Director, Critique Thyself: Reflections on Directing & Mental Health

My Drama students love musical theatre. They’re constantly singing bits from modern pieces, reenacting favourite scenes, and begging me to direct a school-wide musical theatre production. With COVID-19 restrictions lifting and interest at an all-time high, I decided to bite the bullet and do what I had never done before - produce and direct a musical.

We spent 5 months putting together a production of Working, the Stephen Schwartz/James Taylor devised theatre piece based off the best-selling book by historian Studs Terkel. Over 60 students participated as cast and crew. Most of them had zero experience.

The final shows were great. But the process of getting there was very, very difficult for everyone involved. More difficult than it needed to be. My reflection on those 5 months left me wondering what needed to improve; the answer was very clear.

As a high school Drama teacher, my role as a director is not that of artistic or even educational excellence - it has to be mental health stewardship, first and foremost. The key, however, is not to shield students from difficult situations. It is to give them the tools they need to handle difficulty, and there is no better place for that than the stage.

Drama and Mental Health

By now, it should be no surprise that teen's mental health declines as they move through high school. Yet research also indicates that participation in the arts, particularly Drama, provides a safe space - a social construct that promotes respect and encouragement of student opinion. The success of this space is reliant upon the Drama teacher.

Drama teachers are particularly well-equipped to create classrooms that value mental health. The cycle of creation and critique lets students more effectively learn from their mistakes, meaning they don't see academic or social risk-taking as a terrifying series of pass-fail dichotomies. Participation in musical theatre, specifically, has a net positive effect on youth self-esteem. Studies show it increases articulation, self-awareness, imagination, and innovation.

It's clear that the musical theatre process is incredibly beneficial for participating students. This is why, in my auditions, I actively sought to include a wide variety of students; those who had taken Drama classes, and those who hadn't; those who could sing, and those who couldn't; and so on. My goal was not to put on a "good" show, per se, but to provide the aforementioned benefits to as wide a group as possible.

Noble intentions, certainly, but not necessarily the most productive choice.

Safety Through Danger

Nicola Olsen, in her PhD dissertation for Arizona State University, researched the relationship between Drama teachers and their students. Her results echo the experience of most Drama teachers - we simply have a different relationship with our students than those teachers in most other subjects.

Most notably, Drama teachers cannot do their jobs without support from their students. We cannot have support from our students without first creating a safe, supportive environment. Yet Olsen argues the purpose of this safety is not to create "a place to be protected and coddled", but rather a place that "encourages responsible risk-taking".

All the work we do at the onset of our courses and rehearsal processes - trust exercises, building an ensemble, warming up the body and mind - all of it is geared towards helping students face challenges, not avoid them.

The challenges we faced in Working kept mounting. Organizing rehearsals with students who didn't understand the expectations was difficult - staying until 5 or 6 PM was a lot to ask. Multiple students dropped out after realizing what a significant time commitment they had signed up for, requiring blocking and lines to be reassigned. Many students had never been directed before, and took every critique as a personal attack. Our scripts showed up late. Our tech crew was inexperienced. We couldn't have a live band. Strong personalities clashed both on and off stage. All of this with a looming deadline - 5 months is not enough time to put together a musical without significant investment.

How, then, to balance a safe environment with the demands of performance?

Critiquing Critique

"Grit" used to be fashionable edu-speak. Multiple studies looked at how to instill the quality of being able to bounce back after setbacks. While that language is no longer popular, the core concept remains relevant: you will be more successful in dealing with setbacks if you are passionate, practice your skills, and have a sense of purpose.

Musical theatre embodies these qualities perfectly. The students wouldn't show up to rehearsal, even though they were struggling, if they didn't have a passion for the subject. Yet passion will only get you so far - you need to see success. 

This is where my students struggled. Some were excellent in all areas; some were strong singers, but had poor stage presence; others were competent actors, but couldn't sing at all. I was well aware of this dynamic and made it my goal to address all needs in my director's notes. Olsen ties dramatic critique to the "safe" classroom by establishing a culture of respect, risk, and reminding all that everyone can learn, that we work with everyone. Evan Tait, in his dissertation on best practices in arts education with neurodivergent students, frames critique as empowering "by creating an environment where [the students'] ideas and preconceptions can be challenged." Yet for those who had never experienced critique, they saw me not as a collaborator, but as the aggressor. This weakened the student-teacher relationship, making the rehearsal process more difficult and reducing the students' capacity to develop "grit."

The Show Must Go On

My errors in judgement were twofold: first, I put myself in a pressure cooker of limited time, an inexperienced cast, and heightened expectations; second, I became too entangled in getting a "good" show and spent too little time addressing the mental health needs of my cast and crew. Tait argues that part of our job as arts educators is to "rely on the process of checking in with [our] actors and in return, [our[ actors checking in with their scene partners." He refers to this process as "theatrical consent" -  a term I find unnecessarily intense, but effective.

To address the boiling undercurrents of rebellion that were fermenting every night, before our tech week, I cancelled rehearsal and held a cast and crew meeting. Students were allowed to speak their minds without judgement from me, and I gave them my honest replies in turn. Some of the concerns they raised were legitimate. Some were just run-of-the-mill teenage opposition for opposition's sake. Yet this conversation made huge strides in elevating student voice, investigating causes from multiple perspectives, and working towards community-based solutions. 

I continued to hold high expectations for my students - this is a critical feature of mastery learning, as even the most talented students need to continually be challenged lest they find themselves unprepared when finally faced with a task they do find challenging. This practice of task perseverance, along with the opportunity to take more ownership over their rehearsal process, let them finally - finally! - use my critique to improve their performances.

Opening Night

Having never directed anything of substance before, my opening night jitters were just as bad as my cast and crew. Would it be worth it? Would the countless hours of stress, ceaseless last-minute changes, endless triaging of emotional breakdowns, create something worth watching?

Before they went on stage for their first performance, I took my cast aside and told them how I honestly felt: that on stage, they were finally being their true selves. That what they do matters, even though their families and communities may not agree. That I was proud of their courage and growth over time.

