Are You Seeing Behavioral and Mental Health Scope Creep in Schools?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses how the 'whole child' approach has expanded beyond its original intent, pushing schools into mental health territory where they lack the expertise to help.
Key Takeaways
- Scope creep is real - Schools are being asked to provide mental health services that go far beyond their training and capacity
- The whole child framework had good intentions - ASCD's 2007 whole child initiative made sense, but it's been stretched to justify scope beyond education
- Schools should focus on what they do well - Teaching and learning are the core mission; mental health care belongs with qualified professionals
Transcript
As educators, can we meet the needs of the whole child?
Back in 2007, ASCD announced a whole child initiative, and I went back just now and reread the five tenets of ASCD's initiative on the whole child, and I very strongly agree with them.
I think it was a great initiative.
I think they really...
hit on the right points about what children need in school to succeed.
But I'm concerned lately that I'm hearing a lot about meeting the needs of the whole child in a way that requires professional expertise and professional contributions that we cannot make as educators, right?
So this idea that we need to provide a safe learning environment that meets the needs of the whole child is one thing, and I agree with that.
But I'm seeing a lot of scope creep as well, especially around behavior and mental health.
What do I mean by that?
Well, if a student has particular needs, acute needs in some area of their well-being, their life, their health, their mental health, it would be inappropriate for us as educators to claim that we can meet needs that we can't meet.
Right.
If your child has type one diabetes, it would be inappropriate for educators to offer medical advice on how to manage that would be appropriate for us to provide accommodations and understanding and recognize that that's part of what that child needs to be healthy and to succeed is the ability to care for.
their needs in that area.
But we're not endocrinologists, right?
We're not medical doctors.
We're not pediatricians.
And we forget that with any kind of behavior or mental health issue, right?
It's easy to see, you know, if a student has a broken bone, like no teacher is going to say, well, I care about the whole child, so I'm going to set this bone.
No principal is going to say, hey, instead of sending this kid to the office so they can get picked up and be taken to an orthopedic surgeon, you should try to repair this ligament yourself, right?
Like we would never try to do that kind of thing in the classroom or in schools.
As educators, we recognize the limits on our expertise.
And when it comes to behavior and mental health care, for some reason, we're not doing the same thing.
We're not saying, well, these needs are far outside of our ability as educators to meet.
It is inappropriate to try to meet them in the school environment, and they need to be met by qualified professionals.
And there's a licensing thing here, right?
Like we are not licensed to practice medicine or psychiatry.
We don't write prescriptions.
I think we have to be very, very careful about whole child scope creep and about taking on work that we legally are not even allowed to do.
And we certainly don't have the expertise or the time to provide because it's just not in our area.
So let me know what you think about this.
This idea of scope creep, especially around behavior and mental health, I think always will need to accommodate the plans and help implement the plans developed by other professionals outside of education.
But I really reject this idea that we need to be meeting all of children's behavioral and mental health and medical needs within the school environment.
I'm not opposed to kids getting that kind of help from professionals during the school day or even at school, but not from educators.
Let me know what you think.