Mental Health Special Issue Introduction

Our call for proposals for this issue on “Mental Health in the Classroom” came before COVID, when mental health was a looming concern that the global pandemic only exacerbated. At that time, I had been learning a lot about mental health through my volunteer work with an organization in my New Jersey suburban community, “Montclair Bounce: A Creative Project to Build Community and Resilience” (https://www.montclairbounce.org/). The organization is affiliated with a thriving local food pantry and describes a vision of “a community of neighbors utilizing accessible resources and enriching practices to bolster their emotional health, benefiting themselves, their families, their neighborhoods, the township and beyond.” My participation in Bounce included many new experiences for me such as helping to make an interactive map where community members shared locations in the town that made them feel good, participating in a workshop on play (for adults), and attending talk on understanding anxiety among adolescents. I was surprised by how much I had to learn about mental health and the related stigma around mental health struggles, and I was left reflecting on how important this topic is for new educators.

This was not an altogether new understanding. I had learned in the beginning of my career that mental health is closely related to education, in all communities, but particularly in the areas of the country that are most economically marginalized. In the mid-1990s, I ran a tutoring program for children affected by HIV and AIDS in a multidisciplinary clinic in New York City. Every week the clinic held a case presentation about one of the clinic’s clients, we would examine the client’s family genealogy, and different clinicians and educators who worked the person or a family member would report on their progress. Case workers, psychologists, psychiatrists and educators all worked together, and through this experience I was able to see how integrated mental health, health, housing, poverty and other aspects of the families’ lives influenced the children’s school experiences. This critical learning experience has informed many of the ways I have come to understand topics in teacher education such as classroom management and working with families. For this reason, the call for manuscripts for this special issue invited educators – using our usual broad definition of “educator” that includes classroom teachers, administrators, counselors, support staff, teacher educators, and those who educate outside of school settings – to join in on the conversation regarding what it means to be aware of and support mental health in the classroom.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns about our children’s mental health have been a consistent theme in the media, The New York Times has recently published articles such as “How do I Know if My Teen is Ok?” (Goldman, 2021); “’Just Overwhelmed’: When School Restarts but Students Can’t” (Brown, 2021); “Eating Disorders in Teens Have ‘Exploded’ in the Pandemic” (Damour, 2021) to just name a few. Meanwhile, even before COVID, it has been widely estimated that at least one in five school-aged children is affected by mental illness. We know that school personnel (teachers, administrators, social workers, for example) are in a vital position to support children’s mental health. However, the stigma related to mental illness has been and remains a serious roadblock to treatment and care. What are innovative practices that can help educators better meet the needs of those affected by mental illness? This themed issue shares five articles drawing on multiple perspectives on how mental illness is addressed in classrooms, both K-12 and in teacher education settings.

“Mental Health Informed Educators: Facilitating Student Academic Success” is a commentary by counselor educators Dilani M. Perara and Melissa Wheeler, who write about informing educators about the mental health of their adolescent students as key to facilitating academic success for adolescent students with mental health issues. They succinctly identify the most common mental health disorders among adolescents (including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Anxiety Disorders, Depressive Disorders, Eating Disorders, Bi-polar Disorder and Substance Use Disorder, Trauma), and then describe several models that have been successful in supporting adolescent students dealing with these issues. The authors recommend that general educators be informed about what support services their students can be exposed to when they work with school counselors. They suggest that the first stop for mental health informed educators is to consult with school counselors who are trained to both support students and educators in the school system. However, they also point out that there is a shortage of mental health professionals in some school systems and recommend that a team approach, in which involved adults share knowledge across disciplines, is useful for building relationships and promoting mental wellness. This article ends with three vignettes that show a range of mental health issues observed in students from different backgrounds and school ages.

Edmund Adjapong and Ian Levy provide educators with culturally responsive tools to address mental health challenges in “Hip-Hop Can Heal: Addressing Mental Health through Hip-Hop in the Urban Classroom.” Adjapong and Levy, a teacher educator and a school counselor with experience as teachers and practitioners in urban schools, explain that awareness of mental health is particularly important for students in urban communities, particularly for Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC), because they face unique challenges, including environmental stressors, that place them at a higher risk of experiencing mental illness. The authors explore approaches to supporting students’ mental health rooted in hip-hop culture. Specifically, the authors draw from two innovative and culturally responsive frameworks that are anchored in hip-hop culture to offer a set of practices that classroom teachers can use to support students in processing and coping. They aim to create a culture where teachers consider students’ mental health needs as they plan for daily instruction.

Larry Walker’s “Why Don’t You See Me?: Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Black Male Students,” is influenced by the author’s lived experiences as a Black male researcher and mental health advocate. His commentary aims to provide a roadmap for post-secondary institutions and school districts to address the needs of Black males. He begins by describing the public policies, challenges and stressors to which Black children are exposed, and how Black males in particular must navigate a variety of traumas. Walker then describes racial and trauma informed teacher preparation and lists actionable steps, developed from his examination of extant literature, his previous research, and his experiences in PreK-12 settings. These steps include teaching new teachers about connections between traumatic experiences and student behaviors, and informing new teachers about historical challenges and the role of these challenges in exacerbating economic, education, health disparities for Black students compared to the population as a whole.

Meghan Breedlove, Jihyeon Choi, and Brett Zyromski’s article, “Mitigating the Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences: How Restorative Practices in Schools Support Positive Childhood Experiences and Protective Factors,” shares recent research on Restorative Practices in schools that have identified positive outcomes for children. Breedlove, Choi and Zyromski describe the research outcomes from investigations, case studies and research briefs about schools that have implemented Restorative Practices. They highlight several positive childhood experiences and protective factors that can be promoted in the school environment with Restorative Practices that have the potential to reduce the negative effects of “Adverse Childhood Experiences.” They also caution readers regarding the challenges of implementing Restorative Practices, particularly at a school-wide level.

Our final article in this issue turns its attention to a very important and related topic of the mental health and well-being of teachers. In “The Teachers are Not Alright: A Call for Research and Policy on Teacher Stress and Well-Being.” Amy N. Farley and Leah M. Chamberlain share their research on the increasingly stressful teacher working conditions, how teachers are influenced by the context in which they teach, and how teacher mental health impacts schools, students, and the teacher pipeline. Farley and Chamberlain begin by describing how, in recent decades, teacher stress has been on the rise. They explain that work on the topics in this article are usually separate fields of study, and instead, here, they explore a body of existing literature to highlight the rich connections between context, policy, and teacher stress. They draw evidence from two large national datasets, from two distinct sectors–-occupational health and educational policy – to understand the relationship between teacher stress and education policy. One conclusion of their analysis is that teacher educators should educate teacher candidates to be active policy agents rather than be passive policy adopters. Farley and Chamberlain end their piece with hope, recommending that we in the field highlight the “very real joys and hope inherent in the teaching profession.”

This special issue is a starting point for more sharing of ideas throughout the field of education. As I learned early in my career working at a multidisciplinary clinic for families affected by HIV and AIDS, with many professionals from different disciplines working together, we were able to be more effective. We hope this issue, bringing in different voices from across the field of education, can extend the conversation about mental health in the classroom.