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Accommodating Mental Illness in Schools by Marissa Cota

For many students, school is a stressful time filled with homework packets, due dates, and the dreaded final exam. Many spend every waking hour studying, doing homework, working on projects, studying again and much, much more. The level of stress and anxiety that can come from workload and other outside pressures can be tough on a person's mental health, but imagine still having those mental health issues even after all the tests and homework is completed.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIH) in a 2010 survey, it confirms that “youth are disproportionately affected by mental illnesses”  with 1 out of every 5 individuals having some type mental illness, not to mention with 20% of these cases having symptoms severe enough to impact their daily lives. The survey goes into further detail:

11% being severely impaired by a mood disorder, i.e. Bipolar Disorder

10% reported being severely impaired by a behavior disorder such as ADHD or ADD

8% reported being severely impaired by at least one type of anxiety disorder, i.e. Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Social Anxiety, etc.

As someone who has been diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Depression, I can confidently say that my time in high school was made a living with the unnecessarily monstrous workload tacked onto the preexisting chemical imbalances that were occurring in my brain. It took one good mental breakdown due to the stress of school and the self-destruction of my own mind for my parents to finally have me seek help and send me on the road to recovery. My need to succeed in school and the expectation to put it before anything caused my mental illness to go unchecked resulting in my Sophomore year being the most memorable for all the wrong reasons. In my parents desperate attempts to get me better again, we tried having accommodations to minimize the stress but they were unfortunately useless because I didn’t have a physical disability. This lead to high school to being a never ending cycle of mental illness becoming debilitating and affecting my performance in school and forced me to start playing catch up. This resulted in many nights filled with panic attacks and feeling like I could never live up to everyone’s expectations.

No student should ever have to go through what I went through, but the reality is that so many do. Even now as I am writing this, there are probably students freaking out right now about finals and sacrificing every bit of time relaxation to make the grade. If high schools were better equipped in handling these situations and teachers had more training, these student would be able to feel more accounted for.

In order to create the ideal classroom setting, faculty and staff need to be able to provide a safe space for these students. There needs to be training done in order to insure that these kids are being looked after so that they can be as successful as they possibly can.

According to  the article “Supporting Children’s Mental Health in Schools: Teacher Perceptions of Needs, Roles, and Barriers”, a survey that was conducted by teachers that states “the top five student mental health concerns were as follows in order from most concerning: (1) Behavior  problems,  including  disruptive,  defiant, aggressive, and conduct problems, (2) Hyperactivity  and  inattention  problems,(3)Students with significant  family  stressors, (e.g.,  divorced parents, parents in prison, parents with mental health concerns), (4) Social skills deficits, and (5) Depression. A large number of teachers also reported peer-related problems such as bullying and student victims of bullying as major concerns.” With this information, many if the people that I went to school with, including myself, are counted for in the top five concerning mental health issues. It is obvious that there is a problem with mental health and it is obvious that people see that, but what is being done about it? How can we take this information and utilize so that we can provide a better space for our kids?

In order for students to thrive in an 8-hour school setting, mental health and the all-around well-being of a student needs to be put first, before any huge project that is worth 50% of someone’s grade. Proper care, proper training, and mental health awareness in schools can help students who are struggling feel like they are not alone. We can no longer can we let these students push their mental health into the back ground in order for them to make the grade. We, as teachers, need to help nurture these new generations of learners, so that they can take what they have learned, and make the change we so desperately need.

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Components of My Ideal Social Studies Classroom by Jacob Polley

Components of My Ideal Social Studies Classroom

I often daydream about being a school teacher. I envision myself in the front of the classroom with a kick-ass outfit on, coffee in hand, spewing out directions for an assignment while the students are perfectly behaved, laughing at all of my jokes and completely prepared and motivated to take on a lengthy activity that I have designed from scratch. That’s exactly how it is going to play-out right? Well, after speaking to numerous teachers, volunteering in the classroom, conducting student interviews and reading a plethora of educational texts over the course of my collegiate career, I understand my daydream may fall short of reality. However, I believe it is necessary to dream and work to have those dreams manifest into goals. That is exactly what I will be doing with this article. I want to take my dreams of becoming a school teacher and combine them with my education, along with my student and teacher interviews, to create what I believe to be a functional and effective fifth-grade social studies classroom.

Disclaimer: I will not be addressing every single attribute I would like to adopt into my future classroom. It is the goal of this article to highlight a couple key components I believe promote better learning for all in a social studies classroom.

