Free Teacher Classroom Resources to Support Youth With Mental Health Challenges, Tech Overload from Social Media or Online Gaming & Executive Functioning Issues for Grades 5 to 10.

When chronic exhaustion and disengagement takes over learning

By Catherine Patterson-Sterling, PhD, RCC

Ask any middle or high school teacher their biggest challenge and they may tell you that their number one issue is student engagement in the classroom.

Even with the most engaging classroom lesson, educators can be met with spacy expressions as students question “Huh?”, “Whah?”, or “What were we doing again?”

Even when directions are written on a board with an activity that relates to a unit that students have been doing for several weeks, many learners may appear dazed and confused as if looking at this information for the first time even if this is lesson #7 on the same topic.

As a High School Teacher, my biggest challenge was engagement in the classroom. The simplest of instructions became difficult as youth who were “up late last night online”, “did not feel well”, needed to “check their messages because something important was happening” or were distracted by anything other than the learning at hand.

Even if I created the most exciting activity, class discussion, or hands-on exercise that would spark the imaginations of students from previous classes mere years ago, many of my students were walking through emotional molasses....slow-stuck-and without focus!

We used to watch movies in class as a reward for hard work and do a movie analysis. Then students couldn’t pay attention to the movie and asked instead if they could have some “tech time” just to scroll through their phones and catch up on their social media feeds?

The reward would be stone cold silence with eye balls glued to screens.

E-N-G-A-G-E-M-E-N-T was the challenge and then A-T-T-E-N-D-A-N-C-E.

A student dentist appointment became a week-long endeavor even if there was no dental surgery.

When I spoke with parents, they would say their child has "a lot going on."  

As students, came back from their week-long appointments, I would ask if they were okay and they would say that they have been dealing with sleep issues.

Finally, I asked if there was anything medically wrong and I was told that they could not sleep well as they were trying to watch videos to go to sleep or that their “anxiety had gotten really bad.”

We would restart again and I would provide reassurance that I was there for anything they needed.

Each day the struggle was to get through directions and then even if there was a spark of motivation, students would power out.

In order to inspire motivation, I would ask them about their future goals and with glazed faces they would express how they will never be able to afford a home anyways.

On a systems level, the talk amongst educators was often about how to ban cell phones while disregarding the deeper underlying dependencies and cycles that students face balancing both the digital as well as physical worlds.

My journey as an educator and clinical supervisor was to try to build back emotional and social learning into the classroom so I developed a resource called "Twenty." I created animated characters as part of urschool life who struggled with the same issues except that as part of lessons, students would then be able to help fix their issues while learning about dopamine, cell phone addictions, online toxic culture impacting self-esteem, and how to stay motivated with future goals.

This resource then was expanded into three different programs:

These resources include engaging videos and materials with lesson plans, quizzes, reflection exercises all pre-loaded on to a learning management system that can be projected in class or utilized with individual student account keys for students grades 5 to 12.

Access your free teacher copy today at https://www.softskillstrainingcenter.com 

*Check out a new school-wide positive mental health program intervention called "Citizenship Points Passport Program" -https://www.softskillstrainingcenter.com/schoolwideprogram

Educators know all too well that young people need resources and skills for 3 m’s -managing technology, mitigating mental health challenges, and mastering future goal-setting.

About The Writer:

Catherine Patterson-Sterling, PhD, RCC is an educator of 20+ years with diverse experience in all levels of elementary, high school, and post secondary education as a teacher, counsellor, and clinical supervisor. With extensive experience in research and counselling, she understands the impact as well as sources of disengagement as well as chronic absenteeism on learners at all levels. She is also the creator of this new innovative program “Twenty” sponsored by Soft Skills Training Center and Patterson-Sterling Consulting and Counselling Services.

Access your free teacher copy today at https://www.softskillstrainingcenter.com