Behavioral, Emotional, and Mental Health Effects on Education

Presenter: Amelia Balkan, Elementary Education , Global Public Health Scholars

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For my practicum, I volunteered at the Villa Maria School, a special education K-8 school in Timonium, Maryland that specializes in providing students with behavioral, emotional, and mental health issues with a trauma-informed path of education. As a classroom volunteer, I worked with students to succeed academically, to understand and better regulate their feelings and emotions, and to learn to change their behaviors into more productive ones. A lot of people in this world struggle with behavioral, emotional, and mental health issues. In elementary-aged children, these issues affect physical and cognitive development, which negatively affects educational achievement. In my practicum, I experienced first-hand the effect of trauma on the overall health of students, and I also experienced that effect on students’ overall ability to learn. The Villa Maria School is important because it provides an environment in which these at-risk students can learn like they haven’t been able to in their regular course of education. Educators and administrators teach with a trauma-informed path of education that allows them to validate their students’ feelings, actions, and behaviors, while encouraging students to do something more productive with those feelings. I, as a future educator, found this to be a very beneficial experience as I learned the connection between behavioral, emotional, and mental health with learning and schooling.