Inclusivity

One of the top priorities of my future classroom will be inclusivity. I believe it is necessary and key to have students feel welcomed and represented within the classroom.  Fortunately, I know first-hand what it feels like to be underrepresented in a classroom setting and feeling like an outsider. For the majority of my K-8 career I was the only person of color in a majority Caucasian setting and I remember learning about people who looked like me very little (I often had to wait until the month of February to learn about prolific African-Americans throughout history). I’ve seen how non-inclusion can hinder a student’s motivation tremendously. This is why I believe Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies are necessary for our classrooms as they become more diverse. “CSP seeks to foster – to sustain-linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of schooling for positive social transformation” (Alim, Paris; 2017). With minorities becoming the majority in public schools in 2014 (Strauss in Alim & Paris; 2017) it is imperative that teachers stress to students that all cultures are equally important components to today’s society as well as the future.

While interviewing teachers this past semester I heard this very same sentiment about culture in the classroom heavily stressed. To address this notion, Jessica Hernandez, a fifth-grade school teacher in the Bay Area begins her schoolyear annually by having her students participate in the construction of a cultural museum in their classroom. Each of her students are asked to interview their parents / guardians about their family’s culture. Next, they are asked to bring in an artifact from home or their community that represents their culture. With their findings from their interviews, along with their artifacts, the students start to build a cultural museum within their classroom. Jessica told me that this activity is beneficial on numerous levels, because, not only do her students learn about their own family background and culture, but, they also learn about other students’ cultures. Also, the cultural museum gives Jessica an excellent opportunity to see what cultures are represented in her classroom, which can act as an excellent start to incorporating some CSP in the classroom. I will definitely be adapting Jessica’s cultural museum into my future classroom.

Inquiry Based Learning

Often times in Social Studies classes we ask students to memorize the ‘when’ and ‘where’ of important dates and times throughout history. This certainly was true when I was student and probably the reason why I can tell you that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. While I can rattle off important dates and times, I couldn’t begin to tell you how the Battle of Hastings came to be and why it is significant today. This is where Inquiry-Based-Learning can play an important role in education. It focuses more on the ‘how’ and ‘why’ which promotes critical thinking and problem-solving skills within the classroom. Inquiry-Based-Learning is a method of teaching that puts the student, the subject, and their experiences at the center of the learning interaction. It also turns the teacher into a conversation facilitator rather than just the spiller of knowledge. The notion of IBL being an important aspect of education brings me to Jean Anyons’ essay on ‘Hidden Curriculum’. In her article Anyon discussed her research findings where she examined educational differences between affluent schools and working-class schools.  Students from the working-class schools were asked to simply regurgitate facts that the teacher wrote on the chalkboard, whereas the students from the more affluent schools were asked to read and discuss concepts while conducting independent research. Anyons’ research concluded that the students who were from the more affluent schools were receiving an education that would better prepare them for the world as opposed to the students from the working-class schools.

I mention Anyons’ research because IBL reflects the type of learning that was being administered to the more affluent schools in her research. IBL requires students to rely less on memorizing facts and more on discussing concepts that require students to reason through difficult notions. While I would like to incorporate IBL into my social studies classroom, it is important to note that it is a proven effective tool for all subject matter.

Anyon, Jean. “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” Journal of Education, vol. 162, no. 1, 1980, pp. 67–92

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How stocking a mindful book shelf can help keep your classroom kind by Matty Tribbitt

How stocking a mindful book shelf can help keep your classroom kind

It’s scary!

How do you introduce LGBTQIA+ content to your young students? Maybe you’re worried that some children’s books with queer representation are controversial. Maybe you’re worried that your school’s culture won’t be open to a lesson in queer literature. This article will explain why these queer books are important and necessary. I will also provide book recommendations that will work in K-5 classrooms regardless of how accepting the school is.

The truth is that most of us aren’t prepared to go into the intricacies of queer rhetoric, of trans identities, to debate whether or not 8 is old enough to discuss Stonewall or Laramie or The Combahee River Collective. But here’s a quick thought —

It doesn’t matter.

There are hundreds of people in stiff chairs right now as you are reading this, and these people are scouring through journals and newspapers writing dissertations on the difference between boy and boi. Look, this applies to you even more than the queer studies professors because you hold a grand influence on the lives and minds of our youth. So, no pressure. Let’s dive in.

Community of Learners

We’ll start with that initial worry. You’re not sure how to introduce the topic, or not sure if it should be mentioned by a professional in a classroom at all. Fear not. Your students are discussing it. Trust me.

All you are doing is allowing them to lead the discussion in their own ways without the insightful, albeit possibly terrifying, addition of you as moderator.

