Therapy in America: Mental Health in the Classroom in Post-Pandemic America-Supporting the Educator

Seminar 4
Date
Dec 11, 2023, 9:00 am3:00 pm
Audience
PK-12 Community

Speakers

Mark Glat, Ph.D., Psy.D.
Department of Psychology

Details

Event Description

Whether the issue is the emotional and behavioral wellbeing of students, pandemic learning loss, the need for trauma informed teaching, or how to reconcile education, excellence, and equity; it is clear we are having a “therapeutic moment” in post-pandemic American schools.

Understandably, educators have focused on the needs of their students first and foremost. We see our students in crisis and rush to meet their needs and fulfill our responsibilities to them. If our well-being as “the adults in the room” is considered at all, it is usually as an afterthought or footnote.

In our workshop we will put teachers first! We will begin with a brief overview of trauma related research. How do we understand trauma and its etiologies? Also do we need to distinguish trauma from depression and anxiety and what happens we do?

We will then explore our “multiple identities” as individuals, educators, change agents, caregivers, and citizens. Our focus here will be how our “intersectionality” impacts our relationships with our students in the classroom. We will be guided by the principle that if we cannot understand and manage our own thoughts, feelings, and actions at this critical juncture, we will certainly be less able to help our students do the same.

Using our experiential knowledge and professional expertise as a foundation, we will then scaffold our experiential knowledge and understanding with several psychotherapies, principles, and practices from the behavioral and social sciences. They will help us create a clinical toolbox of practices to support both the educator and the student during these challenging times.

Finally, we will put our tools to work in helping by considering how a better understanding of the “narratives” we construct to make sense of things like generational change, equity and diversity, and culture and politics can help us become “clinically informed” and more effective as educators. citizens, and human beings.