Annotated Bibliography Week #1

Shelemy, L., Harvey, K., & Waite, P. (2019). Supporting students’ mental health in schools: What do teachers want and need? Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 24(1), 100–116. doi:10.1080/13632752.2019.1582742 

 

It's crucial for teachers to understand, approach and identify mental health in their classroom. A lot of teachers believe managing students' mental health is a part of their job, so this articles sheds light on the need of training teachers to understand that they are not therapists. This articles explores what UK teachers need the most in terms of training to help their students within the classroom in a study done by Shelemy, Harvey and Waite. The conclusion is that teachers can benefit from training to help early stages of those who are struggling and access to resources that is more applicable. 

 

Borrelli, I., Benevene, P., Fiorilli, C., D'Amelio, F., & Pozzi, G. (2014). Working Conditions and mental health in teachers: A preliminary study. Occupational Medicine, 64(7), 530–532. doi:10.1093/occmed/kqu108 

 

This paper will help with pinpointing the specific aspects of the teaching occupation that contributes the most to teachers' mental health. It includes a study done on teachers in Italy that aims to find out specifically what kind of working conditions and to what extent would become harmful to teachers. In other words, work conditions that would bring them to a state of anxiety and depression. Their results from surveys shows that mental health has association with high job demand and low social support.

Final Class Reflection

 I think this was a really cool class to take part in as it was blended with the Physics cohort. I learned a lot about inquiry and I think everything I learned from this class will be very helpful when I teach within the class. The level of content was perfect since we had so many diverse students and backgrounds. It's a good starting point for all of us. I loved the bell activity and the coloured pieces of paper activity. It was very nice to be able to explore open ended activities, tasks, and problems so we can incorporate inquiry within the classroom. I don't think any of us would be good teachers without learning what it means to inquire within the classroom. I'm glad we had you as a teacher, Susan! 

Dec. 2 exit slip: Embodied bellringing combinatoric patterns

I think the bellringing activity was so cool and the music that we created with the patterns was so magical! It's definitely a great idea to incorporate music in the lesson. The activity even gets students moving. It's short but intriguing, and explains a lot about combinatoric patterns. If I introduced this activity in my classroom, I think students would be very excited to hear the new tune after each round - because I definitely was! I believe it can also make students think a lot using their eyes, ears and touch, and notice special patterns and how it relates to math. 

The origami paper activity was also really beautiful to create. I think the concept can be applied when another medium is used. This activity can be extended and altered to students' interest. I love when math can be represented with such visually pleasing artwork, because it really takes away the boredom students are used in with traditional ways of teaching.

Inquiry Project + Reflection

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CnRU7JGusJvsSnI6mvLya38olM_OBifJ/view?usp=sharing

Teacher's Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health

By: Bonyo + Ealin + Jordan

Doing this project allowed me to really dig deep on Teacher's Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health. It made me more aware of all the realistic challenges teachers have to go through. It was very informative at times, but it also gave me a lot of reality checks. It's almost like reading all the red flags of my future. What's good is that we also made an effort to include things on how to manage those emotions and our mental health, so I was very relieved to have already found solutions to such prominent problems we will all encounter. I was worried that many students in the class will be bored and not pay attention to our presentation because a lot of people think our topic is very "self-explanatory" and that because it's in the future, they don't need to think about it now. I just hope that even if they didn't pay attention, if they ever find themselves struggling with their mental health, they can think back to our presentation and get some resources and strength from it. It's indeed a very big topic, so I'm excited to how much we can extend this topic when we take the inquiry part 2 course in January!

Inquiry Project Annotated Bibliography

Topic: Teacher's Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing

 Inquiry Project Annotated Bibliography By Ealin, Jordan, Bonyo 

Exit Slip Nov 18 : My Plan for the Annotated Bibliography

I plan to talk to my SA how she personally deals with her mental wellbeing, and asking whether there are good contacts within the school community to get more information and resources. I also want to talk to the administrators to see what they do to help teachers. It'll also be interesting to talk to counsellors to see if they have heard of any ways teachers in the school or district deal with their mental well-being. In addition to see what resources they have from the district, I want to see how they personally cope with stress and how specific topics like how they were able to adapt and transition to a new type of teaching when covid hit. This might also lead to how the union supports teachers and their contracts affects teachers on focusing on their mental well-being (for example, limited sick days. Teachers might not take a day off for their mental health because they don't think they are "sick" so they will leave that quota for when they are actually "sick").

For the interactive activity, I'm currently thinking about getting the class to try some "winding down" and "brain breaks" for teachers to do during the day. Our goal is for teachers to realize that they will eventually be burnt out and it will be okay. So when that happens, we can prepare them on what they can do by listing out how they usually destress, so they will have a list to refer to when that happens. 

Marks, grades and their effects in schooling

     As the teacher bird, I've learned that it could be easier to assign percentages that can be translated into letter grades for evaluation assessments compared to a number on a learning map. No matter what type of final evaluations, it should act as a type of feedback for students to know what to work on next. For a student bird, getting percentages isn't always a good thing as it produces stress in students. Specifically, when students get an 85%, they would want that extra percentage just to get a boost to the next letter grade. The question here is, what's truly the difference between an 85% student and an 86% student? If we got a few teachers to mark the same student, their mark can also vary drastically. This puts students into greater stress when it's between 49% and 50%. From the article, it explains that teachers also get fixated on marks and I agree with this because some times when teacher are giving up assessments, teachers run out of reasons to give students especially when the assessments is given out for the wrong reasons. When I say "wrong reasons", some examples include teachers trying to get the class average higher or lower, teachers needing to show parents concrete evidence of why students deserves a specific grade, etc.. Due to many reasons, teachers tend to forget the real reason and purpose for accurate assessments, and this leads to moving further away from focusing on what the students truly needs to get an accurate evaluation of their knowledge and skill. Due to such high focus on grades and percentages, students complete assignments for the sake of getting an A instead of chasing after inquiry, losing their motivation for the subject. 

 

    Something that I also agree with from the article is that student won't need rewards if they get enough stimulation within the classroom. Students tend to only do well with an external reason, like they will get some type of reward. That system will create bad learning behavior since they will only do well if they get a reward, but eventually they will run out of rewards or they will stop receiving rewards, and that's when people usually lose "motivation". Although it might be fixed with self discipline, not many people can transition and develop their own self discipline quickly. Therefore, if activities within the classroom can stimulate their minds and belief for the topic in a positive way, they won't need the external factor reward for them to move forward in the first place.