Their response? Each of them sobbed uncontrollably, deeply grateful for the vote of confidence. Their performances were the best I had ever seen from them.

Our production of Working was not as good as it could have been, but I truly believe that it gave my students an incredibly valuable experience - not only as cast and crew, but as young people who navigate their complicated mental health landscapes every day. They went from neither understanding nor accepting critique, to actively utilizing it in making concrete improvements and feeling positive about the results. They gained a new tool in their kit of personal mental health supports.

As the cast of Working sings in the final number, "Everyone should have something to point to, something to be proud of."  Good mental health is something to be proud of. I firmly believe that no educator is better situated to help students achieve that pride, than a Drama teacher.

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WORKS CITED

Gibson, Kelsey. "Grit in the Performing Arts: A Mixed Methods Study of High School Theatre Student Perceptions of Grit." 2021. Gardner-Webb University College of Education, PhD dissertation. ProQuest. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

Mclauchlan, D. (2011). "What Makes A Great High School Drama Teacher?" In: Schonmann, S. (eds) Key Concepts in Theatre/Drama Education. SensePublishers.

Olsen, Nicola. "We Are All Here to Support Each Other." A Narrative Inquiry of High School Drama Teacher Experience Supporting Student Well-Being." May 2021. Arizona State University, PhD dissertation. ProQuest, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

Penna, Michael. "Musical Theatre Eudcation's Influence on High School Students' Self-Esteem." 2021.Walden University College of Education, PhD dissertation. ProQuest. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

Tait, E. (2022). Putting It Together: Best Practices in Arts Education and Theatrical Education with Neurodivergent Students (master's thesis). Western Oregon University, Monmouth, Oregon.

 

“Learning Loss” Is A Dangerous Myth

    In March of 2021, McKinsey & Company released a report sounding the alarm on global learning loss due to the Covid-19 global pandemic. This set off wave after wave of media stories lamenting the failures of education, and decrying a “lost generation” of students who would need a Herculean effort to catch up.

    This is simply untrue. Students absolutely feel a sense of loss, but it has nothing to do with their academic standing. The entire concept of “learning loss” is a false narrative supported by racist, neo-liberal ideologies.

“Learning Loss” Is Based on Bad Data

    Professional educators know that real learning doesn’t “start and stop”. Kids don’t become dumber over the weekend, or during the summer. In fact, we know that the whole idea of “learning loss” changes depending on which data collection method you use to track it. Research from the University of Iowa shows that by changing your research methodology, the same group of students can show learning loss, no learning loss, or active gains over the summer. We know that test scores are a faulty data collection method. Yet we still base policy on the bad data they give us.

    Not only are we basing the lie of “learning loss” on bad information, the whole idea of “falling behind” is illogical. If the whole world is behind, then who can be ahead? We are framing education as a “pass-fail” dialectic; if you’re not excelling, you’re failing. This is assembly-line thinking that values identical products being churned out at a predictable rate, not children’s mental and social development. It’s just not the way kids learn.

    So what is this sense of loss that we all feel? Professor Rachel Gabriel, from the University of Connecticut, says “it is loss of a previously imagined trajectory leading to a previously imagined future.” We’re collectively mourning the loss of what we thought was going to happen, not an actual loss.

“Learning Loss” Is Inherently Racist

    Pushing the idea of “learning loss” is, to be blunt, racist. 

    For starters, we know for a fact that black students actually do better over the summer than their white counterparts. As for students from marginalized communities who have “dropped out” of online or hybrid learning — well, wouldn’t you? In a system where the majority of teachers are white; where the majority of BIPOC students are overdisciplined and undervalued; where every story about you pushes “white exceptionalism”, framing your family and culture as unable to provide for you — what value do you gain from participating?

    The reality is that BIPOC students, homeless youth, those with learning disabilities, with mental health issues; these kids have always faced “learning loss” because of the systemic oppression built in to schooling. Now we push a story about how these families can’t provide for their kids, so it’s up to the schools to force them to catch up. This deficit model of education inherently assumes the worst of the students for whom we have done the least.

“Learning Loss” Is A Capitalist Tool (No, Really)

    It should come as no surprise that as soon as stories of “learning loss” spread, ed-tech bloggers and consultants come out of the woodwork to hawk their wares. A report from the Washington Post highlighted the growing influence of private education providers that have grown into “multibillion dollar industries. Peddling fear about the loss of school hours creating a gap between expected and actual learning is a great way to prop up these industries while simultaneously setting public schools up for failure.”

    This technocratic fascination with measurement means anything that isn’t quantifiable is irrelevant. At the risk of sounding like a 19-year old in his first Sociology course, this really is because of… capitalism. 20th-century schooling was designed like an assembly line, for the assembly line. This “lost year” is only a problem, says this thinking, in that it will supposedly have a negative impact on the workforce and economy.

    The bigger problem with this neo-liberal approach is that it covers up the real reasons for actual learning loss — the chronic, and purposeful, underfunding of the public education system; an unjust pattern of evictions that targets BIPOC families; and worst of all, the death of family members due to Covid-19. Schools are not dealing with the trauma of these issues in any meaningful way. Instead we give kids yet another round of high-stakes testing as a panacea for the real social disease.

“Learning Loss” is Ruining Student Mental Health

    Mental health professionals have been sounding the alarm over school stress for years. We saw that for many kids, being home away from school because of the pandemic actually improved their mental health. However, it didn’t take long for the “learning loss” narrative to inspire a wave of fear in parents and educators, and then the stress started again. All of a sudden we went from “don’t give your child too much screen time”, to “a good student sits still in front of a camera for 6+ hours every day” — and if they can’t, it’s a problem with them, not the learning model.

    The real loss students feel is the social loss. Students miss their friends, not tests. Their productivity is dropping because they are anxious and depressed, not because they can’t complete a government-mandated test.

