Academic Performance and Mental Health: Or, the Chicken/Egg Dilemma in Schools 🐔🥚🐣

Dear colleague,

A couple years ago, I was watching our high school's AP Research students give their summative presentations, and one student, Larissa, was studying the impact of dogs on academic performance.

(And as an aside, let me just say: the next politician to run on an “every classroom gets an emotional support animal” platform has my vote.)

During her presentation, Larissa made a profound observation: academic performance and mental health are directly related. As one goes up, the other tends to go up. As one decreases, the other tends to decrease, too.

I think it's amazing that a high schooler understood what so many of us in education seem to miss.

Great schools strive to promote both things at the same time:

• Social/emotional learning (SEL) isn't a tacked-on thing. It's embedded into enjoyable and productive learning experiences all across the school day.
• Teachers think about the assignments they give, not just from a mastery standpoint but also from the standpoint of avoiding over- or under-pressuring students because both circumstances lead to problems with mental health.
• They understand that succeeding at hard things (e.g., school, classes) is a great boon to mental health (now and in the future) and that good mental health is one of the preconditions for reliably succeeding at hard things.

Schools like this strike what I call Drucker's Balance (see the preface of The Will to Learn or this article).

So, may we take Larissa's insight into our own minds and souls as we seek to be both more humane this school year and more productive.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR