Intro & Rationale
Introduction & Rationale
I have created these resources (book and website) to provide information to educators. I believe that mental wellness in the classroom is incredibly important and that it is not always represented very well. I also think that it is important for everyone, especially students with exceptionalities to feel as though mental wellness is not something that has a stigma attached to it. To remove this stigma, which I very much still believe exists, even though it is improving, we need to become better informed. I think that the classroom is the perfect place to teach this acceptance. It is also important for classroom teachers to recognize and celebrate the diversity in their classrooms.
These resources represent the Professional Inquiry Project that I have created during and for my Professional Semester Internship. I will be leaving behind the website and a copy of the document that I created in the school I completed my internship at with the hope that it will be of use to faculty members, or students, even after I am gone. Sometimes it is hard to find summarized information about different exceptionalities. It is my hope that the resources that I have put together can act as a starting point for educators specifically, but for anyone who wants to gather more information about certain exceptionalities.
The DSM-5, the golden standard in mental disorders, is a lengthy and informative document, but in its entirety it is almost 1000 pages, which can be pretty daunting. There are over 600 diagnoses in the DSM-5, and some of them differ slightly. For the purposes of this project, I thought about the context of the school that I completed my internship at – an elementary school from Kindergarten up to Grade 6. It is with this context that I selected the exceptionalities that I wanted to focus on. I did some research to determine the onset for the exceptionalities and which are the most common in elementary age students. Anxiety and Depression, exceptionalities that I had not previously believed to affect elementary school age children as much as older ones, is increasingly prevalent with younger students. This shocked me, and some of my peers. It is for this reason that I wanted to highlight these two, often comorbid exceptionalities at the very beginning of this resource. I think too often they are overlooked. Strategies for dealing with Anxiety and Depression in the classroom, as with most of the exceptionalities that I have investigated in this resource, can be done relatively simply. This is another thing that I think can be misunderstood – implementing strategies in a classroom for “a few” students with exceptionalities is time consuming and unfair to the other students. This is not the case. In fact, I believe that mindfulness is something that can be beneficial to all of the students in a classroom at any age. I also believe that these skills, once learned, can be used outside of the classroom setting, and for the rest of students’ lives.
In my previous three practicums, I have encountered numerous students with a variety of exceptionalities. These experiences showed me that the availability of user-friendly resources for educators is numerous but spread out. Taking from my experience I have created this resource, which I feel will be beneficial to educators who will encounter these exceptionalities in their classrooms.
These resources represent the Professional Inquiry Project that I have created during and for my Professional Semester Internship. I will be leaving behind the website and a copy of the document that I created in the school I completed my internship at with the hope that it will be of use to faculty members, or students, even after I am gone. Sometimes it is hard to find summarized information about different exceptionalities. It is my hope that the resources that I have put together can act as a starting point for educators specifically, but for anyone who wants to gather more information about certain exceptionalities.
The DSM-5, the golden standard in mental disorders, is a lengthy and informative document, but in its entirety it is almost 1000 pages, which can be pretty daunting. There are over 600 diagnoses in the DSM-5, and some of them differ slightly. For the purposes of this project, I thought about the context of the school that I completed my internship at – an elementary school from Kindergarten up to Grade 6. It is with this context that I selected the exceptionalities that I wanted to focus on. I did some research to determine the onset for the exceptionalities and which are the most common in elementary age students. Anxiety and Depression, exceptionalities that I had not previously believed to affect elementary school age children as much as older ones, is increasingly prevalent with younger students. This shocked me, and some of my peers. It is for this reason that I wanted to highlight these two, often comorbid exceptionalities at the very beginning of this resource. I think too often they are overlooked. Strategies for dealing with Anxiety and Depression in the classroom, as with most of the exceptionalities that I have investigated in this resource, can be done relatively simply. This is another thing that I think can be misunderstood – implementing strategies in a classroom for “a few” students with exceptionalities is time consuming and unfair to the other students. This is not the case. In fact, I believe that mindfulness is something that can be beneficial to all of the students in a classroom at any age. I also believe that these skills, once learned, can be used outside of the classroom setting, and for the rest of students’ lives.
In my previous three practicums, I have encountered numerous students with a variety of exceptionalities. These experiences showed me that the availability of user-friendly resources for educators is numerous but spread out. Taking from my experience I have created this resource, which I feel will be beneficial to educators who will encounter these exceptionalities in their classrooms.