If there is a single major barrier that inhibits me from becoming the successful teacher I would prefer to be at Abilene Christian University, it is that I am not equipped to teach biology while at the same time monitoring the emotional health of my students. I feel completely unprepared for this some days. No where in my graduate school training in microbiology was there any discussion of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or suicide. I am not their licensed professional counselor, nor do I want to be. However, I want to learn to be observant enough to figure out that there is something wrong with a student before something bad happens, like a suicide attempt.
During Fall 2012, my teaching assistant tried to commit suicide. She had just broken up with her fiancee, and she sat in my office and told me she was “fine”. She seemed “too fine” to me, so I referred her to “S.O.S.”, now renamed “S.O.A.R.”. My good friend in that office met with her and saw no red flags. Three days later she attempted to commit suicide. This is strange, but I felt betrayed. She had sat in my office and lied to me when I was trying to help her. That is when it occurred to me that many, if not all, students will lie to me about their emotional or mental health. When students tell me they are fine, I am skeptical. Over the past five years, I have had four students attempt suicide (and fail) when they were enrolled in my classes. In two cases, I had to intervene in the attempt or threat by calling the police or by taking other action. The other two students reported their attempts to me after the fact. These are just the ones that I know about. I do not see myself as one of those professors who has the personality that students feel like they can tell their darkest secrets to, though somehow students have chosen to share this information with me. Since students are choosing me to confide in, I can be the person that can lead them to resources that can really give them the assistance they desire.
I have also had to become accustomed to students struggling with PTSD. My first experience with this was in Spring 2013. Minutes before and during the first exam in one of my courses, I received emails from several absent students or students bolting out of the room due to PTSD. They had not reported this to me beforehand. They are not required to share this with me, but it is helpful for me to know if a student is stressed that they have the possibility of having some sort of emotional breakdown before or during an exam. It turned out that all three of the students were in the ACU bus wreck and had all been diagnosed with PTSD in various forms of severity. I have had several other students over the years that suffered from PTSD from military combat or sexual abuse that has impacted their performances in my classes.
I am much more prepared now to deal with these students. I now know to call the ACU Police immediately if I suspect a student is about to hurt themselves or to call the ACU Counseling Center for non-emergencies. Nothing about student mental health was discussed in New Faculty Orientation the year I came. This would have been helpful. I believe this has changed now. I have had to learn from experience.
I also now have the awareness that many students are dealing with various emotional issues, and I will probably never know it. I only know about the extreme cases. Students will lie to me about their mental health. When I see the slightest thing “off” about students, I refer them to S.O.A.R. That is all I can do. I can not be their counselor. I am not trained for that.
It would be so much easier to teach students if they did not suffer from anxiety, depression, or PTSD, but that it not a barrier that can be easily overcome.