    Further exacerbating the issue is the fact that we’re now labelling an entire generation as losers. Students known when teachers are being inauthentic. They know when they’re being defined by what they can’t do, rather than what they could do. Professor Gabriel puts it succinctly:

    “If we use words such as ‘slide,’ ‘loss,’ ‘waste,’ ‘pause,’ ‘gap’ and ‘cliff’ to describe their learning, literacy and achievement, what will they conclude about their own intelligence, potential and ability to learn independently?”

Let's Lose Learning Loss

    “Learning loss” may be a myth, but its a story that too many people believe. It’s shaping policy, classroom strategy, and how we view an entire generation of children. We know it’s based on faulty data. We know it’s inherently racist, classist, and detrimental to our students’ mental health.

    Students know all too well what they’ve missed out on during the pandemic. It’s our role as educators to help them celebrate what they have accomplished. If we want to build a successful foundation for their future, students need to know that we care, that we understand, and that we value their abilities. Otherwise, it’s we — the adults — who will have truly lost the opportunity to learn.

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WORKS CITED

Chen, Li-Kai, et al. “Teacher survey: Learning loss is global - and significant.” McKinsey & Company, 1 March 2021.

Diaz, Jennifer and Munoz, Joaquin. “On ‘learning loss’ and the critical need to address existing inequities in education.” Minnpost, 22 March 2021.

Downey, Douglas B., et al. “Are Schools the Great Equalizer? Cognitive Inequality during the Summer Months and the School Year.” American Sociological Review, vol. 69, no. 5, 2004, pp. 613–635. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3593031.

El-Mekki, Sharif. “Analysis: Pandemic learning loss is rooted in the racial chasm between educators and students of color. Only teacher diversity and a strong Black teacher pipeline can fix it.” LA School Report, 28 June 2021.

Fishman, Eric. “How the Rhetoric of ‘Learning Loss’ is Harming Schools.” The Progressive Magazine, 4 April 2021.

Javed, Noor. “ ‘How will we catch up?’ With the learning loss by Ontario students this year, what can be done in September to get them back on track.” The Toronto Star, 27 June 2021.

McKinney de Royston, Maxine and Vossoughi, Shirin. “Fixating on Pandemic ‘Learning Loss’ Undermines the Need to Transform Education.” truthout, 18 January 2021.

Reed, Deborah K., et al. “Exploring the Summer Reading Effect through Visual Analysis of Multiple Datasets.” Journal of Research in Reading, vol. 44, no. 3, 2021, pp. 597–616., doi:10.1111/1467-9817.12357.

Strauss, Valerie. “What ‘learning loss’ really means.” The Washington Post, 10 March 2021.

Strauss, Valerie. “Can we stop telling the ‘corona kids’ how little they are learning?” The Washington Post, 19 May 2021.

Young, Gabriel. “The Dangers of the ‘Learning Loss’ Craze.” Psychology Today, 4 June 2021.

Alone With Everyone: Isolation, Egalitarianism, and Teacher Leadership

In their research on creating a Master’s program devoted to training teacher leaders, Taylor, et al. (2011) interviewed multiple students for their perspectives on how they had grown personally and professionally over the course of the program. One participant, when asked about the effects of co-construction on their view of teacher leadership, stated:

“[...]usually you go to class and they tell you what you’re supposed to learn and how you’re supposed to learn it. And then you do it and you’re never quite sure if that was the right way. And here it was, they trusted us to take ownership of what we were learning and use it in ways that made sense to us, which I thought was wonderful and exciting.” (Taylor, et al., 2011)

 

Aside from the professional revelation afforded to this participant, what struck me as most pertinent was that the language used here could just as easily be applied to an elementary or secondary student as it could to a Master’s level student. As educators we are often told that current best practice involves the gradual release of responsibility, inquiry-based methodologies, “genius hours” in the style of Google and other future-facing companies - all formats that are designed to help our students function in the world of tomorrow, rather than obtain a job that exists only today. Yet the unique nature of the teaching profession makes it difficult to apply that logic to our own work. We teach students to be flexible, but we rarely change our lesson plans from year to year. We foster community, but we do not seek best practices from those outside our departments or grade levels. This inherent tension between the skills we teach, and culture in which we teach them, makes the development and nurturing of teacher leaders an ever-more pressing need in our Western school systems. 

    Two of the most damaging normative states in teaching that lead to inertia in teacher leadership are egalitarianism and isolation. York-Barr (2004) refers to the longstanding culture of egalitarianism in the profession as “a significant problem with formal teacher leadership roles” by insinuating that “teachers who step up to leadership roles are stepping out of line.” This mentality, arguably fostered and encouraged by strong unions in the teaching profession, has benefits in terms of expressing solidarity across the profession but also disincentivizes advancement, particularly when the traditional path of advancement is through administration, who are seen as being on the “other side” (Wenner, 2017). Associated with egalitarianism - and yet, also in contrast to it -  is isolation. Curiously, educators move from a culture of shared learning in Bachelor’s and Master’s of Education programs, to a culture increasingly marked by isolation as they progress through their careers. 

    Multiple studies have noted how as teachers, we “often feel very isolated within our four walls [...] yes we do have rich staff meetings but rarely is there time for authentic discussion.” (Campbell, Lieberman, and Yashkina, 2017) Others have commented on the detrimental effect of this isolationist mindset on the profession, deeming “uncoordinated practice and isolated classrooms [as] relics of twentieth-century education not positioned to support the forms of organizational learning required for schools to meet the demands for improvement they face.” (Goddard, Goddard, Kim, and Miller, 2015) This sense of “frontier education” where the teacher proudly operates independently of others, particularly at the secondary level, is deeply ensconced within the profession, to its detriment. I present three anonymized case studies whose leadership structures suggest that teacher leadership is essential for effective educational change, as evidenced by the egalitarianism-collaborative professionalism and isolationism-deprivatization dialectics.

