddleston, Matthew Kleinschmidt, Tami Mlodik, and Jenny Oosterhuis
- 25 Years: Todd Bohm, Leslei Dickerson, John Glynn, Mike Plaza and Ann Johnson
Musical Parking this week - Due to practice schedules - ALL STAFF will need to move their vehicle in the back staff parking lot by 4:30 each evening. If you plan to stay later than 4:30 Tuesday - Friday please park on Student council Drive.
Important Dates for May:
No comments:
Post a Comment