Page 31 - CARING and SAFE SCHOOLS in ONTARIO

✦ Responding to negative feedback – low self-esteem, leading to difficulty in understanding and interpreting criticism and/or poor grades, and difficulty knowing what to do to improve or how to initiate changes
✦ Responding to change – difficulty coping with unexpected changes in coursework, such as changes in assignments, due dates, or instructors
(Adapted from Mancuso, 1990, as cited by Canadian Mental Health Association, n.d., section headed “Recognizing When There’s a Problem”)
Although mental illness can occur at any age, it often strikes children and youth from late adolescence to early adulthood. Serious mental illness can significantly interfere with learning, thinking, communicating, and sleeping. Medication, counselling, and psychosocial rehabilitation are treatment options that can help students recover from mental illness.
A variety of more common mental health problems, including temporary adjustment difficulties, moderate performance anxiety, and occasional mood swings, affect most people from time to time. Students experiencing these types
of problems may not require medical treatment, but they may benefit from extra support and understanding on the part of teachers and parents. However, if these problems become prolonged or serious enough to affect the student’s learning, they could be a sign of serious mental illness and should be brought to the attention of parents and/or health professionals.
Additional Factors Affecting Behaviour
▪ Student behaviour is affected not only by specific challenges like those just dis- cussed but also by a broad range of influences that flow from the circumstances of the student’s life. For example, a student’s behaviour will be shaped by the presence or absence of the following:
✦ support from parents, other family, and other adults, at home, at school, and in the community;
✦ opportunities to be creative and to participate and interact in a variety of social situations;
✦ reasonable boundaries and realistic but high expectations for behaviour and achievement;
✦ opportunities to develop feelings of engagement in and commitment to learning;
✦ opportunities to develop positive values and attitudes such as empathy, a sense of fairness, a sense of responsibility, and a positive sense of self;
✦ opportunities to develop social skills that facilitate social adjustment and healthy relationships.
Understanding Student Behaviour
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The Search Institute has developed an inventory of forty such factors, entitled “40 Developmental Assets” (www.search-institute.org/assets), which can help schools identify the gaps in a student’s “support system” and can provide a starting point for addressing negative behaviour in a constructive manner.