Peter,
Thank you for this post. One challenge for career schools is finding a way to provide counseling services for students that need it. Many smaller schools do not employ counselors.
One solution is to create relationships with local agencies. Some career schools contract with third party providers that will provide low or no cost services to students and graduates.
Yuhan,
The "mentoring business" is a good way to put it. Thanks!
I agree with you Jeffrey; I just think the choice of words is unfortunate. One would end up spending more time explaining what it is not saying. A phase such as "positive education" is much better.
Also I think we as educators are more accurately described as being in the "mentoring business".
Good comment!No jest intended! Mental health will have different significance to each individual and even between cultures. Sometimes we attach a stigma to something that demands awareness, compassion and consideration in the teaching professions. Students can behave in a healthy and sometimes an unhealthy manner. Depression and anxiety is often not recognized by students themselves, but it may be very obvious from the third person perspective. The student doesn't know what s/he doesn't know, that may interfere with their learning ability. (Student, get some help, and learning will be much easier, i.e. attention deficit)
Yuhan,
I am not sure saying we are in the "mental health" business implies that our students are "mental cases." We do want to create an atmosphere in our schools that promotes positive thinking and positive self images.
Maybe the phrase "mental heath" was made in jest. No one should seriously use this anywhere as it basically implies that the students are "mental cases" and not fully functioning adults. Otherwise we'd better start calling them "clients" instead of "customers"!
Every field is delimited; better to hold the boundary clearly. For example, in coaching great pains are taken to say that it's not therapy in any sense at all. Some goes for education.
Peter,
Thanks for this post. The best term I have seen for what we do is "edupreneur." We have to be educators, but we have to also treat our students as valued customers and our schools as businesses we want to succeed.
Fortunately, do the things that are right for our students are also the things that help us be successful financially in the long term.
I think that is an inciteful question!
We absolutely are in more then one business. We have to be cost efficiency(financial) and quality providers, we need to be mental health counselors, coaches, triager for the learning style of the student, marketeers for our school, facilitators, judges, inspectors for authenticity. Oh, and I ;-) almost forgot, teacher.
In life everyone has their good days and bad days. A university is a community of minds that is the product of the students, faculty and administrators that form a collective learning environment. An educator should try to become a mentor to his/her students and help them cope with a variety of distractors such as home, work, school, etc. In this sense the educator is in the business of being a mental health monitor. When any one component of the learning community is out of step then all suffer as a result. What helps is a smile, an encouraging word, a warm greeting. As educators we cannot solve all of life's problem but we can help to make the student's load a little lighter.
Kaitlin,
You are on to something here. Most non-traditional students have the capacity to be successful academically once they have internalized the belief that they can do it. As instructors, we need to be sure to provide positive experiences to inspire the positve self talk.
I too work with a non traditional students so treating these students as adults, customers, and fellow learners is essential. Once a non traditional student gets past the orginal nervousness of going back to school, they are willing to explore past class goals to application.
Absolutely I find this to be the case. As a small trade school, we are not educating the "traditional" student population. Most of our students are adults with children, many returning to school after long absence. When counseling students there is an ongoing evaluation of their confidence and outlook as well as their academic status and study skills. I often find myself discussing positive self talk and boundaries more often than time management!
I agree that the education business is also in the mental health business. The Education industry is multi-faceted. It requires excellent people skills, understanding, compassion, empathy, tough love, and hand-holding. Students are customers and they are buying an education for use towards their career. Education also involves cheerleading, being a true motivator, and a visionary. Each staff person is responsible for educating the student.
On above post from me, I meant to say that per my original post on this topic, we are definitely in the Mentality "Health" Business...which includes being aware of the many interesting issues this forum has brought to light on this topic.
We are not mental health providers. (Altho I have worked as an academic advisor and tutor for both academically at-risk and students with accommodations, where the position and interview was heavily weighted with whether the candidate had experience working with students who had panic disorder, anxiety attacks, depression, etc.) // My post here did not say we were mental health providers or that we were in that business. It was a "creative" look at the word MENTALITY, and being in the Mentality Business --with mentality defined as: "mental capacity, power, or activity; the mind; mental attitude or outlook; state of mind." Learning is the acquiring of knowledge and uses the mind...or mental capacities. Education, by definition, is the process of training and developing the knowledge, skill, MIND, character etc. especially by formal schooling, teaching, training. Figuratively or euphemistically it could be said we are in the Mentality Business, but absolutely not the mental health business.
Again, I disagree - we are not mental health providers. Some students suffer from depression, anxiety, ect - If we recognize such conditions we should immediately notify qualify people to treat them properly.
totally disagree- we are not qualified.
Looking at “mentality health” (instead of the traditional connotation of “mental health”) the college is in the business to promote mental capacity, power and activity of the mind and provide an environment that nurtures and reinforces a positive mental outlook and attitude toward academic achievement and degree completion/success.
I do agree. As I stated in Forum 1, most of the students that attend my University are "at-risk" in some sense of the word. We have to detect the reason(s) that place them at-risk and assist when and where we can. Without the students/customers, the University is nothing.
Educators are not in the mental health business. We are in the mental health "referral" business. Educators should know basic concepts in physiology and should notice if students show signs of depression or abuse. Educators have a responsibility to refer students who are troubled to the campus counselor or to local agencies who can direct the student to qualified mental health professionals. Our school pays for a 24/7 helpline service called Students Resource Center (www.studentlifetools.com) which is an outside contractor that provides our students with some free mental health counseling and referrals to agencies that will assist them with finding affordable childcare, legal advice, finical assistance, and transportation.