Caste Study #1

        Consider a traditional single-gender parochial school, centrally located, with decades of tradition. In this setting, the traditions of egalitarianism and isolationism remain firm and unchallenged. Daily lesson plans are written up and submitted to the department head, then enacted with no variation across sections. Students take notes from a PowerPoint, use those notes to write essays, tests, and labs, then write their final exams. Staff are held to a strict dress code, have their entrance and exit times from the building monitored by administration and other staff, and must visibly participate in all school-wide extracurricular events. This culture is disseminated top-down through the hierarchical leadership structure, and enforced by older teachers amongst newer staff members, so that they quickly became inculcated with the norms. Any attempts to bring changes even as simple as using Google Drive are met with passive-aggression rejection. Teachers work in isolation even within their departments, and there is little sharing of resources other than those that are officially designated as correct, generally coming from a textbook. At this school, teacher leadership - such as it is - exists only to reinforce and police the status quo. This reflects the observations of Taylor, et al. (2011) that traditional forms of leadership remove authority from the classroom and do not encourage innovation. However - the students seem mostly happy; class averages are generally high; there are relatively few behaviour issues; and staff have no real complaints about the environment. This could indicate the presence of the “unsanctioned work of [teacher leaders] as often covert and subversive, but not ineffective...that function outside of the administrator’s purview.” (Taylor, et al., 2011)

Caste Study #2

        In contrast, consider a suburban high school with an exceptional focus on academic and athletic excellence, and a parent base that is by and large very active in school affairs. Despite its success, the student and staff community feel overburdened with the stress of high expectations. This was effectively counterbalanced with leadership programs within the school that helped build a sense of community amongst students. These programs in student leadership, chaplaincy, mental health, and others, actively sought to break down barriers between students and staff and reduce the isolationist tendencies of both groups. These efforts reflect what Harris (2005) refers to as the “brokering” aspect of teacher leadership. Their goal was to link communities, share leadership amongst a wider network, and create new norms. Here, however, they met with considerable resistance from some staff and students, reflecting Wenner’s (2017) observation that taking on the role of a teacher leader changes the relationship with your peers. 

    To buttress against this resistance, the various aforementioned groups joined their efforts together into school-wide events that all could participate in, theoretically eliminating the perceive elitism of being a student or staff member in these groups. This intentional community building worked against the egalitarian model and formally recognized pre-existing leadership initiatives that previously operated alone, allowing these staff and students “self-concept [to] evolve from ‘content expert’ to change maker in their wider communities.” (Taylor, et al., 2011) Although effective, this process took “what was once a comfortable, primary social relationship with teaching peers” and shifted it “ to include implicit or explicit instructional, professional, or organizational expectation” amongst colleagues, which “violate[d] egalitarian professional norms” (York-Barr, 2004) and caused conflict amongst staff who could not disengage from their deeply ingrained egalitarian mindsets. However these initiatives did manage to meet most of the seven dimensions of teacher leadership: coordination and management; school work; professional development of colleagues; participating in school change initiatives; and community involvement. (Sinha and Sanuscin, 2017) 

Caste Study #3

          Finally, consider the non-traditional environment of a hospital-based school. The teacher participates in twice-weekly “rounds” meetings which were collaborative debriefing sessions with hospital staff - psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, child and youth workers, nutritionists, and others. These invaluable sessions met most of the criteria that Hargreaves and O’Connor (2018) establish for collaborative professionalism. They were embedded within the culture of the organization; they promoted challenging, but respectful dialogue; they were run by staff based on needs identified amongst the patients/students; when patient advocates were present, the voices of the patients/students were also integrated; and, arguably most importantly, the purpose of these meetings was to better understand the wider purpose of learning - to help the child build resilience and self-care techniques; to educate ourselves and themselves about their physical, mental, and social environments; and to equip them, their families, and their school communities to manage their reintegration into society. There was no sense of egalitarianism amongst staff, but neither was there a strict hierarchical model of leadership that was enforced amongst staff. The insights gained from patient/student interviews were expanded on in rounds meetings, then applied again to those interviews to help move the patient/student towards better mental health. This reflects the cycle of praxis and cycle of impact that Taylor, et al. (2011) identify: better understanding of the patient/student leads to better planning for that patient/student, which leads again to better understanding - reflecting the cycle of praxis - while the patient/student engages in the cycle of impact by engaging in actions that had net positive results in their mental health, empowering them to engage in further actions. The inclusion of collaborative professionalism is, why teacher leadership in this program was more effective than in the second case study, where it was well-meaning but disorganized, or in the first, where it was completely top-down and inauthentic. Based on the four quadrants of collaboration outlined by Hargreaves and O’Connor (2018), it can be argued that the collaboration in the first case has “high precision” but “low trust”, since all initiatives are top-down in design; this is indicative of contrived collegiality. In the second case, the initiatives show “high trust” but “low precision”, due to their disorganization; this is indicative of informal collaboration. 

Ironically, the case of  the least traditional schooling model best reflects current research and literature around teacher leadership, rather than than the quote-unquote “high achieving” schools. These experiences raise further questions around the interplay between teacher leadership development and the professional inertia inherent to the traditional conservative Western education system. The current political climate in Ontario adds another layer of uncertainty as to the next steps for teacher leadership. Regardless, if there is to be progressive, meaningful change in Ontario’s education, then teacher leadership, and its core tenets of deprivatization and professional collaboration, is essential for the effective enactment of that change.

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WORKS CITED

Campbell, C., Lieberman, A. & Yashkina, A. with Alexander, S. & Rodway, J. (2018).

Teacher Learning and Leadership Program: Research Report 2017-18.

Toronto, ON: Ontario Teachers’ Federation.

Goddard, R., Goddard, Y, Sook Kim, E. & Miller, R. (2015). A theoretical and empirical analysis of the roles of instructional leadership, teacher collaboration, and collective efficacy beliefs in support of student learning. American Journal of Education, 121: 501-530.

Hargreaves, A. & O’Connor, M., (2018). Collaborative Professionalism: When Teaching Together Means Learning for All. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Harris, A. (2005). Teacher leadership: More than just a feel good factor? Leadership and Policy in Schools, 4 (3): 201-219.