What the students are doing is something Barbara Rogoff talks about in the article, “Developing understanding of the idea of community of learners.” Instead of a teacher-led discussion where the children listen and consume your instruction without opinion, they are practicing student-led instruction. On the playground at recess. In the cafeteria during lunch. Every time you hear a flippant sexist or queerphobic comment. Your students are learning and deciding what their opinions will be on queer identities for the rest of their lives.  

What you might consider instead is called a theory of participation (Rogoff 210). It’s not student- run or teacher-run, but instead works by harnessing that productive tension that Mahiri and Freedman introduced, and using that tension to have a working dialogue with your class on queer issues and identities. It’s also known as a community of learners. You might be one of those stuffy experts in the big uncomfortable chairs who knows everything there is to know about queer history and art. But I’m brown and queer and a queer studies student and I still get tripped up when my kids ask me certain things. I see the community of learners as a way to leverage what we all know or assume and come to a mutual understanding.

In shorthand, what I mean by this is – Listen to your students! Rogoff writes that the idea behind the community of learners classroom model is one where you focus on conversation, “rather than using the traditional question-response-evaluation format” (214). This conversational approach allows for malleable feedback. The students are free to bounce ideas off each other and off of you. They can transform their idea of what queer looks like or sounds like and you can as well. In this model, we are all learners and adults in the classroom “serve as leaders and facilitators for students… not as authority figures” (Rogoff 220). In a community of learners, it’s okay if you don’t have the answer. It’s actually part of the process!

Remind yourself that your students are not only learning in class, they are learning with their friends and with other adults in their lives. Learning is transformation “through participation in the activities of their communities” (Rogoff 226). The adult-led instruction children soak in at home can be positive and encouraging, but a lot of the time it might surprise you how much of the rhetoric is queerphobic or sexist. Regardless of your personal beliefs, we can all agree that one objective of the classroom teacher is to nurture compassion, forgiveness, and patience when our children face the unfamiliar. So what happens when children learn harmful, sometimes violent, ideologies at home and these ideologies are not challenged in productive ways at school?

Bullies

The bully in this sense is the child who uses queerphobic or sexist words, oftentimes words they do not fully understand. We should confront these situations head-on for the sake of the entire classroom, and also the bully. This child has been nurtured in a harmful way that will impair their social development, impair their ability to show compassion and also self-love. How do we remedy?

It’s been proven that literature can help children “increase empathy and respect for others [and] increase understanding of human behavior” (Cox). This Teachhub article touches on a few of the ways that we can push back against what they’re being taught outside of our classrooms when it’s being counter-productive to our classroom culture.

If you hear queerphobic comments, it’s important to address them. Ask the student why they said it. Ask them if they understand what it means. Try to avoid snapping or quickly shutting it down. This can be difficult when you hear a strong word like “faggot” in your classroom. Your gut reaction will be to quickly tell the student it’s unacceptable and the student might even apologize. You have not taught why the word is unacceptable or given the student anything to reflect on. Instead, all they have learned is that they should avoid saying the word in front of you. Consider a dialogue, preferably with other students involved, where your class is allowed a moment to process the feeling that sparked the word and also process how that word can hurt.

There are queer and trans students in your classrooms and it’s important for them to see the distinction in these two approaches. In John DePasquale’s article for Scholastic, he explains how “LGBT youth describe feelings of isolation, and adding books to classrooms that reflect their lives and experiences is a step towards breaking this isolation.” It’s also important for the child showing bullying behavior to not feel alienated as an antagonist in the classroom. This will only provoke more behavior out of frustration, shame, hurt, and guilt.

LGBT+ students in schools need our emotional support. They might not fully understand the reason why they feel different yet, but a great way to expose them to positive diversity is through literature.

There are books that deal with queer content head-on, like books with explicitly queer characters or queer families. There are also books that ease the child in. These books focus more on diversity and acceptance and don’t generally have overtly queer themes. My favorite book in this vein is called Red: A Crayon’s Story. The blue crayon is “born” with red packaging so everyone assumes they’re supposed to color red. They fumble a lot, are sometimes teased, and they try their hardest but they can never color red. Eventually, another crayon asks if they can color a bright blue sea for them. All of the other crayons admire the beautiful blue oceans and blueberries and skies the crayon is coloring and they accept them, instead of being discouraged when they would draw a blue strawberry or a blue tomato. This is a book I read with one of my third graders. It’s his favorite book now and we go back to often. I realized from my field notes, and an interview I conducted with a 1st grade teacher in San Francisco that the biggest hurdle can often just be getting the children engaged. Once you’ve sparked interest, it’s much easier to keep a lesson vibrant and fun, we just need to have patience and keep trying until we find the right lesson or the right book for our particular student.

