Practical Emotional and Behavioral Strategies for Youth with Mental Health Concerns

Presenters

Gregory J. Benner, University of Alabama - TuscaloosaFollow

First Presenter's Institution

University of Alabama

First Presenter's Brief Biography

Dr. Gregory J. Benner is the Helen and Pat O’Sullivan Professor in the College of Education at the University of Alabama. He has a knack for grassroots collective impact—getting whole communities including families, child welfare, mental health, and schools on the same page to meet needs of the whole child. In February 2018, he received the Presidents’ Award from the Northwest Positive Behavioral Supports Network for his leadership of school improvement. He is co-founder of the Tacoma Whole Child Initiative, a comprehensive blueprint for sustainable school and community transformation.

Document Type

Event

Primary Strand

Mental Health

Relevance to Primary Strand

In this session, we demonstrate practical function-based behavioral interventions for students with mental health concerns. We provide practical demonstrations on how these interventions can be applied in the classroom and as easy to use interventions. Real world video examples of each strategy will be shown. We will provide an engaging, user-friendly approach to provide you with emotional and behavioral strategies for students who need them most.

Alignment with School Improvement Plan Topics

Leadership / Development

Brief Program Description

In this session, we demonstrate practical function-based behavioral interventions for students with mental health concerns. We provide practical demonstrations on how these interventions can be applied in the classroom and as easy to use interventions. Real world video examples of each strategy will be shown. We will provide an engaging, user-friendly approach to provide you with emotional and behavioral strategies for students who need them most.

Summary

Coercive interactions contribute to social, emotional, and health challenges across the lifespan; whereas sustained positive interactions contribute to the building of youth and adult emotional and behavioral competence. The purpose of this presentation is to build your capacity to integrate and infuse practical trauma-sensitive emotional and behavioral strategies into your classroom. You will come away with doable and simple strategies to establish the positive classroom culture you envision and to keep it going all year. Strategies for building youth emotional and behavioral competencies while maintaining an engaging classroom learning environment will be demonstrated. Techniques for ending power struggles and responding effectively to disruptive behavior will be modeled.

Is disruptive, disrespectful, or off-task behavior detracting from engagement in your classroom? You are not alone. Teachers cite this as their greatest challenge and are often shocked by the variety and intensity of behavioral issues they face. Sustaining emotional and behavioral strategies in your classroom will lead to a healthier, safer, and more positive classroom environment. In addition, students with behavioral difficulties will experience improved emotional and behavioral regulation, less depressive symptoms, less externalizing problems, and greater engagement. Moreover, youth voice, leadership, and mindfulness will grow. Teachers implementing trauma-sensitive practices report less stress, better health, and significantly more time to teach each day, not to mention much fewer power struggles. In this session, you will get an engaging, user-friendly approach for implementing and sustaining practical emotional and behavioral strategies.

In this context, the two primary goals of this presentation are: 1) To learn how to build youth emotional and behavioral competencies of youth with mental health concerns; and 2) to enhance your own wellness while ending the use of power struggles.

At the conclusion of the presentation, participants will be able to:

1) Build youth emotional and behavioral competence through sustained positive interactions

2) Boost educator wellness

3) End the use of power struggles and reduce teacher burnout, stress, and exhaustion

4) Boost youth engagement, voice, and leadership

Evidence

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (2009) estimated that one in five youth had been diagnosed with, or were at risk for, EBD, indicating a need for SEL among a wide range of students. The pandemic heightened this issue (Galea et al., 2020; Yao et al., 2020) as the number of mental health-related emergency room visits in 2020 increased by 25% among children aged 5-11, compared to the 2019 data (Leeb et al., 2020).

According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL, 2022), SEL is defined as the process through which students “acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.” Development of SEL skills is critical for success in school and life (Melnick & Martinez, 2019). To improve academic and behavioral outcomes for students, educators must be equipped with the knowledge and skills to differentiate SEL instruction based on individual needs (Nelson et al., 2008). However, pre-service teacher preparation programs, in general and in special education, provide little or no SEL instruction (Schonert-Reichl et al., 2017). Pre-service educators receive an average of 8 hours of training on effective SEL strategies, and even less on how to differentiate instruction for youth with social, emotional, and behavioral health concerns (Greenberg et al., 2014). Ongoing training regarding SEL is crucial for in-service teachers (Murano et al., 2019), but is often lacking or delivered as a one-time approach (Jennings & Frank, 2015). As a result, educators feel unprepared to provide explicit, differentiated SEL instruction, particularly for students with or at risk for EBD (State et al., 2019).

Improvement in social and emotional skills benefits all students—but especially students with or at risk for EBD because their social and emotional difficulties often lead to negative educational and life outcomes (e.g., Kramer et al., 2014; Gresham, 2015). As more than 80% of these students are served in general education classrooms (U.S. Department of Education, 2022), general and special educators need practical, evidence-based approaches to meet these students’ individual learning and behavioral needs.

Teachers of Students with Behavioral Challenges Need Professional Development

Pre-service, teachers not only receive limited instruction in SEL, but also have very little training in classroom management—and even less in meeting the academic, social, emotional, and behavioral needs of students with or at risk for EBD (Greenberg et al., 2014). Although federal laws mandate appropriate instruction for students with disabilities (IDEA; U.S., 2004), teachers are largely unprepared to effectively instruct children with behavioral challenges (State et al., 2019). In-service, teacher professional development, whether in the form of courses, workshops, conferences, or formal and informal learning communities, can provide opportunities for educators to improve their knowledge, skills, and teaching practice (Kennedy, 2016). Unfortunately, preservice and in-service educators have few training opportunities focused on students’ SEL needs (Greenberg et al., 2014). Teachers need professional development designed to meet the intensive and comprehensive social and emotional needs of their students with or at risk for EBD.

Professional Development Can Improve Teacher and Student Outcomes

Teachers of students with or at risk for EBD experience high stress and burnout (Brunsting et al., 2022; Brunsting et al., 2014) and often leave their positions (Gilmour & Wehby, 2020). Fifty-eight percent of current teachers report burnout; the percentage is higher for teachers who work with challenging students (Wheelock College of Education and Human Development, 2021). These teachers also have lower self-efficacy—less belief in their ability to manage classroom behaviors (Zee & Koomen, 2016). Disruptive classroom behaviors are a major source of teacher stress, job dissatisfaction, and attrition (Haydon et al., 2019). SEL can improve these student behaviors. Therefore, researchers and practitioners are seeking new ways to help teachers become proficient in SEL practices. Professional development has been shown in meta-analyses to improve student outcomes (Didion et al., 2020), and holds promise for enhancing the academic and behavioral outcomes of students with or at risk for EBD.

Learning Objective 1

Participants will be able to build youth emotional and behavioral competence through sustained positive interactions.

Learning Objective 2

Participants will be able to boost educator or staff wellness.

Learning Objective 3

Participants will be able to end the use of power struggles and reduce teacher burnout, stress, and exhaustion.

Learning Objective 4

Participants will be able to elevate youth engagement, voice, and leadership.

Recommended Citation

Benner, Gregory J., "Practical Emotional and Behavioral Strategies for Youth with Mental Health Concerns" (2023). Southeast Conference on School Climate. 3.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/secsc/2023/2023/3

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