Lieberman, A., Campbell, C. & Yashkina, A. (2017). Teacher Learning and Leadership: Of, By and For Teachers. London & New York: Routledge: Chapter 5: Teachers’ Knowledge Exchange and Sharing of Practices Through the TLLP (pp. 85-120).

Sinha, S. & Hanuscin, D. (2017). Development of teacher leadership identity: A multiple case study. Teaching and Teacher Education, 63: 356-371.

Taylor, M., Goeke, J., Klein, E., Onore, C. & Geist, K. (2011). Changing leadership: Teachers lead the way for schools that learn. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27: 920-929.

Wenner, J.A. & Campbell, T. (2017). The theoretical and empirical basis of teacher leadership: A review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 87 (1): 134–171.

 York-Barr, J. & Duke, K. (2004). What Do We Know About Teacher Leadership? Findings From Two Decades of Scholarship. Review of Educational Research, 74 (3): 255–316.

 

Teacher Identity and Morality:
A Thought Experiment

(The following is a fictionalized account. Potential resemblances are unintentional.)

"Mr. Green"

    Mr. Green is a new graduate of a B.Ed program who, the September after graduating, has begun his first LTO placement at Newbrook SS. The school has a reputation of both high academic achievement amongst its students, and over-involved “helicopter parenting” by the parent community.

Mr. Green is teaching first period Gr. 10 English, a mandatory course. The majority of his students are wonderful - with one exception. James is loud, rambunctious, overly chatty, and prone to wandering out of the class. His work is often late or incomplete, and even completed assignments are done poorly. Green pays little attention in class, preferring to gossip with his friends in a loud and dramatic fashion. After consulting the IEP, Mr. Johnson notices that James has AD/HD; after checking with the other staff, he learns that James poses absolutely no problems in their classes. When asked about this James admits that he takes his Ritalin after first period so that he can focus for the rest of the day. Further conversation reveals that James does not take his Ritalin in time for English class because he dislikes the subject. Mr. Green consults James’ mother about this and is shocked to find that she condones her son’s view of the class and his behaviour.

    Although James does well in his other classes, because he misses so much time in Mr. Green’s class, his average sits at around 30%. Mr. Green tries to engage James but the student will often simply leave the class. The teacher has tried to engage the students' parents, but James’ mother sees no problem with this behaviour, and offers little in the way of discipline or structure.

About three-quarters of the way through the semester, Mr. Green is called in to an emergency meeting with the principal, Mrs. Carpenter, regarding James, who has been absent from school for several days. At this meeting, staff learn that James was hospitalized for self-harm. He has been stabilized and will be returning to school shortly. Mrs. Carpenter is extremely concerned. She asks staff to waive the remaining coursework for James and assign him a final passing grade. Although the other teachers believe this was a behavioural outburst rather than the result of depression, they agree to waive the work since his marks are strong in their courses and he likely would have passed regardless.

Mr. Green, however, has many concerns. He would have to fabricate an additional 30% to make James pass, which strikes the teacher as patently unethical. Further, James completed so little of the course that even if he “passes”, he will not be prepared for the content in Gr. 11 English next year, which is also mandatory. Mr. Green is also worried about what kind of message this sends not only to James, but the other students in his class. Is he learning that by acting out in dangerous ways, he will be rewarded with a free grade? Does this reinforce the message that Mr. Green's class “doesn’t matter”? Yet if Mr. Green does fail James, will this trigger another episode of self-harm; perhaps a more serious one? Compounding this is all the pressure Mrs. Carpenter has put on Mr. Green; as a first-year teacher, his future employment is based on the assessment of this principal.

Critical Schemas

Educators are often faced with moral and ethical dilemmas in the line of work. To navigate these, it is important for teachers to have well-developed schema - a "conceptual cluster we create to help organize environmental information". Particularly in areas of ethical concern, educators must cultivate a value schema that gives them "conceptual tools and weapons that we all employ in order to maintain and enhance self-esteem" (Rokeach 1973).

This cognitive shorthand is helpful in a critical incident which marks a significant turning point in a teacher's approach. These incidents are important to identify; they can offer opportunities for professional growth; or, if mishandled, lead to a decline in professional development, as the negative reaction engendered can be repeated in similar situations (Shapira-Lischinsky, 2010).

How, then, should an educator form a critical values-based schema for dealing with incidents like those with "Mr. Green" ? What should his next steps be in this situation?

The Moral Stress of Education

Colenrud (2015) identifies the cognitive dissonance and moral anxiety that teachers face when dealing with these situations. Educators are held to a high moral standard institutionally, societally, and personally. Failure to meet these standards can arise when there is a lack of clarity, or conflicting responsibilities, that make ethical judgements murky. Many times a teacher will know the "right" thing to do, but for a variety of reasons may not be able to pursue the ethical course of action.

Teachers are possessed of a singular "moral sensitivity" (Colenrud) unlike other professions. When their students feel bad, they feel bad. This leads to a tangle of conflicting fairness dilemmas, where the principles of equality, need, and merit all intertwine. Personal interaction, progressive discipline, and evaluation of students are all based on a messy combination of equity, need, and effort, leading to a calculus of care that is difficult to balance. This juggling act leads to moral stress - internal moral imperatives that conflict with other internal moral imperatives.

Ultimately, teachers cannot look to an external principle for guidance. They must develop their own schemas for dealing with moral quandaries.

Moral Identity Formation

Broadly speaking, a teacher's career can be subdivided into three categories of concern (Clark and Conway, 2003):

• Preteaching - Operates with a schema similar to a student; specifics are not considered
• Early Teaching - Locus of concern lies with personal performance
• Late Teaching - Ego is tied into student progress

As "Mr. Green" is in the early teaching stage of his career, his schema will be based around the ethics of his own personal performance. This will be formed within the dichotomy between personal and organizational identity, as outlined by Caughey (1980). Teachers move between the end points of this dialectic, establishing a schema within:

Feared Identity (Failure) <-------> Idealized Identity (Perfection)

Personal Identity (Son) <------> Social Identity (Teacher)

Who "Mr. Green" believes he is - where he puts himself on this continuum - will define his critical schema, and thus his solution to the ethical dilemma he finds himself in.