Here are some books I’d recommend as starters for a determined book shelf:

Red: A Crayon’s Story

Stuart Little

Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon

Chrysanthemum

Mostly Monsterly

And these are a few recommended books that confront the issues more head-on:

Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress

I am Jazz

And Tango Makes Three

Other resources

Diane Ehrensaft is a developmental psychologist in Oakland. She’s the Director of Mental Health and a founding member of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center. She spoke at the San Francisco Public Library earlier this year. Her presentation was on gender diversity and how to be supportive of our children who are “gender creative.” The video is only 34 minutes, but it’s packed with wonderfully helpful information. It’s titled “Reading in a Gender Creative Child” and she has a book by the same name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q8D52SlAnA

I’d also suggest looking through the school library journal website. If you type LBGT into the search bar you come up with plenty of great suggestions by grade, but the two articles that intrigued me the most were “LGBTQ Diversity: Building a Collection for Independent Readers” and ���What’s new in LGBTQIA+ YA.”

Autostraddle’s “40 LGBTQ friendly picture books” is also a great place to look.

This article is a wonderful starting point to discussing diversity in a mindful way. http://www.welcomingschools.org/pages/using-lgbtq-inclusive-childrens-books-amp-looking-at-gender-through-books/

“You might also discreetly add books to your library, and let students discover them while always being ready to recommend the right book to the right student at the right time. Regardless of how LGBT books are incorporated, their presence is important.”

John Pasquale, Scholastic

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/john-depasquale/2017/Create-Inclusive-Affirming-Schools-for-LGBT-Students/

Works Cited

Cox, Janelle. “Using Children's Literature as Anti-Bullying Material.” TeachHUB, 0AD, www.teachhub.com/using-children%E2%80%99s-literature-anti-bullying-material.

DePasquale, John. “Create Inclusive, Affirming Schools for LGBTQ Students.” Scholastic Publishes Literacy Resources and Children's Books for Kids of All Ages, 27 June 2017, www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/john-depasquale/2017/Create-Inclusive-Affirming-Schools-for-LGBT-Students/.

Rogoff, Barbara. “Developing understanding of the idea of communities of learners.” 1994. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 1:4, 209-229

SanFranciscoLibrary, and Diane Ehrensaft. “‘Reading in a Gender Creative World’ at the San Francisco Public Library.” YouTube, YouTube, 13 Apr. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q8D52SlAnA.

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Representation in Art by Sydney Nirona

Representation in Art

There are many different forms of art that is taught in a school setting such as learning about the history of art, making sculptures and pots, and learning about different pieces of art throughout eras. What isn’t really talked about in class is the other side of art, cinema and music. When we look at art as a whole there is a lot of male, white dominant representation. We know and learn about Leonardo Da Vinci and Vincent Van Gogh. But never about the people of color who contribute to art like Jordan Peele, an African American director, actor, and writer, or Ruby Ibarra and Rocky Rivera who are Filipina rappers. We should be teaching children in our classrooms these PoC who do these jobs for a living because it is relevant education and it creates role models.

Relevant education is important to everyone, PoC or not, and should be implemented in every classroom. Relevant education is when the student can personally make a connection with the information that is taught by the teacher. An example of this is ethnic studies which is offered to students here at San Francisco State University. Relevant education truly benefits and empowers students and this is evident in my student interview with a current student at SFSU who is majoring in asian american studies, “It has opened me up to my culture because growing up I was very involved with my culture. But moving away from my parents and family, it has brought me away from my culture because I was not surrounded with the life I used to live. So talking about topics of Asian Americans it has showed me the importance of staying involved with who I am”. If we teach students about people who are the same color as them, it will truly inspire kids to strive to do what they really want to do in life. From a students point of view, she felt at home because she was learning about information that was comfortable to her and she can personally relate to it. Robin, an educator about filipino history here at SFSU, loves being able to “bring empowering energy to this community because I am passionate about filipino history”. She realizes that having someone of the same ethnic group teach a student who is the same ethnicity, is very important because the teacher and student can connect at a deeper level. Robin personalize sees her students being able to connect with the information even though history can be a drag. Relevant education has a positive impact on students.

