UBC's faculty of education promotes mental-health literacy

Last month, the dean of the UBC faculty of education, Blye Frank, invited alumni and others to an unusual event in downtown Vancouver. Called Frankly Speaking, it centred on mental-health literacy and included presentations by UBC president Santa Ono, UBC assistant director of indigenous education Jessica La Rochelle, and Dalhousie University psychiatry professor Dr. Stan Kutcher.

“This is a topic that is getting a lot of attention these days,” Frank told the Straight by phone. “That’s why we want to focus on it with our teacher-education candidates, of which there are about 700 this year.”

Frank emphasized that the faculty of education is not equipping future teachers to become clinicians. Rather, he said the goal is to promote knowledge about mental health and develop appropriate strategies for educators to make referrals.

“We don’t expect them to be doing the diagnosis and the treatment,” he stated.

He added that mental-health literacy also involves understanding the stressors and mental-health issues that might be facing marginalized communities. This can help prevent problems from escalating.

In addition, Frank said that it’s important for educators to be able to recognize when their own stress levels might be impairing their students’ capacity to learn. There’s a growing body of research into what Frank called “self-regulation”, which centres around curbing the release of stress hormones like cortisol.

“There is a real focus on our own students at UBC in relation to student wellness and student well-being,” Frank said. “Certainly, this is top of mind for President Ono.”

UBC’s faculty of education has long been a leader in indigenous education, with groups of 32 to 36 students enrolling in “cohorts” to gain a deeper understanding in this area. This year, Frank reported, there is the largest number ever of indigenous students in the faculty’s indigenous-education cohort on the Point Grey campus. He also said this year marks the first cohort of nonindigenous students in the indigenous-education cohort.

“All teacher candidates are required to do mandatory courses in indigenous education in order to become certified by British Columbia,” Frank noted. “Issues of indigeneity infiltrate our programs extensively.”

The faculty of education is also devoting a great deal of attention this year on gender and sexuality. This will ensure that teacher-education candidates are literate and knowledgeable when they go into classrooms and encounter students who are coping with these issues.

B.C. recently redesigned its kindergarten-to-Grade-12 curriculum to promote more inquiry-based learning. This dovetails with the UBC faculty of education’s approach, which endorses encouraging students to ask questions, as well as knowing how to go about finding the answers.

“The availability of knowledge to any of us has exponentially increased in terms of speed and quantity,” Frank said. “So we want our teacher candidates to be able to prep us with literacy around that so students and schools can work from an inquiry-based point of view.

“What do we want?” he continued. “We want curious, passionate learners and we want curious, passionate teachers. It makes a huge difference.”