Ethical Assessment

The crux of this quandry is whether or not "James" will pass the course. Most ethical dilemmas in education are based around marking, assessment, and evaluation - this is "not surprising, given the current climate characterized by increasing accountability, high-stakes testing and pressure to improve student learning scores" (Ehrich, et al, 2011). Failure to properly navigate this dilemmas results in "grade pollution", marked by purposely misrepresenting the students' mastery of the assessed material (Ibid.).

Now that "Mr. Green" has developed his identity, and thus his critical schema, how should he move forward to avoid "grade pollution" ? The solution, according to Ehrich, et al., lies in several levels of interconnected ethical decision-making

1. First, "Mr. Green" must bring his own schema to the fore and apply it to the dilemma.
2. Next, he must recognize the mediating morality of the organization (the school), which may be at odds with his own morality.
3. "Mr. Green" must now work to find a solution that appeases both his own schema and that of the organization.
4. In this solution, "Mr. Green" must acknowledge that the results will have impacts on both himself and the organization, and must consider those ramifications.
5. The solution will also impact the ability of "Mr. Green" to make future decisions.

This process considers the schema of both "Mr. Green" and the school; while likely totally satisfying neither, it will still work towards the common goal of student success while maintaining intact values for all parties.

In practical terms, Mr. Green would suggest an alternate modified assignment, or set of assignments, that could be completed in order to justify the additional 30% increase. While this may seem like a simple solution, it can be difficult to see or even accept it without feeling as though one's moral foundations have been violated. The best way to avoid the moral stress of these scenarios is to articulate one's professional ethics clearly, and model them publicly, so that all parties are aware of how the teacher will react. Over time this will result in a stronger critical schema, better self-identity, and clearer relationship between individual and organization that will make decision-making processes less stressful for all involved.

--------------------

WORKS CITED

Caughey, J. (1980). Personal Identity and Social Organization. Ethos, v. 8, n. 3, pp. 173-203. The American Anthropological Association.

Clark, C. and Conway, P. (2003). The journey outward: A re-examination of Fuller’s concerns-based model of teacher development. Teaching and Teacher Education, v. 19, n. 5, pp. 465-482

Colenrud, G. (2015). Moral Stress in Teaching Practice. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and practice, v. 21, n. 3, pp. 346-360.

Ehrich, L.C., M. Kimber, J. Millwater, and N. Cranston. (2011). Ethical Dilemmas: A Model to Understand Teacher Practice. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, v. 17, .n 2., pp. 173-185.

Rokeach, M. (1973). The nature of human values. New York: Free Press.

Shapira-Lischinsky, O. (2010). Teachers’ critical incidents: Ethical dilemmas in teaching practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, v. 27, n. 3, pp. 648-656

 Teacher Responsibility in Causing and Ameliorating School-Based Stress In Students

Introduction

Why is it that North American schools are such effective incubators for anxiety, depression, and a variety of other mental health issues? Outliers aside, the basic concepts of high school education have not changed that much over the past half-century or so. Yet in 2018 we find ourselves immersed in research and reporting that highlights all the now-familiar concepts: adolescents are more prone to stress, anxiety, and depression now than ever before, and our education system seems to be one of the chief causes of these conditions. In particular, I am interested in how teachers respond to the challenge of mental health issues in students, and how those responses ameliorate or exacerbate the conditions around the academic, emotional, and social well-being of that student.

Section 23

My interest in school-based stress began when I worked with a hospital-based school, with children and adolescents hospitalized for a variety of mental health concerns. I was warned off by family members and colleagues before accepting this position. They all warned me that these kinds of programs were were all the “psychopaths” were placed - which only served to pique my interest further. My work entailed creating literacy and numeracy programming for students who were housed in both the In-Patient and Out-Patient units, helping them earn high school credits, and managing the academic portion of their reintegration into life outside the hospital. This involved many meetings with principals, guidance counsellors, student success teams, parents, superintendents, mental health nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, child and youth workers, patients’ rights advocates, police, and more.  

In my four years in the program, I worked with hundreds of students whose mental health issues ran the gamut of suicidal ideation, self-harm, eating disorders, overdosing, schizophrenia, psychosis, OCD, PTSD; their social issues included expulsion, physical and sexual abuse, incest, homelessness, criminal charges, police brutality, and in one case, being put on a terrorist watch list by the RCMP. However, despite the aforementioned list, what I always found most fascinating was the commonalities between these students - the vast majority of them found school to be extremely stressful. Their reasons varied but generally centered around heightened expectations from family, teachers, administrators, or even themselves, and their perceived inability to meet those expectations. They regularly told me how their school simply did not understand their mental health needs; for many students, the most effective part of being hospitalized was simply two or three days away from school. The other half of my job was working with the school community to reintegrate these students after whatever incident brought them into the hospital. In many cases, the school was unwilling to accept these “dangerous psychos” back even though it was their legal responsibility to do so. I found the disconnect between what the student was asking for - support and acceptance - and the school’s reaction - rejection and intolerance - to be both personally and professionally frustrating.

In-School Mental Health Support

After four years I transferred into a quote-unquote “regular” high school which also has a highly stressed student population. One colleague and myself put together a “mental health club” which sought to bring the conversation around mental health to the forefront of the school community. We conducted an online survey of approximately 200 students; some of the more interesting data points were:

•  65% of respondents said that being at school made them “rarely” or “never” happy

•  45% of respondents said their current level of stress is “high” or “very high” - and this survey was given at the beginning of a new semester

• 30% of students reported that they slept 6 or fewer hours a night, which is generally unhealthy for a developing adolescent brain

• 82% said the majority of their stress was caused by homework

• 80% said they put “high” or “very high” amounts of pressure on themselves to succeed

• 90% of respondents said that they either were unsure or had no concept of  where to access mental health supports at school

This data points to a school community and culture where high levels of stress are not only endemic, but expected and normalized. I am curious to see what research has been done in this area, to try and develop a data-driven approach that will help teachers craft different perspectives on their roles in causing and preventing negative mental health in students.

