The Failing First Line of Defense: TLPI's Jessica Lahey in The Atlantic

Teachers are often the first person children turn to when they are in crisis, and yet they are, as a profession, woefully unprepared to identify students’ mental-health issues and connect them with the services they need—even when those services are provided by schools. Aside from the obligatory professional-development session on mandatory reporting laws for child abuse and neglect we have to attend during new faculty orientation, teachers receive little or no education in evidence-based mental-health interventions. . .

As an increasing number of schools roll out evidence-based mental-health programs such as Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), teaching that promotes appropriate student behavior by proactively defining, teaching, and supporting positive student conduct, and Trauma-Sensitive Schools, programs aimed at reducing the effects of trauma on children’s emotional and academic well-being, educators need to be at least minimally conversant in the terminology, methods, and thinking behind these strategies. These programs provide strategies that can be highly effective, but only if the teachers tasked with implementing them are sufficiently trained in the basics of mental-health interventions and treatment.

To read the full article, please click here