Depression, anxiety, and mental stress are now the #1 biggest obstacles to learning for our middle and high school students.
When I read the article below, which is yet another article ringing the alarms about our many students struggling with mental health, I found myself thinking less about school counselors and more about learning models.
Yes, we need more mental health professionals in schools and more training for educators, but we also need more flexibility in the system. We need the ability to use the time our educators and counselors have with our kids in the best possible ways.
As a parent dealing with this with my own child, I see a system still fighting to ensure students are getting 'seat time' and using 'showing up for class' as the marker for success.
If we can move more of our schools to mastery-based models where the focus is on learning outcomes, rather than 'seat-time' rules, this can help give students and staff more time each day to work on whatever other non-academic skills our kids need.
I am in no way suggesting that moving to mastery-based models is the cure for our current ills, but this current crisis is another example of where focusing on outcomes instead of seat-time policies would give us more flexibility to attempt to do so.
We need our schools to help support the whole student and yet we are forcing most of them to do so within constraints that literally block off the time they need.
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