One interesting examination by Pope (2010) looked at the reaction of a high school to the death by suicide of one of its students, as a result of academic stress. “The Jared Project”, named after that student, used a multifaceted approach to reducing stress in the school. The one approach I found particularly interesting involved asking all staff to create a schedule where they input the amount of hours they expected students to give to that course, team, club, band, or other co-curricular area. Then, when students signed up for courses, they had to calculate how many hours per day they were signing up for and include eight hours of sleep. If they signed up for more than twenty-four hours of work in a day, or if their eight hours of sleep were reduced by more than one hour, they were not allowed to have that schedule (p. 7). This is contrasted with the other end of the self-care spectrum, which is self-harm, as detailed by Dimmock, Grieves, and Place (2008). Without the support of a school network, students who lapse into self-harm as a coping mechanism are “coping with a sense of being overburdened with insoluble problems” (p.42). The researchers held interviews with adolescents who were at the end of their psychiatric treatment for self-harm, specifically cutting; through these interviews, their respondents noted that the physical pain of self-harm was easier to deal with than the socio-emotional distress brought on by school (p.44) and that they would rather cut or speak to a teen they had never met than speak to an adult in a school setting (p.45). This suggests severely maladaptive coping strategies that are exacerbated by perceived intolerance or lack of understanding from adults within a school.

Teacher Mental Health

Another Australian study by Trudgen and Lawn (2011) examines how teachers deal with mental health issues in their classrooms, specifically depression and anxiety. Of note is the stress experienced by teachers themselves. According to the study, 40% of teachers feel their career has a large amount of stress, which is twice the national average of most professions; 71% say their stress has a deleterious impact on the quality of their teaching; 57% say they have a poor work-life balance (p.128). This study tried to find a common threshold at which teachers began to intervene in their students’ mental health, usually by making a recommendation to someone else in the school that the child receive some kind of psychiatric treatment. Trudgen and Lawn found that the majority of teachers they interviewed, regardless of years of experience, were able to easily identify behavioural signs in students that would suggest some form of mental health-related distress - however, these same teachers could not act on those signs in the moment because the rest of the class was simply too busy (p.132). Another result that I found particularly interesting was that the teachers in this study believed that teens interact differently in their social spheres now than they did ten or fifteen years ago (p.133). One possible effect of this is that the instincts or “gut feelings” that a veteran educator has honed over their career vis-a-vis rationale for student behaviour may no longer be applicable, leaving educators without a framework with which to confidently make decisions. The pervasiveness of an online life - i.e. social media - realistically leaves educators dealing with a whole other level of reality that their students occupy, which the educator may know nothing about, and where their instincts are compromised with the changing of the medium. One can understand why, later in the study, the teachers say they feel an “overwhelming sense of powerlessness” to help their students (p.134).

Trugden and Lawn conclude with an observation that I feel has become commonplace with many educators - that teachers need more training in establishing their “mental health literacy” (p.138). Yet the specifics of this training and establishing the parameters of “mental health literacy” for educators remains elusive. In my practice I have sought to include “mental health advocate” as part of my role, for both staff and students. Part of this has involved training for staff around mental health vocabulary, stigma, and understanding its relevance to their own lives and the ecosystem of the classroom; a student who is experiencing stress is more likely to cause stress for an educator, which can create something of a feedback loop of stress and anxiety between teacher and pupil. I have facilitated several workshops for staff around mental health and the ministry of care, by which I mean ministry in the ecclesiastical sense, not the governmental sense. We also brought in several guest speakers into our community for staff and students. These included Canadian Olympian athlete Sarah Wells, who speaks about resilience and endurance, and Gillian White, a Ph.D. candidate at the Human Physiology Lab at UofT who specializes in the physiological effects of stress on the human brain. Our group also organizes visits to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) for staff and students to help them understand the environment a student is placed in when they are admitted to hospital for psychiatric concerns. Our hope was that these shared conversations would bridge the gap between teacher and student, adult and child, and allow both parties to understand how the other experiences stress. Once that groundwork is laid and a shared vocabulary can be used, we further hoped that we can address how staff can be complicit, explicitly or not, in the engendering of conditions ripe for poor mental health in students. This will be a difficult conversation to have as it directly addresses an educator’s pedagogy, which, in some cases, may have been established for decades. The goal of is to help staff and students understand the connection they have to one another, and how improving that connection will improve the mental health and performance of our community.

                                      

University of Ottawa B.Ed - Comprehensive School Health Cohort

My experience in my B.Ed program, at the University of Ottawa, involved mental health in my own life but not in a curricular sense. My own mental health suffered during that time; I struggled with loneliness, since I knew no one in the Ottawa area and spoke virtually no French; my grandfather and cousin both died that year; and I was acclaimed as President of the Student Federation but inherited an organization mired in debt and poor management. Yet in my classes there was no mention of mental health - nothing about teacher burnout, student anxiety, or accommodations based on mental health. Curious to see how that program had evolved since I left it ten years ago, I perused their website to see if any mental health programming had been integrated into their offerings. 

Thankfully, the University of Ottawa now offers a mental health cohort in their B.Ed program. This cohort, titled Comprehensive School Health, is offered at the both the B.Ed and M.Ed levels. Its programming is based on a Ministry of Education resource titled Foundations for a Healthy School (2016), which is itself a companion to the K-12 School Effectiveness Framework document. The cohort offers an Educational Research Unit, a list of peer-reviewed mental health resources for educators, published papers by cohort members, inclusion conferences, alternative assessment databases, and more. Examining the Foundations for a Healthy School document, upon which this cohort is based, reveals only three pages related to mental health out of thirty-seven. The document suggests accessing the Ministry’s Supporting Minds (2013) document for more intensive support around mental health strategies in the classroom. Yet in the five years since the publication of Supporting Minds, I have found that it is only familiar to teachers who make mental health a priority. My hospital school mentor was one of the consultants on Supporting Minds so I was fortunate to learn of it early on; I regularly direct teachers and students to it, and have been doing so for years, but still find that a good deal of adults in my workplace - administrators, guidance, resource workers, and teachers - remain unaware of it. 

