Back to the Classroom

Abstract

The example of the young teenager first introduced in illustrates how the school-based mental health approach provides the skill building and counseling needed to help a student erase failure and return to the classroom and work successfully. To take new student-centered methods back to the classroom, first we must get rid of mandated testing; it has been a complete failure and has only increased the failure and inability of teachers to teach and students to learn. We need to teach to the needs of the students, not the needs of a contrived test. In most cases, it is not the students who are failing, or even the teachers, for that matter; instead, it is the methods that we use to teach students in the classroom which have failed and continue to fail every single day. Yes, some students learn; some students will always learn no matter what method you use to teach, but what of the students who are struggling and in many cases failing, not because they cannot learn, but because we are failing to teach them?