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Sexism in Scientific Writing and School by Wyatt Smith

Sexism in Scientific Writing and School

Earlier this year, my girlfriend introduced me to a paper by Emily Martin, “The Egg and the Sperm”. This paper highlights the underlying sexism in the way biology is taught: specifically regarding fertilization. Biology is thought of as an objective science that human prejudice cannot corrupt. Martin challenges this notion by showing how the backgrounds assumptions of researchers can create skewed discoveries that are then widely spread as objective truth. The wording used to teach science can also create a distorted view.  The use of language that has sexist implications in scientific writing directly impacts how this information is taught in schools.  This process further reinforces internalized misogyny that is rooted into our culture, and therefore exists in educational institutions.

Fertilization is framed as the journey of sperm as they race to penetrate the egg. The egg is characterized with stereotypical feminine features, while the sperm are characterized with stereotypical masculine features. Martin quotes an article from Medical World News 23 in which this characterization is especially evident. They describe the egg as “a dormant bride awaiting her mate’s magic kiss, which instills the spirit that brings her to life” (Martin 490). This wording pervades the thinking around fertilization, and this bias may have delayed discoveries about the mechanism of fertilization. The characterization of the sperm as the active party and the egg as the passive party is clear in the way it has been taught for years. The sperm are seen as penetrating the egg, while the egg lies dormant. It was not discovered until years later that the two parties are more equally engaged. The sperm are weaker than once thought, and do not rely on mechanical force to merge with the egg. Both cells emit enzymes that allow for fertilization to take place.  However sexism doesn’t just exist in textbooks and curriculum.  It is a systemic problem, rooted into our culture.

 In my Introduction to Teaching and Learning class my instructor, José Ramón Lizárraga, said something during a discussion about practicing Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy that resonated with me.  He said that to be conscious and respectful of culture, educators should think of bringing education into culture, as opposed to bringing culture into education.  This got me thinking about my background and how I was raised in a white, catholic family.  In the culture where I grew up in (and literally every other culture) men are privileged and women are oppressed.  And since internalized sexism and misogyny exist in our culture, they also exist in educational institutions, in classrooms, amongst students and faculty.

I think of my friend who is affected by this, Kellie Smith, a senior at Carondelet, an all girls private Catholic school in Concord, California.  Just across the street is De La Salle, an all boys private Catholic school, famous for their undefeated football team.  Kellie told me she wished she could change the dynamic of the “all girls school” for Carondelet and “all boys school” for De La Salle. “I have seen this kind of culture have negative effects on both schools and I think moving towards inclusivity and awareness would make it a healthier environment for students.”  I wanted to know more about the gender dynamic between the gender segregated schools so I decided to ask some other alumni about the culture there.

Carondelet has strict dress code policies and other rules that restrict the young women's self expressions. All the girls are forced to wear a skirt every day and many girls, like Kellie, have been punished by the school faculty for dying their hair.  Another Carondelet alumni told me about a specific religion teacher who, “on the first day of class handed out baby fetus models to each student and told all of them that by getting abortions you were killing babies.”  De La Salle students have a much different experience than the women at Carondelet.  Their culture reeks of toxic masculinity, their football team is praised for their undefeatable record, and the boys are free to be boys.  They share images of naked Carondelet students with the entire school without getting punished by school officials.  One of the religion teachers at De La Salle preaches to the young men about the “physiological differences between male brains and female brains.”  This teacher is brainwashing these young men to believe that women are “more emotional and irrational than men.”  Carondelet and De La Salle is just one example of how sexism and misogyny exist in our schools.

If the ways in which women are oppressed in schools is so obvious, why isn’t anything being done about it?  If we know that there is scientific writings that deliver subliminally sexist language, why don’t other scholars actively critique this work and why do publishers publish this work.  In an article called “Looking Closely: Toward a Natural History of Human Ingenuity” by Ray McDermott and Jason Raley, the authors talk about how people are trained to ignore their surroundings and new ideas. “Think, for example, of employers underestimating workers, men ruling over women, teachers degrading students, and politicians manipulating the facts of public life. Inattention to the intelligence of the people is so institutionalized that it now takes hard work to uncover it. No great lap of intelligence can be found in responses to standard, and standardized, questions.” (McDermott, Raley).  I think it is time for educators to examine the texts that they teach to their class and be critical of the language.  Teachers must ask themselves about the roots of the content that they teach, whether it is based on facts and intelligence or on gender stereotypes.

Works Cited

Martin, Emily. “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 16, no. 3, 1991, pp. 485–501., doi:10.1086/494680.

Mcdermott, Ray, and Jason Raley. “Looking Closely: Toward a Natural History of Human Ingenuity.” The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods, 14 Mar. 2011, pp. 372–391., doi:10.4135/9781446268278.n20.

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