This brings up another inherent tension in schools, being that of the new teacher and the established teacher. New teachers, coming from B.Ed programs with mental health-focused cohorts such as U of O’s Comprehensive School Health cohort, can graduate with pedagogy and a view of the profession that has mental health as its foundation, supported by government documents. These teachers ostensibly will approach mental health as their responsibility, equally as important as literacy and numeracy. Teachers who did not have this focus in their pre-service program could potentially be subdivided into two categories: those for whom mental health is not an issue connected to education; and those for whom it is. The former group could present as resistant to accepting their role in promoting positive mental health in the school community; the latter could be more active in promoting positive mental health, but may or may not have the resources, skills, or vocabulary to do so, depending on what resources and training they are able to access. This hypothetical latter group may also take a “scattershot” approach to integrated mental health, since they will have gleaned their philosophy from a variety of other sources as opposed to having it delivered in a standardized format through a post-secondary cohort. This approach could potentially make creating a school-wide shared vocabulary around mental health a more complicated task, since the concept of “mental health” can mean myriad things to different people. However, having a variety of mentalities and approaches could also be beneficial as it provides flexibility, diversity, and adaptability to approach a panoply of potential mental health scenarios.

                                    

Ego Formation and Teacher Identity

Examining the mental health connections in pre-service programs led me to consider teacher ego formation and how it relates to my subject. Many times I have been told that once a teacher is placed within a staff environment, it takes an average of three years for them to acclimatize that that environment and cast off whatever their previous concepts of education were. Thus, to create a climate where staff acknowledge and work through their role in student mental health, it is vital that the majority of that staff have enough similarities in their self-concepts as educators that they can bridge the gap between other differences that may impede progress in this area. Clarke, et al. (2018), draw on Lacan to discuss the formation of teacher identity as a dialectic between the ideal ego, or hypothetical perfect self, and the ego ideal, or practical required self (p. 116). This “lack of fit” between the two Lacanian concepts results in cognitive dissonance, which is exacerbated by “conflict arising from the space between the psyche and the social (...) becoming a teacher requires openness to knowledge of the self and to knowledge originating in the other.” (p. 116) It could be argued that for educators, students are often this “other” - a vast unknown, safely homogenized into broad stereotypes that fit our preconceived notions. The authors also connect this conflict between ego ideal and ideal ego to the use of an inside out model of ego formation as opposed to an outside in model. They postulate than an outside in model uses extrinsic factors to shape a teacher’s identity, namely: curricular documents; ministerial publications, “best practices” courses, and universal standards. The inside out model, conversely, begins with the identity of the teacher at the core and creates the teaching model built around that unique identity (p. 117). Rather than positioning one or the other of these modes of ego formation as ideal, Clarke, et al., reflect the Lacanian postmodern approach by positioning the genesis of teacher ego as an ongoing process that exists in flux between these two poles; here, the teacher-as-subject is eximate, or existing neither inside nor outside, but in both simultaneously (p. 119). 

The eximate model works well in helping me understand how teachers process new information and responsibilities, such as that of mental health advocacy. If mental health is not personally important to you - if it is not part of your inside out model - and it is not theoretically or professionally relevant to you - if it is also not part of your outside in model - then you could struggle to integrate it into both your ego ideal and ideal ego. The relatively recent emphasis on mental health in education could clash with what many educators have “learned”, “known”, and “felt” their entire careers. This new emphasis could cause these teachers to question both their ego ideal and ideal ego as teachers, particularly if mental health in schools fits into neither the inside out or outside in models of ego formation. Thus, one potential solution for them to avoid this cognitive dissonance is to avoid the concept of mental health in education all together. This allows them to still feel like competent, caring teachers, in the same way that they have expressed this for years prior to the emphasis on mental health in education, and prevents them from feeling as though they are unprofessional. Once the mentality of avoidance has taken hold writ large amongst a staff, any new staff coming in will struggle to implement their own ideation around mental health, since they too will experience this same eximatic conflict and potentially choose to go with the path of least resistance to maintain their ego ideal and ideal ego. If the phrases “I am a good teacher” and “I am a teacher who cares about mental health” do not overlap for an educator, then it is easiest to eliminate the latter in favour of maintaining one’s self-perception of the former. Perhaps this is why, in part, some teachers find it difficult to integrate concepts of mental health into their pedagogy - particularly if they cannot recognize that they themselves can be the source of poor mental health in their students. 

REFERENCE LIST

Andrews, J. and Feurer, D. (2009). School-Related Stress and Depression in Adolescents With and Without Learning Disabilities: An Exploratory Study. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, v. 55, n. 1, pp. 92-108.

Clarke, M., Michell, M., and Neville, J. (2017). Dialectics of development: teacher identity formation in the interplay of ideal ego and ego ideal. Teaching Education, v. 28, n. 2, pp. 115-130.

Dimmock, M., Grieves, S. and Place, M. (2008). Young people who cut themselves - a growing challenge for educational settings. British Journal of Special Education, v. 5, n. 1, pp. 42 - 28.

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2014) Foundations for a healthy school. Ottawa, ON: Queen’s Printer for Ontario.

Pope, D. (2010). Beyond “Doing School”: From “Stressed-Out” to “Engaged in Learning”. Canadian Education Association, v. 50, n. 1, pp. 4-8

Trudgen, M. and Lawn, S. (2011) What is the Threshold of Teachers’ Recognition and Report of Concerns About Anxiety and Depression in Students?: An Exploratory Study With Teachers of Adolescents in Regional Australia. Australian Journal of Guidance and Counselling, v. 21, n. 2, pp. 126 - 141.

University of Ottawa, Bachelor of Education Program. Comprehensive School Health. Retrieved from http://uottawa-comprehensive-school-health.ca/. Accessed Monday, April 23rd, 2017.