The flexible classroom: Helping students with mental health challenges to thrive

About 10% of the school population — 9 to 13 million children — struggle with mental health challenges, some of the most challenging students that educators face. In our inclusive classrooms, teachers are becoming skilled at working with children who exhibit learning, physical, and cognitive disabilities, as well as those on the autism spectrum while students with mental health challenges continue to mystify and frustrate.

Many students with mental health challenges have difficulty regulating their emotions and behaviors, often becoming inflexible and oppositional, disengaged or disruptive. Classroom culture is often not supportive of these students, who have difficulty with expectations that are reasonable for most of the class. Traditionally in classrooms, we’ve emphasized and rewarded consistent and regulated behavior and performance — the exact skills lacked by many with mental health challenges.

Students with anxiety or other mental health challenges may demonstrate inconsistent performance and behavior, which may fluctuate with their emotional state. As the student’s anxiety and mood fluctuates, so does his ability to attend, behave appropriately, and do schoolwork. This potentially causes them to go from writing a two-page essay in the morning to struggling with a coherent sentence in the afternoon, from being appropriate during a spelling quiz one moment to crying over an easier assignment the next. Teachers are left not knowing what to expect. Typical classroom expectations are inflexible and don’t account for a student’s varying ability to achieve them at any given moment. Inflexible cultures can produce anxiety in those unable to meet expectations.