The Schools We Need Now
A Guide to Designing a Mentally Healthy School
Foreword by David Adams
Place mental health at the heart of schooling
Our students have always needed our support, but recent events have brought to the forefront the challenges K-12 schools face in supporting their mental health. Now is the time to transform schools into safe and healthy places that enable students not only to learn but also thrive.
Based on decades of research and proven examples from education professionals and the authors—who are experts in school leadership and social work—The Schools We Need Now highlights the importance of placing mental health at the heart of schooling and shares a vision for schools that prioritizes student well-being. Inside you’ll discover:
- Practical ways to improve school climate and mitigate the effects of students’ stress, trauma, depression, and anxiety
- Preventive activities, school transition and crisis response plans, and community collaboration strategies
- How to create a comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan that is grounded your school’s culture and climate
- Examples of schools, classrooms, and organizations that are on the leading edge of creating the schools we need now
For every educator who wants to ensure a healthy and equitable school environment for all students, The Schools We Need Now shows you how to create a safe place that protects and supports their academic, social, emotional, and physical growth.
"In their informative and instructive book, Tim Dohrer and Tom Golebiewski have accurately identified the mental health crisis that all schools are experiencing in the post-pandemic era. This current reality necessitates establishing a supportive, inclusive, and equitable school community for students, their families, and their teachers.
The Schools We Need Now calls us to rethink the purpose of schooling and learning. We must attend to students’ social and psychological well-being along with their academic progress. We must prioritize child, adolescent, and adult development and adopt pedagogy that addresses the whole child and culturally responsive teaching. We must understand social and emotional learning domains that create a school culture of care, belonging, and wellness and we must embrace assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning. We must include family mental health education programs and services. Finally, we must create conditions, systems, and structures that maximize support, prevention, intervention, and trauma-informed teaching practices. The Schools We Need Now provides a blueprint to create a multi-tiered school-based mental health action plan that considers childhood trauma, stress, anxiety, grief, loss, transitions, and self-harm."
"In these challenging post-pandemic times, Dohrer and Golebiewski provide leadership in rethinking one of our highest priority social and school improvement topics: the mental health of America's youth. They offer a comprehensive treatment of this complex domain, including the current social context of mental health, visions of excellence, and priority needs and how to meet them. Their work arises from exceptional scholarship combined with a thoughtful sense of practical reality. This book offers a roadmap to student mental and academic well-being."